The Pleasant Reed House was a sidehall

shotgun house A shotgun house is a narrow rectangular domestic residence, usually no more than about wide, with rooms arranged one behind the other and doors at each end of the house. It was the most popular style of house in the Southern United States from t ...

Biloxi, Mississippi Biloxi ( ; ) is a city in and one of two county seats of Harrison County, Mississippi, United States (the other being the adjacent city of Gulfport). The 2010 United States Census recorded the population as 44,054 and in 2019 the estimated popu ...

on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

. It was built by Pleasant Reed (1854–1932), a former slave on a Mississippi farm who moved with his family to coastal Biloxi after the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

. Reed, as a freedman, worked as a laborer and carpenter and earned the money to build his own house for his rapidly growing family. The house was saved by the Biloxi chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority and added to the National Register in 1979. In 2003, the House was moved to the new Frank Gehry-designed campus of the

Ohr-O'Keefe Museum Of Art The Ohr-O'Keefe Museum Of Art is a non-profit art museum located in Biloxi, Mississippi, dedicated to the ceramics of George E. Ohr, the self-proclaimed "Mad Potter of Biloxi". The museum is named for ceramic artist George E. Ohr (1857–1918) ...

, where it was restored and opened to the public for tours. On August 29, 2005, the House was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. However, the original archival materials and photographs were saved by museum curators, and the museum's board of trustees voted to rebuild the Pleasant Reed House. The Pleasant Reed Interpretive Center, a replica of the original house, opened to the public on September 29, 2008. The center features exhibits on local African American history.Pleasant Reed Interpretive Center
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References

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External links

Ohr-O'Keefe Museum page on the Pleasant Reed House City of Biloxi page on the Pleasant Reed House
Houses in Harrison County, Mississippi Museums in Harrison County, Mississippi African-American museums in Mississippi Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Mississippi National Register of Historic Places in Harrison County, Mississippi Former National Register of Historic Places in Mississippi