More Neglected (Soon to be Lost?) Houses: a Vicksburg Urban Decay Tour

In an earlier article, I wrote about a handsome but neglected early 20th century house on Howard Street. I found more traditional houses nearby, on Spring and Crawford Streets. After looking at them, we will take a quick tour of urban decay in other parts of Vicksburg. This is a convenient way to combine photographs from around town. It is a long article, so please be patient. Click any frame to enlarge it; enjoy the view.

Spring Street

Spring Street near junction with Crawford Street, view north (Tri-X 400 film)

Early 20th century cottage, 1304 Spring Street, Vicksburg (Tri-X 400 film, Hasselblad 501 CM camera, 50mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens)

Chimney at 1304 Spring Street (50mm Distagon lens, 1 sec. ƒ/8)

This cottage may be on its way to demolition. The chimney was once likely set up for a coal stove insert.

Cottage at 1322 Spring Street, Vicksburg

1322 Spring St. rear.

This house at the corner of Spring and Crawford Streets looked like it was in reasonable condition. The roof was recent. But the two electric boxes missing meter domes meant there was no power in the building. Usually this means there are no occupants - but not always.

Crawford Street

1720 Crawford Street (Hasselblad 80mm Planar-CB lens,  ¹/₁₅ ƒ/11.5, green filter

A short article in the Vicksburg Post reported that the city inspector had condemned several houses in town. This little cottage on Crawford Street was on the list. The bridge in the foreground crosses Stouts Bayou, which is channelized in a concrete trough here.

Georgia-Sycamore Avenues

Georgia Ave. looking uphill towards MLK., Jr., Blvd. (Tri-X 400, Fuji GW690II camera, 90mm ƒ/3.5 lens)

Unknown address, Sycamore Ave. (Fuji X-E1 digital file)

Georgia and Sycamore Avenues drops down steeply to the south from MLK., Jr., Blvd. Twenty years ago, there were several homes on this lonely U-shaped road, but now I think all houses are gone. I am surprised that the city still maintains it. Kudzu is engulfing everything. It is like Vicksburg's version of a Secret Garden (apologies to Frances Hodgson Burnett).

Lovers Lane

246 Lovers Lane (Fuji X-E1 digital file converted to B&W)

Detroit iron, 246 Lovers Lane (Fuji X-E1 digital file converted to B&W)

Lovers Lane is an unusual street, with its romantic name. Unfortunately, some of the housing stock is distinctly unromantic. The lane ascends past the Cedar Hill Cemetery towards the Vicksburg National Military Park. For a stretch, Lovers runs parallel to Confederate Avenue in the Park but just south of the Park boundary. A few houses are scattered in the woods, one of which was the abandoned no. 246. In the garage was a big chunk of Detroit iron awaiting restoration. I think I will pass.

Harris Street

706 Harris Street, Vicksburg (Kodak BW400CN film, Leica IIIC, 50mm ƒ/1.4 Canon lens, 1/200 ƒ/8.05, yellow filter)

This old cottage on Harris Street has been empty for years, maybe decades. But it is not abandoned. Status: unknown.

Grammer Street

Grammer Street, Vicksburg (Tri-X 400 film, Hasselblad 501CM camera, 250mm ƒ/5.6 Sonnar lens)

Grammer Street was once lined on both sides with these little shotgun houses. One by one, they have been torn down. As of January 2021, these houses have been razed.

Hunt Street

Hunt Street shotgun houses (BW400CN film, Leica IIIC, 50mm ƒ/1.4 Canon lens, 1/200 ƒ/8.05)

2314 Hunt Street (BW400CN film, Leica IIIC, 50mm ƒ/1.4 Canon lens, 1/200 ƒ/8.05)

These two shotgun houses 2314 and 2316 Hunt Street, have also been empty for years. I think they are undergoing some degree of rebuilding. (Update Feb. 2021: the two houses are gone)

Washington Street

This store at 2408 Wahington Street has the word "DEMO" spray painted on the front. Does that apply to the whole building or just the unit on the right?

Oak Street

2312 Oak Street in process of being demolished (Panatomic-X film, Fuji GW690II camera)

Oak Street runs semi-parallel to the river and has an impressive view. Many of the historic cottages have been torn down or been lost to fire over the years.

Bowmar Avenue

1221 Bowmar Avenue (Fuji Acros film, Leica M2, 35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens, 1/125 ƒ/2.8)

1303 and 1305 Bowmar Avenue (Panatomic-X film, Fuji GW690II camera, 90mm ƒ/3.5 lens)

The severe duplex on Bowmar Avenue just east of the Drummond Street intersection has been demolished. The two shotgun houses are also gone.

Marcus Street

1515 Marcus Street, Vicksburg

Marcus Street (now called Sturgis Street) has lost many older wood cottages. Some have been replaced with modern brick structures. This house at 1515 is clearly modern, but I am not sure if it was from the 1960s or 1970s.

