Yazoo City’s downtown may qualify as the most homogenous in the state, by which I mean of the same period and of a piece. As most of you probably know, a great fire took out a couple dozen blocks of buildings, both commercial and residential in May 1904. According to the Lexington Herald, “every business house of importance [was] in ashes.” Almost immediately, businessmen started over, and within only a few years, they had Main Street and its side streets back up and running and truly “better than before.”

You can see the physical remnants of this great rebuilding still today.

On a recent visit to Yazoo City, I noticed that while the buildings themselves all fit neatly together, the storefronts–always the most trendy part of a commercial building–had a lot of variation. I actually only found a couple of storefronts that appears intact to the c.1905 era, but I found a whole number of them that seem to have been redone in the “Mid-Century Modern” period. As you recall, this is the same period that I extolled in “The Beauty of Modern Storefronts” a couple of years ago.

Very cool edgy storefront on Broadway

I was disheartened to see that while someone has been painting the facades in . . . colorful palettes, there were quite a number of vacant storefronts, including the colorful ones. Even with the vacancies, take a walk down Yazoo City’s Main Street next time you’re passing through. I have my favorites of the bunch, you will too!

Maybe an original c.1905 three-part storefront?

Main Street, Yazoo City. Every building in this picture was built in the few years after the 1904 fire.

Classic post-WWII. Is that black carrera glass? I think so.

Maybe 1930s tile entry floor?

early 1930s?

classic Post-WWII storefront, complete with diagonally placed window and separate showcase to the right of the door.

Hotel Lamar, 115-125 Main Street, South (1924-25, C.H. Lindsley, archt.)

Bank of Yazoo City, 302 Main Street, South (1904)

Classic post-WWII with its deeply recessed entry between two big old showcase windows and another terrazzo floor.

Cool utility sidewalk cover

The south end of Main Street is in especially decrepit condition as evidenced by the backs of these commercial buildings.

Very cool edgy storefront on Broadway

Another deeply recessed entry between two showcases and two smaller display windows, and notice the terrazzo entry floor

This post is a throwback to July 2012. You can read the post as it originally appeared here. Other MissPres modernist storefront posts you might find interesting are: Modernist Storefronts of Pascagoula, Mid-Century Modernism in Downtown Vicksburg, The Beauty of Modernist Storefronts.

Modernist Storefronts of Pascagoula

Mid-Century Modernism in Downtown Vicksburg

The Beauty of Modernist Storefronts

If you have your own Mississippi modern storefront you’d like to share consider uploading the images to the MissPres Flickr page! https://www.flickr.com/groups/misspreservation/

Categories: Architectural Research, Books, Building Types, Cool Old Places, Greenville, Historic Preservation, Mississippi Towns, Modernism, Pascagoula, Yazoo City

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