KILN, Miss.—Hidden in the woods of Hancock County stands a two-room schoolhouse that once served Black students during segregation. Nearly a century later, preservationists and developers are working to restore the Jourdan River School.
The wooden building, constructed in 1929, once operated as the Kiln Colored Public School for African American children in rural Hancock County. Over time, the structure fell into disrepair as it sat abandoned and surrounded by trees.
Now, new owners of the property plan to carefully dismantle and rebuild the historic schoolhouse using as much of the original wood as possible.
Allison Anderson, an architect with Unabridged Architecture, said the building’s condition has worsened significantly in recent years.
Large sections of the roof have collapsed, and the center of the structure has caved inward. Broken beams and debris now fill the interior.
Still, Anderson said much of the building’s original lumber remains usable.
“You can see so much of the wood is still in good condition (and) can be salvaged, restored and then put back,” Anderson said. “I think it’s really critical to maintain what we have for the future because this building can last another hundred years once it’s restored. I mean, wouldn’t that be great?”
The History of the Building
The schoolhouse originally opened with one classroom before a second was added later.
Anderson said small rural schools like Jourdan River School were once common across Mississippi.
“Initially children came here from the local surrounding area in Hancock County,” Anderson said.
Several similar schools once operated across Hancock County, but most have disappeared.
“The St. Rosa school is gone now. The Catahoula School is gone. There were several of them around the county,” Anderson said.
Because of those losses, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History said the Jourdan River School is the only surviving rural African American school building in Hancock County.
Finding It Again
After the school closed, the structure sat abandoned for decades and became hidden by surrounding woods.
According to the Mississippi Heritage Foundation, logging crews rediscovered the building in 2013 while clearing timber.
Soon after, preservation groups began efforts to protect the structure.
“The Jourdan River School is a designated Mississippi landmark property,” said Meredith Kehoe, director of the Historic Preservation Division at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. “It was designated in 2014 … and what that means is that it’s subject to the antiquities law of Mississippi.”
Under that law, any major changes to the building must be reviewed by the state.
“Any kind of proposed plans, alterations, anything to that effect would need to come to our office so we could evaluate different proposed methods and make sure that whatever they’re wanting to do is something that would be in the best interest of the school,” Kehoe said.
In 2015, the Mississippi Heritage Foundation named the Jourdan River School one of the state’s “10 Most Endangered Places.” The list also included the Phoenix Naval Stores Office in Gulfport, which Unabridged Architecture later restored in 2021.
About a decade after the endangered listing, new owners purchased the property.
Anderson said the owners initially knew the property had an easement but did not realize the historic building was there until they began clearing the land.
“Initially the client recognized that there was an easement on the land but didn’t quite understand what it was about,” Anderson said. “They started clearing and they found this building—obviously pretty quickly because we’re really close to the road here—but trees had grown up all around it.”
During the years without maintenance, the building’s condition deteriorated significantly.
“This building is (almost) 100 years old, so, it lasted for most of those years. It’s only in the past couple of years that we’ve seen real deterioration because no one’s been maintaining it. In 2014 it was still … perfectly stable—you (could) walk inside in 2014,” Anderson said.
Restoration Plan
Despite the damage, Anderson said the structure can still be restored.
Contractors plan to carefully dismantle the building piece by piece.
“What they’re going to do is … start at the top, and they’re going to salvage each board, each usable piece of lumber. They’re going to number it, and they’re going to stack it and salvage it and keep it separated,” Anderson said.
After the building is taken apart, workers will rebuild it using the salvaged materials where possible.
“So much of the wood is still in good condition,” Anderson said. “They will replace the foundations. They will probably replace many of the structural members inside that hold the building up. That will be new lumber, but it will have to be milled to match the original dimensions of the pieces of wood that are still there, and then they will put it back up.”
The restoration process is expected to take six to eight months once construction begins.
According to Anderson, contractors are ready to start work, but the project still requires final permits from Hancock County.
Funding Through Historical Tax Credits
Historic tax credits from state and federal programs could cover a significant portion of the restoration cost.
The National Park Service offers a 20% rehabilitation tax credit for approved restoration work on certified historic structures.
The Mississippi Department of Archives and History provides a similar program that offers a 25% tax credit.
According to Anderson, the Jourdan River School project recently received approval for these tax credit programs through MDAH and the National Park Service.
When combined, the incentives could cover up to 45% of the project’s eligible rehabilitation costs.
This article first appeared on RHCJC and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.