Failing Quickly: the Susie B. Law House, Foote, Mississippi

Dear readers. in my last article, I was happy to report how a Victorian-era house in Vicksburg was finally being repaired and saved. But in the small town of Foote, along the shore of Lake Washington north of Glen Allen, the news is much worse. The Susie B. Law House on Lake Washington Road Eastside has deteriorated badly. Some of the roof shingles have fallen away, and in the wet and rainy climate of the Delta, roof leaks lead to rapid rot and deterioration of wood structures. I could already see some eaves rotting away.

Trees have fallen on the driveway and not been cleared away. Whoever owns the house had not obviously done any cleaning or repair in several years.

I wrote about the Law house in spring 2014. It was neglected then, but not as overgrown and was mostly intact. Also, back then, the roof was mostly intact. I fear the worst for this once-handsome example of a Sears Roebuck kit house.

Another piece of bad news for preservationists: just to the north, the brick walls of the once magnificent Italianate mansion known as Mount Holly sit unchanged and abandoned since the 2015 fire. Status: unknown.

The black and white 2014 photograph was taken on Panatomic-X film with a Fuji GW690II camera.

The Law House in film, Foote, Lake Washington, Mississippi

Overgrown drive welcomes paranormal investigators but no residents.

The Susie B. Law House, on Eastside Lake Washington Road, in Foote, Mississippi, has been empty for a decade or more and is deteriorating badly. I keep hearing that someone is renovating it but in April of 2017, it looked pretty bad. I wrote about the Law House in an 2014. Here are a few Panatomic-X film photographs of the house, taken on a gloomy day in 2014.

This was a handsome house originally, with symmetry and an imposing entry colonnade.

The original millwork came in kit form from Sears, Roebuck & Company.

Lake Washington from Foote.

The 2014 photographs were taken with a tripod-mounted Fuji GW690II rangefinder camera; light measured with a Luna-Pro SBC hand-held light meter. The square 2017 photograph is from a Mamiya C220 camera with 55mm Mamiya lens on Kodak Tri-X Professional 320 film.

Update: a very interesting web page describes the Sears Roebuck manufactured houses from the 1908-1940 era. The variety was amazing. Another web page, http://www.kithouse.org, describes research into kit houses around the USA.

Mount Holly Mansion - After the Fire

Mount Holly, on the pleasant shore of Lake Washington, in Foote, Mississippi, is one of those impossibly grand mansions of which many examples were built in the 1800s in various parts of the Mississippi Delta. The 30-room Mount Holly was completed in 1856 of brick with 2-ft-thick walls. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. In the 1990s or early 2000s, it had been used as a bed-and-breakfast, but had sat empty for many years. As usual, ownership was unclear. And, as so often tragically happens to neglected buildings, the mansion suffered a disastrous fire on June 17, 2015. I have not yet read an account of who was responsible, but the forlorn walls sit upright in their misery.

I took these photographs in December of 2015. There was no sign of any restoration or activity at all. What happens next? For some pre-fire photographs, please see my April 2011 blog post and read the interesting comments. Preservation Mississippi had an excellent 2010 article on Mount Holly.

Photographs taken with Kodak BW400CN film in a Leica M2 rangefinder camera. The BW400CN is sharp and fine-grain, but does not have the look of traditional silver negative films. I scanned the negatives with a Plustek 7600i scanner using Silverfast software and resized the files with ACDSee Pro 2.5 software.

Decaying Quickly: the Law House, Foote, Mississippi

A handsome white wood house faces Lake Washington in the hamlet of Foote.  Known as the Susie B. Law House, it has been neglected for 5 or 10 years and is decaying quickly. The vines are taking over, but at least in spring, you can see some of the structure.

