MissPres is on vacation this week, but we’re sending postcards back from Mississippi’s past.
Month: May 2011
Lost Mississippi: Jacksonian Highway Hotel/Lefleurs Restaurant
The Jacksonian Highway Hotel was built at 4800 Highway 51 North (later Interstate 55 North), in an area only just beginning to blossom with commercial development. Construction was begun in April 1955. George Wilkinson and his partners at Crestline Development (later known as the Athens Investment Company) set out to build something more than just another motel.
Critiquing the New Capitol Designs–Bernard Green’s unofficial opinion
The last two posts (Part 1 and Part 2) told us Bernard Green’s official opinion about the 14 proposals for the design of the New Capitol in 1900. To wrap up this series, today we see Green’s informal advice to… Read More ›
Critiquing the New Capitol Designs (1900)–Part 2
Second in our series of transcripts from the State House Commission’s minutes of 1900, in which Washington DC expert Bernard Green examines the 14 proposed designs for the New Capitol and lends his experience to the Commission. Today Green gets… Read More ›
From the Archives: Critiquing the New Capitol Designs (1900)
Today will start a three-part series highlighting the process of choosing an architect’s designs for the New Capitol. We all know how it ends, but the getting there is part of the fun. The series comes straight from the archives,… Read More ›
Oxford/Holly Springs Poll Results
The Oxford/Holly Springs area poll, our latest poll in the run-up for our 101 Mississippi Places list, ended exactly at midnight on Friday, in a rare display of paying attention on my part. We almost made 1000 votes, which puts… Read More ›
At the end of a long week
I don’t have much to say other than the Oxford/Holly Springs poll ends tonight around midnight, depending on how late I stay up, so if you haven’t voted or if you know someone from Holly Springs who hasn’t voted (judging… Read More ›
Architectural Twins: One Happy, One Glowering
Tuesday’s post about the Trailways station and the former Petroleum building across that street that’s been transformed into what some have called a Darth Vader Building reminded me of a similar but smaller scale transformation to a building here in… Read More ›
Lighthouse Churches, By Land and By Sea
I drive Highway 49 south of Jackson often. One of the landmarks for this otherwise fairly boring stretch between Jackson and Hattiesburg is the Jesus Name Tabernacle near Florence (click on the link to hear a rousing gospel chorus), which… Read More ›
Demolishing History Before It Becomes Historic
Those of you who watched last night’s excellent and evocative PBS American Experience documentary “Freedom Riders” saw clips of the riders walking into Jackson’s Tri-State Trailways station and then walking almost right back out into the police wagon to be… Read More ›
MissPres News Roundup 5-15-2011
It’s a shame that with such nice temperatures we have a lot of bad news floating around. Luckily, Malvaney took two of the stories from me the other day with the post about the demolitions in Jackson and Columbus, so… Read More ›
Halfway Through the Oxford/Holly Springs Poll
As is traditional at the halfway point of the regional polls for inclusion in our 101 Mississippi Places, we like to take a peek at where things stand. After one week in our poll of the north-central region and with… Read More ›
Local People, this is what we think of your sacrifice
Yesterday, I passed by the Mississippi State Fairgrounds in downtown Jackson and saw that demolition of the Agriculture Building, one of the pair of barrel-vaulted buildings at the west side of the fairgrounds, was well underway. As you might recall… Read More ›
Mississippi Architect, December 1963: Neshoba General Hospital
Today and tomorrow, we’ll look at a couple of articles from the December 1963 issue of Mississippi Architect, a monthly publication undertaken by the Mississippi chapter of the AIA from March 1963 through March 1965. If you recall, the posting… Read More ›
Two feet high and risin’
I had some other posts ready for this week, but yesterday I found myself obsessively checking around on various websites to see where the Mississippi River’s water was, and this brought to mind Johnny Cash’s song about the 1937 Flood,… Read More ›
Mississippi River Flooding Update
Preservation related news around Mississippi was light since our last round-up, which would normally mean Malvaney would catch us all up on the blogosphere. Instead, however, one of our friends at MDAH, Vicki Myers, is giving us at MissPres some… Read More ›
Vote in the Oxford/Holly Springs Area Poll!
We took a break during April from the polling for the 101 Mississippi Places to See Before You Die list, but now that it’s May, it’s time to get back into it. As a reminder of where we’ve been, we’ve… Read More ›
Builders pics: William J. McGee
I found both of these obituaries for William J. McGee, in my recent productive search through the Gill Collection at MDAH (“Pioneer Club Scrapbooks,” vol 3 of 3). They contain in a few paragraphs a humanizing portrait of the builder… Read More ›
Two Contests, Cash Available!
Let’s take a break from the bad news of late and look at two contests recently announced. First, the National Park Service’s NHL Photo Contest on Flickr–so far no Mississippi NHL has won a place in the top group in… Read More ›
MissPres News Roundup 5-3-2011
The news was not fun to read this week. Reports from the damage of the tornadoes in Mississippi (and Alabama of course) are still coming in, with new information added each day. We’ll keep on it and report what we… Read More ›
Rolling Fork’s Amazing Red Barn Collapses
Sometime late Friday night or early Saturday, the beautiful, amazing structure on Highway 61 on the south side of Rolling Fork, known affectionately as “The Red Barn,” collapsed. The cause is not known, but the U.S. Corps of Engineers, owners… Read More ›
Preservation in Mississippi 