In the Spring of 1936, HABS photographer James Butters visited the John Ford House in the Sandy Hook community just north of the Louisiana/Mississippi line on the west side of the Pearl River. The house must have impressed him because… Read More ›
Vernacular Architecture
Vintage Aerial Adds Mississippi Photos
VintageAerial.com has published over 62,000 historic aerial photos in Mississippi. coverage in Mississippi covers portions of the state with photos dating back to the early-1980s in most counties.
Tag Tuesday: 1820-1829
Wherein we take a look at what was going on in the great big world of architecture in the 1820s. Rosalie (1823), Natchez, Mississippi This National Historic Landmark Federal-style house overlooks the Mississippi River on the bluff in Natchez. St…. Read More ›
Tag Tuesday: 1810-1819
This week’s Tag Tuesday post is brought to you by the semi-circular (or round) arch and elliptical fanlight so characteristic of the Federal style that was coming into its own in the second decade of the nineteenth century. How many… Read More ›
Seven Mississippi Places Added to National Register
A multi-family antebellum slave dwelling in Natchez, an African American school and church, two residences, a farm, and a bus station have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Tour Pearl River County’s Shaw Homestead
For several years, I’ve been hearing about the Shaw Homestead in Pearl River County, and I’m excited to see on the Facebook page of the Mississippi Gulf Coast National Heritage Area that it will be open for tours next Saturday, November… Read More ›
Pearl River County Schools: Part II
Last week we looked at some of the Pearl River County rural schools, many of which were consolidated schools, and all of which were white schools. This week presents a look at the schools for African American students under the… Read More ›
Columbus Marble Works and its architectural culls
It’s an interesting coincidence that this post about the Columbus Marble Works is running the week of Memorial Day, not only because Columbus is a contender as having held the first Decoration Day in 1866, a holiday that later became… Read More ›
Photographer John Margolies Images Now Available Online
Last year Malvaney’s post about roadside Americana photographer John Margolies ended with the wish that someday his photos, which had been donated to the Library of Congress, would be made available for the public to see. That day has arrived, my… Read More ›
Humble Colony at Mallalieu Production Camp, Brookhaven
Because MissPres readers have found the Friday is a Gas series fascinating, you will understand why I was hooked when I stumbled upon this news item about the Humble Camp near Brookhaven. Mississippi, or at least one Mississippian, had a… Read More ›
HABS in Mississippi: Messinger House, near Edwards
Like our last two HABS sites, the Col. Moore House in Winona and the old Grist Mill near Macon, this week’s Messinger (or Messenger) House starts out as a bit of a mystery but gets a little clearer as we… Read More ›
Another Important House Needs Our Help – Georgiana Plantation
Preservation in Mississippi has actively followed the progress of Prospect Hill Plantation since 2009, when Malvaney posted “An Important House Needs Our Help.” Since 2011, Prospect Hill has been owned and slowly but steadily restored by The Archaeological Conservancy, spearheaded by… Read More ›
National Register 2016: Individual Listings
National Register listings for 2016 vary from a rural African American store to an Illinois Central Depot in Durant to “The Hermitage” on the banks of Hobolochitto Creek in Picayune.
Masterbilt Shotgun Houses
Scholars like Jay Edwards of Louisiana State University and John Michael Vlach of George Washington University have long made a convincing case that the long, narrow form of what we now call the shotgun house came to the United States through… Read More ›
Suzassippi’s Mississippi: Hopewell Presbyterian Church in Lafayette County
Midway through 2009 I stumbled across the Preservation in Mississippi blog. I have always been interested in old buildings and photographing them. After another year of lurking around as a hanger-onner-wannabe I finally ventured out of my comfort zone and… Read More ›
Six Years: Where History Meets Architecture
MissPres will be celebrating its sixth anniversary during 2015. To acknowledge this achievement we will be looking back at some of our earliest posts while sharing thoughts and any developments that have occurred since the post originally debuted. Today’s post is a… Read More ›
Crossing the Pascagoula Twenty Years Apart
To shake out the winter dust and get on the road I took a trip to George County. I had several stops to make but I had two destinations with a common thread: crossing the Pascagoula River. The first stop on… Read More ›
Suzassippi’s Mississippi: First 2015 road trip to 101 Places–Elvis Presley birthplace
We haven’t visited a 101 place in a while, so it seemed fitting to jump into the new year with a stop off at one of the most famous of the 101 Places in Mississippi to See Before You Die–the… Read More ›
Cumbest Bluff Water Tank
About 15 miles north of Pascagoula on Highway 63, sits the community of Cumbest Bluff. Simon Cumbest(1755-1820) who first settled on the Pascagoula River in 1799 was the progenitor of the Mississippi Cumbest clan. Cumbest Bluff gained its name in 1832 when John… Read More ›
MissPres News Roundup 8-30-2010
This News Roundup will cover some new news and some of the older news that I could not fit into the last Roundup. And here is the news. Let’s start this News Roundup with news from Starkville, an area that… Read More ›
Hey, haven’t I seen you before?
A while back, in the middle of our frigid winter, I posted about two architectural twins I had run across in travels around the state, schools based on plans published in the early 1920s by the state department of education… Read More ›
William A. Stanton on Ceres Plantation
A reader who took a special interest in the Ceres Plantation story a few weeks ago headed over to the state archives building to do a little digging into the history of the place. After picking through the WPA records… Read More ›
Acona Church and School, Holmes County
I saw so much last Saturday when I went up to the Carrollton Pilgrimage, I’m still sorting through all the pictures I took. Whenever I drive up to Carrollton, I like to swing off of I-55 and hit Hwy 17… Read More ›
How Buildings Learn: Defining Vernacular
Well, once again we’ve reached the end of a week, and I have tons more book to cover. But I’m just going to pick out a few bits from Stewart Brand’s chapter called “Vernacular: How Buildings Learn From Each Other.”… Read More ›
How Buildings Learn: From High Road to Unreal Estate
How Buildings Learn tries to accomplish alot that I won’t be able to adequately cover here. I’ll try to hit the high points, the ones that made the most impression on me, and leave the rest for you to find when… Read More ›
Book Quotes: How Buildings Learn
I read Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn way back in 1997, and it was when I really began to understand and appreciate vernacular architecture. The thesis of the book is that buildings change over time based on the needs of the users–sometimes… Read More ›
Preservation in Mississippi 