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Vital Records County Coordinator - Adoptable State Coordinator - Jeff Kemp This site is under construction! |
Welcome to Lowndes County, Mississippi a part of the MSGenWeb and The USGenWeb Project.  The Lowndes County Courthouse in downtown Columbus, Mississippi, is the seat of government for Lowndes County, in the northeastern part of the state. It was initially built in 1847 to designs of local architect James Lull and then remodeled in 1901-05 by Chattanooga-based architect Reuben H. Hunt, who also completed buildings for the Mississippi University for Women nearby at almost the same time. An addition was constructed in 1976. HistoryThe area of Lowndes County has historically been agriculturally based, mostly on the production of cotton, since European settlement began in the early 1800s. Together with Starkville in Oktibbeha County and West Point in Clay County, it has anchored a region in northeast Mississippi known since the 1990s as the Golden Triangle. In the twentieth century, industry gradually began to overtake agriculture as the primary economic activity. Until the early twenty-first century, Columbus was the largest and most economically robust of the three cities, though Starkville is now slightly larger in population. The courthouse is located at the northern edge of Columbus'
downtown commercial district, occupying most of a block bounded on
the east and west by N 6th Street and N 5th Street, respectively;
and on the north and south by 3rd and 2nd Avenues, North,
respectively. It faces south onto 2nd Avenue North towards a row of
storefronts, which also front the block on the west. The District
Attorney's offices are located in a building immediately behind it.
To the north is
Franklin Academy, while the buildings on both the east and south
sides of the courthouse square are occupied by law offices. Parking
is located on the northern half of the block on which the courthouse
stands. DesignThe two-story courthouse was initially built in 1847. Its current state uses an asymmetrical design. The original pedimented block at the western end has a main façade that steps forward twice from the outer walls' plane, terminating near the center in a portico supported by monumental Ionic columns in pairs on either side. Three round-arched fan-light doorways form the main entrances under and on either side of the portico, which is approached by a wide stairway from ground level. To the west of the original portico rises a square clock tower that tapers to an octagonal plan as it approaches the belfry. It is capped by a dome above the four clock faces that is in turn crowned by a small open lantern. The tower uses an Italianate style, but much of the rest of the building is solidly neoclassical. A large addition steps forward from this original portion, fronted by a flat-roofed monumental portico supported by Corinthian columns; to the east of this block, a smaller newer wing forms an L-shape, giving the entire courthouse a plan much like a blocky W-shape. Like most of the buildings in the surrounding district, the courthouse is primarily constructed of a light orange brick. Lowndes County is a county located on the eastern border of the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2010 census, the population was 59,779. Its county seat is Columbus. The county is named for U.S. Congressman William Jones Lowndes. This upland area was settled by European Americans who wanted to develop cotton plantations to produce what became the largest commodity crop in the state. In the period from 1877 to 1950, Lowndes County had 19 documented lynchings of African Americans, third to Carroll and Leflore counties, which had 29 and 48, respectively. This form of racial terrorism was at its height in the decades around the turn of the 20th century, which followed the state's disenfranchisement of most blacks in 1890 through creating barriers to voter registration.
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