Columbus has for more than 200 years been a cultural crossroads. That diversity of people led to Columbus having a unique mix of architectural styles found in its early buildings.

The origins of the town are tied to U.S. Choctaw interpreter and sub-agent John Pitchlynn and his 1810 residence across the river from the town’s future site. Pitchlynn’s residence also was the location of Fort Smith. Fort Smith was a small, short lived, fort composed of a log blockhouse surrounded by a palisade which was built in 1813 during the Creek Indian War phase of the War of 1812. It was important as a supply depot and meeting place for U.S. officers and allied Choctaw and Chickasaw leaders. Among those receiving supplies there was a company of scouts, which included David Crockett.

The town of Columbus grew up on the east bank of the Tombigbee River four miles south of Pitchlynn’s land ceded by the Choctaw Nation in 1816. It was where Andrew Jackson’s 1817 Military Road from Nashville to New Orleans crossed the Tombigbee River. The state line had not been surveyed and the new settlement was believed to be in Alabama. In the summer of 1819, the settlement’s population began rapidly growing and was named Columbus. It was officially recognized as the Town of Columbus on Dec. 6, 1819, by the Alabama legislature. In late 1820 the state line survey showed that the town was about six miles into Mississippi and on Jan. 3, 1821, Columbus was declared to be in Mississippi. On Feb. 10, 1821, Mississippi chartered the town as Columbus, Mississippi.

In 1872 W.E. Gibbs published a history of Columbus in the Columbus Index. In it he told of the first Anglo-American settlers at the site that became Columbus.

“Thomas Sampson came to this place in the summer of 1817, finding Spirus Roach who lived in a pine log cabin (where the Visit Columbus office is located behind the Tennessee Williams Home) the only white male inhabitant at the time. … Judge Sampson came out as a Pioneer to find a location for himself and his father-in-law, Esq. Silas McBee, who was to follow him the ensuing fall.”

Sampson built a cabin at the intersection of Main and Third Street South. He sold groceries out of the cabin until he moved to the country in 1819.

“Silas McBee emigrated from Christian County Kentucky and settled October 1817, on the East side of Luxapalila, near the mouth of the creek, which now bears his name.”

In the early days of the town of Columbus there was a cultural mix of people with French and Spanish roots coming up the Tombigbee from Mobile meeting settlers with English and Scottish roots coming overland from Tennessee and Georgia. Many early Columbus business contracts even specified that payment must be made with Spanish or Mexican money. That cultural mix included the Choctaw and Chickasaw people who were already here and who began trading with Columbus merchants. One early merchant Spirus Roach was said to have a long-pointed nose and gray hair like an opossum and the Indians who traded with him called Columbus Opossum Town. Many Columbus merchants were opposed to Indian removal in the 1830s as the Choctaws and Chickasaws had been good friends and customers. The legacy of that mixing of cultures is found in the architecture of Columbus.

The earliest local structure for which a description has survived is the 1813 blockhouse at Fort Smith, four miles upriver of town. It was described as a “two-story building, some twenty feet square, made of large cedar logs … there was a door to the lower story, but no windows.

On each side of the door were some holes, evidently made for gun men. The upper story had eight windows, two on each side, and two holes under each window.” On one occasion Creek Indians came to attack it but withdrew after finding it well defended by a combination of U.S. troops and Choctaw warriors.

The first building actually on the site of Columbus was an 1817 log house where Spirus Roach later had his store. In 1848 Oscar Keeler described the building simply as a “small split log hut.” Most pre-1821 structures were log, though there were a few frame structures. The first frame house in Columbus was built by Gideon Lincecum in 1819. The first brick house in Columbus was probably built by Silas McBee in the early 1820s.

By the mid-1820s the cultural diversity of Columbus was becoming evident in the architecture of the town. The architectural legacy of Columbus is unusual in that not only are there traditional architectural styles but local builders often mixed styles. Architectural historian, Ken P’Pool, has described a unique local mix of Greek, Gothic, Italianate and sometimes octagon styles as an “original design,” which he calls “Columbus Eclectic.”

Several frontier log houses survive, though buried in later houses. The Cedars (c. 1818) on Military Road North of the original town limits is the oldest surviving structure in the present city limits. Butterworth on Fifth Avenue South is an example of an 1820s log dogtrot, remodeled c. 1840 into what appears to be a frame Greek Revival home. Other early Columbus structures reflect a wide range of 19th century architectural styles.

There are the Creole-influenced raised cottages with the Ole Homestead on College Street, which was probably built by Charles Abert when he moved to Columbus in1825 being an example. It is the oldest known surviving house in the original city limits and is reminiscent of Madam John’s Legacy, a 1788 French raised cottage in New Orleans. Among other surviving raised cottages are Lehmquen (c. 1838) and the Pratt Thomas Home (1847), both on Second Street South.

The brick Federal style Cartney-Hunt house on Seventh Street South was constructed about 1828 and has the appearance of a Federal Style row house such as one would encounter on the East Coast as in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. Corner Cottage (c. 1830) on Third Street South reflects a transition from Federal style to Greek Revival as does Temple Heights (1839) on Sixth Avenue North, Twelve Gables on Third Street South was built around 1837 and is an early Greek Revival home. St Paul’s Episcopal Church on College Street, which was completed in 1860, provides an example of an English Gothic style. Annunciation Catholic Church, whose construction began in 1863, is also on College Street and is a French Gothic style rarely found in the south. It is patterned after the 13th century St. Chapelle in Paris. Whitehall (1843) on Third Street South is a severe masculine Greek Revival style house more common in the North.

The unique Columbus Eclectic style homes, which mix Gothic, Italianate, and Greek Revival, include Errolton (1848) on Third Avenue South and White Arches (c. 1858) on Seventh Avenue South, which also incorporates the octagon. That unique style may have been the creation of Columbus architect James Lull who built several high style Greek Revival homes including his own home, Camilia Place (1847) on Seventh Street North, and Riverview (c. 1853) on Second Street South. On Ninth Street North is Snowdoun (c. 1854), another octogon influenced style house. Interspaced with the early homes of Columbus are a grand mixture of later Italianate, Queen Ann, Bungalow, Colonial Revival, Prairie and International style homes.

Columbus’ rich heritage as a cultural mixing pot has provided the town with a unique blending of architectural styles representing over 200 years of American architecture including more than 650 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places.

Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].

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