When you’re driving through the Mississippi Delta, where there is no building stone, and you see stone columns, you stop to take pictures. That’s what I did while poking around Merigold after a stop at McCartys Pottery. As I recall, this red Craftsman bungalow is on a corner site nearby, and I spent some time admiring how the tapered, or battered, columns rise all the way from the ground. I also like the exposed rafters, the brick knee wall/balustrade around the porch, and the stringcourse (the white band running just below the windows) that runs all the way around, providing a strong horizontal emphasis and a rootedness to the composition. The house demonstrates how simple but textural materials and strong geometric forms can be put together in a pleasing, straightforward way, in the best tradition of the Craftsman style.
As if that wasn’t exciting enough, I crossed over old Highway 61 to the east side of town and was about to head back out to the big highway, when I spotted those same stone columns! I stuck my camera out the window and took a not-great picture so I could compare the two. Tucked away off the street and sporting a palmetto, this one seems like a country cousin to its almost-twin just a few blocks away. I say “almost-twin” because I just noticed that this second one has a porte-cochere, while the other seems to use that space as part of the porch. I would assume both of these houses were built by the same builder. Were they built for family members? I suspect the sophisticated design came from a published plan or a plan provided by a lumber mill such as Hattiesburg’s Gordon Van Tine-Aladdin affiliate. Maybe someone from Merigold can enlighten us?
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Can’t get enough of Craftsman?
- Craftsman Style in Mississippi
- Greenville Craftsman: Leavenworth-Wasson-Carroll House
- Lameuse Street Craftsman (Biloxi)
- Hattiesburg Craftsman: Corley Griffen House
- Magnolia Craftsman
- Belhaven Craftsman: N.W. Overstreet House
- Fernwood Craftsman
- Craftsman Porches of Yazoo City
- Purvis Women’s Club
- Brookhaven Craftsman: Y-Hut
- Drummond Street Craftsman (Vicksburg)
- Belhaven Craftsman: Emmett J. Hull House
- Money Craftsman
Categories: Architectural Research, Merigold
Preservation in Mississippi 
It is not familiar to me as an Aladdin design offered during the Hattiesburg years. Possibly a Gordon Van-Tine? Are they both brick houses?
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I believe so, although I didn’t get any better look at the second house than is reflected in this picture.
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Lumber companies that offered mail order plans and pre-cut lumber did offer plans for brick veneer structures, but the brick and/or stone had to be sources locally. I can only speculate but based on the stone belt course and lintels these Merigold houses looks like a masonry load bearing structure no one of brick veneer.
Not to say that there are not mail order plans for masonry structures…
https://archive.org/details/radfordsbrickhou00radf
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