Preservation in Mississippi
ELMalvaney
Interesting Mississippi-related Blog Posts
If you can get past the title, the Curator of Shit blog has several interesting Mississipp-related posts, ranging from “The Glorious Evolution of Messeur Elisaeus von Seutter’s Pleasure Grounds at Ivy Cottage, Jackson, Mississippi,” to “A typical early 20th century African American urban street, Jackson, Mississippi,” to “Pre-FEMA Trailers, Thisildu, Hurricane of 1947, Mississippi.” To … Continue reading
Corinth Machinery Building, 1869-2012
As JRGordon noted in last week’s News Roundup, the long-abandoned and highly endangered Corinth Machinery Building, built in 1869, suffered a large partial collapse in that weekend’s heavy storms. As you might remember from a post back in January 2010, there was some movement to try to at least stabilize the building, but nothing ever … Continue reading
Slave Dwelling Project in Holly Springs
According to the Preserve Holy Springs and Marshall County Facebook page, Joe McGill of The Slave Dwelling Project will be spending the night in two Holly Springs slave quarters during Pilgrimage (April 13-15) and helping visitors understand these historic places. Mr. McGill, a historian with the National Trust for Historic Preservation and a Civil War … Continue reading
The Official 101 Mississippi Places to See Before You Die List
As I mentioned yesterday, due to my natural soft-hearted nature, our famous and infamous list of 101 Places is actually a list of 106 Places, but I make no apologies. It’s not the list I would have come up with on my own, but that’s the point of doing polls–to find out what other people … Continue reading
Trying to Make Sense of the 101 MissPres Places Poll
Today and tomorrow, we will finally, at long last and after much fretting, announce the list of 101 Mississippi Places To See Before You Die (shortened to 101 Places for convenience). For those of you who weren’t around from start to finish, here’s a short recounting of how we arrived here (for a longer version, … Continue reading
Two Photo Essays on Endangered Places
Check out these two recent photo essays on endangered historic places in Mississippi: “Decaying History” on the Modern Southerner blog, and “A beautiful dogtrot house, fading slowly away” on NMissCommentor.
Abandoned Mississippi: Port Gibson Oil Works
The abandoned plant of the Mississippi Cotton Oil Company wasn’t on the recent Port Gibson Holiday Home Tour, but as I was wandering about before the tours started, I was drawn to the place, just north of downtown, like a moth to the flame. I’ve always been intrigued by cotton seed oil mills–the strange shapes … Continue reading
Mississippi Architect, May 1964: Gulde Methodist Church
A simple Modern rural church was the featured Mississippi building in the May 1964 issue of the Mississippi Architect. ——————————————————————– GULDE METHODIST CHURCH Rankin County, Miss. CLEMMER & CLARK, A.I.A. Architects Jackson, Miss. R.D. MOON Contractor Pelahatchie, Miss. THIS rural church serves a congregation of less than one hundred and is located near the town … Continue reading
Mississippi Architect, May 1964: Speaking Architects’ Language
In his editorial for May 1964, Mississippi Architect editor and Jackson architect Edward F. Neal notes the language barrier between architects and clients. This is and probably always will be a problem with any kind of specialized field, and like doctors, some architects are better than others at translating their language into ours. Since this … Continue reading
Going Inside: St. Joseph Catholic Church and its Blue Glow
It’s a nice coincidence that in the same week as an update on Jackson’s First Christian Church we should look at the interior of Port Gibson’s St. Joseph Catholic Church. Built almost exactly 100 years apart, these two buildings might be supposed to have nothing in common. In fact, they share one characteristic, besides their Gothic … Continue reading
Some Things To Do This “Winter”
It’s that time of year again for Millsaps to offer its Community Enrichment Series, short courses geared toward the general public and for a small fee. In addition to courses as varied as portrait photography and belly dancing, they are offering a few classes again that appeal to history and architecture-minded folks. I’m a little … Continue reading
Is that a hole in First Christian?
Just before the New Year, MissPres reader “M” (who, I’m told, is a first cousin twice removed from James Bond’s “Q”), alerted us in a comment left on “Friends We Lost in 2011” that there appears to be a large leak or maybe even hole in the roof of Jackson’s First Christian Church. As you … Continue reading
Martin Luther King, Jr. in Philadelphia, Miss.
