According to Julie L. Kimbrough’s Images of America: Jackson (p.107), the Powers House was located at 411 Amite Street, right in the heart of downtown. Looking at the 1948 Sanborn map, I was shocked to discover that it was still standing and butted right up to the back of the high-rise Plaza/old Standard Life Building (seen to the far right in the photo). Ms. Kimbrough notes that J.L. Power was a native of Ireland who moved to Jackson in 1855. According to Lives of Mississippi Authors (1967), Power founded the original Jackson Daily News in 1860, then after serving as the official reporter of the Mississippi Secession Convention and enlisting in the Confederate Army, he returned to begin another newspaper that eventually became the Daily Clarion Ledger in 1890.

The MDAH Historic Resources Database gives some other interesting tidbits:

A one-story house with a decorative iron gallery. This house was the home of Col. John Logan Power (1834-1901), a founder of the Clarion-Ledger who served as Secretary of State from 1896 to 1901, and his daughter Anabel Power, who lived in the house until her death in 1958. The house was demolished in 1958. The ironwork of the porch was installed at the Junior League Headquarters at 805 Riverside Drive in 1968. [HABS: MS-65 (1936)]

FRONT (NORTH ELEVATION) – Colonel Powers House, Amite Street, Jackson, Hinds County, MS. James Butters, Photographer, May 20, 1936

Powers House (highlighted in yellow) on 1948 Sanborn Map.

This Google Map image shows the above-mentioned Junior League headquarters on Riverside Drive across from Bailey Middle School. I don’t see any ironwork–could it be inside rather than outside?

See also:

• Historic American Buildings Survey: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ms0016/
• Mississippi Historic Resources Database

Categories: Antebellum, Architectural Research, Jackson

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