MissPres is on vacation this week, but we’re sending postcards back from Mississippi’s past.
NELVA COURTS AND RESTAURANT. U.S. Highways 80, 11, 45, and 19. On By-Pass. Meridian, Mississippi, Phone 2-6195. 60 Units--100% Air Conditioned The Year Around. AAA and Quality Courts United.
Preservation in Mississippi 
This was just too compelling to pass up. A Google of the Nelva Courts turned up a few other postcards, but also a 1967 entry from the diary of Gladys Bolon Cooper: “Stayed at the Nelva in Meridian for $9.00 and had dinner in restaurant for $1.60.” She makes another entry about staying there and eating chicken dinner in the restaurant the following year.
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For its day it was probably startlingly modern. I expect that nothing of it remains now.
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I remember this well from the sixties. Though my parents were steadfast fans of the Holliday Inn close by, so we always stayed there.
If I had seen Nelva then through my today’s eyes, I’d have demanded we stay there! Or at least tried the $1.60 chicken dinner!
I love the sign, by the way. It’s a wonderful metamorphosis from a windmill frame. I particularly like the way the flare of the ribbon on the Quality Inn (?) medallion picks up the angle of the frame as it flares away.
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I ran across some other pictures, and they show “The Party Place” on the medallion sign on one photo, and “Fine Food” on the one by the restaurant.
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My brief check of the internet returned the information that the “Nelva Courts Corporation” was formed in 1957 and dissolved in 2008. The ominous presence of an Outback steakhouse on Google maps leads me to believe that the bulldozers had their way with this Modernist charmer. Too bad it couldn’t be saved. I’d take one of those chicken dinners over a deep-fried onion any day!
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I think the remnants of the motel and restaurant are serving as a car dealership now. The Outback is across the Interstate highway (what I remember as Tom Bailey Drive)…
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Well, that’s good news I suppose. I’m glad to know that it survives in one form or another!
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Chris Risher, Sr. correct???
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When I was very young in the late 1960s we stayed at the Nelva Court enroute from Atlanta to Shreveport. They had billboards on US 80 for 50 miles in either direction. Our last stay was unsatisfactory and they lost the Quality Courts membership so my father had us change over to the Ramada Inn.
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I know this is a really old post but I meant to add on here that when the last vacation postcards blog entry came through a couple of months ago, my grandmother (who is 86) saw this post ad at the bottom. It struck her because she and my grandfather (he is 87) stayed at Nelva Court on their Honeymoon in 1952. It was their first overnight stay. :) She had me print out this photo so she could save it.
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