Chris Risher Sr. (1913–1999) grew up in Meridian, earned an architectural degree from Auburn University in 1937, worked for Florida modernist Ralph Twitch-ell, and then returned to Mississippi, where he worked for N. W. Overstreet and for Stevens and Johnston before opening his own office in Meridian in 1946. Over four decades he developed the most personal interpretation of European modernism in the state. His son, Chris Risher Jr., did work in the office beginning in the late 1960s.
In Risher Sr.’s International Style remodeling of this four-story building, a precursor to his Meridian Police Department (EM13), he applied stucco on the clinic’s north and west sides and added concrete panels on the south and east sides to produce corner uprights and horizontal spandrels framing louvered strip windows, with the windows turning the building’s southeast corner. A cantilevered concrete canopy protects the side entrance, where the first-floor walls are faced with green veined marble veneer. Neon-script signage remains at the southwest side.