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.
8 comments:
There is a youtube video of the school in 1949 that shows the school as it was then. There are actually several videos--link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVtKIYdKpwc
There is also a great black and white film of the town of Crosby in the 1940s which includes people, stores, the school, and quite a bit on the lumber industry. It is worth the 12 minutes it takes to watch. Link is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLxrshY7idI
Amazing, how did you find these? In the films, you can see that the young women are clean, neat, and well-groomed. The boys are also clean and do not look like they rolled out of a dumpster that morning. What has happened to American society in 6 decades?
Just Googled Crosby school in 1940s and up they popped. It was pretty interesting, and to think someone saved them!
https://www.facebook.com/CrosbySchoolhouse
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I, along with two others purchased this building about eight years ago. It took a year of cleaning and doing minor repairs but we all chipped in and it’s a great place to spend weekends, evacuate to and work in. It’s got eight rooms all of them 750 sq ft. Two of the rooms had been chopped up into smaller rooms so a family could live there. It has two full bathrooms and a kitchen. The paneled wood walls are original. Most of the rooms still have chalkboards. Crosby was a mill town and all the wood came from the mill. We had an open house and a few of the folks who came were former students. Apparently there were quite a few ‘whooping’s’ that went on in the principals office! The school closed after de-segregation came about.
If you’re ever in Crosby come on by and say hi.
Oh, and if you’re very rich - it needs a new roof! Just saying.
Kate, what a great story. Congratulations on buying and renovating/preserving the building. If I do drive that way again, I will stop and say hi! I would like to take some B&W film pictures this time.
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