Vicksburg in the Old Days (the '90s)

No, not the 1890s, the 1990s. I recently rummaged through some of my negatives and was horrified that they were already 20 years old. I suppose you are officially an old geezer when you think something is not particularly old but your co-workers would consider them so 20th century or so non-digital (you mean, like chemical-based?). This "old days" post will consist of a semi-random walk around Vicksburg with film.

This is Ryan's Coal Yard Package Store, at the corner of North Washington Street and First East. The building was torn down sometime in the early 2000s. At one time, this (or a predecessor building) was a coal yard. It was right next to the railroad tracks, and most Vicksburg homes heated with coal before the 1930s. (Trivia fact: Coal fires caused cinders that occasionally escaped from chimneys. Therefore, most older homes were re-roofed with asbestos shingles in the 1920s and '30s because the asbestos was fire-proof.) This is a Kodak Tri-X 400 frame taken with a Nikon F3 camera.

This is the warehouse right across the street from the Ryan Coal Yard. The place is empty and for sale now. The Fina gasoline station in the distance is where Klondike restaurant is now located.

This is L D's Kitchen at 1111 Mulberry Street, just a short distance south of the Ryan Coal Yard. The building is still in use as a restaurant. At one time, it was a package store and then a lounge. This is a photograph taken with a 35mm Summicron-RF lens on a Leica.

Here are three shotgun shacks, possibly off Clay Street. Many of these have been torn down in the last two decades.

This is the old commercial building at 719 Grove Street. It was condemned for over a year but is now being restored. This is a Polaroid Type 54 instant print taken with a 90mm ƒ/6.8 Raptar lens on a 4×5" Tachihara camera.

Right across Grove Street from the commercial block was the Vicksburg Steam Laundry. It was formed in 1910 and closed some time before 1985. The laundry was in the building that previously housed the first commercial Coca-Cola bottling plant in the country. The building burned in the early 1990s. The rumor is that someone started to redevelop it but found asbestos, so instead torched it. That way, the fire department took care of the problem by washing the asbestos down the storm drains.

The Jackson Street YMCA was demolished in 1995. It was built in 1924 and served the African American community. When it was built, YMCAs were segregated. Notice "Boys' Entrance" above the door. The Jackson Street Community Center, address 923 Walnut Street, now occupies this lot.

Heading south along the river, this is the Riverview Motel at 4009 Washington Street. The site is an empty lot now. This is a Polaroid 4×5" sepia instant print.

This view south along Washington Street looks about the same today. The old motel that resembles a barracks is still in business.

This is a former gas station converted into a motel or apartment on Washington Street, with a river view. The building was demolished in the early 2000s. This is another Polaroid 4×5" sepia instant print.

This is the Carr School on Cherry Street. The hulking building had been closed for decades and lay vandalized, an eyesight to drivers entering town via Halls Ferry Road and Cherry Street. Fortunately, it was restored in 2014 and is now used as apartments.

Back to Clay Street, this is the Junius Ward YMCA at 821 Clay. It has been closed for over a decade, but in 2014, I saw some renovation underway at an erratic pace.

The residence halls in the "Y" were last used in the late 1970s. On contemporary standards, the accommodations were rather basic (What, no air-conditioning? Quelle horreur!), but served as temporary residence for hundreds of men who moved to Vicksburg, including two of my friends.

Further east, this is the lot next to the old Vicksburg Ford at 2704 Clay Street. The garage (on the right) now houses TD's Tires. The apartments at the back are an odd architectural design, suspended between telephone posts driven into the ground. The apartments are occupied by a mixed clientele.

Turn around 180 degrees and look north; the old Mercy Hospital was a block away. It may have been named Parkview in 1996, but I can't remember. The little cottage at the very left, facing Clay Street, may have been the home of J. Mack Moore, the photographer who took hundreds of photographs of Vicksburg in the late 1800s and early 20th century. Mack Moore coated his own glass plates and used a large format camera. When the house was demolished, stacks of his glass negatives were found in the basement, some of which he had recycled for use as window panes. The collection is now at the Old Court House Museum.

