Built by W. J. McGee and Son and designed by Town, this monumental Art Deco school, which Town labeled “conservative-modern,” won national acclaim. It was published in Life magazine (April 1940), in Architectural Concrete (1937), and in an architectural survey of Public Works Administration projects (1939). The poured-in-place rubbed concrete construction lowered construction costs and performed well in the shifting Yazoo clay. An auditorium on the south end and a gymnasium on the north end bookend the building, and a buttressed four-story entrance tower punctuates the long horizontal sweep of the two-story classroom sections. The auditorium projects from the body of the building to form the school’s L-plan, its bowed front articulated with six fin-like pylons. Chamfered corners create a prismatic effect. Flanking the entrances, sculpture and bas-reliefs by Joseph Barras of the Jackson Stone Company include Pushmataha and General Andrew Jackson at the Treaty of Doak’s Stand (1820).
Completed in the same project, Tiger Stadium was Jackson’s first public school football stadium. Its dramatic parabolic arch celebrates concrete’s plastic qualities in a more radical way than the school itself.