The Colle Company Housing was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. Portions of the content on this web page were adapted from a copy of the original nomination document. [‡]
Description
The Colle Company Housing is situated to the front of a gently rising lot, facing east at 3611 Frederic Street, Pascagoula, Mississippi. It was originally a long, narrow, one-story house parallel to the street, with a small mass projecting near the northeast corner of the east side, and a porch running from this projection to the southeast corner of the house mass. Infill was placed the length of the west side, its walls extending the south-north walls of the house west. A small lawn rises up to the house. A low concrete retaining wall at the front property line is interrupted by two steps up to a concrete path that leads to the front steps. There is foundation planting, and large trees in the back yard. Behind the house, along the south property line, is a small, wood frame garage with a shallow gable roof and a pair of flush wood car doors. It is a non-contributing element.
A brick chimney with a later masonry "peak" surrounding a pipe flue falls to the front of the ridge of the asphalt shingle roof about a third of the way in from the south end of the main ridge. The roof has modern tile. Except as noted, the house is weather boarded, with simple eave boxing, flat opening trim, corner boards, a water table and fascia, and sits on brick piers. Except as noted, sash is six-over-one.
As seen from the front, the south two-thirds of the house is a simple long plane; at the north third, a projecting clipped gable end of delicate and sophisticated detailing contrasts. A shed-roof porch parallels the long main wall, returning on the south end of the front wall of the gable.
The openings of the wall facing the porch are remarkable for their asymmetrical placing. Towards the south end is a double-hung sash with, going north, a door close to it. Going north is a large space, there is another window, and somewhat less distance away, another window. South, again even lesser space, is another door of the same type, and a couple of feet down, the gable end starts. The heads of all openings line up. The doors are replacement sash with three vertical lights over two wood panels; above are two-light transoms.
The clipped front gable has a wide front plane with two slightly narrow one-over-one double-hung sash separated by a mullion. On the angled sides, they are a typical width and fall one each to the wall surface. Wall surfaces adjacent to all sash are clad with weatherboards. The gable is a cross gable sharing the low pitch of the roof, which hips at the north end. At the top of the gable, there is a delicate projecting verge board with bed mold, ornamented at the top just inside the verge board, with a triangular panel of three rows of spade-shaped shingles over one row of fiat shingles, this panel supported at the outside of its bottom edge by small jigsaw brackets. Below the peak in the plane of the front wall, the gable is filled in with rectangular-shaped shingles, every other one shorter than those on each side. A fascia runs under this, fat on the front and thin where it makes the soffit overhanging the clipped corners. Below this, the building wall is weatherboarded down to the sill level of the sash where a wood sill runs entirely across the wall surfaces of the clipped gable walls, with a paneling of vertical flush boards going down to the water table.
The five-bayed, wood-floored porch has a simple soffit beam and is supported by turned posts, supporting at the square sectioned top portion a frieze of turned balusters, and at the similar tall square sectioned lower end, a boldly detailed railing with rectangular sectioned pickets. The entrance at the center bay does not line up with any openings on the house wall, and is concrete or stucco with the steps butting into two masonry buttresses with heavy projecting caps.
Parallel to the original mass along the west side, later infill construction almost doubles the area of the house. A porch on the new west side can be seen at the southwest corner of the building.
Significance
The Colle Company Housing at 3611 Frederic Street is architecturally significant within Pascagoula's residential context. The circa 1895 Queen Anne style cottage was built as company housing for employees of Colle Towing Company. Such housing was common in Pascagoula, although few intact examples remain. The Colle Company Housing clearly demonstrates the impact of port-related businesses on the economy of Pascagoula.
The Colle family acquired several parcels of land in this area during the 1880s and 1890s, among them 410 Live Oak Avenue, 3607 and 3615 Frederic Street, as well as this property. The collection of houses was not nearly as large as the International Shipbuilding housing group, and represents a different period in architecture. 3611 Frederic Street is the best of the Colle group.
Pascagoula Towing Company, a tugboat business in the port of Pascagoula, was operated by Captain H.H. Colle as early as 1878. He and his partner, Dantzler, purchased their first tug, the Fox, that year in Philadelphia. Colle died in 1891, and his wife retained possession of the house until her death in 1921, when H.H. Colle, Jr. inherited it. He and A.F. Dantzler in 1918 had purchased the Frentz Shipyard Company, which they renamed it Gulf Shipbuilding Company, and owned until 1935.
The picturesque wood detailing of this cottage, which has remained in the Colle family, was made possible by the thriving local lumber industry. The decorative shingles, spandrel, columns and railings were manufactured by the many mill companies in Jackson County.
In summary, the Colle Company Housing is representative of an intact middle-class tenement of the 1890s, during which period Pascagoula's port and lumber industries flourished.
‡ Robert J. Cangelosi, Jr., Architect, Koch and Wilson Architects, PC, Colle Company Housing, Jackson County, Mississippi, nomination document, 1991, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.
Nearby Neighborhoods
Street Names
Frederic Street