From the Downtown Philadelphia Historic District nomination, recounting the civil rights march led by Martin Luther King, Jr., in Philadelphia. Held on June 21, 1966, the march from Independence Quarters, a large black neighborhood west of the railroad, to the courthouse was meant to bring attention to the Schwerner, Chaney & Goodman murders: King began … Continue reading
When You Absolutely Positively Have to Know What’s a Volute?
Recently I took a second look at the sizable number of architectural dictionaries sitting on my shelves, most within easy reach arm’s length of my computer desk. While it may seem that I know just the right architectural term for every minuscule part of a building, in fact, I regularly pull my architectural mumbo-jumbo out … Continue reading
Round the Blogosphere 1-8-2012
As I was writing the date, I realized that if you add 8 and 12 you get 20, so I wanted to be sure to share that little bit of math nerdery with you this lovely Monday morning. JRGordon searched and searched for news this week, but apparently after the splurge of Christmas-week news, everyone … Continue reading
Going Inside: Port Gibson’s First Presbyterian
We’ve all heard about the Hand Pointing To Heaven that tops the steeple of Port Gibson’s First Presbyterian Church and most of have probably seen it while driving down Church Street, but the interior of the church is worth looking at too. I had a chance to get inside for the first time last month … Continue reading
Architects of Mississippi: William Stanton
Maybe you remember the post “From Charleston to Vicksburg With Love” from a while back about the connection between Vicksburg and Charleston, SC, namely the architect of Vicksburg’s Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity started his career in Charleston, with a number of high-quality churches and other commissions there. In that post, I mentioned the … Continue reading
2011 in review
I was sitting down to post the MissPres annual report for 2011 just before midnight, since my neighbors were shooting off fireworks over my house, and lo and behold, I found that WordPress has already prepared an annual report for me. Here’s an excerpt: In 2011, there were 275 new posts, growing the total archive of this … Continue reading
Books About The City
Check out Simon Jenkins’ recent “Five Best Books About The City” in the Wall Street Journal. It includes Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of Great American Cities, our very first Book Quotes series here on MissPres.
Mississippi Landmarks 2011
To end our week of lists, here’s a photographic summary of the historic places designated as Mississippi Landmarks this year. As we’ve noted before, “Mississippi Landmark” and “National Register” are sometimes confused, but they are two completely different programs to recognize historic properties. The National Register is administered by the National Park Service, while the … Continue reading
National Register 2011–Historic Districts
As you know, National Register listings can be either individual places, as shown in yesterday’s post, or larger groupings of buildings known as historic districts. Historic districts can be as small as a handful of houses in a rural community or as large as a dense urban neighborhood (as dense and as urban as Mississippi … Continue reading
National Register 2011–Individual Listings
As in previous years, we’re breaking our National Register of Historic Places listings for 2011 into two separate posts to avoid piling on and to allow you time to read through the summaries and ponder. Some of these listings have been covered in various News Roundups throughout the year, but I always like to have … Continue reading
Auld Lang Syne: Friends We Lost in 2011
As is traditional in this quiet week after Christmas and before New Years, we look back at the year and recount our wins and losses. We usually start with the “sad list” of buildings who lost their battle against time in 2011. This year’s losses seem pretty significant to me, with a number of recognized … Continue reading
Jackson Poll Results
As we all recover from Christmas cheer, take a look at the Jackson poll results. As you recall, this was the last poll in our ongoing effort to build a list of 101 Mississippi Places to See Before You Die. Once our statistician gets back in town, we’ll work a little magic with the numbers … Continue reading
A Few of Malvaney’s Favorite Things
Since this is the week before Christmas, we authors of MissPres thought we’d look back at some of our favorite posts and re-gift them, adding value with a few thoughts about why we liked them so much. It’s the closest we could come to raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, and hopefully these won’t … Continue reading
Belhaven University’s Fitzhugh Hall Endangered
