FEMA Grant Will Restore Biloxi's Old Brick House
Release Date: January 16, 2008
Release Number: 1604-619
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BILOXI, Miss. -- Hurricane Katrina wiped out many of the Mississippi Gulf Coast's most cherished landmarks. These public and private buildings ran the gamut from romantic white-columned mansions to modest shotgun homes. More than a century old, they represented the region's historic character, and the now empty lots they once occupied induce a sorrowful sense of loss.
Since the storm, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been providing grants to help the region preserve its decimated inventory of historic architectural treasures. One of the rarest is Biloxi's Old Brick House.
"The Old Brick House is a survivor from the times before the Civil War," said Biloxi's unofficial historian emeritus, Murella Powell. "Since Katrina, we don't have much left from that time period."
In successive hurricanes, Biloxi has lost almost all its nineteenth century mansions. Many of them were built by New Orleans families who evacuated here to escape the yellow fever epidemics that plagued the city. But the Old Brick House is the little house that could survive even Katrina. A relatively modest family home, dating from about 1850, the house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It sits on Bayview Avenue on the Back Bay side of the Biloxi peninsula.
Katrina chewed through most of one wall, leaving the buildings first floor exposed to the elements. It also swallowed the stairway to the second floor and knocked down the back porch and its roof. But the heart of pine floors dried quickly and are as beautiful as ever and the upstairs floor was spared, remaining dry and intact
Now the Old Brick House is one of only two antebellum buildings left in Biloxi and the only masonry one, according to Mississippi Department of Archives and History Chief Architectural Historian Jennifer Baughn.
Before Katrina, the Old Brick House was open to the public as a museum. "We cant be sure, but it is most likely the oldest structure in Biloxi," said Bill Raymond, Biloxi's executive planner.
Among the historic buildings most missed since Katrina took them are the 1856 Tullis Toledano Manor owned by the city as a popular museum and site of many weddings and community events; the Dantzler house, a two-story cottage from the 1850s that had just been renovated; and the elaborately latticed Brielmaier House that was built around 1895 and had served as a visitors center. All had stood their ground through over a centurys worth of hurricanesuntil Katrina. "We had such a wonderful legacy of the past," Powell said.
Fortunately, at the Old Brick House the legacy can be preserved, and several agencies are involved in assuring the restoration is as historically accurate as possible.
FEMA is legally required to review the restoration plans for conformity with historic building preservation requirements. Repairs and restoration must be made with materials that match the historic ones. Modern improvements, such as air conditioning units, must be camouflaged to blend with the historic structure.
"The bricks were handmade locally by the Kendall Brick Company," Raymond said. "We saved as many bricks as we could, but it is not enough. Part of the challenge is to remake new bricks that will work with the old bricks."
"Replacement bricks must match the color, shape and texture of the historic brick," said FEMA Environmental and Historic Liaison Officer Michael Grisham.
Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency will also review and approve the restoration plans.
Baughn is passionate about the need to save the Old Brick House. Biloxi has so few landmarks left from before the storm, she said. People who grew up in Biloxi are stunned to see how much of what they consider their town is gone. Saving historic monuments is not just something that people who love architecture do. Its saving a piece of a place for people who live in that place. We have an obligation to save what we can to keep as landmarks for the future."
It's been more than 300 years since the first Europeans settled in Biloxi, but the city's vulnerability to devastating hurricanes leaves it with ever fewer architectural reminders of its ancestors. "Our earliest recorded hurricane was in 1719," Powell said. "With hurricane after hurricane, every time we lost a little more.
"People say we lost our history, but thats not true," she said. "Nobody can take our history. We have a wonderful history back to 1699. Storms cant take it."
The process of planning to restore the Old Brick House has been underway since soon after Katrina. "We're hoping to go to bid and start construction in three or four months," Raymond said.
FEMA coordinates the federal government's role in preparing for, preventing, mitigating the effects of, responding to, and recovering from all domestic disasters, whether natural or man-made, including acts of terror.
Disaster recovery assistance is available without regard to race, color, sex, religion, national origin, age, disability, economic status or retaliation. If you or someone you know has been discriminated against, you should call FEMA toll-free at 1-800-621-FEMA (3362) or contact your State Office of Equal rights. If suspicious of any abuse of FEMA programs, please contact the fraud hotline at 1-800-323-8603.
Last Modified: Wednesday, 06-Feb-2008 13:27:56