Mississippi’s first suburban state-office campus began in 1967 with the ten-story Paul B. Johnson office tower flanked by two low-rise buildings set around a formal plaza. A collaboration of Caudill Rowlett Scott of Houston and the Jackson firms of T. N. Touchstone Jr. and Associates, Bouchillon and Harris, and B. H. Biggers and Associates, the modern design has an exposed concrete frame of strong geometries that emphasize the play of light and shadow.
The Mississippi Library Commission moved its headquarters here in 2006. Its building ( pictured above), a joint venture of Jackson firms Duvall Decker and Burris and Wagnon, and constructed by W. G. Yates and Sons, is clad in interlocking cast-stone panels. The four-story office block and its uptilted entrance canopy balance a three-story library wing lit by a projecting north-facing window wall overlooking the wooded lot.
South of the Education and Research Center, the Department of Information Technology Services (ITS) building (2012, Duvall Decker) has a stark, lightweight metal and glass facade that contrasts with the solidity of the earlier buildings.