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Categories: Contest
Preservation in Mississippi 
Looks almost like Coleman High School in Greenville, which was designed in 1952 by N. W. Overstreet. I will say that whatever school it is, it was designed by Overstreet. It has that Overstreet style to it.
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It’s not Coleman H.S. and it wasn’t built in 1952.
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Of course it isn’t. It is Bowmar Avenue Elementary School in Vicksburg, constructed in 1939 when it was still Overstreet & Town. I knew it was Overstreet.
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You’re obviously are skipping class to play games–for shame, W!
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I haven’t had to skip any classes to name that place…
Yet.
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It’s a Mississippi Landmark and was constructed with funds from FDR’s New Deal “alphabet soup” of agencies – specifically, funds were provided by the Federal Works Agency through the Public Works Administration. It has terrazzo floors, chrome banisters, tile inlays on the walls depicting nursery rhymes and, overall, is in the Art Deco style.
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I would put it in the International style more than Art Deco, but otherwise, a point for all that other info.
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Beautiful! (At least, I think so as a no-taste having lover of the International Style.) Are there more pictures of it?
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There are . . . maybe I’ll put them up on Flickr if I ever make it through my backlog. I think it was also pictured in the Overstreet interview a while back: https://misspreservation.com/2009/12/17/overstreet-interview-part-3/
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It’s really lovely, I would say International Style with a few Moderne touches thrown in for good measure.
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Tom, is it the heaviness of the building that gives it the Moderne touches that you see? I’m curious because I myself have a hard time sometimes with when a building becomes International as opposed to Moderne. It seems like the Moderne hangs on a long time in the South, or at least Mississippi–even into the 1950s you see buildings that could be described as “transitional” or some such.
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I thought the simple rule for International Style vs Art Moderne is that Moderne has curves and International Style is all about the white box. Art Moderne also seems to contain a preponderance of glass blocks while the International Style loves the large-paned walls of glass. The International Style was all about white and steel. Moderne could use red or yellow brick and often did. Brick was too bourgeois for most International Style architects, not pure like white walls, and was apt to look too similar to Brick Expressionalism that was popular in Germany during the 1910s and 20s.
Then again, I have seen International Style buildings with curves and glass block, and I have seen Art Moderne structures without curves or glass block.
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Also, the sculpture in front of the entrance confuses me. Why is that statue in front of the school? It does not match the building, though I imagine it would have been hard to get Henry Moore or Constantin Brancusi to work in Mississippi in 1939. It is a nice statue but how did it end up in front of an International white box?
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