(theme song) - [Walt] Coming up on Mississippi Roads, we visit the small Mississippi towns of Carrollton... Brookhaven... and Jacinto.

And take a look at the front porch.

All that coming up now on Mississippi Roads.

♪ Down Mississippi roads... ♪ ♪ Mississippi Roads.

♪ Hi, welcome to Mississippi Roads.

I'm Walt Grayson.

This week, we're focusing on a few Mississippi towns and that small-town lifestyle.

And we're headquartering ourselves in Raymond.

Raymond, like so many other places, has gone out of their way to maintain that historic look to the place.

But in our first story, we start off in one of the largest historic districts on the National Registry of Historic Places.

Carrollton is full of restored historic buildings, homes, and B&Bs.

(gentle guitar music)   (bird chirping) - I was born and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and after college came down to Carrollton to teach school.

That was in 1977, and I've been here ever since.

It's a very laid-back lifestyle.

Even though we're not very large, we do have a lot of nice people who live here.

They like a slower lifestyle.

They like to be involved in the community.

The history of the town and the buildings has always been of interest to me, and I've gotten involved in several organizations that promote the history.

I just love it.

Our architectural styles run from the 1830s to the 1950s.

Even the newest home, which was built just five or six years ago, chose to use an old plan so that it fits in with the homes around it.

People like to come to Carrollton.

They like to stay in the old homes.

They like to see the architecture and hear the history of the town.

- Carrollton was designated by the Legislature to be the county seat for Carroll County, and at that time was kind of the crossroads of North Mississippi.

Right here in front of Cotesworth, you had the main thoroughfare that passed through.

There were six-passenger coaches that came through, and this originally was an inn for that.

Senator George bought it in 1861 and he did renovate it.

What you're seeing here was what he did to it.

In addition to the house being beautiful, Senator George in 1887 built this hexagonal library to the side.

In 1887 when he built it, it was one of two hexagonal buildings in the entire state.

- The Captain Ray House began as one of our earliest homes as a four-room dog-trot style home.

But then one of the later owners enlarged it and changed its front, so it faces a different direction.

And once again, a descendant of that owner lives there.

Stanhope was built in the 1840s, and it has just been bought and turned into a bed and breakfast.

- You know, when you grow up in a small town, you never lose that small-town feeling.

When you move away, your heart's still here.

I grew up in Carrollton and my father was the first deputy sheriff and jailer of Carrollton.

And we grew up living in the local jailhouse that's located here in Carrollton that was built in 1890.

So I grew up here in Carrollton and moved away after college, and I've been away for 26 years.

When COVID hit and all of my plans were just thrown out the window, I decided that what I'll do is I'll move back to Carrollton and I'll open up a bed and breakfast and buy Stanhope.

And I did.

I played at this house many times and I climbed that magnolia tree in the front yard many times while Daddy was at work across the street at the courthouse.

- My father had farms in Carroll County.

I grew up coming here with my children to camp out, and I'd already seen this house and I knew the guy that lived in it, and I knew that he wanted to sell it, and I knew that it was in bad shape.

So I talked my wife, Libba, into coming to Mississippi, and we've been here ever since.

- Oh, I thought he was crazy.

I thought he was crazy.

I said, oof.

This thing is going to take way more time and money than I think either one of us want to spend.

But once we started, it was really a very fun project.

- Carroll County has a lot of Hollywood history.

There have been nine movies filmed throughout the county.

“The Reivers”, “The Minstrel Man”, “The Help”, “The Sound and the Fury” have all been filmed here in Carrollton.

- The amazing thing was, even with “The Reivers” trying to make the town look like 1905, all they really had to do was to cover the fire hydrants, and remove the street signs.

We're still like that, and I think that's what attracts film crews to this area.

- I think that they are beginning to discover how great Carrollton is.

I think that once people come to Carrollton and actually visit Carrollton, they'll understand why we love it.

It's not like we don't have internet or we don't have air conditioning like a lot of movies portray.

We're very modern people, but when it comes to the town, we like our town to stay like it is.

And I think that that is what attracts people and visitors to come to Carrollton to see just how much it's like stepping back in time.

It's the uniqueness of the town and our people.

- The grandchildren love to get out in the creek.

We don't have to worry about them if they say they want to walk downtown from here.

It's very safe.

It is like Mayberry.

It's a great little place to be.

