You’ll not visit another home like Walter Place. It is unique.

Walter Place took the large columns and broad pediment style of Greek Revival houses being built across the South in the 1850s and elevated it to a grander scale.

Harvey Washington Walter, who made a fortune building the Mississippi Central Railroad, asked the town’s noted architect, Spires Boling, to create something different from mansions on the other side of town. His challenge was to build the grandest home in Holly Springs.

The center section of the house was classic Greek Revival but Boling added massive medieval Gothic towers with castellated battlements to each end of the house. The design was unique then and has never been duplicated. It was among the last great mansions built before the Civil War.

During the occupation of Holly Springs, Union General U. S. Grant recognized it as a house suitable for his wife. Julia Grant, her black slave, Julia; and her son moved into Walter Place in 1862.

A little more than a dozen years after the end of the Civil War, a more deadly enemy invaded Holly Springs. Walter Place became a hospital for victims of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878. Col. Walter sent his wife and daughters to live in another town but he and three of his sons died from the fever within days of each other.

The house was bought by Jorja and Michael Lynn in 1983 and has been restored to its original condition.