Footloose around Vicksburg, Mississippi, with Kodak Ektar 25 Color Film

Dear readers, I had one last roll of the long-discontinued Kodak Ektar 25 color negative film in 120 size. I loaded it in the Hasselblad and wandered around Vicksburg. The Ektar is quite contrasty, so I prefer to use it when the light is overcast, or, best of all, foggy or rainy. Vicksburg offers plenty of topography and interesting architecture, so we will take a semi-random tour around town. (Click any photograph to enlarge it).

Clay Street, Vicksburg, view east, 250mm ƒ/5.6 Sonnar lens.

Let us start this short tour with Clay Street, a major east-west thoroughfare. This is the first view of Vicksburg that many tourists see when they exit I-20. A friend called this the ugliest street in America. That is a bit harsh, but much of it certainly qualifies as the typical ghastly American commercial strip with crummy fast food joints, steel buildings, car parts stores, and Dollar stores.

My friends at Warfield's Servicenter kindly let me take pictures. They have kept the family cars running for many years. Highly recommended.

Jackson Street, Vicksburg, view east, 250mm Sonnar lens.

Three blocks to the north is Jackson Street, which still retains its brick paving blocks. Many of the houses are a century old. The photograph shows how the street follows the hills and valleys of the local terrain.

Walnut Street is also in the oldest part of town. This is a 1992 photograph I found in my archives.

Veto Street runs from Monroe Street (behind me) west towards Mulberry Street. It is an odd curved road. Did a streetcar once run on it? This 1992 photograph shows the Warren County library in the distance. I took it from the roof of the former Vicksburg Hospital. The hospital was demolished two decades ago and the Vicksburg police station in now on this footpad.

Former "Colored Motel," US 80, east of Mount Albans Road, 50mm Distagon lens.

Before the interstate was built in the early 1970s, Highway US 80 was the main road between Vicksburg and Jackson. Just east of the intersection with Mount Albans road, a pink motel is almost covered with kudzu. In the early 1980s, you could still see a big sign stating "Colored Motel." Somewhere in my negatives I may have a photograph, but that is a project for another day.

East of town on Culkin Road is the former Culkin Academy. It has been empty for at least two decades. A worm farmer rented the premises for a few years.

In downtown Vicksburg, the neighborhood near the junction of Marcus Street and Halls Ferry Road is known as Marcus Bottom. Many of the cottages here have been demolished over the years.  This photograph is from the Halls Ferry Road bridge where it crosses Stouts Bayou.

These shotgun houses are on East Avenue. The slope in the foreground drops down into Stouts Bayou.

Grammar Street once had 10 or 12 of these little shotgun houses. Only two remain now. Even a decade ago, they were pretty nasty.

Union Avenue descends from Sherman Avenue south towards the Vicksburg Military Park. This is not the Union Avenue within the park, but possibly it once connected in the era when there were multiple park entrances. And this outside Union Avenue is a bit odd. The west side is City of Vicksburg, while the east side is Warren County. Residents on the west get their water from the City, while residents on the east get it from Culkin Water District. The old Chevrolet and the house with blue tarp roof in the photographs above are in Warren County.

I found a 2010 photograph of this same Bellaire. Since then it moved across the street to the Warren County side.

Ford Road, Vicksburg, March 16, 2018

Near the flood crest, March 16, 2018.

Young Alley (off Ford Road), March 16, 2018.

Finally, here are some scenes from the spring flood, when high water forced some of the residents in the Ford subdivision to evacuate. The crest on the Vicksburg Gage was 49.90 ft on 03/16/2018 (from the National Weather Service). This area west of North Washington Street and just north of the Anderson Tully wood mill has always been vulnerable to flooding. Over the years, many houses have been bought via a FEMA program and demolished.

These photographs were taken on Kodak Ektar 25 film with a Hasselblad 501CM camera, with 50mm, 80mm, and 250mm Zeiss lenses. All pictures were tripod-mounted. The film was expired and the colors are off. My scanner software does not have a profile for Ektar 25, so I use the Ektar 100 one instead. Is it "accurate?" Who knows? Can you really remember how the scene looked weeks after you were on the site? If you want boring perfection and "accuracy," use digital.

This is no. 02d of my irregular series on Abandoned Films.

Deserted Culkin Academy, Vicksburg, Mississippi

(Note: click any photograph to enlarge it.)

Generations of Warren County students who lived east of Vicksburg went to school at the Culkin Academy, later the Culkin Elementary School. When I first moved to the area in the mid-1980s, Culkin was still open, and I recall a PTA fund drive to buy air conditioners. The last year of operation was around 1999. A coworker's children attended elementary school there before the new Sherman Avenue Elementary School opened.

The old "Culkin Academy" sign is still engraved in the architectural concrete. On the front wall, each window was topped with the symbol of an academic discipline (in this case, mechanics). According to a friend at Mississippi Department of Archives and History, the building can be considered Art Moderne style, designed by a Modernist master, E.L. Malvaney of Jackson. It was completed in 1942. This was during World War II, but construction obviously started before the war began, likely funded by the Works Progress Administration. The county was lucky on the timing because most civilian construction was terminated or put on hold during the war years.

The classrooms are a mess. Many of the windows no longer have plywood covers, so I was able to place my camera on the window ledges and use time exposures. For a few years, a fellow rented the building and raised worms (yes, a worm farm). But I can't tell in what part of the building this animal husbandry occurred.

Not much is happening out back on a sultry summer day. 

Suzassippi wrote about how the high school in Eupora, Mississippi (now the Webster County school district), may be an architectural match to the Culkin Academy

There may be a use for the Culkin school yet. On July 7, 2015, the Vicksburg Post reported:

The sheriff’s department uses a building on the school’s campus for self-contained breathing apparatus training and tactical training like searching through smoke filled rooms, Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace said. The department also practices intruder simulations besides using the site for other law enforcement training purposes. Pace said it gives the department’s employees real world experience so they can be prepared for any emergency that might arise in the schools, offices or other locations.

Photographs taken with a Panasonic G3 digital camera with the Panasonic Lumix 12-32mm lens. I processed the raw files and converted to black and white with PhotoNinja software.