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 ownership by the Illinois Central, the yards expanded further, and new businesses prospered, including J. J. White’s lumber operation and the McComb Cotton Mill. Many of these companies provided worker housing, much of which was replaced by public housing in the 1930s.
Xavier A. Kramer, architect and business leader, founded so many railroad-related businesses in the area around the shops that the south side of downtown became known as Kramertown. Kramer’s icehouse (c. 1915) in the 500 block of S. Railroad Boulevard produced 200 tons of ice per day for transporting the county’s vegetable and fruit produce to northern markets. He also built a cotton exchange (1928) and cotton warehouses (1929), both demolished.
The Illinois Central closed the McComb shops in 1987, and subsequently many buildings in the Kramertown Historic District were demolished. The restored depot (c. 1901; 108 N. Railroad Boulevard), the sand tower (1947), and the massive car shops (1923), sided with corrugated asbestos panels, remain. Today, along with the railroad, McComb’s economy relies on oil, gas, manufacturing, and forestry industries.
McComb’s residential neighborhoods contain a surprising number of concrete-block houses, perhaps due to the influence of contractor B. V. Slater, who in 1906 advertised his molds for manufacturing concrete blocks. On McComb’s east side three hip-roofed bungalows (1920s) on the 600 block of Bacot Avenue show the material’s versatility, with different rustication textures distinguishing each house. Concrete-block houses also dot the middle-class neighborhood west of downtown, as in the one-story Craftsman bungalow (c. 1930) with a rock-faced foundation and rusticated quoins at 621 Delaware Avenue.
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