Proceed north on North Washington about 5 miles and you reached Margaret's Gro, which the Reverend Dennis had converted to his Temple to God.

The Reverend had a creative streak with bricks, paint, wood, Styrofoam, and anything else he could glue or cement in place. He told me that he learned his brick skills from German bricklayers. He had been a prison guard for World War II prisoners and learned from his charges. Even as late as the 2000s, German tourists came to see Margaret's Gro. (Another trivia item: Germans soldiers were terrified of American black soldiers because of the gruesome stories they had been told by their propaganda machine. Therefore, they tended to be pretty docile when guarded by black soldiers.)

In February, 1989, an ice storm knocked down power lines all over Mississippi. Some parts of Vicksburg were without electricity for almost a week. This is a view of Drummond Street.

Here are two more views of the 1989 ice storm. These are scans of 4×5" Polaroid Type 54 film.

These cottages are on the slope below West Pine Street, just west of the old bus barn. The Kansas City Southern railroad tracks are just below. At one time, there was quite a community of little houses along this slope, but most have been torn down, and the kudzu has taken over. I recall some of these residents had vegetable and corn gardens.

In the future, I will scan more negatives.

Kuhn Memorial Hospital: the Upper Floors

Dear Readers, the old Kuhn Memorial Hospital at 1422 Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard is such a mess, I could not resist showing some photographs from the upper floors. On my own, I was reluctant to venture into the wreck alone, but some paranormal friends joined me and showed me around.

To get to the roof, you walk up some steep steps from the third floor and emerge from a turret. It is a standard graveled industrial roof, now in poor condition. The water tower to the west is in use by City of Vicksburg.

This is the view north towards MLK, Jr., Blvd. (formerly known as Openwood Road). The 2-floor house is very old, possibly Civil War era, and is in poor condition.

This is the building on MLK Blvd. I took this frame with a Leica M2 camera with 50mm f/2 Dual-Range Summicron lens.

 The poison ivy grows all the way up to the roof of the hospital. That is how nature takes over.

The patient rooms on the upper floors in the 1959 wing were probably reasonably cheerful (for a hospital) in their day.

There was once a dumbwaiter to carry food to the upper floors. Notice the sturdy ceramic-glazed tiles.

This was one of the autopsy tables with a convenient drain in the base. My friends said they can detect paranormal activity in this room. I can't, but I am rather oblivious to vibrations and voices.

These cheerful rooms with south exposure were right down the hall from the autopsy room. I suppose that was convenient.

Back down on the first floor was the room with the cadaver refrigerator. Only two stalls in this one. Maybe the upper bin was for bits and pieces (like a removed leg)?

This was the hall leading in from the ambulance entry on the west side. The cadaver room was just off to the left.

On the ground floor out back, there was long room with a fireplace. We thought it might have been a doctors' lounge, but my friend later learned it was a solarium for patients. The open portico is turning to jungle.

This room, just behind the solarium, is collapsing.

Finally, this is one of two huge boilers. I am surprised no one has tried to cut it up for the scrap metal, but it may be too massive.

Urban spelunkers, if you want to look at Kuhn, do it soon. The decay is advancing so quickly, the City will need to act on demolition within the next few years. And, they may have to secure the site prevent someone being injured (and suing the City). On September 29, 2013, the Mississippi Business Journal wrote,

