The Great Houses Of Natchez

Examines the architecture, history, and interior style of fifty-nine antebellum houses

In Art in Mississippi Patti Carr Black focuses on several hundred significant artists and showcases in full color the work of more than two hundred. Nationally acclaimed native Mississippians are hereGeorge Ohr, Walter Anderson, Marie Hull, Theora Hamblett, William Dunlap, Sam Gilliam, William Hollingsworth, Jr., Karl Wolfe, Mildred Nungester Wolfe, John McCrady, Ed McGowin, James Seawright, and many others. Prominent artists who lived or worked in the state for a significant period of time are included as well - John James Audubon, Louis Comfort Tiffany, George Caleb Bingham, William Aiken Walker, and more. Black explores how art reflects the land and how modes of living and values dictated by Mississippi's changing topography created a variety of art forms. She demonstrates the influence of Mississippi's diverse cultures upon the art and shows how it has responded in many forms - painting, architecture, sculpture, fine crafts - to the changing aesthetics of national art movements.

Two hundred stunning photographs complement a beautiful celebration of architecture, lifestyle, history, and interior design in a study of some of the great antebellum houses that mark the architectural heritage of Natchez, Mississippi. 12,000 first printing.

Classic Natchez is the fourth in a series of books about significant Southern cities. By bringing together thought-provoking essays, beautiful contemporary color photographs, and informative maps and illustrations, the editors reveal the essence of each city through its architecture. In this volume, Randolph Delehanty presents the captivating and ironic history of Natchez, identifying the architectural evidence of each era and relating it to the social and economic pulses that created it. An entertaining time line illustrated with archival photographs, maps, panoramas, and floor plans takes the reader from the earliest native habitations, through the construction boom of the cotton era, to the modern-day efforts to preserve this precious legacy. As the introduction and time line give the architecture historical perspective, a portfolio of forty-three landmark Natchez homes gives it life, with stories of Natchez's celebrated nineteenth-century society woven into the lives and lifestyles of modern Natchezians. The portfolio offers a colorful journey through time - the sweet serenity of Spanish-era Hope Farm, to the nearly unbelievable fantasy of Haller Nutt's suburban Longwood, and ending with a bluff-top modern homage to a Mississippi planter's cottage.

The novels of Walker Percy--The Moviegoer, Lancelot, The Second Coming, and The Thanatos Syndrome to name a few--have left a permanent mark on twentieth-century Southern fiction; yet the history of the Percy family in America matches anything, perhaps, that he could have created. Two centuries of wealth, literary accomplishment, political leadership, depression, and sometimes suicide established a fascinating legacy that lies behind Walker Percy's acclaimed prose and profound insight into the human condition. In The House of Percy, Bertram Wyatt-Brown masterfully interprets the life of this gifted family, drawing out the twin themes of an inherited inclination to despondency and an abiding sense of honor. The Percy family roots in Mississippi and Louisiana go back to "Don Carlos" Percy, an eighteenth-century soldier of fortune who amassed a large estate but fell victim to mental disorder and suicide. Wyatt-Brown traces the Percys through the slaveholding heyday of antebellum Natchez, the ravages of the Civil War (which produced the heroic Colonel William Alexander Percy, the "Gray Eagle"), and a return to prominence in the Mississippi Delta after Reconstruction. In addition, the author recovers the tragic lives and literary achievements of several Percy-related women, including Sarah Dorsey, a popular post-Civil War novelist who horrified her relatives by befriending Jefferson Davis--a married man--and bequeathing to him her plantation home, Beauvoir, along with her entire fortune. Wyatt-Brown then chronicles the life of Senator LeRoy Percy, whose climactic re-election loss in 1911 to a racist demagogue deply stung the family pride, but inspired his bold defiance to the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. The author goes on to tell the poignant story of poet and war hero Will Percy, the Senator's son. The weight of this family narrative found expression in Will Percy's memoirs, Lanterns on the Levee--and in the works of Walker Percy, who was reared in his cousin Will's Greenville home after the suicidal death of Walker's father and his mother's drowning. As the biography of a powerful dynasty, steeped in Sou8thern traditions and claims to kinship with English nobility, The House of Percy shows the interrelationship of legend, depression, and grand achievement. Written by a leading scholar of the South, it weaves together intensive research and thoughtful insights into a riveting, unforgettable story.

This fifty-site tour through the Magnolia State's historic locales traces the region's history across several centuries and explores how each contributes a unique piece of the state's rich and multilayered story.

An exquisitely photographed collection of the great houses and mansions of the South. In the tradition of Rizzoli’s Historic Houses of the Hudson Valley and Great Houses of New England, Great Houses of the South features a stunning array of newly photographed homes that range over three centuries and are distinctive examples of the architecture of the region. While in popular imagination the "Southern Style" is embodied in the classic Southern plantation house with its Greek Revival detailing—its stately white columns, wide porch, and symmetrical shape—the houses themselves are much more various and engaging, as shown in this important volume. From stately Stanton Hall of Natchez, Mississippi, one of the most magnificent and palatial residences of antebellum America; to Longue Vue House and Gardens of New Orleans, the luxurious Classical Revival–style home of Edgar and Edith Stern; to the fabled Biltmore of Asheville, North Carolina, the opulent French Renaissance–inspired chateau and Gilded Age estate of George Washington Vanderbilt, this lavish volume is comprehensive in scope and a landmark work of enduring interest to homeowners, architects, architecture historians, and all those who love fine architecture.