Another unidentified building: stairway to where?

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Suzassippi

This building is next door to the Jefferson County courthouse in Fayette.  I have tried to imagine its uses, as diligent searches have turned up nothing about an unnamed building on Main Street.  Doctor’s office?  Insurance business?

There are portions of the ironwork remaining on what was the support for a landing, or railing at the head of where the stairs would have been.

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4 Responses to Another unidentified building: stairway to where?

  1. Howard Bishop says:
    March 15, 2015 at 9:09 pm

    I am a Black man 29 years of age born in Brooklyn Ny. I now reside in Baton Rouge la. While working for a well known carpet cleaning company i had the chance of running into an elderly white women who was a resident of Fayette Ms up into her Highschool years. I explained to her that i had a family business there and that i go there every week. I pulled up that image with that used to be stairwell and told her my family was building a theater in it. She told me that that building was a doctors office. The blacks used the stair case to go to the upper office. The offices were segregated whites on the bottom and Blacks at the top she told me.

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  2. Suzassippi says:
    March 15, 2015 at 9:21 pm

    Thank you for adding this information, Mr. Bishop. That would fit with many staircases in Mississippi. I have run across a couple of interesting articles about the architecture of segregation. How is the theater coming?

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  3. Coach Mac says:
    September 3, 2015 at 10:42 am

    That is partially correct. I am from Fayette. I now live in Arkansas. That building was the old Fay Theater. The steps went up to the balcony. (because of segregation, blacks were relegated to the balcony) After the Fay shut down Dr. Blackburn Harper had his practice in that building. I am white and was born in 1960. I used those stairs myself when going to see him. I can’t recall his office being segregated then. Key word “remember”. I moved from Fayette in 2001 and before I moved I went into the bottom of that building which was the theater auditorium and was very surprised to see that the old movie screen was still there after all those years.

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    • Suzassippi says:
      September 3, 2015 at 10:58 am

      Thanks for the additional update! I have learned a lot more about tracking down buildings since making this post, but there is still so much not known about smaller towns or rural areas.

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