Magnolia Sites

Magnolia's City Hall was painted and various repairs and improvements completed with CWA funds of $2,404.23 toward a total cost of $3,427.20. The most significant improvement was replacing a board wall around the jail windows with a brick wall.

The Works Progess Administration (WPA) renovated the old Magnolia High School (built in 1908) in 1938. This followed a lively debate over whether to upgrade or replace the old high school. A new high school had been approved in 1936 following condemnation of the old building by the Mississippi State Department of Education and the Public Works Administration (PWA) offered to fund a new school (as PWA project W1264). Community controversy broke out, however, over whether a new building should be erected or the old one repaired. As a result, a bond measure for the local matching funds for a new...

The Colonial Revival post office in Magnolia is one of 32 constructed in Mississippi during the New Deal administration. It contains three murals by John H. Fyfe. The post office retains many of its original features, including the wooden entry vestibule common to the design. Enzweiler (1993) described the exterior features of the post office as: "...doorway flanked by wooden, Doric pilasters supporting an architrave with dentils...recessed panel with a brick voissoir surround, cast stone eagle one foot tall." It bears the standard cornerstone identifying the Secretary of the Treasury, Postmaster General, Supervising Architect, and Supervising Engineer.

The Magnolia post office contains three murals by John H. Fyfe, completed and installed in 1939 at a cost of $1,120.00 (Enzweiler, 1993). Under the Treasury Department's Section of Fine Arts program, Fyfe created "July 4th Celebration" also referred to as "July 4th Celebration at Sheriff Bacof's" in other sources. The local committee commissioned two additional murals based on their satisfaction with the first piece of art. "Cotton Harvest" and "Magnolia, 1880" depicted the cotton industry of Pike County. All three murals were restored in 1992 by Stewart-Treviranus Associates of McLean, Virginia. Fyfe also painted a mural fro the post office...

Public Works Administration project 5487 was approved 4/4/1934 for water works project in Magnolia. The city received a loan of $10,500 and grant for $3,874 to improve the water works system constructed in 1905. Construction began 7/9/1934 and was completed12/22/1934 for a total of $14,381.