Lost Mansions of Mississippi, Volume II

Grasslawn

{ 87 } The Gulf Coast of Mississippi developed as an antebellum playground for the elite families of New Orleans and Mobile, providing a relatively healthy haven from the heat, mosquitoes, and crowded urban conditions that prevailed in those cities each summer. The famous “Six Sisters” of Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Mississippi City, Biloxi, Ocean Springs, and Pascagoula grew as steamboat stops peppered with beachside hotels and mansions of wealthy Louisianans and Alabamians . New Orleans was a city of 168,000 in 1860, fourth largest in the nation, and Mobile was a notable metropolis of 30,000. The entire Gulf Coast had a year-round population of only about 12,000, but those numbers would double or triple as the yellow fever months crept into the neighboring states’ cities. Resorts such as Pass Christian’s Lynne Castle andMexicanGulfandBiloxi’sWhiteHousewere separated by waterfront estates that stretched for hundreds of acres north of the Gulf. The houses that went up on these enormous lots were specially adapted for the climate. Raised basements, high-ceilinged rooms, and deeply shaded verandas optimized the sea breezes and allowed the occasional hurricane waters to pass underneath thelivingareaswithminimaldamage.Decorative elements such as double stairways and elaborate balustrades marked the beach road homes from Bay St. Louis to Pascagoula in a unique parade of Greek Revival excess. During the pre–Civil War decades when the Gulf Coast mansions were being built, there were vast fortunes created in the cotton-growing regions of inland Mississippi. But for the newly minted millionaires in Holly Springs, Aberdeen, and the Delta, the coast was too distant for practicality. South of Jackson, the Piney Woods region stretched endlessly with few roads, and railroad service was almost nonexistent. Only a handful of Mississippians built summer homes in Harrison and Hancock counties, but two of those were among the most notable examples of coastal architecture. Beauvoir was all but destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and Grasslawn vanished with nothing left but a concrete slab and the steps to mark its existence. Madison County planter James Brown built the house originally called Orange Grove sometime between 1848 and 1852. Each summer until the early 1860s, the Browns would load up their eleven children and embark for a three-month sojourn in Biloxi, far from the swampy backwaters of the Big Black River. Their destination was “a large and commodious home, with a frontage of sixty feet and a depth of seventy feet . . . It fronts the south and the sea, where the placid waters roll lazily over the white sands or Grasslawn • • • { 88 } grassLawn the great waves chased by the storm king break over the beach with the sound of distant thunder . Twenty-five broad steps lead up to the wide verandas which extend along three sides of the house . . . The whole structure is upheld by brick pillars.”1 Mr. Brown died soon after the end of the Civil War, and the house passed into the hands of Frank Johnston, who then sold it to Sarah Ellis Dorsey. This daughter of an old Natchez family and friend of Varina Howell Davis invited Jefferson Davis to use this idyllic setting to write his memoirs. He spent his last decade at the renamed Beauvoir, which was turned into a soldiers’ home and shrine after his death. A few miles west of Beauvoir, another inland planter constructed a home which would come to be symbolic of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Grasslawn was the summer retreat of Dr.Hiram A. G. Roberts, a Port Gibson surgeon and planter. Roberts had been goaded into buying beachfront property by his sister-in-law, Sarah Cowden Calvit, whose late husband, Samuel, had sunk much of his cotton profits from Jefferson County and Hinds County plantations into a large Mississippi City home. The Roberts family outdid their cousins by erecting a thirty-sixhundred -square-foot Greek Revival showplace just to the west of the Calvit House in 1836. The original house probably closely resembled its description in 2005: Grass Lawn’s distinctive appearance was primarily derived from its elegant two-tiered gallery, which originally encircled the body of the house. Slender twostory box columns supported a well-proportioned Grasslawn was built by Dr. Hiram Roberts of Port Gibson as a summer retreat on the Gulf Coast. Photo courtesy of Historic American Buildings Survey/Library of Congress. { 89 } grassLawn classical entablature and low hipped roof and were linked together on both stories by a delicate geometric...