- Well, as we see from the folks in Carrollton, one of the advantages of living in Mississippi is the lifestyle.

I mean, there's nothing better than relaxing on a front porch on a cool autumn afternoon.

This is the Porter House.

It's a bed and breakfast here in Raymond.

And one of its great attributes is its front porch.

In our next story, we're going to take a look at this front-porch lifestyle and see what that means to people here in Mississippi.

- I just I love this front porch.

I grew up, my grandparents had a wraparound porch, and so when I built this house, that was part of the requirements: that we have a wraparound porch.

- Well, you know, the origins of the front porch were all about fighting the heat, and of course that's a big deal in the South.

And so the front porch originally origins were Africa, the Caribbean, and then into the South.

Before 1944, probably in the mid-forties, probably 90% of the homes in the South had a front porch.

It was an additional room that you could escape the heat at night, and it was where people gathered and obviously that was more important in the South than in other regions of the country.

And so the front porch became emblematic in many times.

“The Andy Griffith Show”, so many scenes are shot on the front porch.

When Andy had to talk to Opie about something important, they would talk on the front porch.

When Barney was a-courting, so many of the scenes were on the front porch.

The front porch brings out emotions in people.

It reminds them of their grandmother's house.

People talk about sitting on the front porch while the grandma was snapping peas, or while your neighbor was playing the guitar.

And it just brings up an era of simpler times.

In roughly the 1940s is when the front porch started going away, and it's very-- you can point to the reasons why very clearly.

Number one was air-conditioning.

Obviously, people now could gather inside their house without having to worry about being hot.

Number two was the television.

As more homes started having a TV, people would gather around the TV.

And then thirdly was the automobile.

So the automobile gave rise to something known as suburbia, and houses were built further out.

And these new houses, a front porch was not important because you had air-conditioning and you had the TV.

And so it literally changed the way houses were built.

And for about 30 years, the front porch almost became a symbol of poverty.

And so you started seeing the number of houses, the percentage of houses being built in the South without front porches go way up in the forties, fifties, sixties and even into the seventies.

Front porch communities allowed neighbors to visit with each other.

I mean, just by definition, you're out on your porch, you see your neighbors walking by.

As homes started being built without front porches, sociologists would look back through the lens of history sort of seeing neighborhoods change.

Neighbors didn't know each other quite the same.

They didn't care about each other.

They didn't communicate and literally neighborhoods or developments in suburbia that didn't have front porches took on entirely different personalities.

Everything is focused inward or towards the backyard: the privacy fence, the deck.

You pull into your garage, the doors close down, you go straight inside and you just lose some what of a sense of community, of knowing your neighbors, of sitting outside and enjoying, you know, God's fresh air.

I think having a front porch brings you back to just a more friendly time.

So my family and I, we moved back to Mississippi in 2003, and this idea of doing a development, a community built around the arts was kind of always kicking around in the back of my head.

And Taylor is really a bedroom-community for Oxford.

We’re four and a half miles down the road.

People think it's further, but it's not.

And things finally fast- forwarded and we said, okay, let's move forward with Plein Air, which is a French expression meaning “in the open air”.

Again, part of our nod to doing a community centered around the arts.

And so we stuck a shovel on the ground.

People kind of refer to us as Mississippi's Front Porch Neighborhood.

They like the fact that it is a little bit of a throwback to a quieter, more simple time.

And we think that's a good thing.

- [Walt] So with the porch becoming so much more than just an open air attachment to the front of a house, but an entity taking on a cultural significance, that draws up feelings and emotions and memories, it's only natural that the social, as well as the architectural significance of the front porch, be examined.

So what was born is the annual Conference on the Front Porch at Plein Air.

- So when we decided to start The Conference on the Front Porch, we just thought that the front porch was so significant, and who we are as Southerners, that we wanted to celebrate it and we wanted to celebrate what it stood for: community, interaction, a slower pace, getting back to a bygone era.

I don't think any of us realized what a nerve it would strike in so many people.

And that's what we were told over and over by people who come to the conference each year is it reminds me of a bygone era.

One of the speakers we've had at several of our conferences is Jay Watson, who is the Faulkner Scholar at Ole Miss, and he has delivered several incredible lectures on the front porch as a character in Faulkner's work, and how significant the front porch played in many of his major pieces of work, and that several of the most important parts of the book took place on the front porch.

