Two weeks ago we quietly celebrated the fourth birthday of MissPres.com with a great article about the early conversations regarding the first restoration the Old Capitol. Discussing the Old Capitol has become an anniversary tradition. Another anniversary tradition has been the introduction of a… Read More ›
If you’ve ever read the MissPres post The Beauty of Modernist Storefronts, you’ve seen some HABS images of Jackson’s long gone, international style, J.C. Penney department store. This unique building was taken away before it had the opportunity to be appreciated. J.C. Penney Department… Read More ›
In honor of the one and only 12-12-12 day any of us will ever see (unless we can get that Youth Serum working so we all live to be incredibly old and wise yet fit and trim, making all the… Read More ›
The October 1964 edition of the Mississippi Architect features an industrial building in Corinth, designed by John L. Turner.
In the last feature of “Architects’ Homes” we saw Carl Matthes Sr. remodeled home in Biloxi; with today’s featured residence we get to see the house that his son lived in and quite possibly designed. Carl E. Matthes Jr.‘s (1927-1964)… Read More ›
This week’s word is brought to you by the letter T as defined by William J. Hornung’s Architectural Drafting:
The new Moss Point Municipal Building, designed by H.F. Fountain of Biloxi was the subject of the September 1964 issue of Mississippi Architect magazine. Unfortunately, this building’s life was cut short by Hurricane Katrina, as I believe it flooded like… Read More ›
Pascagoula, better known for its colonial-period Old Spanish Fort (aka De le Pointe-Krebs House), actually has some really interesting mid-20th-century buildings for the architectural explorer to examine. The commercial strip on Delmas Avenue in particular, although partially covered as a downtown “mall” as part of an urban renewal scheme in the 1970s, still has a few nicely done Modernist storefronts.
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… Read More ›
In my car I keep a copy of A Field Guide to American Houses by Virginia and Lee McAlester. It comes in handy when I have some time to spend while waiting for an appointment or if I am out… Read More ›
The August 1964 issue of the Mississippi Architect magazine features a building type that I hadn’t even noticed on the landscape until Thomas Rossell started pointing it out to me: the motor bank, better known to us today as the… Read More ›
Time for another MissPres Architectural Word of the Week. As we move right along through the alphabet, you can check out our past words here. Have you been keeping an eye out for these elements like I have? While only… Read More ›
“Officially” Summer starts later this week, but some preservation news stories are already heating up – luckily, I found some good news stories that I hope will balance this week’s roundup out nicely. First, Meridian where there were two stories… Read More ›
Time for another MissPres Architectural Word of the Week. As we move right along through the alphabet, you can check out our past words here. Have you been keeping an eye out for these elements like I have? This week… Read More ›
I can be pretty bold about taking pictures of historic buildings or just any building that I consider architecturally impressive, but one place I’ve never even tried to take a picture of is the inside of my bank, Trustmark Bank… Read More ›
With this week’s word we will be launching from Hancock County’s Stennis Space Center to some out of this world shapes! While our word is really a three-word phrase, it is the best way to describe some of our State’s… Read More ›
A while back I stumbled onto a website called “Defining Downtown at Mid-Century: The Architecture of the Bank Building & Equipment Corporation of America.” A part of the Recent Past Network, the site aims to bring attention to the thousands… Read More ›
This week we are following Architectural Photographer Joseph Molitor on the 58th anniversary of his 1954 trip. Today is the last day of our three-blog-postings trip through Mississippi with Mr. Molitor. According to Columbia University’s Avery Library Archive, by Thursday… Read More ›
This week we are following Architectural Photographer Joseph Molitor on the 58th anniversary of his 1954 trip to Mississippi. Molitor’s collection of photos, now at the Columbia University Avery Library in New York, forms an important documentary of what the… Read More ›
You may remember about this time last year, how we followed the 1952 footsteps of architectural photographer Joseph Molitor on the 59th anniversary of his first professional trip through Mississippi. As a reminder, here’s a little background about Molitor from the… Read More ›
You may recall Mark Davis’ guest posts last month about Meridian architect P.J. Krouse, re-printed from the original publication in the Pearl River County Historical Society newsletter, The Historical Reporter. This month, Mark has outdone himself, introducing us to Clair Maurice Jones, who was… Read More ›
A while back, reader Gary E. Magee commented on an old post about Jackson architect Tom Biggs that one of Bigg’s designs, the chapel at St. Dominic hospital, is slated for demolition in a planned expansion of the adjacent emergency area…. Read More ›
Since yesterday’s first post was about the Vicksburg Poll Results and since the next two days’ posts are about concrete block in Vicksburg, I figured why not just make a week of Vicksburg? Back in the Spring when it was… Read More ›
Gulf Towers, a high-rise apartment building in Biloxi, was the featured Mississippi building in the February 1964 issue of Mississippi Architect. It might be hard to remember now, but back in 1964, before Camille and of course before Katrina, the… Read More ›
The Blog of the Preservation Research Office has an interesting post entitled “Destroying Modern Architecture in St. Louis” regarding the St. Louis Pruitt Igoe Housing Project among other St. Louis modern architecture icons. The post discusses some of the issues… Read More ›
Our across-the-River friend Blake Wintory from Lakeport Plantation sent me this screenshot of Jackson’s Petroleum Building as seen in the recent PBS American Experience documentary “Freedom Riders.” This was in response to the last paragraph in my post on the… Read More ›
Mississippi Architect’s January 1964 featured Mississippi building introduces us to a Hattiesburg architect we’ve mentioned only in passing here on MissPres, Stephen H. Blair (1926-1993). I don’t know much about Blair, but USM’s archives contains a collection of his drawings,… Read More ›
Preservation in Mississippi 