Property

Location Information
(for the Old U.S. Post Office and Courthouse)

Name:

(Old) U.S. Post Office and Courthouse

Address:

245 Capitol Street, East

City/County:

Jackson, Hinds County

Architectural Information

Construction Date:

1884-85

Architectural Styles(s):

Italian Renaissance

No. of Stories:

Destroyed:

demolished c.1932

Context/Comments

This building was designed under the direction of James G. Hill (1841-1913), Supervising Architect of the Treasury from 1877 to 1883, and completed under the direction of Mifflin E. Bell (1846-1904), Supervising Architect of the Treasury from 1883 to 1887. The contractor for the basement and “area” walls was the Belknap & Dumesnil Stone Co. This was a fine, three-story Renaissance Revival style building of brick construction, on a partially-raised stone basement. It was enlarged at the southwest sometime between March 1900 and October 1904, and at the southeast in 1909-10 (though that addition is not shown on the April 1914 Sanborn map). The building was demolished about 1931-32 to make way for the new U. S. Post Office and Federal Building (later named the Eastland Federal Courthouse) that was built on the same site in 1932-34.

The building is pictured in “Jackson Landmarks” (1982) (p. 21), “Jackson (Images of America)” (1998) (pp. 14-15), "Musing through Towns in Mississippi" (1999) (p. 55), and “Chimneyville: ‘Likenesses’ of Early Days in Jackson, Mississippi” (2007) (pp. 81, 176).

Historic Information

There is information about this building in the "Annual Report of the Supervising Architect to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Year Ending September 30, 1884 (1884) (p. 28), which states that "The superstructure is nearly completed … and the building will probably be ready for occupancy before the close of the [next] fiscal year." There is information about the enlargement of this building in the "Annual Report of the Supervising Architect to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1909" (1909) (p. 142). There is also information about this building in the "Annual Report of the Supervising Architect to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1918" (1918) (p. 202), which says that the building was completed and occupied in 1885, and that the additions were completed and occupied in 1910.