M. A. MILLER'S SKETCHBOOK OF 1860
                    CORINTH: THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
                       OF A MISSISSIPPI BOOMTOWN

CHAPTER VII - MILLER'S SKETCHBOOK AS A TOOL FOR ANALYZING THE DOMESTIC
              ARCHITECTURE OF 1860 CORINTH

     Most  of  what is known about the domestic  architecture  of
pre-Civil  War Corinth comes from M.A. Miller's  sketchbook.   He
sketched  a great variety of houses both inside and  outside  the city
limits.  Miller shows the houses of the wealthy as well  as the houses
of the middle and lower classes.  He records them  all and gives a
detailed account of how the citizens of 1860 Corinth, Mississippi
lived.  This democratic  coverage is  unusual  since most  recorded
visual information is slanted  toward  the  upper socio-economic
class.

     While  examining Miller's sketchbook, one is struck  by  the
homogeneous  nature of the architecture.   With very  few
exceptions, the houses are simple one story vernacular cottages.
Of the two story residences shown, none are clearly  identified  as
being inside  the  city limits.  Miller does not  show  any  log
houses  in his sketches.  The only log structure he shows  is  a
stable  (bottom left hand corner page six).  The houses  are  all wood
frame covered with  horizontal clapboards,  vertical  board and
batten  siding, or stucco.   Miller  carefully  notes  color schemes
for  the various houses in his sketchbook.   White  with white  trim
and pink with white trim were the  two  most  common color schemes.
Yellow doors and green shutters were very common. Miller shows the
location of outbuildings, fences, gates and even landscape  features
adjacent to the main house on  many  of  his sketches.

    A  typical house of 1860 Corinth  consisted of from  two  to four
rooms  on a single floor separated by a wide  center  hall. The
porch, if the house had one, was a simple  pedimented  gable supported
by two or four columns.  Entrance doorways at the finer residences
were usually surrounded by sidelights  and  transoms. Chimneys,
simple  functional  affairs for the  most  part,  were located  either
on the gable ends or in the center of  the  roof, their  location
dependant of course on the location of the  fire- places  in  plan.  A
rather common practice, if  the  fireplaces were on the inside walls,
seems to have been to corbel the  chimney over the central hall so
that it emerged at the center of the roof.    This  placement of
chimneys is borne out  by  the  Allen House (Appendix B, Illustration
89).  This house shows a  chimney in  the center of the roof on axis
with the projecting  gable  of the porch.  This house is known to have
had a center hall  double pile plan,[1] so the chimneys must have
corbeled out over the hall.

     Another plan type common for smaller, less impressive houses was
a double pile plan without a center hall.  This produced  a plan
arraignment  somewhat like a saddlebag log cabin.   In  fact many of
the houses Miller drew which seem to follow this plan may have  begun
as cabins that were added on to as time  passed  and eventually
covered with clapboards.  This lack of a center  hallway  prevented
a central doorway and pedimented porch.  In  fact, these  houses do
not have a porch of any sort.   The  only  floor plan drawn by Miller
is of such a house.(Appendix B, Illustration 90)   This house, labled
the Dora Cottage, is shown on  the  last page of Miller's sketchbook.
This plan shows room arrangement  of the house as well as the
relationship of an outbuilding, probably the  kitchen,  to  the main
house.   The front of  the  house  is painted  white  clapboards.  The
two windows are of  a  different size suggesting that one of the front
rooms was a later addition. The  two back rooms are probably lean-to
additions.  This  sketch is  the largest of Miller's house drawings.
The large amount  of detail  given to such a plain house suggests that
Miller  stayed here while he was in Corinth.  The figure seen to the
left in the sketch  could  very well be Miller's portrait of  himself
as  he sketched the house.

