The Town of Carrollton recently completed an application nominating the Carrollton Community House for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, the official list of the Nation's historic places worthy of preservation.
Under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service is responsible for overseeing this national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America's historic and archeological resources. If accepted, the Community House will be the 14th Carroll County site on the National Register.
A small plaque above the doors of the Community House reveals that it was designed and built by the Works Progress Administration between 1935 and 1936. What this plaque does not include is that local contractor and builder David Felts was the superintendent and that many local men were given the jobs of logging, peeling, moving earth, constructing foundations and assembling the logs on site to create the classic and familiar design of a log cabin.
Mention the Community House today and locals are quick to tell stories of their fathers, grandfathers, uncles and great-uncles who were involved in its building.
Unless you remember the Great Depression, the significance of the plaque will probably be lost. The Works Progress Administration [WPA] was one of the New Deal agencies launched by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, in response to the hardships of the Great Depression. New Deal agencies lasted until America entered World War II in 1942. There were four major goals: economic recovery following the stock market crash of 1929; job creation as one in four workers were without jobs during the Great Depression; investment in communities, building hundreds of thousands of highways, bridges, hospitals, schools, theaters, libraries, city halls, homes, post offices, airports, and parks across the country; and civic pride, touching every state, city, and town, improving the lives of ordinary people.
The origination of the Community House in the WPA program and the impact that program had on the lives of Americans is the first reason the Carrollton Community House is eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.
The second reason it should be included is its form – a rustic log cabin structure. The log cabin design is one that we relate to the original settlers and frontiersmen. Lizzie George Henderson had a log cabin built behind her father’s impressive library at Cotesworth as a reminder to future generations of what Carroll County settlers lived in. Eight of our early presidents were said to be born in log cabins, the most well-known being Abraham Lincoln.
According to Robert Parker Adams, retired architect who wrote a study on the Community House for the Town some years ago, log cabins were easy and quick to build, using native timbers and assembled on site using native clay to fill between the logs. The constant exposure to the elements also made the log cabin a somewhat temporary structure. In some cases, the original log cabin would be encased in outer and inner walls, protecting the logs and extending the life of the structure.
During the era of the Gilded Age, wealthy men paid great sums to architects and contractors to expand on the basic design, making massive and ornate structures while still using native materials. Known as the Great Camp-style of architecture, these structures can still be seen around the country. The Rustic-style of log cabin used by the WPA designers merged the simple version with the elaborate trusses from the Great Camp-style.
Like many other community centers built through the WPA, the structure consisted of two areas, a “ball room” which was designed to be the largest public space in the community and a “meeting room” which housed the library, under the direction of another New Deal project.
Building large rooms with logs can be tricky. Suitable logs are generally only so long and are not easily joined together lengthwise using traditional methods. That is the reason there is an inset in the center of the east and west walls of the Community House. It is functional as well as appealing.
While some of the local children have described the Community House as the three bears’ house, retired architect and historical consultant Tommy Goodman described it this way.
“The Carrollton Community House is a rustic, one-story, stacked peeled pine log, rectangular, simple in plan structure with massive stacked stone chimneys at each end. The front elevation faces east. The exterior walls are constructed of stacked peeled pine logs, keyed at the corners with the ends exposed. The roof is hipped on the ends and shingled with asphalt composition shingles. The east-facing elevation has a centered entrance porch protected by a sloping, hipped at each side, porch roof. The entrance is set in from the main walls.
There is an office/storage appendage on the north side of similar construction and details with an asphalt single-hipped roof. There is a small stacked stone chimney on the north side of the office appendage. The west facing elevation (back) has a kitchen/bath room appendage of similar construction and details with a stoop and wooden steps to grade. The entire structure is supported on brick piers and concrete footings. The windows are six over six double hung wooden sash windows. The entrance has the original double 3x6-8 wooden vertical plank doors with original hardware.
The interior continues the rustic style with the exterior peeled pine logs serving as the interior walls. The double-entrance doors open into the center of a large vaulted open room dominated by the massive stacked stone fireplace at the south end. The fireplace retains its original mantels of half of a vertically split peeled pine pole.
The vaulted pine planked ceiling is supported by three main exposed peeled pine pole trusses, equally spaced and spanning the width of the room. Each hipped end of the vaulted ceiling is supported by three half trusses tied into a main truss. There are six original wooden oxbow light fixtures hanging from the main trusses, two per truss. The wide-plank-pine flooring is original. At the north end of the main room are two original pine-plank doors leading to storage rooms, one of which has been refitted as a handicap bathroom.
Both the bathroom and the storage area are accessible from the main room and the smaller room on the north. This room is similar to the main room but is not vaulted. It has a small stacked stone fireplace on the north wall. At the southwest corner of the main room are original pine-plank doors opening into the kitchen. The kitchen construction is similar and has some original pine-plank upper kitchen cabinets. Near the center of the main room is an original door opening to a corridor that leads to the restrooms. The kitchen and restrooms have been altered and modernized. The kitchen and restrooms do not have vaulted ceilings.”
Thanks to the work of locals such as Henderson Campbell, Thomas Clunan, Annie Mae Wilson, Dianne Slocum, Margaret Adams, and Snooky Lee, the overall condition of the structure and its architectural integrity is very good. Almost all the original interior and exterior details remain intact. The last restoration not only involved structural work but also installed heating and air conditioning, a handicap bathroom, and handicap entry, and made it more usable all year long.
The National Register of Historic Places designation will allow the Town of Carrollton to apply for more grants to maintain and improve the Community House. Projects include replacing some rotting logs on the west side, stabilizing the south fireplace, repairing the windows throughout the structure, and upgrading the aging heating and air systems.
Donations from public and private groups can be made to the Town of Carrollton Community House Fund, PO Box 181, Carrollton, MS 38917. Most grants require local matching funds and local support. Financial donations meet both requirements. The last time a capital campaign was held, individuals gave almost $50,000 to match grant money. Thinking back, list events from your life that happened at the Community House. What would those events been like if there was no community house?
Recently while eating at The Tracks restaurant in Winona, I spied a small article cut from an old newspaper and glued to a table top. Truer words were never spoken. Here it is for your consideration:
“Generally, when a person thinks about his spare time, he thinks about the time he devotes to the sports and pastimes he likes best – when he is not eating, sleeping and working. If every person in the town spent his spare time in that way, the town would certainly drag behind. People clamor for prosperity – yet they do not give much thought to the fact that if they would devote a certain amount of their spare time to efforts calculated to build up the home town, it would help prosperity to come to the town. If people maintain organizations and activities that make the town successful, beautiful, interesting and pleasant, it is going to grow in prosperity. That gives people more money, and their spare time will bring them greater satisfaction.” (Paper, author, and date unknown)
