The twelve-story U-shaped Edwards Hotel replaced the rambling Edwards House, which since 1868 had accommodated Mississippi’s political and business leaders arriving from the adjacent railroad. A two-story pilastered base supports a cast-stone entablature, and the two-story attic features skintled brickwork, iron balconettes, blind arches decorated with shell motifs, and a heavy modillioned cornice at the top. It took only ten months for the steel-framed and brick-clad building to rise, just in time for members of the 1924 legislature to occupy its rooms. The hotel’s connection with the capitol was so strong that as late as 1960 the Jackson State Times remarked, “There are three separate branches of the Mississippi legislature—the Upper House, the Lower House and the Edwards House.” Closed in 1967, the building stood abandoned for four decades before being renovated as a hotel and apartments in 2009.