Archivists photograph Threefoot Building

    A trio of specialists from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History spent Tuesday photographing nearly every inch of the historic Threefoot Building in Meridian.

    Jennifer Baughn, chief architectural historian with MDAH, said the agency was on site to document the building’s interior, with an emphasis on its architectural features.

    “We document buildings all over the state,” she said. “Usually, we’re looking at the outside of the buildings, but for a building like this, the inside is so important. We’ll be reviewing the plans that come through for this building, so that will help us as we look at changes that will have to occur for it to be put back into use. It will also be a good archival document for the future.”

    Last fall, the circa-1930 Art Deco building was sold to developer John Tampa, who plans to   turn it into a Courtyard by Marriott hotel. Tampa, the president of Ascent Hospitality Management, LLC said it would probably be this fall before work starts on the 16-story hotel, because the Threefoot is a historical structure and there are state and federal guidelines that must be met. The hotel will have at least 120 rooms when completed. The facility will also have a restaurant that will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as a Starbucks coffee shop.  

    Baughn said the team looks at what historic features the MDAH feels should be preserved during the restoration. The agency will work with Tampa during the renovation process, she said.

    “It’s a conversation about what needs to be kept and what needs to be changed,” she said. “Certainly, our biggest priority is to have the building back into use, but we also want to maintain the spaces that are so important to the architecture of the building.”

    One of those areas is the first-floor lobby, she said.

    “It’s similar to the Standard Life Building in Jackson,” she said. “Which was also a C.H. Lindsey-designed Art Deco skyscraper.”

     Baughn said the restoration of the iconic building is important for Meridian, not just from a historical standpoint, but from a cultural and economic viewpoint as well.

    “This is the icon of Meridian,” Baughn said. “Even as far away as the interstate, this is what you see. For downtown Meridian, this has the potential to be a real instigator of development and redevelopment of downtown — bringing life back, in a way that it hasn’t been here since the 1960s and 70s.”

    Baughn said the team went through the same process during the restoration of another historic building, the King Edward Hotel in Jackson.

    “That project did the same thing for downtown Jackson,” she said. “That end of Capitol Street was really dead before the King Edward reopened. Now, it’s got restaurants and there’s a lot of life there.”

About the

Threefoot Building

    The historic building has dominated Meridian’s skyline since the 1930s. When completed in 1930, the 16-story building was the tallest in Mississippi. The Threefoot Building and Jackson’s Standard Life Building had the same architect, C.H. Lindsey of Jackson, along with Frank Fort of Meridian.

        The Threefoot family (German immigrants who had Anglicized their name from Dreyfuss, which means three feet in German) constructed the building to house and operate its Threefoot Brothers Wholesale Company. It also housed Threefoot Realty and a number of smaller businesses, along with doctor and business offices during the 1940s-1960s.

    The building is an example of Art Deco architecture, with classic setbacks and polychrome terra cotta accenting the first-floor granite water table and the upper-floor spandrels and parapets. The building also has an ornamental Art Deco lobby decorated with marble flooring and wainscoting, plastered cast walls and ceilings, and etched bronze panel elevator doors with decorative dial indicators above each elevator.

    The Great Depression put the Threefoot store out of business, but the Threefoot Building continued in operation under various owners. By the 1990s, the shift in development from downtown to suburban areas left it mostly vacant. Several redevelopment plans over the years fell through.

Since 2013, the Threefoot Preservation Society has worked to clean up the building and raise

public awareness through tours and events.

     It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and designated a Mississippi Landmark in 2008. The Meridian City Council approved a final agreement for the sale of the building in October 2015.