Sunday, April 4, 2010

Shotgun shacks on Avenue E, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Avenue E is a short little street located west of Drummond Street and south of Bowmar Avenue. This area features a maze of narrow streets crowded with cottages and shotgun shacks dating from the early 20th century. Five of the streets were somewhat optimistically named avenues and given the letter A through E. At least they were not named boulevards, which make me think of grand thoroughfares in Paris or London. Avenue E is dead end and has access via Valley Street. At one time, there were at least six matching shotgun houses facing north on the south side of the street. The photograph above, taken from Valley Street, shows house numbers 902, 904, 906, 908, and 910. Let's proceed from west to east. The first house now is number 902, but in 2002, 900 still was standing. In 2007, 902 was rather ratty, but it has been fixed up with new windows and a front porch. This shows that these little houses have potential. This 2007 photograph shows 904 with the red spray paint number from the city inspector, indicating that it had been condemned. As long as I remember, 906 has been painted with this bright green-blue color and had rickety steps. 908 did not look too bad in 2003 with fresh white paint. But, by 2010, 908 has deteriorated. I think the houses are occupied because I may have seen someone peeping out from the curtains when I set up my tripod. This 2002 photograph shows number 910 (behind the car), which was torn down sometime in the mid-2000s. Neighborhoods like this are steadily losing their characteristic architecture. The black and white photographs were taken on 120-size Kodak Panatomic-X film with a Fuji GW690II rangefinder camera. Film developed in Agfa Rodinol.

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