United States Post Office and Courthouse (1933), Meridian, Mississippi
A three-story Art Deco limestone federal building at 2100 9th Street in downtown Meridian, completed in 1933 to designs by local architect P.J. Krouse — the city’s most significant federal building and the courthouse where James Meredith filed his lawsuit desegregating the University of Mississippi, and where the men charged with the murders of civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were tried in 1967.
At a glance
The United States Post Office and Courthouse stands at 2100 9th Street in downtown Meridian, Mississippi. Completed in 1933 to designs by the noted Meridian architect P.J. Krouse and his partner Fort, the three-story limestone building was built as part of the federal public works program during the Great Depression and represents what architectural historians call the “simplified, or stripped, classical” mode of Art Deco — the austere, monochromatic variant that federal architects applied to civic buildings across the country during the New Deal era, as distinct from the decorative exuberance of commercial Art Deco towers like Meridian’s nearby Threefoot Building (1929). Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, the building served as both Meridian’s main post office and a federal courthouse from 1933 until 2012; it continues to function as the city’s main post office.
Key facts
- Built: 1933
- Style: Art Deco (“simplified, stripped classical mode”)
- Architects: P.J. Krouse & Fort, Meridian, Mississippi
- Material: Three-story limestone, granite steps, terracotta coping
- Ornament: Bronze grill with decorative corn design; parapet with repeated eagle and steer motif; amber glass globe entrance lamps; marble mosaic lobby floor; four marble columns
- NRHP listed: May 17, 1984 (ref. 84002236)
- Civil rights history: Site of James Meredith’s 1961 lawsuit against the University of Mississippi; site of the United States v. Price trial (Chaney, Goodman, Schwerner murders) in 1967
- Current use: United States Post Office (main post office, Meridian); courthouse closed 2012
- Address: 2100 9th Street, Meridian, Mississippi 39301
- GPS: 32.36639, −88.69972
History
Meridian’s first federal building — constructed in 1898 at a cost of $80,000 at 8th Street and 22nd Avenue — had served the city’s growing postal and judicial needs for 35 years when the Great Depression both created the financial justification for a larger building and provided the federal public works funds to construct it. During the New Deal era, the federal government embarked on an ambitious program of constructing new post offices and courthouses in towns of importance across the country, applying the “simplified, stripped classical” variant of Art Deco to give these civic buildings a common visual language of institutional authority and modern economy. The 1933 Meridian building, designed by local architect P.J. Krouse and his partner Fort, belongs to this national program: a limestone structure “noted for its mass and proportion rather than for its detail,” as the WPA Guide to Mississippi described it.
The building’s granite steps, bronze entrance grill with its decorative ear of corn motif, parapet eagles and steers, and marble lobby establish the building’s identity as a federal civic building of the New Deal period, using the same stripped-classical Art Deco vocabulary that James Wetmore’s Office of the Supervising Architect was standardizing for federal public buildings across the country in the early 1930s. The building served as both Meridian’s main post office and the seat of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi from 1933 to 2012 — an 80-year span during which it became the setting for some of the most consequential legal proceedings in American civil rights history.
What you see
The Post Office and Courthouse’s Art Deco exterior is built entirely in limestone and represents the “simplified, stripped classical mode” of federal civic Art Deco — the variant that architectural historians distinguish from the decorative commercial Art Deco of the same era by its monochromatic stone surfaces, minimal ornament, and classical temple proportions. Where the nearby Threefoot Building (1929) deploys the full decorative program of commercial Art Deco — polychrome terra cotta, stepped setbacks, bold vertical striping — the Post Office and Courthouse is closer in vocabulary to the stripped classicism of the Lincoln Memorial or the Supreme Court building, adapted to the scale and budget constraints of a Depression-era public works project in a mid-size Mississippi city.
The building’s specific ornamental program is worth examining closely: the bronze entrance grill with its decorative ear of corn is an agricultural allusion appropriate to the Mississippi context; the parapet above the terracotta coping repeats a design of an eagle flanking a steer with ears of corn at its ears — a distinctive combination of federal symbolism (the eagle) with regional identity (agricultural motifs). The front facade carries the classical postal motto in capitals: “Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night shall stay these couriers” — a dedication not universal on federal post offices but chosen for Meridian as a statement of institutional purpose carved in stone in the Art Deco manner of frontal inscription. Four amber-globed entrance lamps line the approach.
Practical information
- The building continues to serve as Meridian’s main post office; the public lobby is accessible during postal business hours.
- The courthouse closed in 2012; judicial proceedings are no longer held in the building.
- The exterior is visible from 9th Street in downtown Meridian; the NRHP listing plaque and identifying signage are at the main entrance.
Getting there
The Post Office and Courthouse is at 2100 9th Street in downtown Meridian, Mississippi. Meridian Regional Airport (MEI) is approximately 5 miles northeast of downtown via Highway 19. Amtrak’s Crescent (New York–New Orleans) and City of New Orleans (Chicago–New Orleans) both stop at Meridian’s Union Station at Front Street — Meridian is one of the few mid-size cities in the South with two Amtrak trains daily, a legacy of its 19th-century rail heritage. By car, Interstates 20 and 59 intersect in Meridian; the 22nd Avenue and 29th Avenue exits provide downtown access.
Nearby
- Threefoot Building (1929) — approximately 3 blocks northeast at 215 Fifth Street; the 16-story Art Deco skyscraper designed by Claude H. Lindsley, named for brothers Solomon and Meyer Dreyfuss (both three feet tall in local legend), and now converted to mixed-use residential; the most exuberant example of commercial Art Deco in Mississippi, a striking contrast with the stripped-classical restraint of the Post Office and Courthouse just blocks away
- Union Station (1906) — approximately 4 blocks north; the Beaux-Arts railroad depot that served as Meridian’s principal passenger terminal during the city’s years as a major rail hub; now the terminus for Amtrak’s Crescent and City of New Orleans trains
- Meridian Museum of Art — at 628 25th Avenue; housed in the former Carnegie library building (1912), with collections of American art and works by Mississippi artists
Sources
- Wikipedia: “United States Post Office and Courthouse (Meridian, Mississippi)”
- NRHP Nomination, National Register of Historic Places: U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, ref. 84002236 (April 12, 1984, Ila Ree Odom)
- Todd Sanders: “Architecture in Mississippi During the 20th Century,” Mississippi Historical Society, January 2010
- Jack Shank: Meridian: The Queen with a Past, Southeastern Printing Company, 1986
- Wikimedia Commons: Meridian_December_2018_28_(United_States_Post_Office_and_Courthouse).jpg, CC BY-SA 4.0, Michael Barera
Find it on the map
See this place and what’s around it →📷 Diventa un fotografo di Cultural Heritage Online
Condividi le tue foto dei luoghi: restano pubblicate con la tua firma come autore. Più vengono viste, più ti fai conoscere — e presto un concorso premierà le foto più apprezzate.
Accedi o registrati gratis per aggiungere una foto