Blog Roundup 7-26-2010

Posted on July 26, 2010 by ELMalvaney

I think the blog roundup will become a regular feature, not every week but enough to start designating it with a date like the news roundups. I hope these links help pull together lots of good blog posts you might find interesting and broaden all of our horizons a bit.

  • As you might recall from the last Blog Roundup, the National Trust’s blog recently had a provocative post called “How to turn young adults into preservationists.” Kaitlin over at Preservation in Pink, a young preservationist herself, took umbrage at the concept that young people need to be “turned into” preservationists–read her thoughts at “A Response to ‘How to Turn Young Adults into Preservationists’.”
  • Blake Wintory at Lakeport Plantation in Arkansas takes a trip across the river occasionally and shares his recent visit to the Burrus House, also called Hollywood Plantation, in “Lakeport Explores the Delta: Hollywood Plantation, Benoit, MS.” The house was placed on the Mississippi Heritage Trust’s 10 Most Endangered Places list in 2001 but is now towards the end of a major renovation by the Winn family, descendants of the original owners.
  • Robert Walker’s Southern Faces, Southern Places always features beautiful photography of this place we call Mississippi. I particularly enjoyed his recent “Church Hill, Mississippi” where he captures this place in the same spirit that Eudora Welty did back in the 1930s, except with another 80 years of patina and now in full color.
  • There’s a new blog that covers the Louisiana/Mississippi region called A Southerly Flow and it’s kind of a travelogue of interesting trips. Recent postings take us to “Routh Cemetery, Natchez,” “Margaret’s Grocery and Bible Class, Vicksburg,” and the is-there-isn’t-there-a-cannonball “Rodney, Mississippi–Presbyterian Church.”
  • Architectural Research, blogging from Tulane’s Southeastern Architectural Archive, posts about Samuel and William Wiener’s trip to Venice in “Venice Sojourn 1927.” As you may recall, the brothers, known for their very early International style buildings in Shreveport designed a couple of houses in Jackson for family members, including the William Wiener house in Woodland Hills, listed on the National Register last year and on the SESAH tour last fall.
  • For those of us interested in historic schools and ensuring they survive into the future, the National Trust’s blog has an interesting post “Reflections on Modernizing and Expanding a Historic School,” about Washington DC’s former Grant School, now known as the much more hip and trendy School Without Walls Senior High School.
  • Speaking of historic schools, the DOCOMOMO_NOLA blog, devoted to the Modernist architecture of the Gulf Coast region, posts about sustainability and Modern schools, specifically the highly endangered Phillis Wheatley School in New Orleans in “Intelligent Design with Principles of Sustainability and Modernism in Mind.”
  • And in a similar vein, Preservation in the Present, the blog of the Preservation Resource Center, highlights “New Orleans’ Modern Heritage,” addressing the same issues I think all us who want to preserve (good) Modern architecture are facing.
  • Back in Mississippi, the fairly new WEST JACKSON blog posted about the COFO building on Lynch Street, a beehive of activity during the Civil Rights period, and Westland Plaza, one of the largest 1950s shopping centers in the state. My only complaint is that they don’t give enough time for me to answer their trivia questions before they answer it themselves–I could totally win the contest if I realized the question had been posted!
  • And last but not least, not blogs but two interesting short videos:
http://blogs.nationaltrust.org/preservationnation/?p=10832

Posted in Architectural Research, Demolition/Abandonment, Environment/Green, Historic Preservation, Modernism, Recent Past | 3 Comments

MissPres News Roundup 7-23-2010

Posted on July 23, 2010 by ELMalvaney

Let’s keep one eye on Bonnie and the other eye on the preservation news around the state. And those of us who wear glasses will still have two more eyes to, like, avoiding marauding oil splotches, watch tv, etc. See how useful having four eyes is, y’all?

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From Monroe County, a section of the state I don’t think I’ve highlighted enough here on MissPres, this story last Friday, “Historic Aberdeen church to be moved tomorrow.” The church in question is the old James Creek Methodist Church, a small frame building with corner tower built in 1904, that from the looks of the photo has been abandoned for a long time. According to the Monroe Journal, the church will now reside on the property of the Adams-French House in Aberdeen, an 1850s Greek Revival mansion on Meridian Street that was listed on the National Register in 1988 and documented by HABS in the 1930s.

