City commission approves plans to demolish old Natchez General Hospital

NATCHEZ, Miss. – The owners of the old Natchez General Hospital plan to tear it down to be replaced with a landscaped garden for their adjacent antebellum estate.

The Natchez Preservation Commission on Wednesday approved James and Ginger Hyland’s plans for demolishing the century-old building they said is so deteriorated it can’t be restored.

“It is completely gone on the inside. It really is absolutely deplorable. There is no way to save the building,” James Hyland told the commission.

Built in 1925, the Oak Street structure served as Natchez’ main hospital until 1960, when what’s now Merit Health Natchez was built. The Hylands own The Towers antebellum house behind the old hospital.

Demolishing buildings in the city’s historic district requires the permission of the Preservation Commission.

While the commission OKed the Hylands’ plans to raze the old hospital, it will later review what they want to do with the two-acre lot where the hospital stands. The Hylands said they’ll landscape the property that once was part of The Towers estate, which traces its history back to 1798 when its first structure was built.

“It belonged to The Towers years ago. We want it back,” Ginger Hyland said.

The Natchez Board of Aldermen last month sold the dilapidated building to the Hylands for $105,000.The city acquired it in 2013 after the previous owner defaulted on paying property taxes. The old Natchez General Hospital has in past years been apartments and a shelter for battered women.

While the city board in 2017 approved a proposal to convey the building to a medical foundation that planned to renovate it into apartments for elderly residents, that was nullified in 2020 after Dan Gibson became mayor. He broke the board’s 3-3 tie vote to nix the deal. He cited neighbors’ opposition to the old hospital becoming apartments.

James Hyland said the building has no historical significance and should be leveled, but it has sentimental value for Natchez residents born and cared there when it was the city’s primary hospital.

The Hylands’ attorney and neighbor Joe Meng acknowledged the hospital and nearby doctors’ clinics played an important role providing medical care to many Natchez residents in the 1900s, but the building “has outlasted its usefulness.”

In urging the commission to permit its demolition, Meng said he and other residents of Oak, Myrtle and Pearl streets don’t want to live by “a building that’s collapsing on itself.”

While the 97-year-old building’s exterior is a visible eyesore, James Hyland said the interior is far worse with a disintegrating, collapsed center core. The building is a waterlogged, mold-ridden, snake-infested albatross that defaces the neighborhood, he said.

The eight-member Preservation Commission approved the demolition plans with little resistance, but it emphasized that the Hylands must return later with more detailed plans for landscaping their historic property and tourist attraction. “I just want a rose garden,” James Hyland said.