Since many of the lucky ones are off work today to recover from too much fun/food in the sun yesterday, it might be the better part of valor for me to just do a post catching y’all up on interesting recent posts in the blogosphere.
June 14, 2010: Marty Kittrell’s post on the Lamar Life Building has some great detail shots of the gargoyles hovering over the street in downtown Jackson.
June 18, 2010: Suzassippi’s Lottabusha County Chronicles takes a look at some interesting sites in Lafayette, Yalobusha, and Calhoun Counties.
June 25, 2010: A thought-provoking essay from The Urbanophile arguing that civic leadership hasn’t disappeared, but has shifted from the bankers and merchant classes to the real estate and development communities.
June 25, 2010: A photo essay of Yazoo City and County from kodachromeguy at Urban Decay
June 28, 2010: Architectural Research’s “Hurricanes, Oil & Architecture” reminds us that before the oil disaster in the Gulf, the oil industry had brought great wealth and many major works of architecture–good and bad–in the Gulf Coast region.
June 28, 2010: Regional Modernism posted a scanned newspaper article (“Mississippi Coast: Lost Moderns“) about the Calongne House in Waveland, and also provides a link to a blog post about the unknown-to-me Bruce Goff house in Gulfport, built in 1958 for the Gutman family and apparently destroyed by fire. Anyone know where this wacky/amazing house was?
June 28, 2010: Suzassippi visits the B.T.C Old-Fashioned Grocery store in Water Valley mentioned in the June 25, 2010 News Roundup and shares her pictures and thoughts. She even tracks down an interesting historic photograph of the building that leaves us with some intriguing questions. Thanks Susan!
July 1, 2010: The National Trust’s blog gives some ideas in “How to turn young adults into preservationists.” The comments to this post provide other interesting perspectives on the issue of bringing the Under-40 crowd into the preservation tent.
The Bruce Goff House, aka the Gutman House, in Gulfport, also locally known as the Star of David House, was located on the north side of Bayou Circle in Gulfport, which runs along the south shore of Gulfport Lake, all in the Bayou View subdivision. It was originally constructed by a Dr. Gutman, and was sometimes called the “Flying Saucer House”. It was quite a sight when it was built.
Posted by Jim Galloway | July 5, 2010, 10:57 amThanks for that helpful information–wish I had been around to see it. Do you know about when it burned?
Posted by ELMalvaney | July 6, 2010, 8:09 pmMy memory often plays tricks on me when I’m asked how long ago things happened, but I’m going to guess it was no more than 10 years ago.
Posted by Jim Galloway | July 7, 2010, 8:59 amthe house burned in 1986. this was a favorite destination for sunday drives when i was a kid. the stucco finish had crushed glass mixed in it and the house glittered in the sunlight. Goff’s other gulf coast masterpeice, the Gryder house in Ocean Springs MS is still in pristine condition.
Posted by archangel41 | August 12, 2010, 11:32 pmAccording to J. Francois Gabriel’s Beyond the cube: The architecture of space frames and polyhedra, it was in the 1980s, and was a fire of “suspicious origin.” Assuming the link works, it will take you to a page about the Gutman House, and also includes a picture that is more visible than the one from the first post. http://books.google.com/books?id=FkM0945nFV8C&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=Bruce+Goff+house+Gulfport&source=bl&ots=W_uesrfJ5X&sig=NxrWV2fneM06nx4TQrbBTSHN_Pc&hl=en&ei=rgUyTMLzG6LenQfLg-WJBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CDEQ6AEwBjgU#v=onepage&q&f=false
Posted by Susan Allen | July 7, 2010, 12:10 pmWell….I only missed the date by 2 decades or so. Maybe it was the late 80′s.
;-)
Posted by Jim Galloway | July 7, 2010, 1:30 pmThanks for that link Susan–too bad about the fire, I would have loved to see this place. That picture is definitely better than the one on the blog too.
Jim, just like our parents warned us, once we got out of school, the years just all melded into one :-)
Posted by ELMalvaney | July 7, 2010, 7:04 pmMy husband bought the Star House from the Gutmans. From what I understand it was quite the party house. I wish he had not sold it to the last owner. Wonder how it would have withstood Katrina.
Posted by Sandy Scully | August 13, 2010, 10:58 amOh I wish it would have lasted long enough for us to see how it stood up to Katrina! It was elevated, right, so it might have had a chance, unless the water came up even higher or the fasteners weren’t strong.
I guess it’s not surprising it was a party house, maybe that’s what started the fire?
Posted by ELMalvaney | August 16, 2010, 6:34 pm