West of the intersection of Main Street with the old Open Wood plantation road is Vicksburg’s earliest neighborhood, which grew before the Mississippi River shifted its course in 1876. Christ Episcopal Church (1843; 1119 Main) is a Gothic Revival design with a square entrance tower at the center of the facade. Around 1906, the brick building was covered in stucco rendered to imitate stone, similar to the treatment of the terrace walls surrounding the 1858–1860 courthouse (YB1). Next door at 1115 Main, the 1871 rectory’s Gothic Revival porch is attached to an Italianate L-front villa of red brick.
In the surrounding blocks, simple settlement-era structures such as the wooden McNutt House (1826, 1832; 815 1st E) and the George Washington Ball House (1828; 921 Main) transition to the modestly wealthy cottages of Lakemont (c. 1835–1840; 1103 Main) and Plain Gables (1840; 805 Locust) and finally to the grandiosity of the Duff Green House (1856; 1114 1st E). The similarity of Lakemont’s Ionic columns-in-antis frontispiece to those of the Cobb (see YB17) and Pemberton (see YB17) houses indicates the same builder, William Bobb.
The town’s evolution from settlement to boom is most evident at Anchuca (1010 1st E), where an 1830s two-story frame section at the rear (much remodeled) acquired a grand Greek Revival stuccoed brick front in the 1850s. The full-width undercut porch supported on monumental but simplified Doric columns fits the stereotypical image of southern plantation houses, but is not common in Vicksburg, seen only here and at Cedar Grove (YB23).