It was the common ground where whites and blacks could meet, where neighbors could meet.

The front porch is frequently known as a semi-public, semi-private space.

And he thinks it was not by coincidence that Faulkner chose those settings to take place on a front porch.

Most of the year, people are using their front porches year-round.

It's beautiful in the Fall, and of course the Spring.

And then late Summer nights, there's nothing better than sitting on a front porch with a full moon and listening to the cicadas and crickets.

It just kind of takes you back to a more friendly time.

(peaceful music) - This is the historic courthouse here in Raymond.

It’s just right off the town square.

Raymond is one of two county seats in Hinds County, and Hinds County is one of just 10 counties in the entire 82 counties in Mississippi to have two county seats.

So, that’s something else significant about this courthouse.

Now in our next story, we travel up to North Mississippi to take a look at another significant courthouse in the tiny town of Jacinto.

(gentle guitar music) - Jacinto Community was established in early 1830s.

It was the county seat of “Old” Tishamingo County, which was one of 10 counties that was established in the state of Mississippi before the counties were divided out.

At its prime time, Jacinto had 6,600+ residents.

In 1854, the citizens decided that Jacinto was growing to the point it needed to have a better and nicer Courthouse, and it only cost about $6700 at that time in 1854.

There were 10 courthouses built with a federal style.

This courthouse is the only one of the 10 that are still in existence.

The thing that really spelled the doom to the Jacinto Community was the fact that the Legislature decided to divide the county up into three counties: the present Alcorn, Prentiss, and Tishamingo Counties.

The courthouse was on the very south-end of Alcorn County and just a few hundred yards from the Prentiss county line, and maybe a mile or so from the Tishamingo county line.

After this was no longer the center of the county, Alcorn County Courthouse was built in Corinth, the Prentiss County Courthouse with built in Booneville, then the Tishamingo County Courthouse was built in Iuka.

Well, a lot of businesses left.

All the doctors and lawyers, because they followed where the county seats were.

It wasn't shortly after that that the population of 6600 dwindled down to less than 400.

The Jacinto Courthouse has just been sitting here ever since.

Now, the courthouse was used after it was closed.

It was used for the school.

A Methodist Church was here for several years.

In 1964, the church decided they would close the church and sell the building.

They put it up for sale to a salvage company for $600.

Some local people found out about it, and then they just raised the money and gave them $2,000.

Then in 1965, they established The Jacinto Foundation.

When you walk in the front door, you'll notice this courtroom is probably different than most courtrooms.

Of course, the pews for the visitors are here, and they’re pretty much intact.

What they were then.

When you walk into the area we’re sitting now, it's oval, semi-oval.

The lawyers would sit on one end, if he had a lawyer, defendant, and the prosecution, would sit on the other one.

And where I'm sitting today looking to the judge, this was where the witnesses would testify.

To my right and to my left were two benches, and that was where the twelve jurors sat, six on each side.

And if you’ll notice, in the courtroom there are two fireplaces and a big window in behind the judge.

And it's been noted that probably the judge had been known in the wintertime when it was cold, and the heat was just real nice in the room, and in the summertime when a breeze was coming through the window, he would meditate a lot.

He would nap a little bit, maybe.

(chuckles) This was the center of the government for northeast Mississippi.

If you stand at the back door and just try to think about what all went in this room, what decisions were made that affected the people of this area, it's a little bit hard to imagine.

This courthouse belongs to the whole state of Mississippi.

We want everybody to come to see and learn the history.

You know, history is something that we can't change.

History is something that we learn from, and history is something we need to preserve for future generations.

I've always thought if we forget where we come from, we don't know where we’re going.

Ask you to come visit with us.

When you walk up to the front door, if you feel comfortable, you pull your shoes off and you go through the Courthouse.

If you’re tired, you can take a nap, but you'll have to leave when we leave.

We're not going to feed you overnight.

(chuckles)   (peaceful music) - While some towns keep their historic feel by restoring their old buildings, Brookhaven, on the other hand, keeps its historic and small town feel by repurposing its old buildings and turning them into modern businesses.

(acoustic country music) - So many people say, when I tell them I'm from Brookhaven, they say, “Well I've stopped at Brookhaven”.

They stop on the interstate, get gas, and keep moving, either going to Jackson, Memphis, or going down to New Orleans, and don't drive that one mile off the interstate to get into our downtown.