Just up the road from Aberdeen, the Spain House story continues and demolition permits continue to be denied. According to the Tupelo Daily-Journal‘s “Spain House Saved Again“:

The Planning Committee on Monday reluctantly upheld an earlier decision by the Historic Preservation Commission that prevented Calvary Baptist Church from tearing down the three-story structure, which the church owns.

The committee voted 4-4 on the church’s appeal. A two-thirds majority was required to overturn the earlier ruling.

. . . .

Church members, many of whom were in attendance at the roughly 90-minute meeting at City Hall, said they’ll appeal the decision to the City Council. They have 30 days to do so.

If the council grants the demolition permit, Pirkle said the church will tear down the house as quickly as possible unless the city is willing to assume liability for it.

This controversy about the Spain House, one of the oldest grand houses in Tupelo, where the 1936 tornado blew away a big chunk of the town, has been going on since last year around this time. Tupelo has not had a strong preservation tradition, and the preservation commission is only a few years old, so I commend them for going to the mat for this house and for not getting bowled over, as often happens in controversies with large churches. I know that Baptists have been mentioned alot lately, but all the denominations have been guilty at one time or another of using their power and ability to pack a meeting to bulldoze their way through their neighborhoods. And please don’t call me anti-Christian for saying so because nothing could be further from the truth.

You can track the progress of it through previous posts: News Roundups 6-19-2010, 7-24-2010, 8-21-2010, 10-9-2010, 1-15-2010, 2-26-2010, 4-10-2010, and 6-11-2010.

If you were a male and attended Mississippi State in the last 40 years, odds are you spent a little time in Suttle Hall. Built in 1967-68, the multi-story concrete and steel frame building served as a men’s dorm, but as of this week,  it is no longer with us. I’m not arguing that Suttle was a great work of architecture, but it was a very sturdy and re-usable building. Instead of remodelling it as needed, MSU has torn it down to make way for . . . nothing. Just behind Suttle is a whole new development of “residence halls” that have been recently built, and seem about as substantial as the computer screen you’re reading this on. In a decade, maybe two if we get our money’s worth, the new buildings will be worn out and they’ll tear those down too. This seems to be the way things are done nowadays–quality construction is replaced with barely minimal wood-frame construction with Dryvet and thin sheetrock walls. Luckily, I took pictures of Suttle earlier this year:

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Good news out of Starkville though in addition to bad, with the announcement of the Starkville Central Neighborhood Foundation’s Historic Preservation Awards. Great coverage in the Starkville Daily News (“SCNF announces 2010 awards“) too, where you can read all about each honored project, including the rehabilitation of the old Borden Milk Plant.

Speaking of government agencies tearing down instead of building up, Ceres Plantation has come back up for a vote at MDAH’s Board of Trustees meeting today, according to the Vicksburg Post’s “State vote on Ceres house is Friday”:

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History Board of Trustees will vote on whether to designate Ceres Plantation House a Mississippi Landmark at 10 a.m Friday at the William F. Winter Archives and History Building, 200 North St., Jackson.

. . . .

The session is open to the public. Landmark status would limit future development of the site under the state’s antiquities law.

This is another story we’ve been following round these parts for a while: Ceres Plantation Update, William A. Stanton on Ceres Plantation, News Roundups 12-21-2010, 1-15-2010, 1-22-2010, 2-12-2010, 2-26-2010, 3-5-2010, 3-19-2010, 4-10-2010,  4-25-2010.

In fact, it’s interesting that the Dec 2009 roundup calls attention to the reason for demolition being broken window panes and some porch boards missing, and then I notice in the Post article quoted today (which unfortunately I can’t link to because they’ve gotten tight about archiving articles within a day or two of publication), that the “windows have been broken and planks vanished from the porch of the structure in recent months.” Hmmm, those modern boards on the porch sure are in demand!

The Vicksburg Post featured another article too this week, this one about the Beulah Cemetery, one of the oldest and largest African American city cemeteries in the state. A documentary is being filmed about the cemetery, which I happened to visit back this last winter:

The Beulah Cemetery Restoration Committee has commissioned Jackson-based Cam Cam Video Productions to produce a 20-minute documentary on its private graveyard established in 1884 by the Vicksburg Tabernacle No. 19 Independent Order of Brothers and Sisters of Love and Charity.

. . . .

