Photo by Keith Benoist
Windsor Ruins
10 miles southwest of Port Gibson, Mississippi, across the Mississippi River from Lake Bruin, sits Windsor Ruins.
This is, in our estimation, one in a list of thirty marvelous places, flavors, events, and experiences that anyone who lives in—or loves—our part of the world should experience at least once in his or her lifetime.
The ruins of Windsor stand ten miles southwest of Port Gibson, Mississippi. Built in 1859 by Smith Coffee Daniel II, Windsor was the largest Antebellum home in Mississippi. It survived the Civil War by serving as a Union hospital. Mark Twain gazed over the Big River from Windsor’s rooftop observatory. The story goes that the massive 1890 fire broke out after a careless party guest left a cigar unattended on the balcony. Now all that remains are twenty-three fluted Corinthian columns and a few portions of the balustrade. It is best viewed on a cool fall day when the wind blows the changing leaves to the ground. There is a haunted sadness about it, but its untimely demise does lend itself to a tragic, yet romantic, end for a decadent house that could never have sustained itself in the modern world.
