At eight stories, this steel-framed masonry building designed by a New York City architect was the state’s tallest skyscraper until 1923, when Jackson’s Edwards Hotel (JM28) rose higher. Contractor F. J. McGraw, also a New Yorker, spent a decade in Mississippi constructing residential and commercial buildings before moving to California. The bank’s two-story terra-cotta-clad base has monumental Ionic columns at the entrances, while limestone quoins enliven the tan brick upper floors. The bracketed cornice, destroyed in the tornado of December 1953, was reconstructed in the 2014 restoration that converted the upper office floors to apartments.
Nearby, the five-story brick Valley Department Store building (Keenan and Weiss; 1421 Washington) opened to great fanfare in 1910, with the Vicksburg Post noting, “This is the first store in the South to provide [rest rooms] for the colored people.” The store closed in 1986, and the building was renovated for apartments in 2009. On the next block, two Moderne former department stores, J. C. Penney (1939; 1500 Washington) and Sears (1930; 1509 Washington) indicate the street’s vibrancy as a commercial center well into the twentieth century.