Franklin Street

2501 Franklin Street (Fuji X-E1 digital file converted to B&W)

2503 Franklin Street (Fuji X-E1 digital file)

2505 Franklin Street (Fuji X-E1 digital file)

Franklin Street had three similar-looking duplexes. When I photographed them in 2018, all were empty and overgrown.

Grove Street

2212 Grove Street (Panatomic-X film, Fuji GW690II camera, 90mm ƒ/3.5 lens)

2329 Grove Street, Vicksburg (Fuji X-E1 digital file)

Grove Street is one of Vicksburg's historic streets with many older houses and cottages.

Pearl Street

2509 Pearl Street (Panatomic-X film, Spotmatic camera, 55mm ƒ/1.8 Super-Takumar lens)

This is an unusual cottage on Pearl Street because it was made from cinder blocks. One by one, houses along Pearl have been torn down, and the area feels empty. I met a gent who grew up near here in the 1950s and 1960s, and he said it was vibrant with families and children then.

Levee Street

Machine shop, tank farm, Levee Street (TMax 100 film, Spotmatic camera, 24 mm ƒ/3.5 SMC Takumar lens)

This old tank farm on Levee Street, at the west end of the old Fairground Street bridge, has been unused for at least three decades. The machinery building has lost its roof and has a Stonehenge collection of concrete support pillars. I can smell fumes here, so some of these tanks hold some chemical. There has probably been leakage into the ground.

Johnson Street

754 Johnson Street, Vicksburg (Tri-X film, Hasselblad 501CM, 50mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens, 1/30 ƒ11.5)

Johnson Street has been methodically deconstructed, and there are progressively fewer and fewer houses as the years go by. I wrote about Johnson Street early in my blogging efforts, in January of 2010.

(Update April 2023: this house is gone.)

Yerger Street

2602 Yerger Street, Vicksburg

2604 Yerger Street, Vicksburg

Here are two traditional shotgun houses from Yerger Street. They are long gone. These are 4x5" Fujichrome frames.

Warrenton Road

Warrenton Road store (4×5" Tri-X Prof. film, 90mm ƒ/6.8 Angulon lens)

This former gas station/store at the junction of Warrenton and Wigwam Roads has been unused for years. (Update April 2023: the building is being cleaned and possibly upgraded. I photographed this store with the Hasselblad XPan panoramic camera in 2022 (click the link)).)

Rubber Recycling Factory

Former U.S. Rubber Reclaiming, Rubber Way (Fuji Acros film, Leica M2, 24mm ƒ/3.5 SMC Takumar lens)

U.S. Rubber Reclaiming (Fuji Acros film, Leica M2, 24mm ƒ/3.5 SMC Takumar lens)

U.S. Rubber Reclaiming (Fuji Acros film, Leica M2, 24mm ƒ/3.5 SMC Takumar lens)

This disgraceful mess is part of the remnants of U.S. Rubber Reclaiming, at 2000 Rubber Way. According to the Vicksburgnews.com:

The Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office announced Tuesday, Dec. 10, that it has transferred approximately 12.6 acres of tax-forfeited property to the City of Vicksburg effective Dec. 4, 2019. 

The Warren County tax collector conveyed the property, once owned by U.S. Rubber Reclaiming, Inc. to the State of Mississippi for the non-payment of property taxes in August 2010, the same month the company ceased its operations. The company was wholly owned by Obsidian Enterprises of Indianapolis, Ind.

So this rubber and other debris has rotted here for a decade. How many mosquitoes breed in the water? Any other pathogens? I wrote about the site in more detail in April of 2019.

US 61 South

Hopewell Church, US 61 south (Panatomic-X film, Hasselblad 501CM, 50mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens)

Side of Hopewell Church (Fuji Acros film, Leica IIIC, Jupiter-8 lens)

The Hopewell Church sits on a bluff on the opposite side of US 61 from the Municipal Airport. I do not know its history. The poor old church is being engulfed by vines, and you can only see it in winter.

Glass Road

Church, Glass Road (Panatomic-X film, Hasselblad 501CM, 80mm ƒ/2.8 Planar-CB lens, ¼ ƒ/11, green filter)

This little church is on Glass Road near the former entrance to the Marathon LeTourneau industrial complex. LeTourneau once built jack-up drilling rigs and other industrial machinery. At one time, a small neighborhood existed here. The pavement can still be seen in the woods, but all the houses are gone. I assume that this church once served the community.

Dear readers, this has been a rather haphazard tour around Vicksburg and Warren County. There is a lot of old architecture here, and we are gradually losing it. If any of you readers have suggestions of more places to see and photograph, please let me know.

UPDATE: I found a 2018 photograph of the tanks at the Levee Street tank farm.  

