One Place Understood

Former Citizens National Bank, December 2015 – photo by author

IN OCTOBER OF 2016, demolition began of a small but elegant building at 2212 4^th Street in Meridian, MS. A few years before, the owner had removed the metal siding that had covered much of the ornate Romanesque façade since at least the 1970s. I had hoped someone was finally going to “do something” with the building – the last remaining structure on that side of the 2200 block of 4^th Street. For a while there were rumors about a mixed-use development – apartments on the second floor with commercial space below – but those never materialized. The building continued to deteriorate. In October of last year, the backhoes showed up.

Ongoing demolition, December 2016 – photo by author

In the last decades of the 19^th Century, 4^th Street was known as Commerce Street. It played host to Meridian’s first opera house, the First National Bank, and various saloons, restaurants, and cotton brokers. The Romanesque building at 2212 4^th Street was constructed some time before 1885, and it was built to impress with its rusticated granite base and ornamental stonework above. In the beginning it housed a grocery and office space, later a cigar manufacturer, harness shop, auctions house, restaurant, and jeweler.

Citizens Bank, c. 1902 – photo courtesy of Citizens National Bank. (The History section of the CNB website captions this photo ca. 1888, but Sanborn Maps do not show Citizens at 2212 4th Street until 1902. The 1889 Sanborn shows Citizens in the 2300 block of 4th Street.)

From 1902 until 1912, Citizens Savings Bank, later Citizens National Bank, occupied the building. The bank had only just incorporated in 1888 and had relocated from another building on 4^th Street. Beginning in 1902, the Standard Club – a literary and musical society organized among the prominent male members of Meridian’s Jewish community – met on the second-floor, until constructing their own hall at 22^nd Avenue and 10^th Street around 1910. Citizens National Bank moved to its own building – a seven-story classical structure at 22^nd Avenue and 4^th Street – in 1912. Afterward 2212 4^th Street served as Meridian’s American Legion Hall, at least from 1950 until 1979.

2212 4th Street (photo taken 1978) is located in the foreground to the left. A sign over the righthand door reads Legion, apparently referring to the American Legion – photo courtesy of the National Register of Historic Places.

By the 1970s it had gotten its metal siding “face-lift,” but the 1979 National Register nomination for the Meridian Urban Center Historic District still called it “one of the more remarkable district buildings.” It was a fine example of Romanesque architecture – on par in its detailing with the nearby Rosenbaum Building, though considerably smaller. It presented a surprising contrast to the run-of-the-mill Italianate storefront more common in the late nineteenth-century in general and in downtown Meridian in particular.

Before demolition began, there was some talk of the primary façade at least being saved and reused in the construction of a new building. I hope this is the case, but watching the process of the demolition from October to December, I have my doubts.

Former Citizens National Bank Building, October 2016 – photo by author

Sources:

Meridian Sanborn Maps. Mississippi Library Commission digital archives.

Meridian Urban Center Historic District Nomination Form (1979). National Register of Historic Places online archive.

1888 Meridian City Directory. Lauderdale County Department of Archives and History.

A BALMY DECEMBER MORNING in east central Mississippi. It could be a day in April, except the sky is that peculiarly intense shade of peacock blue Mississippi reserves for the winter months. It must have rained the night before – a fount of water spews from a gutter piercing the parapet of a vacant building – its roof now more reservoir than shelter.

At the intersection of 5^th Street and 25^th Avenue in Meridian, Mississippi, the occasional car passes by, and less often the odd pedestrian. 5^th Street has had a new coat of asphalt – shining and black and still a little soft underfoot – whereas 25^th Avenue is a mottled gray, with so many brittle asphalt patches its nearly impossible to discern the original road. Still the remaining buildings – small and weather-beaten – have a certain warmth about them.

ONE BUILDING IN PARTICULAR stands out – an Art Moderne corner building, its stucco façade so weathered it has grown as variegated as living stone. The simple building, with its strong geometric lines and zig-zag cornice motif, puts one in mind of post-war jazz. Above the corner entrance, a neon blade sign that likely hasn’t worked in decades still spells out “HOTEL – E. F. YOUNG Jr.” in simple block letters. Another sign below reads “YOUNG’S BARBER & BEAUTY SHOPS.”