Word has come from Belhaven University in Jackson this week about disturbing recent structural shifts in the East Wing of their iconic Fitzhugh Hall. Built in 1911, the building was significantly rebuilt and altered after a 1927 fire. Now the south masonry wall appears to be crumbling for some reason, shifting over 6 inches in … Continue reading
The Cornerstones of Port Gibson
Y’all know how I love to find a cornerstone on a building–even new buildings. They are gifts that hand down essential knowledge to passersby about when a building came to be and who had a hand in bringing it from dream to reality. So if one cornerstone can make me so happy, imagine what two, … Continue reading
Travelling by Trolley in Mississippi: Yazoo City
The Yazoo City Light, Water and Sewage Plant built and operated the second oldest municipal street railway in the United States. Continue reading
Port Gibson Holiday Home Tour
Last Saturday I got out of Jackson, avoiding the maddening Christmas shopping traffic, and headed down southwest to Port Gibson. I usually take Highway 18 through Raymond, Utica, and Carpenter and through the steel truss bridge that spans Bayou Pierre. But Saturday I took a different route, possibly for the first time, heading west on … Continue reading
“The view from the roof of the building is magnificent in every direction”
Vicksburgers were especially proud of their 8-story skyscraper–the tallest building in the state when it was finished in 1907–and these images prove that they wanted to share their urbanity and modernity with the outside world. Continue reading
Restoring America’s Oldest African American Church
Catch this NPR story about the completion of a 6-year restoration project of Boston’s African Meeting House, the country’s oldest African-American church, celebrating its 205-year anniversary.
Halfway Through the Jackson Poll
With a midway total of 602 votes and one more week left in the Jackson poll, the two capitols are duking it out at the top, followed by a peloton of skyscrapers, the War Memorial Building, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Fountainhead” in Woodland Hills. The Governor’s Mansion, Bailey Junior High, St. Andrew’s Cathedral, and the old … Continue reading
Travelling by Trolley in Mississippi: Vicksburg
My mother was from a large Vicksburg family, and for that reason, relatives’ tales of the trolleys were standard and frequent. As a child, my mother rode the streetcar to school and back each day, and my uncle soaped the tracks on the hill passing the Bijou Theater many a summer night! Continue reading
MDAH Announces 2011 CHPG Grantees
According to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History’s website, the department will be giving about $2 million in grants for the rehabilitation and repair of nineteen historic buildings around the state. As in the past, I’ve taken the liberty of adding photographs, obtained courtesy of MDAH’s Historic Preservation Division, which oversees the grants. Here’s the … Continue reading
MissPres 101 Places: Jackson Poll (The END Is Near!)
It was November 19, 2010, when I posted what I thought would be a fun somewhat off-beat Friday post, entitled “Miles to Go Before I Sleep.” Examining a new book I had bought called 1001 Buildings You Must See Before You Die, I counted up the number of places in the world I had been to (a … Continue reading
Travelling by Trolley in Mississippi: Summit-McComb
Mississippi’s streetcar lines included a small operation in the McComb area. A letter from Mr. C.H. Douglas, mayor of McComb, November 25, 1960, states that streetcars operated between McComb and Godbold’s Wells, located east of Summit. Continue reading
Mississippi Architect, April 1964: Howard Memorial Hospital
Sometimes I sit down to write a post thinking I know what I’m talking about and then as I write and check the facts I thought I knew, I realize that I was completely on the wrong track. For instance, when I started putting together today’s article, reprinted from the Mississippi Architect April 1964 issue, I … Continue reading
Mississippi Architect, April 1964: Say No To Historicism!
A few years back it was not uncommon to find streets in American towns which displayed an amazing array of architectural types. One might see a motel reflective of the architecture associated with Pueblo cliff dwellings next to a bank inspired by the Temple of Apollo. Continue reading
101 Places: Piney Woods Poll Results
I hope y’all had an enjoyable and relaxing Thanksgiving and most of all that you avoided the so-called Black Friday scourge and in any context did not get pepper-sprayed. I myself had a few minutes to think this weekend, and all the sudden I realized that I forgot to run the Piney Woods poll results … Continue reading
Mississippi Places We’re Thankful For
As seen in “Katrina Survivors: Randolph Rosenwald School, Pass Christian“
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