Hazlehurst Sites

The former Hazlehurst grammar school was PWA project W1077. The project was approved 9/25/1935 and completed 11/10/1936 for a total cost of $50,004. PWA supplied a $27,500 loan and a $22,457 grant. The school was enlarged in 1947, and currently serves as the high school. Work on clearing the lot began January 1936. Contractor was J. R. Flint and architect was E. L. Malvaney.

Hazlehurst's Colonial Revival style post office is similar to many of the New Deal post offices constructed in Mississippi. The builder, Blair, Algernon Construction Company, was responsible for a large number of Mississippi post offices during that time. The building featured English bond brick pattern, wooden fluted Doric pilasters, a cast metal eagle over the door, terrazzo tile floor, marble wainscoting, and wooden vestibule (Enzweiler, 1992).

The post office contains a Treasury Section of Fine Arts mural "Life in the Mississippi Cotton Belt," painted by Auriel Bessemer in 1939 and installed in the Hazlehurst post office that same year. Bessemer was the son of Hungarian immigrants (Boszormenyi Family Tree). His accomplishments included work with the Gallery of Modern Masters in Washington and the American Museum of Natural History in New York (Enzweiler, 1992). Bessemer's painting represented the Copiah County diversified economy of an earlier time: cotton industry and manufacturing (Nelson-Easley, 2007), possibly the nearby Wesson Mills. Like many of the murals under the program, it could be...