Barnard Observatory

Chancellor Frederick Barnard designed the building around what he meant to be the world's largest refracting telescope, modeled on the observatory at Pulkovo in Russia. War stopped the order, the lens was never delivered, and the instrument went to Dearborn Observatory at Northwestern. Barnard owned enslaved people yet opposed secession, and left in 1861 for the North. General Sherman later wrote that riding through the grounds he thought he saw the traces of Barnard's life in the observatory, and the building was spared. It served as a hospital.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Lyceum and the Circle, University of Mississippi — steps away
  The 1848 Greek Revival building at the center of the Ole Miss campus, where federal marshals held off a mob on 30 September 1962 and James Meredith registered the next morning.
• Rowan Oak — 0.7 mi
  William Faulkner's Greek Revival house in Oxford, bought in 1930 and kept by the University of Mississippi, with the outline of A Fable still written on his study wall.
• Oxford Square — 0.8 mi
  The courthouse square laid out in 1837 on land bought from a Chickasaw woman, rebuilt after the 1864 burning and home to Square Books and a memorial to Lafayette County's lynching victims.
• Sardis Lake and Dam — 15 mi
  A flood-control lake on the Little Tallahatchie, built from 1930s labor and a dredge named Pontotoc, with a dam that for years was the largest earth-filled dam in the world.

More markers nearby

• Documenting the Blues — steps away
• "Dead House" — steps away
• Ventress Hall — steps away
• Hilgard Cut — steps away