E. F. Young Jr. was born in 1898 the son of a farmer and eventually became one of the wealthiest African American businessmen in the Southeast. He started as a barber as a young man, experience he used to formulate his own hair care products. On February 14, 1933, he registered the E. F. Young Jr. Manufacturing Company – the first ethnic hair care product manufacturer in the United States – with the U.S. Patent Office. It quickly became one of the largest African-American owned companies in the South. In 1946, Young realized his final goal in the establishment of his commercial empire. That year he opened his own barber and beauty shop, as well as the first and only Meridian hotel to serve African Americans. He called his new establishment the E. F. Young Jr. Hotel.

YOUNG HAD LONG BEEN involved in the struggle for Civil Rights in Meridian. During the 1940s, he served as the Vice President of Meridian’s Chapter of the NAACP. By 1942, Young had helped recruit nearly one hundred dues paying members. Even after E. F. Young Jr. died in 1950, his business establishments continued to serve Meridian’s African American community. Following Young’s death in 1950, family members continued to operate his various businesses. In 1953, his wife and three children renewed his patent for E. F. Young Manufacturing Co.

Through the 1960s, the E. F. Young Jr. Hotel remained the only Meridian hotel to serve black patrons, and in a 1962 issue of Ebony Magazine, Young’s hotel was the only lodging listed in the state of Mississippi. As one of the only African-American hotels in the state, the E. F. Young Jr. Hotel welcomed a long list of distinguished guests, including Leontyne Price, Ella Fitzgerald, the Harlem Globetrotters, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The E. F. Young Jr. hotel remained in operation until 1978, when the building was rented to office tenants. In recent years it has lain entirely vacant.

A 2004 REPORT BY the Urban Land Institute prioritized the preservation and rehabilitation of Meridian’s historic African-American Business District as an important part of Meridian’s and Mississippi’s Civil Rights history. To this end, the report selected the E. F. Young Jr. Hotel, along with two other buildings, for particular rehabilitation and reuse. Unfortunately the two other structures, the Fielder and Brooks Pharmacy Building and the Cohn Sheehan Building, are no longer standing. Both buildings were the victims of decades of neglect. In 2004, the Cohn Sheehan Building collapsed in the high winds of Hurricane Ivan. Two years later, a structural engineer ruled that the Fielder and Brooks Pharmacy Building – which had served as the headquarters of the Council of Federated Organizations during the Freedom Summer of 1964 – was a threat to public safety. The City approved its demolition in 2011.

The E. F. Young Jr. Hotel is now the only one of these three landmark buildings standing. It is not only the most iconic building in the historic African American Business district; it is among the most historically significant and architecturally unique structures in downtown Meridian. Too much of Meridian’s historic building fabric has already been lost to neglect and apathy. The City and its residents would do well to pay attention to this historic landmark before it’s too late.

SOURCES:

“African-American Business District.” Visit Meridian. Lauderdale County Convention and Visitors Bureau, 2016.

Davidson, June Davis. Meridian. Images of America. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2012.

“Downtown Meridian Mississippi: A Strategy for Redevelopment.” Washington, DC: ULI-the Urban Land Institute, 2004.

“E. F. Young Hotel.” Historic Resources Inventory Fact Sheet. Mississippi Department of Archives and History. https://www.apps.mdah.ms.gov/Public/prop.aspx?id=16598&view=facts&y=709.

“Ebony’s Annual Vacation Guide.” Ebony, Vol. 17, No. 8. Johnson Publishing Company, June 1962.

Official Gazette of the US Patent Office, Vol. 669. United States Patent Office, 1953.

“The City of Meridian Annual Report.” The City of Meridian, 2005. http://www.meridianms.org/default/assets/File/annualreport05.pdf

Williams, Andrea. “COFO Building Update.” WTOK, Jan. 14, 2014. http://www.wtok.com/home/headlines/COFO-Building-Development-240118331.html.

Williams, Andrea. “The Historic Young Hotel: Explaining Its Past, Present, and Future.” WTOK. Feb. 11, 2016. http://www.wtok.com/home/misc/The-Historic-Young-Hotel-Exploring-Its-Past-Present–Future-368471571.html.