Author Archives

Thomas J. Rosell lives on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and has had an interest in preservation for twenty+ years. He has been lucky enough to work in different aspects of the field for ten years. His area of focus are materials conservation, archival, interpretive, and building restoration.

• A.J. Downing Exhibit Now Available Online

  By Thomas Rosell on September 21, 2016 • ( 2 )

  

  For the 200th anniversary of his birth, the Avery Library at Columbia University featured an exhibition exploring the legacy of Andrew Jackson Downing.  The exhibit… “…showcases several editions of Downing’s publications and those of his many successors. It offers a glimpse into… Read More ›

• Mississippi’s Historic Playing Fields

  By Thomas Rosell on September 20, 2016 • ( 4 )

  

  It’s football time again folks.  This reminded me of an excerpt of a news roundup from this spring… Rick Cleveland’s article “Hometown teams are what make Mississippi, Mississippi” highlights a Smithsonian exhibit that is about to begin touring Mississippi. “In… Read More ›

• Happy 160th Birthday, Louis Sullivan!

  By Thomas Rosell on September 13, 2016 • ( 3 )

  

  To commemorate the 160th anniversary of Louis Sullivan’s birth (which I foolishly missed on September 3rd) I’d like to pull from the archives a newspaper clipping regarding his most noted apprentice Frank Lloyd Wright.  Wright visited the Mississippi Gulf Coast as a guest… Read More ›

• MissPres News Roundup 9-7-2016

  By Thomas Rosell on September 7, 2016 • ( 4 )

  

  This mid-week news round-up is less varied than last week’s round-up, but it still features some good information.     Starting off with some concerning news regarding several large rehabilitation projects in both Gulfport and Natchez. In Gulfport, Virginia attorney Robert Lubin… Read More ›

• Newspaper Clippings: Hattiesburg’s Ultra Modern J.C. Penney

  By Thomas Rosell on August 31, 2016 • ( 2 )

  

  In July of 1945, the Hattiesburg J.C. Penney store at 122-126 W Pine Street suffered a significant fire.  This provided an opportunity for the company’s branding efforts to be put to use with a complete rebuilding of the store.  Sixteen… Read More ›

• MissPres News Roundup 8-30-2016

  By Thomas Rosell on August 30, 2016 • ( 14 )

  

  This is my first attempt at a news roundup so please be forgiving.  If you have any additional information about any of these stories, or if you have your own preservation news from your neck of the woods, please let… Read More ›

• Roadside Mississippi: Dairy Freeze, Crystal Springs

  By Thomas Rosell on August 25, 2016 • ( 5 )

  

  The Dairy Freeze in Crystal Springs opened up c.1951 at the intersection of Hwy 51 and what I believe was old Hwy 27.  With Hwy 51 being the main drag between Jackson and Baton Rouge / New Orleans, the stand likely… Read More ›

• Going Inside: Loy Bowlin’s Beautiful Holy Jewel Home

  By Thomas Rosell on August 19, 2016 • ( 11 )

  

  The home of the Original Rhinestone Cowboy, Loy Bowlin began life as a somewhat typical craftsman bungalow in McComb.  Over the years Mr. Bowlin added his own decoration consisting of glitter, rhinestone, and paint to his house.  After his passing… Read More ›

• An Ill Wind Brings New Rules: What Hurricane Camille Changed

  By Thomas Rosell on August 17, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  As a way of commemorating the 47th anniversary of Hurricane Camille this week, let’s look back at two structures that are prominent features of the Mississippi Gulf Coast’s skyline. While it is apparent that disaster shapes our physical environment in what is lost, as… Read More ›

• Gulfport’s Gutman House: “Dreams of the Dwellers and Creator”

  By Thomas Rosell on August 11, 2016 • ( 10 )

  

  Bruce Goff designed two houses in Mississippi during his career.  The Gryder House (1960) in Ocean Springs is a frequent topic here on MissPres.  The other Goff design was the Gutman House (1958) in Gulfport.  It is likely not as… Read More ›

• Kremser’s Air Conditioning For Your Comfort, Kremser said.

  By Thomas Rosell on August 9, 2016 • ( 7 )

  

  Last week’s post regarding the rise in popularity for modern & ranch houses throughout the South brought up the question, when did air conditioning become a standard feature in home construction?  Kremser’s Sheet Metal Works was apparently one of the first local… Read More ›

• Help Identify the Mississippi Mystery Houses

  By Thomas Rosell on June 28, 2016 • ( 10 )

  

  The Library of Congress needs our help!  That’s right, our defacto national library, the second largest in the world, has some historic images of Mississippi buildings that are unidentified.  These images are the work of Frances Benjamin Johnston, whose 60-year career as… Read More ›

• Bruce Goff’s Mississippi Work in His Own Spoken Words

  By Thomas Rosell on June 17, 2016 • ( 6 )

  

  Comments by architect Bruce Goff about his two Mississippi Coast houses, the groovy Gryder House in Ocean Springs and the spaceship Gutman House in Gulfport. Plus the best construction sign award goes to “We Don’t Like Your House Either.”

