Cotton broker William Craig and his wife, Hettie, commissioned Knowles, the New York City architect of Vicksburg’s first sky-scraper, the First National Bank (YB3), to design their Tudor Revival residence, after demolishing the Greek Revival house of John Wesley Vick, son of Vicksburg’s founder. Set well back from the street overlooking a broad lawn, the house has a horizontal profile, irregular massing, half-timbering, battered piers, and intersecting gables. The Vicksburg Post noted that the house’s plan, with a spacious stair hall, dining room, parlor, library, and pocket doors, “adapts it to entertaining.” The original screen doors were a response to Vicksburg’s 1905 yellow fever epidemic that took the life of the house’s first contractor, W. O. Glass of Yazoo City, and inspired public health efforts to eradicate mosquitoes and other disease carriers.
To the south, the Fischel-Feld House (1913, Keenan and Weiss) at 2108 Cherry is notable for its vivid blue barrel-tile roof. With its Palladian massing and details, this is the state’s most sophisticated Italian Renaissance—styled residence. Two projecting pavilions with wide bracketed eaves shelter arcaded porches and flank a recessed central entrance set within a row of engaged Ionic columns. An original iron fence fronts the lot. Keenan and Weiss of New Orleans also designed the two-story house (1908–1909; 2212 Cherry) for cotton factor and alderman David J. Schlenker. The Prairie Style house’s red tile hipped roof extends to shelter the red brick walls and the balcony of the centered porch.