For those who haven’t heard, the National Trust announced its 2010 11 Most Endangered List today, and Meridian’s Threefoot Building made the list. It’s a dubious honor of course, but we can hope that the national attention to one of our state’s original skyscrapers will help move the renovation project back to the city’s list of priorities.

According to the National Trust:

Named for its owners, a successful German-American family in Meridian, the building was admired for its decorative polychrome terra cotta and granite exterior and lavish interior details, including marble flooring and wainscoting, cast-plaster walls and ceilings, and etched bronze elevator doors.

. . . .

In the last several years, the building has experienced significant deterioration. Terra-cotta tiles are falling off the facade, water is infiltrating in several locations and windows are in poor shape. Without immediate action, portions of the masonry are at risk of falling into pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Even though a developer expressed interest in the building, the City of Meridian was unable to provide funds for gap financing or other incentives – and now locals fear that the City Council will attempt to remove the building from the Mississippi Landmark List in order to pave the way for its demolition.

You can read all about it in today’s Clarion-Ledger (interestingly I didn’t see anything on the Meridian Star site) and more at the National Trust site.

Categories: Demolition/Abandonment, Historic Preservation, Meridian, Mississippi Landmarks, National Trust