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Mississippi » Prairie Region » Lowndes County » Columbus and Vicinity » MISSISSIPPI UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN (COLUMBUS FEMALE INSTITUTE, MISSISSIPPI INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE AND COLLEGE)

MISSISSIPPI UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN (COLUMBUS FEMALE INSTITUTE, MISSISSIPPI INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE AND COLLEGE)

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1847 established. College St. at 12th St.

In 1847, local citizens raised funds through subscriptions to establish the Columbus Female Institute. In 1884, the state legislature transformed it into the first public women’s college in the United States, the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College. The name changed to the Mississippi State College for Women (MSCW) in 1920, then to the Mississippi University for Women (MUW) in 1974.

The central portion of Callaway Hall (1860, James Lull; 1884 addition, B. J. Bartlett and Son; 1896, 1900 additions, R. H. Hunt) is the earliest surviving construction on the campus. Lull’s portion was his largest commission, and while it has a five-part Palladian plan, it is composed in a medieval revival manner that is hard to categorize. It is comparable in massing to James Renwick’s Romanesque Revival Smithsonian Institution Building (1855) in Washington, D.C., and also has a tower, but Lull’s building has mostly flat-headed windows, not round-arched ones. Lull’s use of exaggerated textures and polychromy is suggestive of High Victorian Gothic. Callaway Hall was first extended in 1884, when the Iowa firm of B. J. Bartlett and Son added what is now called the Orr Building as a west wing in the High Victorian Gothic manner. Hunt’s additions are Columbus Hall (1896, east of Callaway) and Hastings-Simmons Hall (1900, south of Columbus Hall; pictured).

Writing Credits

Author: 
Jennifer V.O. Baughn and Michael W. Fazio with Mary Warren Miller
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Data

What's Nearby

NORTH CAMPUS
ANNUNCIATION CATHOLIC CHURCH
ROSEDALE
COLUMBUS LIGHT AND WATER DEPARTMENT (U.S. POST OFFICE)
RIVERVIEW

Citation

Jennifer V.O. Baughn and Michael W. Fazio with Mary Warren Miller, "MISSISSIPPI UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN (COLUMBUS FEMALE INSTITUTE, MISSISSIPPI INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE AND COLLEGE)", [Columbus, Mississippi], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MS-02-PR32.

Print Source

Buildings of Mississippi, Jennifer V. O. Baughn and Michael W. Fazio. With Mary Warren Miller. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2021, 187-188.

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