| This two-story brick house with Greek Revival features and a lacy cast-iron front gallery was built about 1847 as the home of Major Thomas Garton Blewett. From 1871 to 1879 it was the residence of Blewett’s eldest daughter and her husband James T. Harrison, an attorney who had been a member of the Mississippi Secession Convention and who had served in the Confederate Congress. It was later the residence of former Confederate General Stephen D. Lee, who served as the first President of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Mississippi (now Mississippi State University). In 1915 the house was conveyed to the City of Columbus. It served for many years as part of the Stephen D. Lee High School before being restored for use as a museum and a venue for public events. The house was listed individually on the National Register on 6 May 1971. It was later listed as an element of the Columbus Central Commercial Historic District, which was placed on the National Register in 1980. The house was designated as a Mississippi Landmark on 7 August 1985. This building is included in "Shrines to Yesterday" (1968), "Historic Architecture in Mississippi" (1973) (pp. 122-123), "Old Homes of Mississippi, Volume II: Columbus and the North" (1977) (pp. 23-24), "Reflections: Homes and History of Columbus, Mississippi" (2001) (pp. 80-81), and "The Majesty of Eastern Mississippi and the Coast" (2004) (p.28). [HABS: MS-105 (1936)] |