Unused tank farm, Levee Street, Vicksburg (Kodak Ektar 25 film, Rolleiflex 3.5E, 75mm ƒ/3.5 Xenotar lens)

From the Archives: Around Vicksburg 1998

Dear Readers, I recently looked through a box of negatives and found a roll of Fuji NGII film from 1998. I remember a gorgeous spring day during which I was testing my new Leica 35mm ƒ/2.0 Summicron lens. I still have this lens and use it regularly. This will be a semi-random look at Vicksburg some two decades ago. (Click any picture to enlarge to 1600 pixels wide.)

Railroad depot, view north, 35mm ƒ/2 Summicron lens, polarizing filter

This is a popular scene that tourists see when they visit the Vicksburg waterfront and view the murals. The Mississippi Valley and Yazoo Railroad Depot was built in 1907 and now houses The Old Depot Museum. The Vicksburg Southern Railroad (VSOR), owned by Watco, operates these tracks for occasional freight to the Port of Vicksburg and to International Paper north of the community of Redwood.

Mulberry Street, Vicksburg 

Lower Grove Street with the Biscuit Company and Velchof's Corner restaurants

Levee Street, view northeast

I took these frames from an apartment on the 3rd floor of the depot. Some young guys were renting the apartment and they kindly let me go out on their balcony. That was before the depot was restored in 2011-2012 (recall how it flooded during the spring 2011 high water). A kidney dialysis clinic occupied the ground floor and the 2nd floor may have been unoccupied.

Former rail sidings at the site where the M/V Mississippi IV is now permanently mounted. 1990 4×5" Fuji 50 transparency, taken on a B&J camera

Since I took these 1998 frames, a number of changes have come to downtown. 10 South Restaurant has been built on top of the bank building. In the lower picture, the M/V Mississippi IV has been permanently mounted on a concrete pad where the old railroad tracks one ran, and the Jesse Brent Lower Mississippi River Museum has been built at 910 Washington Street.

Nice Chevrolet! Corner of Grove and Buck Streets

Ansche Chesed Cemetery, Vicksburg

Anshe Chesed Congregation established this cemetery in 1864 for Vicksburg's Jewish community. In May of 1863, fierce fighting occurred here during the siege of Vicksburg.

Azalea blossoms, Leica 90mm ƒ/2.8 Tele-Elmarit lens

This was a splendid Azalea year, and I could not resist a few "pretty" pictures.

These negatives are from Fuji NGII film. My SilverFast Ai scanning software does not have an NHII profile, so the colors are a bit odd. Resized, they almost look digital, which is not what I am trying to achieve. I think B&W is the more effective way to show the differences between film versus digital capture.

Vicksburg's Lost Masonic Temple

During the early 20th century, most American cities of any size or commercial prominence had a Masonic Temple or Lodge. Often it was a well-built building in the commercial area, typically dating from the late-1800s or early 1900s. The Masons must have been fabulously wealthy to be able to buy land and erect substantial brick buildings in major cities. I sometimes wondered if Vicksburg had a lodge, and by pure chance, found some photographs in the Library of Congress' holdings.

This rather severe three-floor building is the former Masonic Temple, at the corner of Grove and Washington Streets. The view is looking uphill to the east along Grove Street. This building and the small shops to the left were razed sometime before 1985, and the grassy lot now serves the weekly farmers' market. The present Highway 61 Coffeehouse and Attic Gallery are just off the frame to the right, where the cars are pointing. The metadata from Library of Congress does not provide a specific date other than post-1933. My guess from the cars is mid-1970s.

This is the view of the rear. The windows are broken out, so it must have been abandoned at the time the photograph was taken. My friend from Mississippi Department of Archives and History checked and found an undated article from the Vicksburg Sunday Post, apparently from the 1970s with a photo of the building and a caption noting that it had recently "been taken by Urban Renewal" and demolished. The article was mostly about the history of the lodge and the contents of  in its cornerstone. The urban renewal craze of the late-1970s demolished many historic buildings in Vicksburg.

This is a photograph from a 1931 paper (James, P.E. 1931. Vicksburg: A Study in Urban Geography, Geographical Review, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Apr., 1931), pp. 234-243). The Temple is the building with a light roof in the middle left. Note the gas tank in the middle of the photograph near the river.

This is postcard 90864-01-postcard_View North from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. The temple is the tall building in the right center. The Yazoo Canal is in flood, and I wonder if this was taken during the 1927 flood?

This is the grassy field where the buildings once stood. They were already gone when I moved to town in 1985. The limestone block wall in the center may be Civil-War era. The building on the right received a major renovation and conversion into a BBQ restaurant. It operated for only a few months (maybe a couple of years?), and the building is for sale.

The Reverend Dennis painted the Masonic symbol in several places on Margaret's Gro on North Washington Street. He spent two decades decorating the old grocery store as a "Bible Temple to God." The Reverend passed away a few years ago, and his Temple is crumbling away.

If anyone can add any information about the Vicksburg Masonic Temple, please add to the comments. Based on a quick search, I found two present lodges. I do not know how active they are.
1. Masonic Temple, W.G. Paxton Lodge #559; and
2. William H. Stevens Lodge #121, F&AM Masonic Lodge in Vicksburg, MS.