This week’s Hill-Burton hospital, originally called Northeast Mississippi Regional when it opened in 1949, was the first to be completed in the state and, since Mississippi was a leader in building Hill-Burton medical clinics and facilities, it was therefore one of the earliest in the country. In a comment on a previous post, W. White noted that this hospital received a special mention in N.W. Overstreet’s application for a fellowship in the AIA in 1952.
Overstreet’s Nomination for Advancement to a Fellowship in the AIA, from March 29, 1949, states, “Mr. Overstreet designed and built the first hospital in Mississippi under the Hill-Burton Act, 1947, which was the Northeast Mississippi Hospital at Booneville, Mississippi. This hospital was one of the first three in the country under this Act. He is a member of the Advisory Council to the Mississippi Commission On Hospital Care.”
Although I can’t see much detail in this photocopy, I do see an asymetrically massed, possibly concrete Moderne-International-style building with corner windows and wide eaves as sunbreakers (or brise soleil).
Ok, here’s the location given by the the MDAH Historic Resources Database, which seems reasonable since it’s identified as a hospital on the topographic map. Today the hospital is known as Baptist Memorial Hospital, but whew! Where is Overstreet’s Moderne-International-style building in all that Dryvet? I think this Google Streetview must be showing what’s left of maybe the back of the building?
Or is the Overstreet building completely gone? I just can’t make out the long wings connected by what appears to be a two-story hyphen as shown in the rendering. Anybody out there able to shed light on this mystery?
More hospitals? More medical clinics? You got it!
Categories: Booneville, Hospitals/Medical
Preservation in Mississippi 
Air conditioning sure has messed up many a lovely building.
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About half of the 1949 building is gone. A 1972 aerial shows three, north-south oriented wings. Only the easternmost of these three wings remain. So part of the building shown in the elevation is gone, but hey, that chimney looks to still be there.
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