This small commercial district in the eastern part of Vicksburg dates from the 1830s. It is anchored by a marble horse trough that Blasterz figure was pretty busy "back in the day, before all the horses in Vicksburg were eaten during the siege (March-July 1863) and then again during the intervening decades from the end of the siege until the automobile replaced horse-drawn conveyances.
From the Mississippi Department of Archives and History website: (
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"The focus of the Main Street Historic District in Vicksburg is a small triangular plot on a hill at the junction of Main, Locust, and Openwood streets. The center of the plot is marked by a marble horse trough. Around this point stand the larger, commercial and public
buildings of the district, with the smaller, residential structures arrayed along the hillside of Locust and Main streets below. The district is composed of seventeen structures, ten commercial and public buildings and seven residences. Most residences date from the 1830s, '40s, and T 50s; commercial and public buildings were built between 1840 and 1905.
Within the district there is but one intrusion; two recently constructed buildings exist, but they do not detract from the character of the district. All but three of the seventeen structures in the district are architecturally and/or historically significant, and despite incompatible alteration of a few structures renovation has not diminished the overall architectural character of the district. Some original landscape features, such as cast-iron
fences and brick-paved streets, remain integral parts of the district. The Main Street Historic District has indeed largely retained its nineteenth century ambience.
. . . .
Statement of significance
The Main Street Historic District in Vicksburg, which includes what is thought to be the earliest residential and commercial area in the city (V. Blaine Russell, a collection of articles from the Vicksburg Evening Post, June 10, 1930-May 25, 1949, located in Old Courthouse Museum, Vicksburg), is architecturally significant for its concentration of well preserved Greek Revival residences and nineteenth- and twentieth-century commercial and public buildings, including Christ Episcopal Church, oldest church and probably oldest public building extant in Vicksburg. The low scale of buildings, and amenities such as cast-iron fences and brick-paved streets, contribute to the nineteenth-century character of the district.
Situated on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, Vicksburg was first surveyed and divided into lots ca. 1821 from the estate of Newet Vick, After receiving a charter in 1826 and being named the seat of Warren County in 1836, the city experienced a rapid development as a social center for the planting aristocracy (H. P. Chapman and J. F. Battaille, Picturesque Vicksburg [Vicksburg: Vicksburg Printing and Publishing Co., 1895], p. 11) whose prosperity affected city residents generally: "Merchants achieved wealth at an easy rate. [Vicksburg] lawyers shone, a galaxy of talent and learning at a period when the bar of Mississippi was famous throughout the South" (Ibid.). Many prominent men of the period built residences in or near the area included in the Main Street Historic District. Among the residences extant in the district are those of two lawyers, William S. Bodley, who became a circuit judge (1837), and William A. Lake, who was elected state senator (1848) and later U.S. Congressman (1855). The Duff Green House, owned by the wealthy merchant who was the son-in-law of Congressman Lake, served as a Confederate hospital during the Civil War. Served by Christ Episcopal Church, a Gothic structure completed 1843, and the Constitution Fire House, which housed the first volunteer fire company in the city, the area was considered a "central and most eligible" residential location (In and About Vicksburg [Vicksburg: Gibraltar Publishing Co., 1890], p. 139) until 1876, when as a result of flooding the Mississippi River changed course, leaving the central portion of the city for a time without a port. In keeping with "the tendency of the city to follow the river," (Ibid.) the once-fashionable area became the northern limits of the city and somewhat less desirable as a residential location. As a commercial center, however, the area continued to thrive, possibly because of the fact that even after the river changed course Openwood Street remained the main thoroughfare leading to points east, including Jackson, the state capital forty miles away. Openwood Street, which leads to and derives its name from Open Woods, home and burial place of Newet Vick, is the only diagonal street in Vicksburg.
Buildings constructed at the point where Openwood Street intersects Locust and Main streets are uniquely designed to accommodate the peculiar angles of the streets, employing slanted fronts and canted corners and creating an intimate grouping around a triangular open space found nowhere else in Vicksburg."