To start off your week, get your favorite hot beverage and settle down for a romp round the blogosphere. (And if you haven’t yet, take some time to vote for your favorite places in the Natchez area.)

Mississippi bloggers have been busy since our last blogosphere post five weeks ago. Maybe I need to start doing this more often to keep up.

• Suzassippi’s Lottabusha Chronicles headed out on the backroads of northern Mississippi over the holidays and her pictures and thoughts about the places she discovered are worth reading. Plus, her blog header is a great snow picture that looks more like Michigan than Mississippi:
  • “Church Grove and Back Roads“
  • “Getting lost in Lafayette County“
  • “Tippo, rural gin architecture, and more churches than you can throw a rock at” (Not sure whether Susie is recommending throwing rocks at churches, but I’ll leave that to her to sort out.)
  • “Webb and Oakland Visit“

• Kodachromeguy and Urban Decay were also out and about around Warren County and its environs:
  • “Bonner Campbell Institute, Edwards“: Taking a cue from our recent look at the abandoned Southern Christian Institute in Edwards, UD headed over to the campus and took alot more pictures than I did, and proved he had more courage than I did by showing us some interiors, several of which were in better shape than I expected.
  • Also not to be missed “Update on the Mississippi River Basin Model–Further Decline” which shares recent pictures of this engineering wonder left rotting in Jackson’s back yard.
  • And the most coherent recounting of a situation I had heard about in Vicksburg but never really knew what happened in “Collapse! 515 Clay Street, Vicksburg, MS“

• Speaking of snow pictures, Sense of Place, the MDAH blog had a nice shot of a snowy downtown Jackson Capitol street around 1930 for its Christmas post. Also of note on SoP:
  • “Early Natchez: Concord” which has some images of a few items rescued from the burning house back in 1903 and now in the MDAH collection. They also linked to the Concord post on MissPres. Thanks y’all!
  • “Laurence Jones & The Piney Woods School” gives a succinct introduction to this significant historically black boarding school and the MDAH collections relating to it.

• Sense of Place also introduced us to the new Mississippi Civil War Sesquicentennial website. Speaking of the Civil War, the war between the National Trust and Wal-Mart over The Wilderness battlefield has heated up again. Check out the Trust’s story and one in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

• Marty Kittrell also found time to wander over the holidays and made what I consider an epic discovery, on what I think is the old Highway 80, now the frontage road on the north side of I-20. I won’t tell you what it is, but make sure to click over there and find out. You’ll be amazed, guaranteed.
  • Marty also shares some poignant memories of Rev. Dennis who built and decorated the now-fading Margaret’s Grocery in Vicksburg in “The Ark of the Covenant.”
  • shows the remains of “Where the Fleet once called home“
  • and illustrates in a series of images how nature swallows even what we think are permanent markers of our time on this earth in “Cedar Hill Cemetery“

Some items of interest from outside our fair frigid state:

• Many of you might have already heard, but just in case, Mississippi’s Robert Ivy, long-time editor-in-chief of Architectural Record magazine, has recently been named CEO of the American Institute of Architects. Ivy was the keynote speaker at the Southeastern Society of Architectural Historians’ meeting here in Jackson back in 2009, as you may recall from my review of the speech. Congratulations, Mr. Ivy!

• Here’s a reason to fly through San Franscisco–an exhibit of architectural miniatures in the airport. Did I mention I got the LEGO Fallingwater for Christmas?

• MissPresers of a certain age might be interested in the answer to the question “Why is the Ferris Bueller House Still For Sale?“

• Dallas is losing its Alamo Hotel Courts. Mississippi lost the last of two (Jackson and Gulfport) when the Gulfport court was torn down sometime before Katrina.

• The New York Times reports on a dispute in Chelsea over a Civil War rowhouse. What I particularly loved about the article was the neat special effect with the before and after picture of the building and block of buildings. Check it out!

• I can’t help myself, I love seeing pictures of horrible architectural decisions. Chicago’s Cityscapes does an annual “Dubious Design Moves” post, and 2010 was a doozy.

• Regional Modernism, which highlights modernist architecture in and around New Orleans showcased Chapel of the Holy Spirit, a church that reminds me somewhat of the Booneville Church of Christ I’m so inordinately fond of.

• And if you’re as intrigued as I am by that New Orleans architect named Rathbone DeBuys, you’ll want to head over to Tulane’s Architectural Research and read “Charlie Smith AKA Rathbone DeBuys.” Now if someone could just tell me if his name is pronounced “Dubees” or “Dubuys”?

Categories: Historic Preservation