John Alexander Klein’s obituary noted “his great passion for building,” a passion embodied in Cedar Grove, which he developed with an impressive two-story Greek Revival brick house and an estate that retains much of its mid-nineteenth century garden. Klein came to Vicksburg from Virginia in 1836, established a jewelry business, and branched out into sawmills, a cotton compress, and railroads. In 1840, he bought sixty-six acres stretching from the Mississippi River to the bluff, where he began building Cedar Grove. On a honeymoon trip to France in 1842, Klein purchased mantels, chandeliers, and furnishings for the house then nearing completion. The house’s monumental Tuscan porches accessed through floor-length windows present imposing facades to Washington Street on the east and to the river on the west. Gallery railings, a staircase between floors on the west porch, and a fence along Oak Street, all of iron, may be later additions. In 1852, with a growing family (ten children), Klein added the south wing—a library, ballroom, and bedrooms—and in 1858 balanced the composition with a north wing housing a sitting room, dining room, interior kitchen, and more bedrooms.
At least two cannonballs from Union gunboats hit the house during the Civil War, one ripping up through the roof and the other passing through the front door and lodging in a parlor wall. After the war, Klein became president of two banks and continued to build, adding a bay window to the north wing and developing his gardens. One of Vicksburg’s most significant designed landscapes, the garden includes two cisterns that fed a fountain and a cast-iron gazebo. The oak grove extending down to the river survives only in the name of Oak Street.
Cedar Grove was almost lost to development in 1960, but the Vicksburg Theater Guild acquired it that year as a tour home and performance space. Today, the house and much surrounding property has been converted to an inn, including the classical Gibson Memorial Methodist church (1914, Michael J. Donovan; 2200 Washington), now used as a chapel.