The house is reputed to have been a kit home from Sears, Roebuck & Company.  If it was a kit, you can see the quality materials and the handsome windows. A Wikipedia article cites this reference: Hall, Russell S.; Nowell, Princella W.; Childress, Stacy. 2000. Washington County, Mississippi. Arcadia Publishing. It may have been "The Magnolia" Colonial design according to Searshomes.org. I am often surprised that we drifted away from these well-made kits with precision parts from a factory, and returned to a construction method where workers cut bulk materials on site. This latter method suffers from a lot of waste material and inefficiency (and, very often, sloppy workmanship). Look at the typical modern McMansion: you consider that precision craftsmanship??

The breezeway on the side was designed to let you unload a car with cover from rain or sun.  Someone has been here in the last few years, and the pillows looked reasonably fresh.

This was the only interior photograph I could take. A sign said, "No trespassing," so I did not venture inside. The roof is beginning to fail; see how the ceiling plaster is collapsing. It was plaster on wood lath.

A little hut in the side yard matched the main house. Was it a child's play cottage?

This is the view from the front yard of Lake Washington. It is a nice setting and superb for water fowl. Anhingas and Cormorants are common.

According to Wikipedia, the horror movie, Dark House, was filmed here in 2012. I have not seen it, but look at the official poster - it sure looks like the Law House. There is reputed to be a lot of paranormal activity here. Maybe I should return at dusk and take some more photographs....

Please click the link for some photographs of Mt. Holly, another decaying mansion just to the north.

Digital images taken with a Panasonic G3 camera with 9-18mm Olympus lens, processed with Picasa or PhotoNinja.

Update: Click the link for some film pictures of the Law House.

Update Nov. 2018: a very interesting web page describes the Sears Roebuck manufactured houses from the 1908-1940 era. The variety was amazing. Another web page, http://www.kithouse.org, describes research into kit houses around the USA.

Round Barn of Chatham, Mississippi

Mississippi has an unusual semi-round barn in Washington County. This one is in Chatham, near Lake Washington. Take the Eastside Lake Washington Road north of Lake Washington, and at the 3-way junction with Leota Road and Stein Road, you will see the barn.

Round barn, Chatham, Mississippi

It is called round but is really 16-sided. According to Preservation Mississippi's 101 Mississippi Places to See Before You Die (the preliminary list), the barn dates from the 1920s:

SHARECROPPERS' COTTON STORAGE BARN Stein Rd. toward Lake Jackson

Chatham MS

Sharecroppers' shares were kept separate in this structure which was divided into compartments. Cotton trailers were backed up to the high openings and the cotton was unloaded into the individual farmer's section. 

Update January 2017.  Mississippi Department of Archives and History has placed a historic marker in front of the barn. 

Cotton fields, Chatham, Mississippi

As of a few years ago, these fields were still being used for cotton production. But, depending on commodity prices, they could also be used for soybeans or something else. 

Drive on Lake Jackson Road, and you can see some old sheds and crumbling houses.

True round barns were pioneered at the University of Illinois, in Urbana, Illinois. The round barns were supposed to be easier to erect, use less material for the enclosed volume, and withstand Midwestern wind storms better than the regular rectangle design. The round design became popular in the decades between 1880 and 1920, with hundreds being erected in Illinois, Indiana, and adjoining states. Experimentation with this unusual architectural style ended during the agricultural depression following World War I. I have eaten in a restaurant that was situated in one of these round barns in Champaign, Illinois. As I recall, the roof was supported by a single strong central pole, leaving much open space around the periphery.

There is a nationwide round barn inventory you can explore. 

Another true round barn is in Arcadia, Oklahoma, along Route 66. 

Not far away from Chatham is another architectural curiosity, the Italianate and now-crumbling mansion Mount Holly. 

These are digital images from a Sony DSC-W7 compact digital camera.

Country Store Still in Business: Roy's Store, Chatham, Mississippi

Roy's Store is one of the rare 100-year old Mississippi country stores that is still in business, and doing very well with its clientele of hunters and fishermen. Located at 2202 Lake Washington Road near the northern end of Lake Washington, it has survived floods and the Great Depression.

Roy's Store and Cabins, Chatham, Mississippi

The front has been fixed up and has modern gasoline pumps.