     Most of these houses cannot be given any stylistic
classification.  Perhaps to M.A. Miller, architecture of classical
derivation  was considered to be the standard style and as  such
deserved no special recognition.   But the Gothic, being out of the
ordinary,  did  require some commentary.  At any rate,  the  main
difference  between  a Greek Revival house and a  Gothic  Revival
house  was in the trim work.  Greek Revival houses did  not  have this
trim work while Gothic houses did.  This trim work, as  well as  the
lumber to build the house, was readily available  at  the local
sawmill  or could be easily shipped in by  train.   Miller notes  that
several of the houses were "fine  Gothic  cottages". Most of the
houses that he notes as Gothic can best be  described as "Carpenter
Gothic". The single exception to this rule, however, is a cottage that
Miller calls Gothic but appears  actually to  be a Swiss Chalet
style.(Appendix B, Illustration  91)   This house has much in common
with designs for Swiss cottages as found in  Downing's The
Architecture of Country Houses[2] and William  H. Ranlett's  The
Architect. (Appendix B, Illustrations 92  and 93)[3] The  house
Miller sketched was not identical to either  of  these published
designs but clearly shows their influence.  This  house has the
elevated wrap-around porch shown by  both  Downing  and Ranlett. The
broad overhang just below the eave line seems to be the  local
builder's solution to the problem of a  second  story balcony on a one
story building.   Both of the published  designs were  for two story
houses.  The Corinth builder working  in  the local one story
vernacular style cleverly substituted this  overhang  for the
balcony to give the same visual impression.   Aside from  giving the
proper visual effect this overhang  also  shaded the walls and porch
from the sun.  Miller shows what probably was the  kitchen  connected
to the rear of the house  by  a  covered walkway.  Behind the kitchen
is another, unidentified,  outbuilding.  The chimneys were simple
round flues recalling the  finials on  the roof of Ranlett's design.
The gable ends were  decorated not  with  brackets  as seen in the
patternbooks,  but  with  the "Gothic" inspired bargeboards used on
many other houses in  town. Perhaps this decorative touch coupled with
the uniqueness of  the Swiss  Chalet  style in the South prompted
Miller to  label  this house  a "fine Gothic cottage".  Gothic this
house was  not,  but fine  it  certainly was.  The designer should  be
credited  with adapting  an  unfamiliar style to local  building
materials  and climate.

     Another  house recorded by Miller which seems to  have
followed  a  pattern book precedent is the "Gothic Cottage"  of  Dr.
Joseph  Stout (Appendix B, Illustration 94).  This house  appears to
be a local builders smaller interpretation of a "Plain  Timer
Cottage-Villa"  published by Downing. (Appendix  B,  Illustration 95)
[4]  The builder seems to have compensated for the loss of  the second
floor by adding a third gable over the entrance.  The  bay windows  of
the published design were substituted in the  Corinth house  for
simple double-hung windows with  elaborately  trimmed window  hoods.
The chimneys appear to have remained in the  same place  in the Stout
house as in the published design.  The  porch in  Downing's engraving
was enclosed with double doors  and  wide sidelights.  The trimwork in
the gables of both houses was  similar.   Downing's  house was
covered in board  and  batten  siding while  Dr.  Stout's  house was
apparently  clapboarded  and  then painted  pink with white trimmings
and a yellow door,  as  Miller notes.   The kitchen of Dr. Stout's
house was board  and  batten, painted  white,  and connected to the
house by means of  an  open dogtrot.  Miller shows two outbuildings,
one of which he  identifies as a "barn".

     Unfortunately,  none  of  the Gothic  cottages  sketched  by
Miller  have survived to the present day.  Were it not for  Miller's
sketchbook, the strong Gothic Revival presence in  Corinth's domestic
architecture  would have gone entirely  unrecorded  and would be
unknown.

        The only buildings from the entire sketchbook still in
existence are four houses. [5]  These houses, the Oak Home, the Fish
Pond House,  the Curlee House and the Duncan House are all  variations
of  the Greek Revival style.   The first three provide an  excellent
sampling of this style as executed in  antebellum  Corinth. They range
from a very simple straightforward cottage with  minimal  detailing,
to a highly ornamented cottage, to  the  closest thing Corinth ever
got to a high style Greek Revival house.

