Showing posts with label Homochitto National Forest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Homochitto National Forest. Show all posts

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Abandoned Wood Schoolhouse: Crosby, Mississippi

While driving on Highway 33 through the Homochitto National Forest in southwestern Mississippi, you pass through the small town of Crosby. It is pretty quiet. The photograph above shows the view towards Oak Street.

Just east of 33, a driveway leads up an incline to a parking lot. This is the site of the Old Crosby School House. It was closed and unoccupied as of January 2014, and a commercial real estate company had it listed for sale.
This was a long, low wood-frame building with cheerful windows facing the north to let in plenty of light (compare and contrast with modern super schools, which look like windowless penitentiaries to me).
This was the door on the east side, facing Oak Street.
The south side was a mirror image of the north, with tall windows. I wonder if the building originally had girls' and boys' sides, separated by an interior wall?
I did not go in but took this photograph through a window. I can't tell if this shows original tongue-and-groove walls or if someone put paneling up over the original walls. I emailed the Realtor about the site. She wrote back that the school was built in 1945-50 and had recently been used as residential. It was rented to a family for about 12 years, but had been vacant for a year after they moved. Current status: unknown. If any reader has information, please add to the comments.

A few minutes to the south is Coles, Mississippi, a town that appears to be drying up entirely. I wrote about Coles earlier this year (click the link).

Photographs taken with a Fujifilm X-E1 digital camera. Black and white processed in-camera or using PhotoNinja.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Coles, Mississippi - Not Much Left

If you drive from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Vicksburg, Mississippi, via the inland route rather than the 4-lane Hwy 61, you pass through a number of small lumber towns in the piney forest terrain. Driving north on Hwy 33 north of Gloster, you soon you enter the Homochitto National Forest. If you go too fast, you will zip by the junction where Mullins Road and McDowell Lane join 33. Oops, you just missed Coles.
Most of the buildings facing the road are abandoned. Whatever business once sustained this town has dried up.
There was an old cottage behind some trees. The porch had some of the old-fashioned outdoor chairs of the type I have seen in New Hampshire and the Adirondacks.
The former gasoline station had become an antique shop within the last few years, but I could not tell if it was open any more.
There was some great debris outside the antique store - my favorite photography subjects.

Photographs taken with a Fujifilm X-E1 digital camera, tripod-mounted, with the Fuji 27mm f/2.8 lens (an excellent and compact little optic). Raw files processed with PhotoNinja software.