Early roads leading from surrounding rich cotton lands converge at Canton’s courthouse square, platted in 1834. Two blocks west of the square, the Canton-Jackson Railroad connected Canton with points north and south in 1858. The depot (...
The domes of two capitols (JM12, JM16) piercing Jackson’s skyline establish the city’s purpose as the seat of Mississippi’s government. The capitols reigned in succession as Jackson’s tallest structures until the 1920s, when skyscrapers...
Jackson’s original Vandorn Plan of 1822, named for its chief surveyor Peter A. Vandorn, comprises the eastern section of downtown, with boundaries roughly what are now Fortification, West, and South streets, and the Pearl River. The...
The Farish neighborhood today bears only a passing resemblance to its appearance during its six decades as Mississippi’s most important black neighborhood. Stretching nine blocks north of downtown to Fortification Street, along Mill,...
Named for a nineteenth-century estate that was developed as a Presbyterian college now known as Belhaven University, Belhaven is the state’s largest and most architecturally distinguished early-twentieth-century neighborhood. After...
Two miles north of downtown, Asylum Heights developed in the late nineteenth century along the N. State streetcar line as a mostly African American community adjacent to the Mississippi Lunatic Asylum (1848–1855, Joseph Willis). The...
When U.S. 51 Bypass was extended from Woodrow Wilson Drive in the 1950s to the town of Ridgeland, it opened the forests, farmland, and swamps north and east of Jackson for development. Expanded and joined with I-55 by 1970...
Until the late nineteenth century, large semirural estates covered the heights west of the Illinois Central Railroad, and for the dozen years of Reconstruction, a U.S. Army garrison occupied a large area bounded by Gallatin,...
Founded in 1829 as the seat of Hinds County, Raymond began to lose political prominence in 1869 when the legislature created a second seat in Jackson. The tiny square originally held a courthouse, but today it only boasts a...
This three-county area to the south of Jackson transitions from the sandy clay of the Piney Woods on the east to the rich brown loess soil of the river counties to the west. The region’s economy has been defined since...
Incorporated in 1857, Crystal Springs and its surrounding network of truck farms achieved its greatest growth after the 1880s when refrigerated railroad cars made Copiah County’s fruits and vegetables accessible to northern cities...
Hazlehurst was incorporated in 1865, and in 1872, when it was designated the county seat, the frame courthouse was moved here from nearby Gallatin, which had been bypassed by the railroad. Like Crystal Springs, Hazlehurst’...
Founded as a railroad town in 1858, Brookhaven predates its county, Lincoln, which was established in 1871 by the Reconstruction government. As at Hazlehurst, the courthouse square is situated off the main commercial strip, which lines...
Pike County’s largest municipality, McComb grew after the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad was completed. In 1872, its president, Henry S. McComb, moved the company’s maintenance shops here from New Orleans. Under later...
Incorporated in 1859, Magnolia replaced Holmesville as the county seat in 1872. Magnolia’s nineteenth-century wealth rested on the resort trade made possible by the railroad, which was completed to Magnolia by 1855. New...
Encompassing most of southeast Mississippi, the Piney Woods region is the western end of a pine belt that once stretched from the Carolinas across Georgia, Alabama, and northern Florida. The tall, straight longleaf pine, often called...
Incorporated in 1886 on the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad (later the Southern Railway), Laurel developed into a prosperous rival to Hattiesburg to the south. The railway’s brick Craftsman depot of 1913 is at 230 N. Maple Street....
The confluence of rail lines made Hattiesburg the hub city for the Piney Woods region and the transfer point for timber shipped south to Gulf Coast ports. William H. Hardy, developer of the railroad from Meridian to New...
Established as a trading post on the banks of the Pearl River, Columbia became the seat of Marion County in 1819 and served briefly as the seat of state government before Jackson became the capital in 1822. Lumbermen began to exploit the...
The area now known as the Mississippi Gulf Coast came under French rule in 1699 when Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville established several outposts during his mission to control the Mississippi River. Native peoples, including the...
Occupying a peninsula with the highest elevation on the northern Gulf of Mexico, the village of Bay St. Louis was incorporated as Shieldsborough in 1818 and became the county seat in 1860. The French land division system of long...
“The Pass” stretches approximately five miles along the beach and has only a small downtown, anchored by two iterations of the Hancock Bank: the small Classical Revival building (1905; 113 Davis Avenue) and the larger two-story...
Incorporated in 1898, Gulfport formed the southern terminus for Joseph T. Jones’s Gulf and Ship Island Railroad (G&SI), which needed a deep-water harbor to export lumber from the inland yellow pine forests. Downtown...
Biloxi’s long peninsula had been seasonally occupied by the Biloxi people for centuries before the French arrived in 1699. Incorporated in 1838, the town, its population then still heavily French, began to attract New Orleanians to its...
In 1699, French explorer Pierre Le Moyne D’Iberville built a small palisaded settlement, Fort Maurepas, on the east side of Biloxi Bay, but in 1720 this was abandoned for “New Biloxi” on the west side. Much later, the hospitable...
The small Pascagoula Indian tribe inhabited this area before the French arrived in 1699. Sparsely settled by Euro-Americans until the 1870s, when Piney Woods lumbermen began floating timber down the Pascagoula River for export,...
North Carolina’s architectural heritage reflects the state’s diverse and complex geography and its long and often contentious history. Over the three centuries since Euro-African settlement began in the late seventeenth century, North Carolina’s architecture has developed not simply as a...
Newcomers to the Great Plains soon discover a quality of sparseness in the dispersal of delightful buildings. Perhaps it is that very sparseness that yields insight into the place, people, and architectural purpose of one of the nation’s least known landscapes. People...
The southeastern region of North Dakota is characterized by its early agricultural success through a series of speculative bonanza farmland developments and by the establishment of two transcontinental railroads...
Founded in 1871, Fargo spread from two ragtag settlements at a crossing of the Red River that were known historically as “Fargo in the Timber” and “Fargo on the Prairie.” Academically trained architects and experienced designer-builders soon discovered a...
