Barnard Observatory is an 1859 brick building on the Circle at Ole Miss that originally housed what was intended to be the largest astronomical telescope in the world — a 19-inch refractor ordered from Alvan Clark in 1859. The telescope was on the ship from Boston to New Orleans when the Civil War broke out; it was diverted to Chicago and eventually installed at Northwestern. The observatory dome at Barnard remained empty.
The building now houses the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, the most important institution of its kind in the country and the publisher of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. The Center hosts the Oxford Conference for the Book, a long-running annual literary festival, and runs a steady programme of lectures and exhibitions in the building's small public gallery.