About 5,500 graves are in the cemetery, which was the primary burial ground for Vicksburg’s African-Americans until the 1940s, when burials started tapering off. The land, which shares a border with the Vicksburg National Military Park, was neglected and became overgrown and almost forgotten. For about 20 years, the committee has backed myriad efforts to clear and maintain the land through grants and volunteers.

It’s really an amazing place, and if you’re in Vicksburg, and you have time to poke around to find it, tucked away as it is right on the edge of the Military Park, make sure to check it out. In addition to this picture to the right, you can find a whole slew of pictures of the cemetery on my Flickr site.

Biloxi’s City Hall has just completed a major renovation to fix up Katrina damage and other wear and tear on this Neoclassical-style, former Federal courthouse and post office. According to the Sun-Herald (“Biloxi City Hall is reopened for business“),

An open house will be in September, said City Clerk Brenda Johnston. That’s also when the council meetings will return to the ornate chambers at City Hall.

I don’t have a picture of this building for some reason, but Flickr has a bunch, including this one.

And give yourself a pat on the back because if you’re a regular MissPres reader, you’ve been a part of history this week. Sometime yesterday, we passed 50,000 all-time views on this little blog. That’s a nice round number I’ve been watching for for a while now. Congrats!

http://monroe360.com/view/full_story/8790081/article-Historic-Aberdeen-church-to-be-moved-tomorrow?instance=home_news_right

Posted in Aberdeen, Biloxi, Churches, Demolition/Abandonment, Gulf Coast, Historic Preservation, Hurricane Katrina, News Roundups, Preservation Law/Local Commissions, Recent Past, Starkville, Tupelo, Vicksburg | 9 Comments

Southern Mantel & Tile: Mission Furniture Too

Posted on July 22, 2010 by ELMalvaney

Here we are at the last in our series “Best of the Southern Mantel & Tile Catalog.” Yesterday, I showed where the main office of the company was located, on South Gallatin Street, and I wondered if that was also where they manufactured their mantels, but today, as I was looking back at the catalog, I noticed that the price list noted that while the “Ware Rooms” were on Gallatin, the “Factory” was at Farish Street and the A & V Railroad. Sure enough, I found it on the 1909 Sanborn map, so we can see that at least for a while, Southern Mantel had a going concern in Jackson.

They also sold some nice Mission furniture, including a Morris chair and a rocker that I would love to find and buy for my house.

Here’s the full catalog–peruse it at your leisure and check out the price list at the back.

Posted in Architectural Research | Leave a comment

Southern Mantel & Tile: Selling Mantels and Mantel Accessories

Posted on July 21, 2010 by ELMalvaney

1909 Sanborn map of Jackson

Here we are on the third day of our series bringing some of Jackson’s construction history back out in the open. The Southern Mantel and Tile Company was based in Jackson, and apparently had their offices and maybe their whole operation on Gallatin Street, right around the corner from the old Armour & Co. building which later became the Iron Horse Restaurant, listed on the National Register and much beloved by Jacksonians until it burned back in the early 2000s. This catalog was published around 1908.

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Sizes.

Mantels are always made five feet wide, except on special orders, though the wall places on the sides can be extended several inches to cover the breast (front) of almost any ordinary chimney. Any variation from regular sizes compels a change in the work and makes an extra charge necessary.

Grates.

Grates are made in a number of patterns, but all of the very best castings, which will not be affected by any degree of heat. Some are highly polished, plated, or otherwise ornamented, and any preferred grate can be substituted for the one appearing in the illustration, as all are interchangeable. The openings (in the chimneys) for grates should be thirty inches high, thirteen inches deep, either twenty-four or thirty inches wide, as grates are in these sizes.

Enameled Tiles for Hearths and Facings.

Enameled tiles are made in such a variety of colors and styles, that any taste can be met in this particular. On information as to your wishes in this regard, we make most careful selections, or if left to us, we select the best and most harmonious colors and designs which our experience tells us would suit your requirements. All hearths are sixty inches by twenty-one inches, but tile for twenty-four inch hearths can be had at an additional cost of fifty cents net.

Floor and Wall Tiles.

We make a specialty of floor and wall tiles for vestibule, halls, bath rooms, public buildings, etc., and as this is a branch of growing value to intending builders, we invite correspondence. With the correct measurements and your ideas of their use, we will prepare colored sketches and submit for inspection, and at the same time quote you very low prices.

Posted in Architectural Research | Leave a comment