More Pearl Street Cottages, Vicksburg, Mississippi: 2014

Long-term readers may remember my 2010 essay on cottages of Pearl Street, Vicksburg. A notice in the Vicksburg Post about a house that had been condemned inspired me to revisit Pearl Street. The news is bad: many houses have been razed, and many of the remaining are in poor condition. This once-vibrant community is simply crumbling away.  Let's start at the north and work our way south, with house numbers increasing. This is a long article with plenty of houses to cover. You will see recent photographs along with scans of Kodachrome slides from the 1980s and 1990s.

The railroad has always run parallel to Pearl Street, at least since the Civil War. This is the main line to Jackson. The 2005 photograph is from the new embankment, which cuts across land once owned by Vicksburg Lumber Company. The railroad bought it to reduce the radius of the curve as the trains turn east to go under the Washington Street tunnel.

2000 Pearl Street, 2004 (Kodachrome slide).

The first house on our tour is No. 2000.  This is the west side of the street, where the land drops off steeply down to the railroad yard a few hundred meters further west.  Therefore, the rear of most of these west houses are supported on stilts.

The little house at 2004 was condemned, according to a January 7 article in the Vicksburg Post. The City had been unable to locate the owner, and the inspector deemed it a hazard. Notice in the third photograph, the far wall beyond the door has been totally eaten by termites. By February 22 (2014), the house was gone.This is how we have lost so much housing over the last two to three decades: the place deteriorates, the owner is gone and cannot be located, and the city is forced to raze the unit and take ownership of the parcel. Then the property no longer generates tax revenue.

Next on our tour is this house at 2014. As of February 2014, it was still standing.

This is no. 2114, with an awning and asphalt siding shingles. This house also was standing in 2014.

No. 2118 is occupied and in fair condition.

2123 Pearl Street

A bit further south on the east (opposite) side of the tracks is 2123. It is empty, status unknown.

This big mansion is at 500 Klein Street. It was once a tour home but may be for sale now.

Also on the east side, a set of small cottages. This is No. 2213.

The little yellow shotgun is No. 2215.

No. 2217 is almost identical, except for the porch having siding.

The last of the group is No. 2219.  All of these were occupied as of February, 2014.

Moving on to the 2300 block, this little store was at 2328 Pearl. Now it is a dull brown paint and unused.

Located across the street from 2328, this pink unit at 2410 may have also been a store. As I recall, it has been empty for years but is in reasonable condition. It is interesting to consider that there were once enough residents to support two neighborhood groceries.

 No. 2414 is a cottage, occupied in 2003.

No. 2416 had a home-made brick half facade.

No. 2418 was in poor condition in 2003, and is gone now.

No. 2420 was a duplex. I think it is also gone now.

Up on the east side was no. 2421, in poor condition in 2003, and demolished soon after.

The next house on the east side, 2423, was also in poor condition in 2003.  It, too, is gone.

Back on the west side, no. 2424 was painted and sound.

No. 2426 was a cheerful little place with a couch out front.

No. 2428 was another blue house (at least in 2003). Notice that in the 1993 photograph above, it was pink.

The house at 2430 was the last on the west side of the tracks. Further south (to the left in the photograph), the land drops off steeply. Possibly years ago there were more houses on stilts, but I do not remember them.

These were my basketball buddies from 2002. I wonder where they live now?

This yellow house at 2504 is unusual in that it is made of cinder-block. It is empty now.

No. 2508 was on the west side and was condemned as of 2003.

Across the street on the east side was No. 2509, one of many cottages formerly on the hillside.

Just a bit south, no. 2521 soldiers on, usually in rather rough shape. Several other houses nearby have been demolished, ones that I did not photograph.

No. 2529 and a matching unit next are still occupied.

This is no. 2531, almost identical to the former.

This is no. 3513 up on a hill. In 2006, when I took the photograph, it had just been repainted and fixed..

The small cottage at no. 3607 is the last house on this Pearl Street tour.

So many of the houses have been demolished, it is hard to tell exactly where they once stood. The lots are covered with grass or brush. To think, once this was a vibrant mixed neighborhood with hundreds of residents, but is rapidly depopulating. This is the fate of so many small American towns.

