Imagine this being your high school in 1942, after the International style building designed by E. L. Malvaney had been completed. Look at those beautiful glass enclosures and columns on the corner entrances! And, then look what happened with the… Read More ›
Historic Preservation
Cataloguing Mississippi for HABS: Early Recording Efforts
The following list of buildings and sites was taken from documents in Record Group 515 at the National Archives. Twelve buildings were recorded through measured drawings in the 1930s, and in 1939 additional places were considered. The resulting list, entitled “Structures Proposed for Measurement,” was compiled by the state office led by District Officer Emmett J. Hull.
Cataloguing Mississippi for HABS, Part 3
In the final episode of this three-part series about HABS in Mississippi, Virginia Price explores the dominance of the old river towns Natchez and Vicksburg in the HABS collection for Mississippi, and the consequent impression that the Greek Revival style constituted Mississippi’s architectural golden age.
Cataloguing Mississippi for HABS, Part 2
In Part 2 of 3 in a series about HABS in Mississippi, Virginia Price explores the role and work of Mississippi’s first two district officers, A. Hays Town and Emmett J. Hull, and compares Mississippi’s HABS documentation to other states. Plus, C.H. Lindsley, mystery man extraordinaire, appears unexpectedly.
Cataloguing Mississippi for HABS, Part 1
If you’ve hung around this blog for a while, or if you’re a regular on various Facebook groups, you’ve probably seen beautiful black-and-white images of buildings, or even floorplans and detail drawings, with the citation “HABS” or the spelled-out version… Read More ›
For Sale: 1323 3rd Avenue, North in Columbus – Save and Restore This House
This morning’s post was on historic houses that have quietly vanished in Columbus between 2009 and 2013. This post is about an opportunity to keep that fate from happening to another Columbus house. 1323 3rd Avenue, North is currently for… Read More ›
Four Years, Six Demolitions – Columbus’s Disappearing Historic Buildings Through Google Street View
I used Google Street View quite a bit to look around Columbus while writing this week’s series of posts on the inaugural 1940 Columbus Pilgrimage. Frankly, the armchair traveler has never had it better, as one can drive the streets… Read More ›
1940 Inaugural Columbus Pilgrimage – Star Homes
This week, in honor of the beginning of this year’s Columbus Spring Pilgrimage, Preservation in Mississippi has been writing about the inaugural Columbus Pilgrimage, held April 14-16, 1940. Monday’s post was a short introduction about the inaugural Pilgrimage, and yesterday’s… Read More ›
1940 Inaugural Columbus Pilgrimage – Tour of Homes
Yesterday, in honor of the beginning of this year’s Columbus Spring Pilgrimage, we had a short introduction to the inaugural Columbus Pilgrimage, held April 14-16, 1940. Today’s post contains information about the twenty-two antebellum homes featured in that inaugural Columbus… Read More ›
1940 Inaugural Columbus Pilgrimage
Today is the start of Columbus’s two-week long Spring Pilgrimage. This makes it the opportune time to look back at the Pilgrimage, in fact, all the way back to the first one, in 1940. The “Program and Historical Facts” book published… Read More ›
MissPres News Roundup 3-28-2016
The biggest preservation news this week comes from the Legislature, where lawmakers are debating renewal of the Historic Preservation Tax Credit, which provides a tax credit for rehabilitation of National Register-listed properties amounting to 25% of the cost of renovation…. Read More ›
Meridian: Traveling with the Green Book in Mississippi
Our next stop in using Victor Green’s The Green Book, assurance of accommodation for the African American traveler from 1936-1967, is Meridian. The year 1939 was the first year Mississippi was listed in the Green Book, with only 6 hotels. … Read More ›
MissPres News Roundup 3-21-2016
From sunken treasures to interpretive plaques on Confederate monuments, this week’s roundup proves it’s definitely not all moonlight and magnolias here in azalea-blooming, early-Spring Mississippi.
Friday Puzzler: Webster County Court House
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 ›
Hop On The Bus For A Mad Mod Affair In The Delta
Mississippi Heritage Trust Mad Mod Affair Delta Saturday, April 2 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.-Architectural Tour of the Delta $25 a person Architects in the mid-twentieth century defied tradition and experimented with color, form and materials to create the… Read More ›
Seven Years: The Hostess House, and the Female Architect (…and Mississippi)
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
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 ›
Traveling with The Green Book in Mississippi: First stop, Queen City Hotel in Columbus
Victor H. Green, Editor and Publisher, introduced the Green Book in 1936 as a local publication for the New York City area. “Motoring” for leisure was catching on, but Green, as an African American businessman from New York City, was… Read More ›
New Capitol Updates
If you’ve been in downtown Jackson in the last two months, you’ve noticed that the scaffolding has come down from the dome, or more precisely from the cupola above the dome. This won’t be the last time we see the… Read More ›
Suzassippi’s Mississippi: The “Cotton Pickers” B. P. O. Elks Lodge
The cornerstone for the old Elks Club, Lodge #148 on Washington Avenue in Greenville, was laid April 19, 1906. Today has been a gala day in Greenville, the streets are crowded, banners are floating, and the town in decorated in… Read More ›
Removing the Scar from the War Memorial
If you’ve been to an event at the Old Capitol or the War Memorial Building in the last five to six months, you’ve probably noticed the disturbingly large brown Rorschach Test-like marking on the limestone of the War Memorial’s south wall,… Read More ›
Suzassippi’s Mississippi: Lowery Memorial Baptist Church
The Eclectic/Composite Lowery Memorial Baptist Church, with some Colonial Revival features, was constructed in 1908 adjacent to Blue Mountain College. Features include: …two-story, seven-by-seven bay brick structure with pyramidal hip roof, gable-roofed projecting central section, and four-story square tower with… Read More ›
Happy Birthday, Governor William Winter!
Former Governor William Winter celebrated his 93rd birthday yesterday. One would be hard pressed to name another governor, of any state not just Mississippi, who has advocated and acted for historic preservation as strongly as Governor Winter. In 1954, as… Read More ›
Industrial Mississippi: Knox Glass Company
One of the advertisers in the 1946 Mississippi edition of Manufacturer’s Record was Knox Glass Company. This rang a bell for me, and I went searching back through the trusty WPA Guide to Mississippi, which gives directions and a little information… Read More ›
“Stonewalling”–Moulded Stone Wall-Facing
Rostone was one of many “simulated masonry” developments. Produced in 1933 for the Chicago World’s Fair Century of Progress exhibition, it was used to create the Wieboldt-Rostone House designed by Walter Scholer (McKee, Stonewalling America: Simulated Stone Products). Last week,… Read More ›
Happy 7th Birthday, Y’all
Yesterday was this blog’s seventh birthday, and as is traditional, we start our new year a day late and return to our first love, the subject of our first post, the Old Capitol in Jackson. I was flipping through the… Read More ›
Lost Mississippi: Andrew Jackson Donelson House
The Delta is Mississippi’s quintessential plantation landscape, more so than the areas surrounding Natchez, Aberdeen and Columbus, or Holly Springs. However, those places possess an antebellum architectural heritage, derived from the plantation economy, that is second to none. The Delta… Read More ›