The Scottish Rite Cathedral in Meridian, Mississippi

Meridian, Mississippi

Meridian is the county seat of Lauderdale County, Mississippi. It is the sixth largest city in the state and the principal city of the Meridian, Mississippi Micropolitan Statistical Area...

 is a former building that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

. The building was designed in Egyptian Revival

Egyptian Revival architecture

Egyptian Revival is an architectural style that uses the motifs and imagery of ancient Egypt. It is attributed generally to the public awareness of ancient Egyptian monuments generated by Napoleon's conquest of Egypt and Admiral Nelson's defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile during 1798....

 style by prolific Meridian architect P.J. Krouse

P.J. Krouse

Penn Jeffries Krouse, usually known as P.J. Krouse was a prolific architect in the state of Mississippi. Many of his buildings were located in the Meridian area.Buildings he designed that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places include:...

, who also designed Meridian City Hall

Meridian City Hall

City Hall in Meridian, Mississippi in the United States is located at 601 24th Avenue. Originally designed by architect P.J. Krouse in 1915, the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and as a Mississippi Landmark in 1988...

 in 1915 and the 1906
Greek Revival building used by Congregation Beth Israel

Congregation Beth Israel (Meridian, Mississippi)

Congregation Beth Israel in Meridian, Mississippi is a Reform Jewish congregation founded in 1868 and a member of the Union for Reform Judaism. The congregation's first permanent house of worship was a Middle Eastern style building constructed in 1879...

.

History

The site of the former building was originally the site of the Methodist Mississippi Female College (MFC), established in 1869 as the city's second oldest college (only surpassed by the Baptist MFC, established in 1865). The Methodist MFC was later converted into Beeson's College.

The design of the Scottish Rite building was inspired by a trip to Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

 taken by Hyman W. Witcover, an architect from Savannah, Georgia

Savannah, Georgia

Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...

. The architect was impressed by the Temple to Osiris

Osiris

Osiris is an Egyptian god, usually identified as the god of the afterlife, the underworld and the dead. He is classically depicted as a green-skinned man with a pharaoh's beard, partially mummy-wrapped at the legs, wearing a distinctive crown with two large ostrich feathers at either side, and...

 on the island of Philae

Philae

Philae is an island in the Nile River and the previous site of an Ancient Egyptian temple complex in southern Egypt...

, now submerged due to the construction of the Aswan Dam

Aswan Dam

The Aswan Dam is an embankment dam situated across the Nile River in Aswan, Egypt. Since the 1950s, the name commonly refers to the High Dam, which is larger and newer than the Aswan Low Dam, which was first completed in 1902...

. Witcover designed a Scottish Rite Cathedral with the hope that it would one day be built by the Scottish Rite. Krouse revised and resubmitted the plans in 1914 and supervised construction, which was carried out by the Cass Construction Company, located in Georgia. The three story building was built into the side of a hill so that the northern facade appeared only two stories tall with a basement. Circling the whole building was an Egyptian-style gorge-and-roll cornice

Cornice

Cornice molding is generally any horizontal decorative molding that crowns any building or furniture element: the cornice over a door or window, for instance, or the cornice around the edge of a pedestal. A simple cornice may be formed just with a crown molding.The function of the projecting...

. A central projecting section on the northern side of the building contained a recessed entrance supported by columns with lotus flower capitals

Capital (architecture)

In architecture the capital forms the topmost member of a column . It mediates between the column and the load thrusting down upon it, broadening the area of the column's supporting surface...

. A vulture and sundisk symbol was located in the entablature

Entablature

An entablature refers to the superstructure of moldings and bands which lie horizontally above columns, resting on their capitals. Entablatures are major elements of classical architecture, and are commonly divided into the architrave , the frieze ,...

 directly above the columns, and the front entrance was flanked by sphinx

Sphinx

A sphinx is a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head or a cat head.The sphinx, in Greek tradition, has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless...

es covered in polychromatic terracotta and two obelisk

Obelisk

An obelisk is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top, and is said to resemble a petrified ray of the sun-disk. A pair of obelisks usually stood in front of a pylon...

s.

Following destruction by fire on March 20, 1985, the building was delisted from the National Register in 1987.