It’s been a long while since our last Name This Place contest, since last July when JRGordon took over, to be exact. For those of you who are new around these parts, Name This Places contests are usually a week-long festival for eagle-eyed Mississippi preservationists, where the person who correctly identifies the most buildings wins the right to be called “Mississippi Preservationist Extraordinaire.” As you might recall, the last two contests have been a bit harder than earlier ones, as they have included detail shots of buildings rather than full buildings to identify. This means we’re finding it harder and harder to come up with challenging contests, y’all have become such scholars of Mississippi architecture!

As you’ve already noticed since I inadvertently scheduled the first contest post (an easy-breezy first pitch) to publish at 3 AM rather than 3 PM, this week’s “detail” theme is Doors. Doors help define a building, which is why it makes me gnash my teeth, pull my hair out, and sit in sackcloth and ashes whenever I see a beautiful original door tossed out in favor of a boring and cheap Home Depot variety. This week, we’ll see who else has been paying attention to doors around the state. Most, but not all, of the photos either are from buildings that are on the 101 Mississippi Places list or have actually been shown in previous posts here on MissPres. A couple are meant to catch you off guard since they have never been seen on MissPres.

Since the first door posted earlier than this introductory post, I’m giving Suzassippi one bonus point for being on the ball so early in the morning, but as you’ll see you all have plenty of time to gather points.

While the MDAH Historic Resources database, which hit the airwaves last fall, will undoubtedly change the dynamics of the contest, we’re leaving the point system pretty much as JRGordon left it last July. The person who identifies the door’s building gets two points and others have a chance to grab one point each with extra information. Hopefully this will help all of you become especially proficient in searching the MDAH database.

Here are THE RULES:

1. There might be up to three (3) posts a day. They will be posted on the hour no earlier than 7 AM and no later than 4 PM (I promise not to mess up the times again). If you’d like to make sure you know about them without having to check back, make sure to subscribe to get the posts e-mailed to you (see right sidebar at the top) when they post.
2. The first person to ID the building and its location gets 2 points.
3. The first person to name the architect gets 1 point–there won’t always be a known architect, so this is not a guaranteed point.
4. The first person to give the date of the building gets 1 point.
5. YES – if you ID the building, location, architect and date in the first post, you get all 4 points!
6. New Way To Get a Point this NTP: Accurately describe the doors and their surrounds (if applicable) using architectural terminology from the new architectural glossaries you’ve all bought to keep up with Thomas Rosell’s Word of the Week series. I, ELMalvaney, will make the decision about whether your description adequately meets the guidelines. No whining allowed.
7. Go ahead and share any additional tidbits you have about the buildings, but do NOT expect bonus points.
8. If I manage to stump you all on a building for 24 hours after it posts, I get four points.

Get on your marks, get set . . . the second post will be up sometime this afternoon.

Categories: Contest