In honor of the one and only 12-12-12 day any of us will ever see (unless we can get that Youth Serum working so we all live to be incredibly old and wise yet fit and trim, making all the… Read More ›
Recent Past 
Project updates from Biloxi
Back in June JR Gordon reported on the rehabilitation of the White Pillars restaurant in Biloxi. Since the restaurant has been closed since the early 1990′s my interest was piqued and I went by for a look. Work has been… Read More ›
Before and After: Hilton Hotel, Jackson
I’m not sure what architectural style the old Jackson Hilton, built sometime in the 1970s (?) on North State Street would have been called, but all of its style–whatever it was–is gone gone gone today in its current incarnation as… Read More ›
Mississippi Architect, October 1964: I.T.T. Kellogg Plant, Corinth
The October 1964 edition of the Mississippi Architect features an industrial building in Corinth, designed by John L. Turner.
“Ghosts of Ole Miss” on ESPN
If you’re looking for a break from the Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy coverage tonight, check out ESPN’s “Ghosts of Ole Miss” about the 1962 football season in the midst of violence over integration: “In the fall of 1962, James Meredith walked onto… Read More ›
Something You May Not Know About the Natchez Malt Shop
You probably read with horror, as I did a couple of weeks ago–in fact, I think my co-workers heard a long anguished “NOOOOOOO!!!” from my office–that a car smashed into the Malt Shop in Natchez, destroying pretty much the whole… Read More ›
Before and After: Admiral Benbow Inn, Jackson
I haven’t done a Before-and-After in a while, but one of yesterday’s masonry screens came from the old Admiral Benbow Inn (now Admiral Retirement Center) and reminded me I had an old postcard from its glory days of colorful panels… Read More ›
Mississippi Architect, September 1964: Moss Point Municipal Building
The new Moss Point Municipal Building, designed by H.F. Fountain of Biloxi was the subject of the September 1964 issue of Mississippi Architect magazine. Unfortunately, this building’s life was cut short by Hurricane Katrina, as I believe it flooded like… Read More ›
Modernist Storefronts of Pascagoula
Pascagoula, better known for its colonial-period Old Spanish Fort (aka De le Pointe-Krebs House), actually has some really interesting mid-20th-century buildings for the architectural explorer to examine. The commercial strip on Delmas Avenue in particular, although partially covered as a downtown “mall” as part of an urban renewal scheme in the 1970s, still has a few nicely done Modernist storefronts.
Mississippi Architect, August 1964: Greenville Motor Bank
The August 1964 issue of the Mississippi Architect magazine features a building type that I hadn’t even noticed on the landscape until Thomas Rossell started pointing it out to me: the motor bank, better known to us today as the… Read More ›
Mississippi Architect, August 1964: “Assembly Line” Holiday Inn
In his editorial for August 1964, Mississippi Architect editor and Jackson architect Bob Henry calls architects to public service. If you know an architect, odds are, he or she is serving on a board of some kind, whether public or… Read More ›
MissPres Architectural Word of the Week: Mushroom Capital
Time for another MissPres Architectural Word of the Week. As we move right along through the alphabet, you can check out our past words here. Have you been keeping an eye out for these elements like I have? While only… Read More ›
Going Inside: First National Bank, Jackson
I can be pretty bold about taking pictures of historic buildings or just any building that I consider architecturally impressive, but one place I’ve never even tried to take a picture of is the inside of my bank, Trustmark Bank… Read More ›
Yazoo City’s Delta National Bank and Its Place in American Architectural History
A while back I stumbled onto a website called “Defining Downtown at Mid-Century: The Architecture of the Bank Building & Equipment Corporation of America.” A part of the Recent Past Network, the site aims to bring attention to the thousands… Read More ›
Molitor’s Mississippi: February 11, 1954
This week we are following Architectural Photographer Joseph Molitor on the 58th anniversary of his 1954 trip. Today is the last day of our three-blog-postings trip through Mississippi with Mr. Molitor. According to Columbia University’s Avery Library Archive, by Thursday… Read More ›
Molitor’s Mississippi: February 8-10, 1954
This week we are following Architectural Photographer Joseph Molitor on the 58th anniversary of his 1954 trip to Mississippi. Molitor’s collection of photos, now at the Columbia University Avery Library in New York, forms an important documentary of what the… Read More ›
Molitor’s Mississippi: February 3, 1954
You may remember about this time last year, how we followed the 1952 footsteps of architectural photographer Joseph Molitor on the 59th anniversary of his first professional trip through Mississippi. As a reminder, here’s a little background about Molitor from the… Read More ›
MissPres News Roundup 2-13-2012
Happy Monday! Here’s the latest preservation news from around the state: We’ll start on the Coast where 33rd Avenue School in Gulfport is back in the news. If you remember from a couple of posts last summer (here and here),… Read More ›
A Brief History of Headers
Today is technically the third anniversary of Preservation in Mississippi, but due to my own mistaken impression on the first year’s anniversary that February 9 was the big day, tomorrow will actually be the “Observed” date. In the meantime, as you’ll… Read More ›
Biloxi’s Blighted Banking Buildings Blowup (not really but they are getting demolished)
JRGordon first reported on the city of Biloxi’s blighted property list back in an early November round-up. The list is starting to generate either repairs or demolitions as reported recently by the Sun Herald. While most buildings on the list… Read More ›
Going Inside: St. Dominic’s Chapel
A while back, reader Gary E. Magee commented on an old post about Jackson architect Tom Biggs that one of Bigg’s designs, the chapel at St. Dominic hospital, is slated for demolition in a planned expansion of the adjacent emergency area…. Read More ›
Preserving Ranch Houses
Although not really a new concept in the preservation world, the interest in preserving ranch houses and other mid-century buildings caught the attention of the Wall Street Journal in “Plain, Common . . . and Historic?.”
Saving 33rd Avenue High School
The Sun Herald has a positive report on the efforts of the 33rd Avenue High School Alumni Association and MDAH to restore the once segregated Gulfport high school.
Mississippi Architect, Feb 1964: Gulf Towers, Biloxi
Gulf Towers, a high-rise apartment building in Biloxi, was the featured Mississippi building in the February 1964 issue of Mississippi Architect. It might be hard to remember now, but back in 1964, before Camille and of course before Katrina, the… Read More ›
Destroying Modern Architecture?!
The Blog of the Preservation Research Office has an interesting post entitled “Destroying Modern Architecture in St. Louis” regarding the St. Louis Pruitt Igoe Housing Project among other St. Louis modern architecture icons. The post discusses some of the issues… Read More ›
Fins to the left, Fins to the right . . .
Our across-the-River friend Blake Wintory from Lakeport Plantation sent me this screenshot of Jackson’s Petroleum Building as seen in the recent PBS American Experience documentary “Freedom Riders.” This was in response to the last paragraph in my post on the… Read More ›
Mississippi Architect, January 1964: Hattiesburg Clinic
Mississippi Architect’s January 1964 featured Mississippi building introduces us to a Hattiesburg architect we’ve mentioned only in passing here on MissPres, Stephen H. Blair (1926-1993). I don’t know much about Blair, but USM’s archives contains a collection of his drawings,… Read More ›
