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I’ o s t -K yiit r i n a Rev i s	er
Old Bay St. Louis National Register Historic District
The Old Bay St. Louis Historic District represents the rigorous reassessment of the city’s historic resources by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Old Bay St. Louis Historic District includes the extant sections of the Beach Boulevard Historic District, as well as a large residential area to the west of the old district boundaries. This western expansion absorbs the Washington Street Historic District as well as other buildings previously excluded from historic district designation. The impact of Hurricane Katrina coupled with the age of the nomination (30 years) made it necessary to reevaluate Bay St. Louis’s cultural resources, taking into account the large number of buildings that had become eligible since the MRA nomination was completed and new historic perspectives on those resources that survived the storm. The Old Bay St. Louis Historic District, which features a wide variety of vernacular and high style buildings, is unique among the small town landscapes on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.''	:	;;
The new district is composed of 503.5 acres and contains 939 resources, including 681
contributing resources and 258 non-contributing resources (approximately 28 percent). The area
includes 933 buildings, four cemeteries and two religious shrines. One building, the house at 242
St. Charles Street, is individually listed on the NRHP. The district includes much of the eastern
part of the city located south of US Highway 90 and east of Old Spanish Trail, excluding those
blocks near the bay that were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Beach Boulevard, which parallels
St. Louis Bay, forms the primary eastern boundary of the district. On the west, the line is more
irregular, on State Street, the district extends beyond Old Spanish Trail/Dunbar Street, almost to
U. S. Highway 90, while at other points it falls short of that thoroughfare. Tucked away from the
disjointed, modem commercial development that has grown up along the four-lane U. S.
Highway 90 and separated from other coastal communities by a wide expanse of water, Old Bay
St. Louis has retained a sense of timelessness and cohesiveness that has been lost in most of the
communities on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
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FEMA and SHPO representatives met in Bay St. Louis and concurred with the proposed historic district boundaries for the Old Bay St. Louis Historic District in September 2008. Those boundaries have remained unchanged, with two exceptions 1) a small extension on the north to include the Sacred Heart Shrine of St. Augustine’s Seminary and 2) the addition of two buildings on the southern edge of the district. FEMA submitted the Determination of Eligibility for the Old Bay St. Louis Historic District and received concurrence from SHPO in early 2010. The historic district was listed on the NRHP July 8, 2010.
Survey Data Publication Hancock County Mississippi
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