I took most 1980s and 1990s frames on Kodachrome 25 film with a Leica M3 camera and the 50 mm ƒ/2.8 Elmar lens (the post WWII version with lanthanum glass). The 2014 images are digital files from a Fujifilm X-E1 digital camera.

Levee Street Railroad Warehouse Demolition, Vicksburg, Mississippi

The 1870s warehouse/office, built by the Louisville, New Orleans & Texas Railway, has been demolished. The photograph above shows the site at the Kansas City Southern railroad yard on Levee Street, Vicksburg. Please see the August entry for photographs of the standing building. I was out of town when it was torn down and do not know what happened to the bricks.

Update Sep. 3, 2017: I added this 1990 photograph of the warehouse to remind viewers of its once handsome appearance. This is a scan of a 4×5-inch Fujichrome 50 transparency, taken on a B&J camera.
The rail yard is much quieter now than before the spring 2011 Mississippi River flood. Ten and twenty years ago, the yard was always packed with rail cars, but now the tracks are mostly empty.
Here is a photograph from 1990 taken from the ramp that leads to a gate in the flood wall. The cars belong to workers who are offshore. As you can see, the rail yard is well-filled with rail cars. (Scanned from a Polaroid Type 54 4×5-inch print, taken with a Tachihara 4×5" camera with 90mm f/6.8 Wollensak Raptar l

ens).

Railroad Warehouse, Levee Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Drive on Levee Street in Vicksburg south of the waterfront and the casino, and you soon reach the Kansas City Southern railroad yard. This is a historic railroad yard and has been in continuous use since before the Civil War. There is still a turntable, and there was once a brick roundhouse, but it was demolished sometime in the 1970s, I was told. One remnant of the 1800s remains, a forlorn and sad but once handsome brick building. According to the Vicksburg Post (20 January 2008), it was once a warehouse and work shop for steam engine supplies, but it now sits neglected and deteriorating.

Some Vicksburg residents do not know about the warehouse. The view above shows the railroad yard from Klein Street, looking west. The steel building beyond is part of the Anderson Tully wood mill.

This is the west side of the building, seen from Levee Street. A marble plaque above the louvered entry shows "L. N. O. & T. 1890, R.T. Wilson, President, J.M. Edwards, Vice Pres." According to the Mississippi Rails web page, the abbreviation stood for the Louisville, New Orleans & Texas Railway, in operation from 1884 to 1892. It was sold to the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad in October of 1892 (this is the name on the Vicksburg Depot, highlighted in a previous blog entry this year). As of December 2010, the plaque had disappeared from the facade.

The south side has a section of wall that is collapsing. Some of the window sashes had broken and the glass has fallen out.


The north side had a loading dock. Overall, it is in as bad condition as the south side.

As of 2010, many of the windows were broken. Sad, this was a handsome building in its day with nice proportions.


The rooms inside have old tools and furniture strewn about. I have never been able to walk inside but could take photograph through the windows.

The handcart above is the type you see in old movies where the porter takes the elegant passengers' luggage into the terminal, with dramatic lighting, steam hissing from the locomotives, and the couple smoking into each others faces (and then kissing without brushing their teeth).

Ledgers were kept in a pre-computer age.

According to the Vicksburg Post article, there are no plans to restore the building, and calls to Kansas City Southern railroad were not returned. Another piece of our heritage will soon be lost.

Finally, here is the turntable I mentioned earlier. KCS rebuilt it about 20 years ago. The old one looked like it had the original timbers and machinery from 100 years ago. I do not know how often it is used. The brick engine barn (roundhouse) would have been located about where the modern steel shed is situated. In the old days, all railroad yards needed a turntable because steam locomotives did not run in reverse as efficiently as forward. Therefore, the easiest way to turn them around was to place them on a turntable. There is less need now because modern diesel/electric locomotives run in either direction.

This the the motor and chain mechanism to spin the turntable. It had to be robust because of the weight of the locomotives. Notice the disk brake mechanism.

(2008 photographs taken with an Olympus E-330 digital camera, tripod-mounted. 2010 photographs with a Sony DSC-R1 camera. The turntable photograph was taken with an Olympus 9-18mm lens at the 9mm setting (equivalent to 18 mm on 35 mm film) on a Panasonic G1 camera.)

2014 update: I added two photographs.