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| Clay Street view west (Panatomic-X film, Hasselblad 250mm Sonnar lens, 1/15 ƒ/8.0½) |
Clay Street is the major east-west road through Vicksburg. Before Interstate 20 (I-20) was completed in the early 1970s, US 80 came into town on Clay Street. A driver heading west would drive on Clay to downtown, turn left on Washington Street, and drive south to the old Mississippi River bridge.
I label the part of Clay Street just west of the Vicksburg National Military Park as upper Clay, while the area downtown near the Yazoo Canal is lower Clay. Here we will look at some scenes in upper Clay. Decades ago, private homes lined the street, but now it is strip America of the ugliest sort. You car, tire, and muffler repair shops, check-cashing and title-loan places, a few real estate offices, abandoned buildings, a dead A&P super market, derelict historic homes, and fast food emporiums. Empty lots show where houses once stood. A former resident labeled this "the ugliest street in America." Well, maybe not the ugliest, but certainly a contender.
The Eastview Apartments, situated between Clay Street and Baldwin Ferry Road, are low income housing subsidized by the federal government via HUD (Housing and Urban Development). They are unusual construction, being suspended between telephone poles that were driven into the ground on the steep hillside. It was a practical solution compared to grading flat terraces and pouring concrete slabs.
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| Eastview Apartments with Stouts Bayou in foreground (Panatomic-X film, Hasselblad, 50mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens, green filter) |
Stouts Bayou flows under Clay Street through some form of culvert or tunnel because it emerges out of the hillside below the Eastview Apartments. This is kudzu jungle. It needs a cleanup by goats.
Warfield's ServiceCenter, at 2910½ Clay Street, has served customers for over 30 years. Good people.
One of the nondescript street running into Clay Street from the north is Hope Street. The proprietor at A & V Discount Tobacco & Beer generously let me take a photograph.
The long-unused Parkview Regional Medical Center building looms over the area north of Clay Street. It has been vacant since 2002, except for homeless who occasionally find ways to enter.
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| Mercy Hospital, Grove St. (Kodak Super-XX film, Tachihara 4×5" camera, 90mm ƒ/6.8 Angulon lens) |
The Sisters of Mercy, who have a long history of care in this town, originally built Mercy Hospital in 1957. The present owners have tried to sell it but with no results. Who wants an obsolete hospital building considering the cost to renovate and upgrade electricity, exits, stairwells, and utilities? Externally, it looks intact, but I do not have information on the roof or the interior.
When I took photographs in the parking lot in the rear, the neighbors came by and said they watch for vagrants. The police come, clear away the homeless, and then they return later.
Further west is a short segment of Crawford Street. This is not the main Crawford Street downtown but a short detached section running directly next to Stouts Bayou. The houses are on the south side of the road and have access via wood bridges. I photographed more of the Crawford Street region during my tour of neglected Vicksburg houses (
Nov. 16, 2020 article).
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| 1517 Main Street (Panatomic-X film, Hasselblad 501CM camera, 80mm lens, 1/8 sec. ƒ/8.0½) |
Main Street is one of Vicksburg's historic streets. It is still lined with old houses, but one by one, they have been condemned and demolished. This house at 1517 looks pretty good, and I do not know its issues.
This ends our short tour of upper Clay Street. Standby for more Vicksburg photographs soon. Thank you all for riding along.
5 comments:
You mention wood bridges - I have a policy of extensively photographing them when I come upon them, as they all seem to disappear shortly after I visit them.
Interesting about both the apartments supported by telephone poles and the wooden bridges to access the houses.
Jim, these are not elegant covered bridges or structural gems, just wood platforms that span the bayou, which runs in a concrete trough. It's pretty ugly.
I think these problems in Vicksburg and a lot of other cities can, at least in part, be traced to the interstate highway system. I-20 took all the commerce off Clay Street and Washington Street, and the two roads have been dying a slow death ever since it was completed. We have a lot of the same kinds of businesses lining the frontage roads now, but the newer developments definitely lack the charm that old Clay Street had.
Same thing happened in Jackson, and in Meridian. For a contrast, look at cities that didn’t get an interstate until relatively recently, like Huntsville, Alabama or Tupelo, Mississippi. You’ll see the same thing happening but the changes haven’t moved as far along yet.
Berberry, you are right. The Interstates brought unprecedented mobility to Americans, but they ruined the core of smaller towns everywhere. It is part of the hollowing out of America. That is what I have been trying to document for many years, and I never run out of material.
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