Established in 1844, Greenville relocated in 1870 to a site two miles to the north. The town’s fortunes rose and fell with the Mississippi River and the price of cotton. Two railroads served the town: the east-west Columbus and Greenville (C&G) Railroad, with a depot (1888) at 200 Central Street, and the north-south Louisville, New Orleans and Texas Railroad; its c. 1905 depot is at 738 Washington Avenue.
Greenville’s population was unusually diverse for Mississippi and included Jews, Lebanese, Italians, and Chinese. It also nurtured a stream of writers, beginning with William A. Percy, poet and author of Lanterns on the Levee (1941), and including Shelby Foote, Walker Percy, David L. Cohn, Ellen Douglas, and Hodding Carter Jr., Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of the Delta Democrat Times (office at 201–203 Main Street).
Although located on a relatively high ridge, Greenville has endured numerous river floods—so many that residents historically referred to these events merely as “high water.” But the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 changed Greenville’s relationship with the river after it broke through the nearby Mound Landing levee on April 21, 1927, covering one million acres of Delta land up to ten feet deep and remaining for most of the planting season. In response, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers realigned and rebuilt levees, forcing the Mississippi River to change its course near Greenville and leaving the oxbow Lake Ferguson as the town’s present waterfront.
Greenville’s greatest growth was between 1930 and 1950, when its population doubled from 15,000 to 29,914. This surge came from the influx of African Americans to jobs at the U.S. Gypsum Company and Refuge Cotton Oil Mill, the opening of Greenville Army Air Base in 1940, and the completion in 1940 (replaced 2010) of an automobile bridge over the Mississippi River. In 1935, this strong economy allowed the construction of Greenville’s tallest building, the seven-story Art Deco Greenville Hotel (now Delta Towers Apartments) at 638 Main Street designed by Anker F. Hansen of Memphis. After World War II, downtown merchants undertook a campaign to modernize their storefronts with chrome, glass, and terrazzo, notably at 307 and 309 Washington Avenue and the International Style May Building (c. 1948) at 618–620 Washington. Since then economic decline, depopulation, urban renewal, and deferred maintenance have left gaping holes in the once vibrant downtown.
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