• What is an Archipedia?

  By Thomas Rosell on June 15, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  Mississippi architecture is about to get its due on the Society of Architectural Historians’ online database, Archipedia.

• Happy Birthday Bruce Goff & Frank Lloyd Wright

  By Thomas Rosell on June 10, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  June 8 is the birth date shared by architects Bruce Goff and Frank Lloyd Wright. While Wright, born in Wisconsin in 1867, is better known, Goff, born in Kansas 1904, is one of the few architects that Wright would openly… Read More ›

• A Piece of Pascagoula History on the Market

  By Thomas Rosell on June 8, 2016 • ( 1 )

  

  I recently saw a Pascagoula real estate listing that caught my eye.  The former Pascagoula National Bank at 535 Delmas Avenue is on the market.  Originally built in 1938, the bank is the only building I am aware of that R…. Read More ›

• Mississippi Architects: Rathbone DeBuys (1874-1960)

  By Thomas Rosell on June 1, 2016 • ( 9 )

  

  New Orleans architect Rathbone DeBuys has been mentioned many times over the years here on MissPres, but recently I was surprised to see we have never had a feature post dedicated to his work in Mississippi.  This was something I had not discovered until I found… Read More ›

• N. W. Overstreet, 1928

  By Thomas Rosell on May 18, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  If you missed it, or if last week’s History Is Lunch series presentation by Michael Fazio has you hankering for more  N.W. Overstreet, below is a brief biography of Mississippi’s homegrown architect from a 1928 publication with the long winded title From Mississippi Today :… Read More ›

• Mail Order Mississippi: Geo F. Barber Design E-25 / No. 781

  By Thomas Rosell on April 27, 2016 • ( 2 )

  

  We’ve previously had a brief introduction to architect George F. Barber here on MissPres. Barber, who lived in Knoxville, TN from 1888 until his death in 1915, did a significant mail order plan business across the United States.  The Knox County… Read More ›

• Friday Puzzler: A Tale of Two Domes

  By Thomas Rosell on April 22, 2016 • ( 7 )

  

  Here is a Friday puzzler for all you puzzle masters out there.  You might be familiar with “Tale of Two Domes” a saga in which architect George R. Mann claimed that the Mississippi New Capitol building’s dome is based on… Read More ›

• Paul Rudolph in Biloxi (Richard Neutra too)

  By Thomas Rosell on April 20, 2016 • ( 4 )

  

  In 1953, the fourth annual conference of the Gulf States Region of American Institute of Architects was held in Biloxi, on Sept. 17-19. The theme of the conference was “Serving the People of the New South Through Architectural Progress” and there was a strong focus… Read More ›

• Architect Pics: Claude H. Lindsley, 1968

  By Thomas Rosell on March 23, 2016 • ( 3 )

  

  If you’ve hung around MissPres for a while now you might have become familiar with Claude Lindsley and come to know his reputation as a bit of a mystery man.  Malvaney first posted a picture back in 2010 of Lindsley… Read More ›

• Friday Puzzler: Webster County Court House

  By Thomas Rosell on March 18, 2016 • ( 15 )

  

  This Friday do something the Webster County supervisors couldn’t do.  Rather than chose to fight the insurance company and preservationists to get a metal new building, you can put the Webster County Courthouse back together.  Unlike the supervisors, I bet you won’t take two… Read More ›

• Seven Years: The Hostess House, and the Female Architect (…and Mississippi)

  By Thomas Rosell on March 16, 2016 • ( 10 )

  

  MissPres will be celebrating its seventh anniversary during 2016.  To acknowledge this achievement we will be looking back at some of our earlier posts while sharing thoughts and any developments that have occurred since the post originally debuted.  Today’s post is on a… Read More ›

• Adaptive Reuse

  By Thomas Rosell on March 15, 2016 • ( 12 )

  

  Last September in Malvaney’s post on Mid-Century Fondren’s First National Bank R P Adams commented that as drive up traffic became heavier than lobby traffic banks started having smaller or in some cases no interior banking floor, turning full efforts to multiple… Read More ›

• Biloxi Aeroplane Bungalow

  By Thomas Rosell on March 2, 2016 • ( 14 )

  

  I had always thought the term “Aeroplane” or “Airplane” Bungalow was a modern term, one of the many bizarre descriptions that are a lay person’s terminology or inscribed by super studious architectural historians to describe an architectural trend.   So imagine my… Read More ›

• Dendrochronology underway at Pascagoula’s La Pointe Krebs House

  By Thomas Rosell on February 29, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  The earliest standing European structure in Mississippi may soon have a specific date associated with its construction.  While it is agreed that the La Pointe Krebs House is the oldest extant structure, it’s not known exactly how old the building is.  Differing reports… Read More ›