     The first house, the Oak Home (Appendix B, Illustration  96) was
built in 1857 for Judge W.H. Kilpatrick, a  prominent  local citizen.
According to tradition, Tom Chesney, a local  builder, planned  and
built  the house.  The center block  of  the  house contains  five
rooms with ceilings thirteen  feet  three  inches high.[6]   In the
1930's, Lyman B. Hoshall, an architect from  Memphis  made extensive
alterations to the house.[7]  As a  result  of his  work it is
difficult to  decipher what is original and  what he  added.   The
floor plan of the original block of  five  rooms dates  from the
nineteenth century.(Appendix B,  Illustration  97) The  dining room,
located in the rear of the house,  slightly  to the  north of the main
axis, has what appears to be the  original (1857)  wainscot.   This
wainscot is almost  identical  the  the wainscot  in the Curlee House
dining room (1857).   If this  room was  not  here in in 1857, it was
most assuredly  put  here  well before the alterations of the 1930's,
probably in the 1870's when two  wings  were added to the rear, or
east, side of  the  house. Hoshall's alterations to this house were
very extensive,  ranging from  removing  a wall between the parlor and
entrance  hall  and replacing the original floors and mantelpieces, to
adding a three bay  bedroom  wing  to the south of the house  and
excavating  a basement  under the house.

        Despite these extensive changes  the house   still  appears
quite similar to the  house sketched  by Miller  in  1860.(Appendix B,
Illustration 98)   Miller's sketch shows  a  one  story frame cottage
with a  two  columned portico sheltering  a door with sidelights and
transom.  This west front of the house, which faces Fillmore street,
has the same fenestration and proportions today as it did in 1860.[8]
The only obvious change to the facade is the enlarging of the portico
from two to four columns.   In Miller's sketch the two columns are
placed  at each  corner of the portico where they line up with
pilasters  on the wall of the house.  The columns and pilasters were
connected by a railing.   The change to the portico could have been
made by Hoshall in the 1930's or could have occurred earlier.  The
Inge House, or "Rose Cottage" was located just a block to the south of
the Kilpatrick  house.  The Inge house, which had  a  four  columned
portico in Miller's 1860 sketch, could have been the  inspiration for
an early change to the portico of the Kilpatrick House.[9]  Today this
portico has  a brick  floor.   Miller shows a brick floor in  this
location  in 1860.   In 1860 the front door was painted the ever
popular yellow[10], but today it is stained a dark color.

     The  plan of the center block as it exists today  does  not
match  Miller's sketch very well.  The plan today is a  rectangle
while  Miller  shows it as being L-shaped.  The house  as  Miller
sketched it appears to have been a one room deep center hall plan with
a one room ell to the right rear, or southeast  corner,  of the house.
If this was the original plan, then the dining  room must have been
added in the 1870's.

     Miller's sketch shows the location of several  outbuildings.
Immediately behind the house was a simple one story building with a
central chimney.  This chimney divided the building in two with each
half  provided with its own entrance.   This  building  was probably
half  kitchen  and half laundry or  some  such  similar arrangement.
Behind this larger outbuilding was a smaller building  with an end
chimney.  The last outbuilding shown  by  Miller was the stable,
located at the opposite corner of the block  from the house.[11]

     Miller called this house a "fine house".  He noted  many  of the
houses he sketched as "fine" or "very fine" but just what  he meant
by this is unclear.  It is most likely that by the use  of these
terms  Miller means a house that is well built and  has  a pleasant
appearance.  It is doubtful that his use of  the  terms had anything
to do with the style of the architecture for on page twelve  of the
sketchbook he calls the C.W. McCord house a  "fine house".   This
house was a simple two room board and batten  cottage with an open
dogtrot.  Judge Kilpatrick's "fine" house has a little more
architectural sophistication.

     Just  as Judge Kilpatrick was probably a  very  conservative man
so  is his house very conservative.  The house  follows  the very
general  vernacular form applied to most of the  houses  in 1860
Corinth whether Greek or Gothic in decoration.  In fact  his house is
not Greek by choice of detail, but rather by lack of it. The  primary
difference between the Greek and Gothic cottages  of 1860 Corinth is
the details.  Judge Kilpatrick could have  easily made his house
Gothic merely by adding the appropriate trim  work such  as
bargeboards and window hoods.  This house is not  important for its
architecture because it was just one of many similar houses  built  in
Corinth in the mid-nineteenth  century.   It  is important because it
is the only example of this once very common plain  style to have
survived down to the present  age  virtually unaltered in appearance.

