La Pointe Krebs House
The oldest standing structure in the state of Mississippi is this unique building in the coastal city of Pascagoula.
Evidently built sometime between 1772 and 1780, it combines two unusual construction
styles. The original two-room structure has thick walls of oyster-shell concrete (called
tabby).
Around 1820, a third room was added to one end, with walls made in the traditional
French colombage style, with mud and Spanish moss (a mixture called bousillage) used
to fill in the spaces between wooden uprights. The tabby and bousillage both contain
animal bones and pieces of pottery made by the Pascagoula Indians who occupied the
site until about 1750.Today the house stands (newly restored) on the edge of the Pascagoula
River in a park operated by the Jackson County Historical Society.
To read about the LaPointe-Krebs House, see:
Archaeology at the Kreb’s House (Old Spanish Fort), Pascagoula, Mississippi, by Gregory A. Waselkov and Diane E. Silvia. University of South Alabama Archaeological Monograph 1 (Mobile, Alabama, 1995).