The historic home at 201 Boothe Street is under threat from the same old nemesis that has claimed most of this town’s other historic structures — parking.
Built in 1888 and known as the Lee House, it is the only home still standing in Batesville that was built by the renowned 19th Century builder/architect Andrew “Swede” Johnson.  Along with the St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church on Panola Avenue, also built by Johnson, and the J. W. Bates home on Country Club Road, completed in 1856 by the man for whom the city is named, the three are the city’s most architecturally significant, historic structures not yet demolished.
Batesville has never seen an historic structure or natural setting that could not be improved by paving over for parking. That should be our motto or slogan or somesuch.
This time it’s the South Panola School District that covets the space for parking where the property joins the Batesville Elementary School on Boothe Street.
The Lee House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, but that’s mostly an honorary designation, a spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History said. The designation does prevent the school district from buying the property outright and tearing the house down, but the owner could tear it down and then possibly sell the lot to the district. Even that would get complicated by state law that would restrict the district from paying more than the appraised value of the lot.
House owner Byron Houston does not want to see the house torn down, but after having it on the market for almost two years his options are narrowing.
“I want to try to preserve it, but if it doesn’t work out, I don’t have a choice,” Houston said.
Houston is seriously considering having the house moved, which may be a second best solution.
The best outcome would be for the home to be sold to someone who is happy to allow it to remain in its original setting.
Batesville itself offers no legal protection for historic structures. Efforts to enact a Historic Preservation Ordinance bogged down when the mayor and aldermen could find no one willing to serve on an Historic Preservation Commission to help monitor changes to buildings in a Historic District whose boundaries have already been established. Those boundaries include the Lee House.
To date, the efforts to expand the school’s parking area have only been discussed during executive sessions at South Panola school board meetings. These words are written to expand that discussion.