 

 

The inside is full of useful stuff for fishermen, along with and bits and pieces from the old days.  Stop for a coffee or snack. As of 2008, there was not yet an espresso machine.

Old Highway 61, Chatham, Mississippi

This is part of the original U.S. Highway 61. It is a single concrete lane running straight through the farmland.  It was explained to me that in the 1920s, the State could only afford to pave a single lane, which was adequate in an era when few people had cars or mechanized farm machines.

In winter, this is an excellent area for birding.  These people are participating in the annual Audubon Society Christmas bird count.

Lake Washington

Lake Washington is rimmed with cypress trees and is a great place to see cormorants, grebes, and other waterfowl. It is well worth a visit. Close by are the two abandoned mansions at Lake Washington.

For more information on Roy's Store and Cabins, call 662-827-2588.

Update June 5 2017: An Australian gent posted some wonderful photos of Roy's Store on his blog, The Rolling Road. Click the link. He is a Leica photographer.

Impossible Mansions of the Delta, Mount Holly, Lake Washington

Mount Holly, Lake Washington, Mississippi

Lake Washington is a quiet little town on the banks of a lake of the same name, about 20 minutes south of Greenville just west of Hwy. 1. The crescent-shaped oxbow lake is a peaceful, bucolic setting, where cormorants and anhingas sit on branches of cypress trees, and ducks quack in the distance. Drive slowly on Eastside Lake Washington Road past modest one-story houses, and you come across this impossibly grand Italianate mansion sitting on an equally grand lawn. What kind of wealth was there once in the Delta to allow this kind of extravagance? What were the original owners thinking in 1856?
MS Preservation wrote about the history of Mt Holly; recommended reading, as are all the interesting posts dealing with Mississippi's architecture and history.
At first glance, the structure appears to be in reasonably good condition. But look more closely, and you see that it is deteriorating badly. Some of the roof is intact, but trim around the soffits is rotting, and some parts of the roof are failing.
Walk around to the back, and you see broken windows and decay. A gent I met a few houses to the south said someone started repair work a few months ago, and indeed, there is a commercial work-foreman's trailer parked on the front lawn. But the trailer has been vandalized, and little work appears to have been done in many months (or years?). Previous owners used the mansion as a bed and breakfast, and the rear section of the house has a modern kitchen and redecorated rooms. They are now seedy, but at least this was a going concern in the late 1990s or early-2000s.
The front and side porches show the effects of years of neglect.
This porch, on the north side of the house, would have been an inviting place to laze away a hot summer afternoon in the pre-air conditioning era.
As pointed out in the MS Preservation blog, many sections of brick are crumbling. Areas were repointed with modern concrete rather than soft mortar, which would have matched the mortar used in the 1800s. I thought anyone buying a historic house would know enough to not use the wrong mortar, but obviously some people are really stupid.
The drawing rooms were elegant and even today do not look too bad. The windows are intact so far, but vandalism will take a toll if the present owners don't secure the property.
The Susie B. Law home is another fine mansion only a short distance south of Mount Holly. A reader commented that it was built in 1902 for Sidney Law and may have been ordered from Sears, Roebuck & Company (yes, they sold very fine kit homes for decades - why don't we do this now?). I don't know the recent history of this handsome wood house, but the weeds are taking over and it looks unoccupied. 

Please see this post for a 2014 update on the Law House.
See this post for some 2014 black&white film photographs.

Not far south in Chatham is Roy's Store, still thriving, and a fun place to visit.
Also see the Preservation in Mississippi article on Mount Holly.

These are digital images taken with an Olympus E-330 digital camera, tripod-mounted, with the Olympus 14-54 mm ƒ/2.8 lens.

UPDATE June 18, 2015: Mount Holly burned early in the morning on June 17, 2015. The damage is overwhelming. The Lakeport Plantation blog posted photographs of the destruction. I am saddened to see another piece of our heritage so badly damaged that it is unlikely to ever be restored.