And they are so unexpectedly surprised at what we have here.

- The landscape of our architecture overall, there's some really cool historic places and homes throughout Brookhaven that we're really proud of, and I think people are pleasantly surprised at the beauty of some of our surrounding areas and neighborhoods here in Brookhaven.

- I moved to Brookhaven in 1995 from Jackson with my wife and four children.

Bought an old home in Old Towne and been restoring that for the last 25 years.

So I have a very much a love for old, old buildings, old projects.

A lot of the properties downtown, the buildings were not in good repair.

Some of the buildings were vacant.

- Well, a lot of the retail business and other businesses, offices, etc.

had moved out from the downtown area and moved onto The Boulevard, we call it, out towards the interstate.

Sort of the fast food culture.

But there were some great old buildings downtown that had historic significance, but were just good spaces that would lend themselves to some creative thinking, both in terms of new design, but also utilization of the space.

How could you repurpose this space?

To repurpose these buildings, and save the buildings, and make them better, and in turn, make the downtown area better.

- There was no master plan on this at all.

I needed an office.

So there was a building that came available from The City Power and Light, and it suited my needs where I could have a two-man office.

I ended up having an attorney come looking for office space and he said, “Do you have any office space that's similar to the one that you're in right now?” And I said, “Well, if you're interested in this one, you can have this one and I'll move somewhere else”.

One project would lead to another project, and the more I got involved in it, the more projects became available to me.

Where we are right now is The Inn on Whitworth.

This is a boutique hotel about 15,000 square feet.

It is a bed and breakfast.

It has 14 rooms right in the middle of Downtown.

There was a men's clothing store that ended up going out of business.

Been here for 15, 20 years.

We ended up gutting the building, not having an architect, not having a designer.

And after looking at it, we needed some professional help and got my good friend Kim Sessums to help me with this.

- So they bought an old building, 12,000 square feet downtown and gutted it.

I mean, literally took everything out, but the beams holding the building up.

It was two stories.

And I got a phone call from Johnny saying, “Hey, come look at this space.

You might find it interesting”.

I came down and looked at the space and I said, “Yeah, it's pretty cool”.

And he said, “We're going to build a bed and breakfast”.

I said, “That's even cooler”.

And he said, “Well, how about this?

How about you design it?” It was a beautiful setup for me, and I hope they felt the same way when it was finished.

But this is very important.

We had a town that would allow us to have a building permit without complete architectural drawings.

We had drafting.

We had plumbing design.

We had electrical design.

We had all the things you need to do it correctly and do it safely.

But we were able to do it without turning it over to an architectural firm.

And so that's a bit unique, but I think the city is glad they did it, because when The Inn on Whitworth was completed, it was the first of a series of renovations that began to encourage and give other people courage to say, “Hey, I think I want to be Downtown, too”.

- With the different business owners really collaborating together and talking through what they want our Downtown to look like really helped change the landscape of everything from our sidewalks to the buildings themselves, parks, lighting.

- Lofton’s Department Store.

It was a huge transformation, and we think it's a fantastic project.

- That place, I think, was a little overwhelming to a lot of people, as it sat vacant for several years.

So now having the facade redone to say The Arcade, which it was originally called, kind of a revitalization and an evolution of that same historic building.

I think revitalization or renovation stands out more to people and how I see it from having grown up here, see it more of an evolution.

These businesses, like The Inn on Whitworth that used to be a progressive men’s shop.

So that's what my generation remembers it as.

Before that it was a Community Center.

So there's a generational thing now.

It's a beautiful new bed and breakfast.

So it's kind of like each generation has its own remembrances of these great places that are now modernized and beautiful in their own way.

- We have a very good mix of loft apartments, restaurants, a little bit of retail, plenty of professionals.

It's been a good 20 years of renovations, ongoing renovations.

There's many, many parts when a town revitalizes.

There's many individuals.

There's bankers, entrepreneurs, creators, designers.

There are many, many parts that come into play.

It’s just not one individual.

- When you see activity, when you see people wanting to come to Brookhaven, it is definitely a great feeling and knowing that you played a small part in making it attractive and they will come and creating an atmosphere that is pleasant to be around.

- That's all the time we have for this show.

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Till next time, I'm Walt Grayson.

I’ll be seeing you on Mississippi Roads.