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| 2400 Washington St., Vicksburg, February 2008 (Olympus E-330 digital file) |
Mississippi Hardware Company formerly occupied a rambling building on the corner of Speed and Washington Streets in Vicksburg. At one time, likely the late-1920s through the 1940s, the building was a car dealership. My friend, Martha, told me that she and her husband bought a 1941 Studebaker there in 1945 when her husband returned from World War II. When it changed into a hardware store I do not know (can any readers help?).
For most of the 1980s until 2019, the building was not commercially used. For a few years in the 1990s, a pawn shop occupied part of the front. I remember stopping by a couple of times. Then, for years, an antique flatbed truck with an antique Austin car on the bed was parked under the overhang. Part of the roof collapsed in the early 2000s. Finally, the City of Vicksburg condemned the building. I chatted with the contractor who was doing the demolition. He said the work was difficult because of the debris from the roof. Also, he had to brace a rear wall, which was in danger of collapsing on the downhill property.
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| Former Mississippi Hardware Company, 2400 Washington St., Vicksburg, June 2019 (Kodak Ektar 25 film, Pentax Spotmatic camera, 24mm ƒ/3.5 Super-Multi-Coated Takumar lens) |
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| (Kodak Ektar 25 film, Spotmatic camera, 24mm Super-Multi-Coated Takumar lens) |
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| June 13, 2019 (digital file, Fuji X-E1 camera) |
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| Giant crab (Kodak Ektar 25 film, Spotmatic camera, 24mm Super-Multi-Coated Takumar lens) |
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| Former basement, Speed Street (Kodak Ektar 25 film, Spotmatic camera, 24mm Super-Multi-Coated Takumar lens) |
The site is now grassy and slopes down to the west. Another piece of our architectural heritage is gone.
Most of the June photographs are from the long-discontinued Kodak Ektar 25 film, which I exposed in a Pentax Spotmatic camera with a 24mm ƒ/3.5 Super-Multi-Coated Takumar lens. I scanned the film with a Plustek 7600i film scanner. The colors were off on this expired film, but Photoshop CS3's auto color correction function largely corrected the colors. The film is lower contrast than when it was new, which suits me for my type of photography.
2 comments:
We lived on Speed Street in the late 60's and I remember walking to the hardware store with my father. Sad that it's gone.
Thank you for commenting. Unfortunately, owners of this building over the last few decades let the roof fail, and finally part of the roof collapsed. This is a common theme in Vicksburg.
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