"Dead House"

Chancellor Barnard built this two-room brick structure in 1860 as a magnetic observatory, with double walls, double windows and doors, and a brick ceiling to shield instruments from temperature swings. Nails, locks and hinges were copper so they would not disturb the readings. The instruments were never delivered. When the university became a hospital, the building served as the morgue, and the dead were put in coffins until the wood ran out, then wrapped in blankets. Later it housed faculty, a fraternity and law journal offices before demolition in 1958 for a library addition.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Lyceum and the Circle, University of Mississippi — 0.2 mi
  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
• Barnard Observatory — steps away
• Ventress Hall — steps away
• Hilgard Cut — steps away