Columbus’s richest concentration of historic houses is found south of Main Street in an area stretching from the bluffs over-looking the Tombigbee River east to the Mississippi University for Women (MUW) campus (PR32). Dominated early by large houses on large plots for the planter elite, it eventually attracted merchants and bankers and was the domain of both state legislators and U.S. congressmen. Errolton (1854) at 216 3rd Avenue S. and the cottage-scaled Campbell House (c. 1860) at number 205 are examples of the local mode combining Greek, Gothic, Italianate, and Tudor features. The creator of this exotic amalgam is unknown. Nine houses were given such an appearance, and six remain. They have conventional massing but are outfitted with such elements as split and octagonal Italianate columns and colonnettes supporting low Tudor arches, with jigsawn tracery above them featuring Gothic Revival patterns.
At the northwest corner of 2nd Street and 4th Avenue South, the two-story house called Belle Bridge (c. 1856) is attributed to James Lull, and its paired-column portico (rebuilt 1984) is unique in his work. In the next block to the south, Lull’s Riverview (PR26) and the Pratt-Thomas House (c. 1847; 519 2nd Street S) face each other. The latter’s most distinctive external feature is the central loggia with four widely spaced stunted Ionic columns, each hewn from a single log. Their proportions and wide intercolumniations defy classical canons, but the effect is profoundly spatial in a way that few nineteenth-century classical houses are. At number 613 stands a raised cottage known as Lehmquen (c. 1838). While its form is regional, its detailing is drawn from Greek Revival models (dormers added twentieth century). The Colonnades (c. 1861; 620 2nd) has a two-story, paneled box-column portico with a bracketed cornice.