[9/19/03]The South Cherry Street Historic District is now one step away from being listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

At the Mississippi Historic Preservation Professional Review Board meeting in Jackson Thursday, the nine-member group voted unanimously to approve the district that stretches about nine blocks, from Bowmar Avenue to part of Harrison Street and doglegs over to cover part of Chambers Street.

“The (district) is one of the richest residential concentrations of historic architecture in the state,” said Richard J. Cawthon, chief architectural historian for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

The next step for the nomination is forwarding it to the Department of Interior in Washington, D.C., for approval, said Kenneth H. P’Pool, deputy State Historic Preservation officer. The federal agency will have 45 days from the time it receives the nomination to approve it. The district then will be listed on the National Register.

If not approved, the nomination papers will be sent back to the Mississippi Review Board to be amended, P’Pool said.

The construction period for most properties in the district stretches from 1848 to 1953, 50 years from the date of the nomination. The area includes 210 properties, of which 184 were identified as representative of local history.

The statement of the district’s significance said architecture represented in the district includes Greek Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne, Romanesque Revival, Colonial Revival, Neoclassical, Tudor Gothic, Tudor Revival, Spanish Revival, Italian Renaissance and Mediterranean.

The board received one notarized letter of objection to putting the district on the National Register.

Royce Eaves, who wrote the letter, owns the house at 2416 Cherry St. He said in a phone interview Thursday afternoon that he felt his property would become too wrapped up in red tape by being on the National Register.

“I don’t need to fool with those people when I get ready to do maintenance on my property,” Eaves said.

The National Register does not place any restrictions on what people can do to their property, P’Pool said. The designation simply acknowledges the district’s historical significance.

It also qualifies contributing rental property or businesses to receive a 20 percent tax credit for renovations that meet government specifications, he said. The letter of objection will be forwarded to Washington with the nomination, P’Pool said.

Linda Muffuletto, who lives in Madison County, was the only property owner at the meeting. She said she is the executor of the will of an uncle who owned the three-story house at 2433 Cherry St. Muffuletto’s brother lives in the house at 2427 Cherry St.

She said the area holds memories dear to her, and anything that would help preserve the houses would be a good thing.

“I was raised there on that street and lived there all my life,” Muffuletto told the board at the meeting.

Cawthon said the South Cherry Street Historic District had been nominated once before by the board in 1989, but the National Register office in Washington felt like the nomination didn’t provide enough explanation of the architectural context of the buildings.

Plans for renominating the district were delayed until recently, when the area was expanded and the nomination was completely redone, he said.

Along with the Vicksburg historic district, three other nominations to the National Register were approved to be forwarded to Washington.

If the Department of Interior approves the Cherry Street district, it will become the fifth district in the city to be on the National Register.