A few historic commercial buildings remain on Beach Boulevard: the Spanish Colonial Revival A&G Theater (1927, William T. Nolan; 120 N. Beach); the adjacent Sea Coast Echo Building (1903; 200 N. Beach), where a two-story gallery has been added since Hurricane Katrina; and the two-story classical, stuccoed Hancock Bank (1899; 100 S. Beach), the building where this banking institution began.
Main Street United Methodist Church’s Carpenter Gothic building (1895; 162 Main Street) features a double entrance through a square corner tower set in the corner of the T-shaped plan; the steeple was rebuilt after falling during Katrina. The church’s design came from a mail-order plan by Philadelphia architect Benjamin D. Price.
Several prototypical vernacular house types dot the downtown streets. A four-bay Creole cottage at 146 Main (c. 1850) has a characteristic full undercut gallery. The Kate Lobrano House (c. 1895; 108 Cue Street) exemplifies the once-common Gulf Coast shotgun house with a side wing and an L-shaped gallery. Moved to this site c. 1920, it has housed the Hancock County Historical Society since 1990. At 110 S. 2nd a Creole cottage (1880) with a four-bay facade and paired entrances has a porch that wraps three sides to form narrow outdoor passages. A post-Hurricane Katrina design that gives modern expression to vernacular forms is the Hancock County Civic Center (2009–2012, Unabridged Architecture; 122½ Court Street), a skeletal steel and concrete structure with full-height steel columns supporting an uptilted porch, and a stair ascending to the connected concrete parking garage.