Buie House
a.k.a. Ezell House
NE of Natchez, Natchez, MSThe Buie House is one of Mississippi's unique residential essays in the vernacular Greek Revival Style. Constructed ca. 1855, the house is a good example of the typical mid-nineteenth-century, Mississippi plantation house that is characterized as a story-and-a-half frame residence set upon brick foundation piers with cabled roof and undercut gallery. However, the house achieves distinction from its vernacular architectural details and from its integrity. The most unusual feature of the house is its front gallery construction which features box columns extending almost to the ground to rest upon brick foundation piers and a gallery floor which is recessed on all three sides for protection from the weather. This gallery treatment seems to be peculiar in the southwestern area of the state to Jefferson and Franklin Counties, where approximately a half dozen antebellum examples have survived. At least two of these residences, the Scott House and the Buie House of Jefferson County, were apparently constructed by the same local builder as evidenced by similarities in gallery construction, mill-work, floor plan, second-story arrangement, and walls of wallpapered rough-sawn boards rather than matched boards or plaster. Abandoned and threatened by demolition by owners who would not preserve the house or sell it for restoration on site, the Buie House was rescued by Adams County preservationist Leicester R. McGehee. The house was subsequently moved approximately forty-five miles from Jefferson County to a plantation site in Adams County near the Jefferson County line. The historic character of the original plantation site has been maintained in the new setting, and the house is being sympathetically restored as residential rental property.
Local significance of the building:Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.