The I.T. Montgomery House, located at 302 West Main Street in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, was built around 1910 for Isaiah Thornton Montgomery (1847–1924), a former slave of Joseph Davis who co-founded Mound Bayou in 1887. This all-Black town, one of the first economically successful communities established by freed slaves in the South, was a beacon of African American self-sufficiency, dubbed the “Jewel of the Delta” by President Theodore Roosevelt. Montgomery, a civil engineer and the only African American delegate at Mississippi’s 1890 Constitutional Convention, replaced his earlier frame home with this two-story, twenty-room brick-veneered house, featuring a wraparound porch with Doric columns and a raised basement. The house, which included a garage and a vault-like room possibly used as a post office, served as a residence, guest lodging for white visitors, and later a nurses’ home for Taborian Hospital in the 1940s. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976 and a Mississippi Landmark in 2003, it symbolized Mound Bayou’s legacy of resilience.

On my recent visit to the I.T. Montgomery House, I found it boarded up tightly, preventing interior access. Restoration efforts, including a $284,000 National Park Service grant in 2016 and $2,250,000 in Community Project Funding in 2022, have stalled, leaving the house’s future uncertain. A QR code on a sign led to a defunct link, adding to the sense of abandonment. Despite this, the house’s imposing brick structure and elegant porch remain magnificent, a testament to Montgomery’s vision. My photos capture its exterior grandeur, though I hope to return and explore inside if restoration resumes, preserving this vital piece of Mound Bayou’s history.