Historic Arlington remains in ruins 20 years after fire

NATCHEZ, Miss. – Today marks the 20^th anniversary of the fire that devastated a Natchez architectural landmark that remains standing as a blighted structure after all these years.

Arlington sits abandoned by an absentee owner who city officials have struggled with for years in a stalemated effort for the mansion’s remediation.

The mansion built around 1816 was ravaged by fire Sept. 15, 2002 — destroying its roof, gutting the second floor and severely damaging its first floor. The vacant mansion’s columned façade and walls remain, but years of neglect, weather and vandalism have taken their toll.

The Historic Natchez Foundation quickly led efforts after the fire to salvage house contents that included antique books in Arlington’s extensive library collection traced back to the 1800s. The foundation also ensured the house got a new roof, but little else appears done for the crumbling structure owned by Thomas Vaughan of Jackson.

Vaughan has remained an elusive figure hard to find. It’s been difficult to make him accountable for the house’s continued deterioration amid public outcries for Arlington to be rescued by a willing buyer. He has a record in recent years of not responding to the city’s complaints about his negligence. He has been taken to city court in previous years and fined for neglect, but Arlington further rots on its spacious, overgrown estate along John Quitman Parkway.

In the most recent action by city officials, the Natchez Board of Aldermen in 2021 voted to take legal steps against Vaughan along with owners of 25 other properties deemed public nuisances. It’s uncertain what became of that, said Frankie Legaux, who took the job in June as administrator of city regulations against blighted properties.

Legaux did say Wednesday that Arlington is on her list of unkempt, dilapidated properties the city should crack down on through the “demolition-by-neglect” process.

This gives property owners time to show they’re making attempts

to reverse their structures’ deterioration. If no progress is made, the city can file misdemeanor charges against them in court and have fines imposed – a repeat of what’s been done to Vaughan in past years.

An alternative – albeit unlikely — is for the city to allocate public funds to preserve Arlington and impose a tax lien on Vaughan to make him reimburse the city for the expenses.

Former Natchez planning director Rico Giani said in 2018 that Vaughan had not responded to the city’s complaints about his negligence. He said records show a Jackson residential address for the physician, who inherited the house from mother Anne Gwin Vaughan after she died in 1991.

The Federal-style mansion was designated a national historic landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior in 1974 and placed on the list of the state’s most endangered historic places in 2009 by the Mississippi Heritage Trust.

Historic Natchez Foundation executive director Carter Burns said Wednesday he doesn’t know of any promising prospects for Arlington, but he noted the foundation has received numerous inquiries from those interested in saving it — a costly possibility.

A Facebook page has been created for the national landmark – Save Arlington Historic Mansion – and it’s the subject of numerous articles and postings, such as one at: theforgottensouth.com/arlington-mansion-natchez-mississippi/