OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss. (WLOX) - The roots of the popular home design featuring an open floor plan can be traced back to a house in Ocean Springs.
The Charnley-Norwood House on East Beach is considered possibly the first modern home in the Western World.
“It’s claimed to be designed by two of America’s greatest architects and we’re fortunate it’s located on the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” Jeff Rosenberg, historic preservation coordinator of the Mississippi Gulf Coast National Heritage Area said.
Rosenberg is the home’s caretaker, and he tells its story as many times as he can. He starts his story in 1890 when the man who’s considered the father of the skyscraper, Louis Sullivan, partnered with wealthy Chicago businessman James Charnley to build a pair of getaway homes in what was then the wilderness.
The design was a change from the skyscrapers Sullivan was famous for building.
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“They left plans with a local builder for two homes that were very horizontally oriented, they had hipped roofs, a big t-shaped floor plan, and these nice big porches on all sides of the house,” Rosenberg said.
A few years later, Charnley sold his house to Fred Norwood, another what today we might call snowbird.
“When the weather got bad in Chicago, they would come down here for the winter months,” Rosenberg said.
In 1897, winter followed the Norwoods, and a heater fire destroyed their home. It was quickly rebuilt with a similar design and called “Bon Silene”, meaning good salt water. The construction proved to be well ahead of its time and helped lay the foundation for future home designs.
“This is sort of foretelling for what you will be popular in the in the 20th century with the prairie style architecture, craftsmen style bungalows, or eventually the ranch house with this idea of horizontality,” Rosenberg said.
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More than a century after its creation, “Bon Silene” got its toughest test.
“During Hurricane Katrina, it was washed eight feet north and six feet west off its foundation,” Rosenberg said.
After the hurricane, the state of Mississippi stepped in to save and restore the home.
“It’s a testament to those builders in 1897 that they could construct something that could stand for more than 100 years and weather a storm like Katrina,” Rosenberg said.
Now, the Charnley-Norwood Home is maintained and operated as a Mississippi Gulf Coast National Heritage Area site. The home’s more than 130-year legacy provides plenty of lessons to be passed on.
“Just last week we had architecture students from Mississippi State here,” Rosenberg said. “Historic preservation students learned about the design of the house, and what the recovery process was during Hurricane Katrina.”
The home is open to the public and available for scheduled tours.
“This is all funded by the public and we want to celebrate that Mississippi can have nice things,” Rosenberg said. “This is something that marks our positive mark on the American architectural canon. We’re able to share it with folks and see them get excited to realize that something like this is in their own backyard.”
When Louis Sullivan originally designed the house, his assistant at the time was Frank Lloyd Wright. He helped with the design and Wright went on to be considered by many the greatest American architect of all time.
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