| Built for Smith Coffee Daniel, II, this was a huge, elegant late Greek Revival house with some eclectic details from other styles, and distinguished by its colossal peripteral colonnade of 29 Corinthian columns, most of which still stand, although the body of the house was destroyed by fire in 1890, leaving behind a dramatic and picturesque ruin. Some dispute has arisen over the designer of the building--Victor McGee claims that Henry Howard, New Orleans architect and designer of Belle Grove Plantation in Louisiana, was working the area at the time and probably designed Windsor. However, no documentary evidence for this attribution has been found, whereas the documentation for David Shroder having been both the architect and builder seems quite strong--credited with the house in Goodspeed's and appearing in the 1860 Census along with a house full of masons and carpenters. The property was listed on the National Register on 23 November 1971. It was designated a Mississippi Landmark on 11 October 1985. "Windsor" is included in "Historic Architecture in Mississippi" (1973) (pp. 66-67), "Architecture in Claiborne County, Mississippi" (1974) (p. 99), "The State of Mississippi – Historic Properties" (1982) (p. 4), "Architecture of the Old South: Mississippi – Alabama" (1989) (p.113), "Lost Mansions of Mississippi" (1996) (pp. 27-30), "Must See Mississippi" (2007) (pp. 115-118), "Lost Plantations of the South" (2009) (pp. 151-155), and "Buildings of Mississippi" (2020) (p.64, ND79). [HABS: MS-26 (1936)] |