It would be inappropriate to complain about an 80 degrees Thanksgiving, so I’ll just roll that into all the other things I’m thankful for this year:
- For the Craftsman style and the Art Deco style and for the Federal and Greek Revival styles that got Mississippi started on the road to good architecture.
- For round banks
- For colorful buildings and the hard-nosed businessmen who thought going to work in colorful buildings was the thing to do.
- For William Nichols, R.H. Hunt, P.J. Krouse, C.H. Lindsley, Tom Biggs, W.S. Hull, and all the other architects who designed beautiful buildings for our state. I’m even thankful that Lindsley practiced architecture into his old age and used his eye for traditional proportion to design sophisticated Modern buildings.
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- Matthes, Naef, Gates, and Overstreet (1970)
For these old guys →
- That I happened to stop in Inverness one summer afternoon and found a person willing and able to let me into Central Delta Academy. Those pictures are the last ones I’ll ever get to take of those beautiful buildings, but I cherish the memory.
- For the sophistication and intelligence of Modernist storefronts
- That I have yet to be attacked by a rattlesnake, mutant Anaconda, tarantula, zombie, crackhead, or other strange horrible creature when exploring Mississippi’s abandoned places.
- For fields white with cotton
- For people with strong opinions about architecture
- That “the Classic will be passe,” or at least that Overstreet thought so
- For my screened porch and a warm Thanksgiving morning to sit on it listening to the whistle of a train in the distance, a big ol’ dog snoring, acorns dropping, birds at the feeder, kids walking down the street
and of course, for Tom Barnes, W. White, Jack Elliott, Thomas Rosell, and JRGordon whose thoughtful posts on diverse topics enrich us all,
and for all the MissPres readers who argue fuss and fight but remain friends, and move discussions in directions I might never have imagined.
Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!
Categories: Historic Preservation
Preservation in Mississippi 
Thank you for all the work you have devoted to your blog. I especially enjoy the series on “abandoned Mississippi.” There is so much more potential material for this series; I wish I had more time to explore..
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I second your thank-you, Andy! Without Malvaney we’d have nowhere to argue, fuss, and fight or hear about all the interesting architecture! I’m thankful for Preservation in Mississippi!
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Thanks Andy! And I’ve learned alot from your World of Decay blog. I enjoy exploring abandoned places too, although I have mixed feelings knowing that most of these amazing places are going to rot away completely without intervention. On the other hand, I know that my pictures are sometimes the last ones of a place (Central Delta Academy), and I figure that’s the best and only token of respect I can show.
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Thank you for being thankful for me! I am thankful for you, the blog and Preservation in Mississippi!
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