| A significant and (for Mississippi) unique interpretation of the Greek Revival temple-form house. Its style is derived from the c.1854 addition of a giant-order Doric portico to the rear and to the two principal elevations of an earlier vernacular house built by Richard T. Brownrigg in 1837. The original two-story frame house, with its inset gallery and broken slope gable roof on the rear, its exterior end brick chimneys, and its side-hall plan with three entrances, is a form more commonly associated with Brownrigg's native eastern North Carolina than Mississippi. The structure thus appears to be a conscious attempt to reproduce a familiar form. Brownrigg, a successful planter and one of the earliest settlers in the vicinity of Columbus, moved his family from Chowan County, North Carolina, in 1835. "Temple Heights" was listed individually on the National Register on 22 May 1978. It was designated a Mississippi Landmark at the request of the owners in 1987. The house is included in "Historic Architecture in Mississippi" (1973) (pp. 116-117), "Old Homes of Mississippi, Volume II: Columbus and the North" (1977) (p. 34), and "Reflections: Homes and History of Columbus, Mississippi" (2001) (pp. 46-49). It is also the subject of an article by H. Parrott Bacot in the July 2002 issue of "Antiques" magazine. [HABS: MS-86 (1936)] |