     The "Fish Pond" House built in 1856 is the second  variation of
the  Greek Revival style to be found in  antebellum  Corinth. This
house was built by I.P. Young for his daughter, Mrs. Neely.[12] Like
the Oak Home, "Fish Pond" House has been changed quite a lot over the
years since it was built.  But the alterations here have not been as
sensitive as the changes at the Oak Home.

     Miller  sketches this house on page 13 of his sketchbook  in
great  detail.(Appendix  B, Illustration 99)  He  shows  the  two
columned  porch, the long windows that reach to the  floor,   and the
two tall chimneys with the recessed panels in the  brickwork all  of
which  give the house a  very  light,  vertical  effect. Miller also
gives a very good indication of the house's extensive woodwork  trim.
Miller  shows the house's  namesake,  the  roof cistern.   This
structure appears to have been a  low,  windowed cupola  that let
light into the attic with a railing  around  the top  which apparently
hid the actual cistern.(Appendix B,  Illustration  100)   There is a
very vertical, almost Gothic,  feel  to this  house which sets it
apart from the Oak Home which  is  more heavy and grounded.

     This  house was originally a center hall, double pile  plan, but
a remolding job in the early 1950's altered it.  Changes were made  to
the exterior throughout the  twentieth  century.    The porch  was
replaced by  a low brick porch,   the  chimneys  were lowered, the
windows cut down and the cupola\cistern removed from the  roof.  All
of these changes greatly affected the  appearance of the house which
now has a rather awkward look rather than  the graceful  image  it
had from its completion down  to  the  early twentieth  century.   A
photograph made around the  turn  of  the century shows the house
still very much as Miller sketched it  in 1860 with the exception of
the cupola\cistern.(Appendix B, Illustration 101)  The last known
view of the house with this  element is  in Benson J. Lossings
Pictorial History of the Civil  War  in the United States of 1868.[13]

     The  most significant remaining antebellum house in  Corinth is
the  Curlee  House.  This house was known  as  Veranda  House during
the nineteenth century because of the verandas  that  surrounded it
on three sides.  The house was built for Hamilton Mask in  1857,  the
same year that the Oak Home was  built.   Hamilton Mask  was  a real
estate speculator and one of  the  founders  of Corinth.   There  is a
story that an architect from  New  Orleans designed the house.  Martin
Siegrist, a local master builder,  is traditionally  thought to be the
contractor.[14] This  makes  sense because  this house has little in
common with other local  houses of  the period.  This story also makes
sense because of  Hamilton Mask's  position  as  a leading citizen who
doubtless  wanted  a showplace different from all other houses in
town.  The interiors have some of the finest Greek Revival woodwork
and plasterwork of its  period  in the state of Mississippi.  The plan
itself  is  a simple, double pile, center hall plan.

     Miller's  1860  sketch of the house was made  not  from  the
front  but  from the South side.(Appendix  B,  Illustration  102)
Miller gives no indication as to why he drew the house from  this
side,  but by so doing he shows a white frame wing added  to  the west
or  rear of the house.[15]  There are two symmetrical  wings  on this
side  of the house today  but according  to  all  available sources
they were added in the 1920's.  It is interesting to note that  as
early as 1860 the house had a service wing.   The  wing that  occupies
this site today contains the  kitchen.   Miller's sketch  shows  that
the house has changed very  little  over  the years. (Appendix B,
Illustration 103)

     Miller's  sketches  show  how all of the  citizens  of  1860
Corinth lived.  His sketches show the variety of building  styles used
by local builders and the various attempts to produce unique
residences.   If not for Miller's sketches, the  only  residences from
antebellum Corinth that would be known about would have been those
occupied  by  the various Civil  War  generals.   Miller's sketches
give us a complete picture.



CHAPTER VIII. CONCLUSION






todd17