Looking Back: a history of 2901 Drummond St.
Published 12:17 pm Tuesday, June 24, 2025
- Pictured is the home at 2901 Drummond St. (Submitted photo)
In April 1966, the house, then the home of one of the Jabour’s son Karl and his wife Delores, was featured on a home and flower show tour and was described in an article in The Post.
“The interior architectural design is French with beautiful archways from living room to dining room to music room. A cathedral ceiling is an unusual feature of the living room. The living room mirror came from Baer Brothers Department store, a former Vicksburg landmark. The walls in the formal rooms have the original paint of 28 years ago, having been specially treated to preserve their beauty. Recent additions to the house include a large conservatory and a French kitchen-dining area. Pillars between the paneled archways are from an old plantation home on Pearl Street. A conservatory wall is of stark white chipped marble with indirect lighting, rock, plantings and a small fountain.”
It appears that Marie indeed was a horticulturalist, planting the large lot that extended at the time to Short Cherry Street, with exotic plants and trees. The author of the Vicksburesque column in The Post had completed more research by June 1942 and reported that “many people in passing admire the small, cypress like trees around the curb-plots at the home of K. Jabour on outer Drummond Street, and often people ask what the species is. I think this is the Tamarix. So far as I know, Mr. and Mrs. Jabour were the first to so thickly and beautifully cultivate this species here. It has a striking appropriateness to the architecture of the handsome house it encircles. The Tamarix, or tamarisk, is as ancient as the history of the orient. There is one species of it, the East Indian tamarisk, which has a salt incrustation in it that is sometimes used as a source for making salt. The tamarisk species are mostly peculiar to the eastern Mediterranean and regions of tropical Asia. It is replete in tannin, and, several oriental species of tamarisk yield manna—the Biblical morsels, you know, with which the ravens or something were supposed to have fed a famishing tribe, way back before even my memory. Mr. and Mrs. Jabour’s tamarix trees are especially wonderful when the frilly foliage becomes tufted with the pinkish blooms—to me resembling a little girl’s play-purse knitted in pink crochet meshes.”
Kaleel and Marie Jabour were natives of Tripoli, Lebanon and were married there in 1903 prior to moving to the United States. Kaleel owned dry goods and clothing stores in Vicksburg and was a charter member of St. George Orthodox Church, helping to supervise the construction of the new church on Washington Street. In an interview with Annie Lee Sanders in The Post on May 1, 1964, family members reminisced the “he loved to buy property, build houses, and promote construction. This was his hobby.”
The Jabours raised three daughters and six sons, three of the sons – Philip, Ned and Karl – serving in World War II. Kaleel died suddenly at his store on Washington Street on May 25, 1953, at the age of 71. Marie died on July 15, 1957, after a lengthy illness. Karl and Delores Jabour continued to live in the house until their retirement in 1993 when they moved to Florida. The house continues to be a beautiful part of the Drummond Street neighborhood.
– Nancy Bell, Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation
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