NATCHEZ, Miss. – The city has received a state historic preservation grant for an architectural assessment of the Natchez City Cemetery’s century-old Shelter House and maintenance barn.
The Shelter House – the cemetery’s main building – was constructed in 1914. It was designed by Natchez-born architect Samuel Marx, who went on to become a nationally acclaimed designer of homes, commercial buildings and furniture.
The Craftsman-style Shelter House is a state-designated Mississippi Landmark. The cemetery’s maintenance barn – also designated a Mississippi Landmark – was built around 1920, according to a Mississippi Department of Archives & History report.
The $5,200 grant from MDAH will help pay for evaluating the two buildings’ conditions and needed structural improvements, said Carter Burns, executive director of the Historic Natchez Foundation and a MDAH board member. The Natchez Cemetery Association is matching the state grant with another $5,200.
Marx was born 1885 in Natchez and died 1964 in Chicago. The long list of structures he designed include the New Orleans Museum of Art built in 1911, the remodeled Beverly Hills home of actor Edward G. Robinson with an art gallery in the 1940s and the old May Co. department store in Los Angeles in 1939, which is now the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, according to various published accounts about Marx’s life and work.
Marx was also a prolific collector of art by Picasso, Matisse and others. His collection of paintings and sculptures were donated to the the Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the St. Louis Art Museum.
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