You may recall that our list of 101 Mississippi Places to See Before You Die arose from my expressed annoyance in a November 2011 post at Mississippi’s exclusion from the door-stop of a book 1001 Places to See Before You Die. Well, I guess I’m a glutton for punishment, because when I saw that The Atlas of American Architecture: 2000 Years of Architecture, City PLanning, Landscape Architecture and Civil Engineering had gotten very cheap on Hamilton’s Books ($9.99 for a $75.00 book? How can you resist that??), I grabbed it. After all, the 1001 Places book covered the whole wide world, while this only covers the United States, of which, I’m told, Mississippi is a part now, so surely we had a better chance of getting covered?

Well, yes, we do get mentioned, but not much. Three whole Mississippi buildings appear in The Atlas of American Architecture. They’re probably not the buildings that would immediately spring to mind, but two of the three are on our list of 101 Mississippi Places. One is from the nineteenth century, two from the twentieth. Can you guess which three Mississippi buildings the authors notice? I’ll give you until the end of the day to enter your guesses.

I guess I shouldn’t be too grumpy, it’s not just Mississippi. Alabama gets only one entry. Florida gets tons of entries, but only one in the Panhandle, and that’s Seaside, the New Urbanist wonderland. Georgia gets a surprisingly short list, with Savannah only mentioned for its town plan. Louisiana’s list seems reasonably long and inclusive. Arkansas only has two buildings, both from the last few decades: Thorncrown Chapel and the Clinton Presidential Library (a “resurgance of Modernism”). Meanwhile, Minneapolis alone has 38 entries. Alaska–ALASKA?–gets nine entries?? Harrumph!!!

Categories: Books