Period treasures: Aberdeen beckons lovers of antiques and architecture

Mississippi Magazine, March-April, 2008 by Lucy Schultze

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Like setting the table with crystal and silver and sitting down in your comfortable jeans, Aberdeen shows off its finery with a casual charm.

The town itself is a china cabinet of treasures--antebellum homes, Victorian showpieces, and the biggest auction of fine antiques this side of Sotheby's. A day here is as easy and unhurried as a visit to your grandmother's house, where every wall and bookshelf display the souvenirs of a vibrant youth.

In its heyday in the mid-1800s, Aberdeen was a bustling port city perched along the Tombigbee River. Cotton planters came from 50 miles around to meet the steamboats and sell their crops. The money in their pockets fueled revelry at an opera house and saloons.

Just a dozen years after its founding in 1836 by Scotsman Robert Gordan, Aberdeen was the second-largest city in Mississippi. It rebounded quickly after the War Between the States, with the arrival of the railroad spurring a second wave of prosperity.

In the years before and after the war, Aberdeen's planters and merchants filled the city with a collection of lavish mansions, the monuments to their success. Many of the houses remain preserved today by owners who share a passion for historic homes, with all their stories, glory, and quirks. Some moved here just for the houses.

You can step inside their world and tour as many as nine historic homes during Aberdeen's annual springtime pilgrimage. Homeowners open their doors and dress in period clothing to share stories and point out architectural details. During the weekend, the whole town gets involved with events like an afternoon tea, antiques symposium, carriage rides, an antique car show, and a storytelling cemetery tour.

Among Aberdeen's treasures, lovers of architecture will find every American style popular between 1830 and the early 1900s represented. The 1879 Victorian "Bella Vida" reigns along the town's "silk stocking row," showcasing the Second-Empire style popular during the rule of Napoleon III in France. Dating further back to 1850, "Holliday Haven" bears meticulous detailing in its Greek Revival facade, and inside, original pieces of furniture and art are at home with the present owners' fine collections.

In all, more than 200 properties are included among the Aberdeen sites and neighborhoods listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Even if you can't make it to the pilgrimage in April, the Aberdeen Visitors Bureau can supply you with a brochure for a self-guided driving tour through the city's five historic districts (look in the brochure box outside during non-working hours). The tour will take you by six historic churches, the Monroe County Courthouse, antebellum graveyards, and historic Commerce Street.

The visitors' bureau is run by Deborah Stubblefield and Judy Smith. This pair of gracious historic-home owners can arrange for a guided tour of the town and likely even a few house tours if you call ahead and ask.

You can also take advantage of daily tours offered at "The Magnolias," an antebellum home now owned by the city, by contacting the visitors' bureau or calling the house directly.

The heart of Aberdeen is Commerce Street, where the bustle of the week fades to a leisurely quiet by Saturday. It's here, though, that the town's current preservation movement has begun to gain momentum with the recent renovation of the Kimmel Bakery Building, circa 1850, into modern storefronts and loft apartments.

The structure was crumbling when the nonprofit Save Aberdeen's Landmarks stepped in. Founded two years ago by Aberdeen native and celebrity makeup artist Billy Brasfield along with local antique auctioneer Dwight Stevens, the partnership is now focused on raising money to restore the city-owned Mobile and Ohio Railroad Depot. The oldest train depot in the state, it dates to 1869 and was named last year among the Mississippi Heritage Trust's 10 Most Endangered Historic Places.

"You can't wish them back once they're gone," Stevens says. "People now realize what can be done, but it takes a positive move to show it's not just talk and rhetoric."

That kind of coming together is what's kept the 70-year-old Elkin Theater a vibrant part of the community. The art-deco-style building on Commerce Street has been restored bit-by-bit beginning in 1985, when a group of 65 people bought the building and began running it as a nonprofit.

Today it's staffed by volunteers and open for movie nights on Fridays and Saturdays. You can catch a current film for $4, with drinks or popcorn a dollar extra. The theater seats 466 and also hosts local plays, dance recitals, and other events.

Another steadfast Commerce Street neighbor is Lann Hardware, founded in 1879 and run today by the fourth and fifth generation of the Lann family. You'll find historic photographs and tidbits of local history amide the tools and building supplies.

Further west, off Commerce Street, the Evans Memorial Library is headquarters for genealogical research for families with roots in and around Monroe County. Along with family histories and records from churches and cemeteries, its photographic collection includes more than 13,000 glass negatives taken between 1894 and 1930 by local studio photographer F. S. McKnight. Identified through McKnight's customer registers, the people pictured include local residents and others who had left Aberdeen and returned.