Last Thursday night, many people (possibly 400+? I’m a terrible judge of numbers) gathered at Union Station in downtown Jackson to witness the unveiling of the Mississippi Heritage Trust’s latest 10 Most Endangered Places list. This was the 10th anniversary of… Read More ›
Historic Preservation
Newspaper Clippings: A Plea for North State Street’s Preservation
Earlier this year, as you may remember, a book from Arcadia Press authored by Todd Sanders of MDAH, looked at the history and evolution of North State Street from a corridor of antebellum and Victorian mansions to the commercial hodge-podge it… Read More ›
A 10 Most Reminder and a New Addition to MissPres
Remember that the 10 Most Endangered Places Unveiling will take place at Union Station in downtown Jackson this Thursday evening. Don’t worry about what to wear–my tickets say “business casual” which I take to mean dressed up if you want, less-dressed-up if… Read More ›
MissPres News Roundup 9-4-2009
The official sponsor of this week’s News Roundup is White Shoes: Wear ’em While You Can. Well, after spending the last two weeks on the Coast, we have to bring ourselves back to reality and acknowledge that the rest of the… Read More ›
Katrina Survivors: Regular People Saving Their History
We’ve spent the last two weeks looking at lost landmarks and restored landmarks on the Coast after Katrina, but I wanted to end this series by recognizing that the vast majority of preservation work on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast since 2005… Read More ›
Katrina Survivors: Charnley House(s), Ocean Springs
Those of us who had the opportunity to see the Charnley house and its small guest house next door with the Southeastern Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH) tour in 2003 were fortunate to walk through this amazing “beach house” and… Read More ›
Katrina Survivors: Beauvoir
After last week’s long trail of lost landmarks, I thought we should brighten up the mood a little with a few survivor stories that show that all was not lost. There are still historic places on the Coast (and inland)… Read More ›
Lost to Katrina: Tullis-Toledano Manor (1856-2005)
from National Register nomination, August 1976: As one of the most substantial and elaborate of the vacation homes constructed on the Mississippi Gulf Coast during the early peak period of the area’s popularity in the 1850s, the Pradat/Toledano/Philbrick/Tullis House is… Read More ›
Lost to Katrina: Farnsworth Summer House, Pascagoula (1898-2005)
from the National Register of Historic Places nomination, 1991: Originally from Kentucky, [R.A.] Farnsworth acquired the Hunter-Behn Lumber Company and renamed it Farnsworth Lumber Company. . . .901 Beach was built as a summer home or beach house, as the… Read More ›
Lost to Katrina: Elmwood Manor, Bay St. Louis (1812-2005)
From the National Register summary (1986) One of the earliest, extant buildings in Bay St. Louis, Elmwood Manor is a significant example of the French Colonial style of architecture in the community. No other buildings remaining from the early 19th… Read More ›
Roll Call of Landmarks Lost to Katrina
This coming Saturday will be the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s destructive rage across Mississippi’s Coast. In the spirit of the newspaper clipping re-printed here for the Camille anniversary, I’ll begin this week of remembrance with a listing of Mississippi’s… Read More ›
MissPres News Roundup 8-21-2009
The official song for this week’s News Roundup is . . . “Cocacabana.” Begin humming as we whirl around the state of MS: The Summer 2009 issue of “The Wellspring” (scroll to page 5) gives a nice update on the progress… Read More ›
SAH Civil Rights Memorial Study Tour
The Society of Architectural Historians has recently announced an intriguing tour of Civil Rights memorials in Georgia and Alabama, October 8-12, 2009. According to the SAH website, the four-day tour will begin in Atlanta, visiting Auburn Avenue and the Atlanta… Read More ›
MissPres News Roundup 8-14-09
Well, what’s been going on this week around our fair state? Before we begin, let me just put this fact out there: August is my least favorite month, so I’m liable to be especially cranky and hard-to-please, so bear with… Read More ›
The International Style: Conformity, not Individualism
You have reached the end of a four-part series about The International Style by Henry Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson. If you missed the earlier posts, you can find them here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. ———————————————————— Way back… Read More ›
An Architectural Bonanza in the Clarion-Ledger
Was I in heaven this weekend? Was it a dream? I think there were not one, not two, but three really informative articles about architecture in the Clarion-Ledger. I know I usually leave such things to Friday’s News Roundup, but… Read More ›
Yankee Stadium Update
There’s an interesting follow-up by Paul Goldberger on the future of old Yankee Stadium in this week’s New Yorker, in which the debate appears to be whether to save one gate or not. These guys don’t deserve Yankee Stadium anymore–may… Read More ›
MissPres News Roundup 8-7-2009
Well, get out your event calendars, Ladies and Gentlemen, because we’ve got a lot of ’em coming up announced in the last week or two: August 25, 2009 will find you sitting impatiently in front of the television, with your antenna… Read More ›
To Lexington (Miss.) and Back
Well, I haven’t done a “To . . . and Back” posting of late, mainly because when summer really comes in, I usually don’t get much farther (or is it “further”?) than my front porch–anything else just takes too much… Read More ›
Visitor Centers-Bah!
For your Sunday afternoon reading pleasure, and in light of my recent musings on the National Park Service and on the fate of heritage sites, may I suggest this article from Architectural Record’s March 2009 issue, “Rolling out the unwelcome mat for… Read More ›
MissPres News Roundup 7-31-2009
Can you believe it’s almost August? After our horrible hot dry June, July has flown by with beautiful rain, coolish nights, and not-very-hot days. This is my kind of summer! This week has been very eventful, and in a good… Read More ›
National Register and Other Simple Tools
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post on the value of the non-flashy National Register, I wanted to mention how struck I was with the book Preserving New York: Winning the Right to Protect a City’s Landmarks and its emphasis on the importance of simple… Read More ›
In Defense of the National Register
I planned to write this particular post when I first started this blog, way back in the Dark Ages of February, but for some reason, I’ve only just now gotten around to it. I felt the need to defend the… Read More ›
Old Newspaper Clippings: Saving the Madison County Courthouse
A group of dedicated researchers in Canton has put together a notebook of newspaper clippings and other primary source materials titled “Madison County History Preserved,” and I was fortunate enough to have a colleague show it to me. Glancing through it,… Read More ›
A Little Tidbit About the South Delta Housing Authority
Here’s an interesting little article I saw yesterday in the Clarion-Ledger about a lawsuit against the South Delta Regional Housing Authority: http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009907240344. As you might recall from Shame of the South Delta Regional Housing Authority”, the SDRHA demolished the National Register-listed… Read More ›
MissPres News Roundup 7-24-09
Here’s some goings-on that you might find interesting. July 12, 2009: An obituary in the Hays (FL) Daily News for architect and planner Raymond L. Eaton, who died July 7, 2009. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Eaton was a partner… Read More ›
July09 Name This Place #5–Who Will Win?
To recap: Joseph A grabbed an early lead with Monday’s spot-on identification of the Washington County Courthouse in Greenville. But then doakley, obviously a morning person, jumped into the fray and took the lead with a win each of the next… Read More ›