Comments on: Name This Place 4.2

By: Abandoned Mississippi: Mt. Holly, Lake Washington « Preservation in Mississippi

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:05:33 +0000

[...] heard was falling into disrepair. As you may recall, Mt. Holly was one of the mystery places in our latest Name This Place contest, and to summarize the information we discovered from the answers to that post: Mt. Holly was [...]

By: ELMalvaney

ELMalvaney — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:44:45 +0000

Since you’re at MSU, you presumably have easy access to JSTOR? If so, search for Lewinski, and you’ll turn up two articles and a book review, all by Clay Lancaster from the 1940s and 50s. These only focus on his Kentucky career though, and say nothing about work in any other states.

I at first thought he must have come to Mississippi for the big Memorial Hall project in Natchez and then stayed on for Mount Holly, but in fact, those two buildings are separated by at least 5 years. There were, of course, family connections between Natchez and the settlement at Lake Washington, and I’ve heard that some of those families also had connections with Lexington, Kentucky, but I haven’t seen the documentation that ties all that together. And Lewinski, while documented for Memorial Hall, is only attributed for Mount Holly, at least to my knowledge.

You’re right that we have only a very limited understanding of the antebellum construction scene in MS, and I would say that persists even into the late 19th century–we know a few architects or master builders, mostly in the major towns, but for the vast majority we know only snippets or nothing at all.

Seems to me “Lewinski in Mississippi” might be a good thesis topic :-)

By: W. White

W. White — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:01:44 +0000

Thank you. Once you told me that it was not Sloan, I had to decide which other architect from the era it was. I decided on Vaux because of the characteristics of the only other likely candidates, Richard Upjohn’s designs are heavier than Vaux’s; Alexander Jackson Davis and Andrew Jackson Downing were more interested in symmetry that Vaux.
Do you have any other information on Thomas Lewinski? What other structures did he design and, as a Kentucky architect, how did he come to build structures in Mississippi? Afterall, not every architect was as widely traveled as William Nichols (just to name one example). The builders who actually created the antebellum buildings we see are often both interesting and unfairly forgotten. There were very few architects that created original designs; it was up to skilled builders to adapt designs from pattern books to climate, client desires, etc.

By: ELMalvaney

ELMalvaney — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:20:55 +0000

Shouldn’t that be “well, ah nevah”? :-)

By: ELMalvaney

ELMalvaney — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:19:43 +0000

You’re correct! It’s a variant mirror version of Vaux’s “Irregular Villa Without Wing” in Villas and Cottages. I guess I could hold everyone in suspense about who is thought to have made the modification, but I think it’s very obscure and not published anywhere. The speculation is that Kentucky architect Thomas Lewinski, who designed Henry Clay’s “Ashland” and Natchez’ Memorial Hall, was the architect who took Vaux’s published plans and worked them into Mount Holly. You should get an extra point, W, for pulling Vaux’s name from memory–who needs those books anyway? :-)