The Nathan Bedford Forrest Chapter No. 422 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy meets once a month in a dilapidated building inside Kamper Park that was built in 1913.
The building isn’t safe. The City of Hattiesburg is responsible for the building, but renovation has been estimated to cost $250,000. So, the best solution for the city is to move it or tear it down.
However, the Daughters of the Confederacy filed suit in Forrest County Chancery Court on Friday, Sept. 14 seeking injunctions and legal judgment to prevent the city from demolishing or moving the house.
Hattiesburg City Attorney Randy Pope said the irony of the situation is the UDC chapter donated the 40 acres to the city for Kamper Park in 1908, five years before the building was supposedly built.
Pope said the city council voted in executive session last Tuesday to retain attorney Holmes Adams of Ridgeland to work with Pope in the litigation involving the Kamper Park house.
“To get that torn down or moved – to do anything to it – you have got to go to Archives and History,” Pope said. “Holmes Adams has done a lot of work with Archives and History as a lawyer. He knows all about historic structures.”
Pope said two things are involved in the status of the house: its current dilapidated state and the future expansion of Kamper Park.
“The Convention Commission is buying houses along there, and the house is right in the way,” he said. “So, if we are going to provide more playgrounds and other things, something must be done.”
Pope said the local UDC chapter meets at the house only once a month.
“They are the only ones that use it,” he said, adding that it would be good if a way to move it could be figured out.
“I don’t know what that would cost or where they would put it. We’re not determined to tear it down, but it doesn’t need to be in that condition.”
The Catch-22 of the situation is the Daughters of the Confederacy’s filing with the Department of Archives and History to be listed on the Historic Register of Places.
“It’s not a landmark,” Pope said. “It’s just an old building.
City Engineer Lamar Rutland did a study and the foundation is not in good shape. Pope said the petition to Archives and History said the house was built in 1913.
“I don’t know how they would know that, but it’s old,” he said. “They have put Band-Aids on it, and we’ve probably put some Band-Aids on it.”
The worst-case scenario, Pope said, is to have someone injured because they were playing around the house.
“You’ve got little kids playing in that park,” he said. “If part of the building falls on a child, we know about it. We’ve got some responsibility. We have got to do something.”
The cost for renovating the building would be prohibitive, Pope noted.
“We hired a contractor and asked him how much it would cost to get this thing really in shape, to renovate it, to restore and put it where it needs to be,” he said. “It would cost a quarter of a million dollars.”