
This three-story, scored-stucco, Italian Renaissance-styled building, with its arcaded facade and deep modillioned cornice was the headquarters for the Gulf and Ship Island Railroad. (The one-story red brick Union Station [1904; 1419 27th Avenue] stands one block north at the intersection of the G&SI and L&N railroads.) The G&SI ran from Jackson through Hattiesburg with branch lines to Laurel and Columbia. The Illinois Central Railroad bought the company in 1925, and after a period of vacancy in the 1970s, the building was restored for offices by the Mississippi Power Company, which maintains its company headquarters one block southwest at 2992 W. Beach Boulevard. Its seven-story building (1967–1969), with an exposed, gridded, concrete frame and deeply recessed reflective-glass windows, was designed by Curtis and Davis of New Orleans in association with Milton B. E. Hill of Gulfport. The building rises from a terraced podium reached by broad steps and is further monumentalized by perimeter landscaping, exemplifying the garden office building type popular in the 1960s.