This week’s round-up of all the preservation news I can find from around the Magnolia State. As usual, if you have any newsy tidbits come your way, please pass them on to me so I can be sure to post them.

June 22, 2009: “Return to Glory” in the Vicksburg Post about the renovation of the Bazsinsky House on Monroe Street.

June 27, 2009: A photograph of Vickburg’s first telephone exchange in The View from the Top in Vicksburg’s Post

June 27, 2009: “Koenig’s Case Study House No. 22 as home” in the LA Times. Not about Mississippi, but about a famous work of Mid-Century Modern architecture in Los Angeles, the Case Study House #22 that had the iconic photograph of mid-century elegance and sophistication: at night looking into the windows at two young ladies sitting on the modern furniture, in the living room that is cantilevered out over the cliff.

June 30, 2009: “Local Church Earns Main Street Honor” in the Senatobia Democrat about the Senatobia Presbyterian Church winning an award at the Main Street Awards Banquet last week.

June 30, 2009: “Research Mission” in the Marshall (TX) News Messenger about a man named Chris Meister from Michigan who has been researching and photographing the courthouses of Texas architect J. Riely Gordon (1863-1937) and stopped in Mississippi on the way through to Texas. The article doesn’t say which courthouse he was looking at in 100-degree temperatures, but it could have been either the Copiah County Courthouse (1902) or the Wilkinson County Courthouse (1903). Although apparently there’s some dispute about whether Gordon or his partner Alfred Zucker designed the Wilkinson County CH. Gordon also designed the Vicksburg City Hall (1902). As for Zucker (I know I’m getting off-track, but I can’t help myself–it’s like the Kevin Bacon game), he began his life in Germany, moved to Galveston, then Meridian, then NYC, then back to Texas for a brief practice with Gordon, then after a lawsuit with Gordon fled to Buenos Aires where he ended his career. So many of his Mississippi buildings are gone now, but St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, Meridian (1886) and Ricks Memorial Library, Yazoo City (1902) remain as a testament to this interesting and peripatetic man.

July 2, 2009: “Mansion Parties Cross Owner up with Police” in the Greenwood Commonwealth. An odd story about a lady on River Road, Greenwood’s upper class street that’s listed on the National Register, who seems to be having lots of late-night parties (we won’t call it a nightclub however) in her historic home and ticking off the neighbors. Having dealt with illegal nightclubs in my own neighborhood, I completely sympathize with the neighbors, and based on my experience they should watch out for the accompanying gunfire, drug-dealing and gang fights.

Categories: Architectural Research, Churches, Courthouses, Greenwood, Hazlehurst, Historic Preservation, Meridian, News Roundups, Recent Past, Yazoo City