Belinda Stewart Architects restores and celebrates the beauty of buildings
Located in Eupora, Belinda Stewart Architects actively seeks to help its community and similar communities identify and celebrate their uniquely built heritage and character.
After Belinda Stewart graduated from Mississippi State University, she moved to North Carolina and worked there for five years. By the time the fourth year came around, North Carolina didn’t feel like home to her.
“After about year four, I decided that this was not home and that I needed to move back to Mississippi,” said Stewart. “It took me about a year to get the logistics together, but I came back with a job offer and I just thought, ‘This is my chance.’ If I want to do my own thing and see if it will work, I can do that.”
Stewart then moved back to her hometown in Walthall to live with her grandmother and start her business, which was started in her grandmother’s living room.
“Within two or three months, I had rented a building in Eupora. My current building is my third building, and so we’ve been just growing on from there,” said Stewart. “My goal has always been to grow sustainably. I never borrowed any money for my business. It was always that when we had more money to hire somebody, we did.”
In the business’ 31st year, the team at Belinda Stewart Architects is composed of 20 people who are committed to fulfilling your needs whether they relate to preservation, architecture, grant writing, and more.
“We’ve always sort of gone after historic preservation projects,projects that are special to the community, things that are about people using them. It’s been about public architecture and meaningful architecture. We’ve just been incredibly fortunate to get involved and be brought into some of the most meaningful projects,” said Stewart. “We discovered early on that a lot of the counties that we were working with had some real financial challenges and maybe didn’t have the money they needed for a particular restoration project. So, we got into grant writing a long time ago and helping people with fundraising. With that, we’ve raised over $30 million for various clients over these past 31 years.”
Stewart said the fact that the focus being on existing and new buildings in a historic context is what sets her architectural firm apart from others.
“When Mississippi State built their new Old Main building on campus, we were selected to do that because it is right there in the center of campus, and it was about reflecting that historic character of campus,” said Stewart. “That kind of concept, we do all over the place. It’s like a new building in a real sensitive, historic downtown.”
Stewart’s firm has a history and track record that backs up the fact that there is none other like it.
“I think we have a lot of evidence that we’ve been doing this well for a number of years now. I think we’re easy to work with. It’s all about the clients and the place, and we may be able tohelp find some additional funding,” said Stewart. “It’s a lot harder now than it used to be, but we’re still funding. We just found out about a couple [Tuesday] morning that just got funded through a program.”
Stewart added that her firm’s grant writing service is another thing that stands out from others, stating that it’s not a norm for architectural firms.
Not only does Stewart’s firm do local projects for communities, but it also does projects all over the state, including a particular one in Iuka.
“In Iuka, we’re working on two wonderful little churches there. We’ve been helping do some repair and restoration to one, and then some planning for the other,” Stewart said.
Stewart’s firm has won over a hundred awards from their projects. There’s one particular award that is special to Stewart, and that is from when their restoration project of the Tallahatchie County Courthouse won the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians’ (SESAH) Best of the South Award in 2015.
“We’ve been working with Tallahatchie County on telling the story of Emmett Till, which we’ve been doing for about 15 years now. The first major thing we did was restoring their courthouse, and the restoration of that courthouse received that Best of the South Award,” said Stewart. “It’s an award that looks at the really big picture of preservation, such as the research and the planning that goes into it.”
Belinda Stewart Architects is located on 61 North Dunn Street in Eupora with hours running from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Mondays through Fridays.
If you’d like to get in touch with Stewart about potential projects, you can either call the firm at (662) 258-6405, email them at bsa@belindastewartarchitects.com, or leave a message on their website, www.belindastewartarchitects.com.