VICKSBURG — The city of Vicksburg has given the owner of a 54-year-old building that once housed the Kuhn Memorial Hospital, once one of Mississippi’s three charity hospitals, 120 days to decide its fate.
The Vicksburg Post reports that the order was issued this week by city building and inspection director Victor Gray-Lewis.
The order came after a Sept. 18 hearing held on the property. No one from Ester Stewart Buford Foundation of Yazoo City, which owns the property, or Long Land Investments of Lauderdale County or Adair Asset Management LLC/U.S. Bank showed up, Gray-Lewis said. The hearing was not open to the public.
Long Land acquired the property at the 2011 county tax sale. Adair got it at the 2012 tax sale. Neither has redeemed the property.
“Someone’s going to have to fix it or take it down,” Gray-Lewis said. “They can’t leave it as it is.”
If no action is taken after 120 days, he said, he will take the matter to the Board of Mayor and Aldermen for a recommendation.
If the property owners do not take action, Gray-Lewis said, the city can decide to demolish the building, which he said is expensive. Under the state’s slum clearance law, the city can sell the cleared property to recover the cost of demolition.
“I hope it won’t come to that,” he said.
The hospital was closed in 1989 along with two other charity hospitals in Meridian and Laurel.
The hospital was built in 1959 on 12.8 acres. The building was given to the city in 1990. While the city owned it, a Louisiana company proposed renovating the building as a 118-bed adolescent psychiatric facility, but the plan fell through.
In 1996, the city sold the property to Frank Lassiter of Lassiter Associates in Baton Rouge, La. Lassiter proposed using the building as an assisted living facility and clinic. The project, he said, would employ 100 to 150 people.
The property was sold in 2000 to Bob Pitts, who donated it to the Esther Stewart Buford Foundation the next year.

If you are interested in black and white photographs, please click here.

Kuhn Hospital is becoming popular. The Tennessee Paranormal Society came to visit.

The extra-wide angle photographs in today's tour are from a Panasonic G3 digital camera with the Olympus 9-18mm lens for micro 4/3 mount, all tripod-mounted. The other frames were from a Fuji X-E1 camera with the Fuji 27mm lens. All RAW files processed with PhotoNinja software.

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June 29, 2015 update:  Paranormal investigators found a body in the hospital. "Police Chief Walter Armstrong confirmed that the body is that of 69-year-old Sharon Wilson, who was reported missing. Wilson's attackers broke into her Drummond Street home and abducted her late Saturday night, police said." (From WAPT News, 06/29/2015). The two thugs were apprehended in Leland because of reckless driving. They were in the victims' SUV. It's hard to believe they could be so stupid.

The Carr School, Vicksburg, Mississippi: Part II

This is the second part of our tour of the former Carr Central High School, at 1805 Cherry Street, Vicksburg. The building has been renovated and converted into apartments, so urban spelunkers will no longer see the decay in these photographs. This time, we will explore the upper floors. Most of these photographs are from 2007, when a work crew was removing debris, floor tiles, rotted wood, and vegetation. Part I covered the lower floors (please click the link).

First off, you had to climb the debris-covered stairs. It is amazing how the paint chipped after years of heat-cool cycles. Other than a minor problem of lead dust, it would have been easy to chip down to the bare plaster.

If you walked along the main hall, you could down into the auditorium. As you can see, it was an impressive facility in its day.

A double-length classroom led off from the opposite (south) side of the hall. With south exposure, it was a cheerful room, but probably pretty hot before air-conditioning. A coworker, who was a student at Carr, told me that was the chemistry laboratory.

This was the only bottle of chemicals left.

I liked the symmetry of this corner. I was surprised that these were green boards, not genuine slate blackboards.

 A wing on the north side had a classroom with a good view.

From this wing, you could see a room way up in the roof (under the chimney). Notice the long radiators for hot-water heat. Being placed below the windows, they produce an insulating air dam.

This was the cheerful room at roof level, with windows on four sides. My friend told me this was the art classroom.

The art room was on the 4th floor and was semi-isolated from the main building. It had its own stairs and clean-up facilities.

The art class was alive with killer vines.

No wonder, the jungle was engulfing the north side of the building. This is the process of destruction described in the "Life After People" series on History Channel, which showed how nature would take over if people abruptly disappeared.

Back to the 3rd floor. Many of the rooms had suffered water damage, and trees were growing in some of them. The wood floors were laid over horizontal stringers on top of the concrete floors. Some of the oak flooring was intact, but most was ruined.

Finally, it was time to head on down via the rear fire escape. Well, maybe not - too much jungle.

If you are interested in other abandoned schools, please click the links:

• Utica High School
• Vicksburg's now-demolished Speed Street School
• The Hinds County School in Utica
• Yazoo County Agricultural HS in Benton
• Former St. Mary's school/rectory
• Wood school in Crosby

Most photographs on this page were taken with a Sony DSC-R1 digital camera.