Kuhn Memorial Charity Hospital before the Fence

The City of Vicksburg finally gained legal title to the Kuhn Memorial Charity Hospital and land in late 2016. The legal battles and title searches took several years, and I can't begin to understand the details. On November 29, 2016, I was taking some photographs on Martin Luther King, Jr., Blvd., and a fence company was erecting a chain link fence to secure the property. Therefore, the following photographs may be my last of the condemned site

Severe and formal facade of Kuhn Hospital. The grass field had just been cut.

Entry main door with vandalized furniture.

West side of the hospital complex with the connector passage between the two main buildings.

Former ambulance entrance on the west side.

The interior is such a mess, I did not want to venture inside. I photographed some of the first floor rooms in early 2014 and the upper floors in 2014.

The October 20, 2016 Vicksburg Post summarized the history of the building:

A former city hospital, the city sold Kuhn to the State of Mississippi in 1956 for $5, and the state operated the facility as a charity hospital, initially known as the Vicksburg Charity Hospital, until 1989. 

The city regained the property in 1990 under an agreement with the state to turn it over to a private corporation.

In 1993, the building was considered as a possible veterans home, and in 1994, it was considered for a possible 38-bed adolescent psychiatric ward. 

In 1999, the building was sold to the Lassiter-Studdard Group Inc., which planned to open a 100-bed clinic and assisted living center. The plans fell through, and in 2000 the company donated the building to the Esther Stewart Buford Foundation. 

The property has been sold six times for taxes, and city officials have been trying for at least the past 10 years to get the property owner to clean the property and demolish or renovate the buildings on the site. 

The board on July 6 put the 12.8-acre property under the city’s slum clearance ordinance in a move to step up its efforts to remove the complex’s main building. The city’s efforts to do something with the property accelerated in the aftermath of the abduction and murder of Sharen Wilson, whose body was found on the property June 28. Police said Wilson was killed in the back building and her body left on the property, where ghost hunters who were on the site found it. When the parties with an interest in the property failed to present plans to either raze or renovate the two buildings on the site in September, it cleared the way to begin the process for their demolition.

I took these photographs on Tri-X 400 film with my Fuji GW690II 6×9 camera and its 90mm ƒ/3.5 Fujinon lens. I scanned the negatives with a Minolta ScanMulti medium format scanner operated by SilverFast software. Click any photograph to enlarge it to 2400 pixels wide.

Murdered Body at Kuhn Memorial Hospital, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Sometime late Saturday evening, June 27, 2015, an elderly lady was abducted from her house on Drummond Street. Some paranormal researchers found the body in Kuhn Hospital on Sunday, June 28. Mrs. Sharen Wilson, 69, was last seen at her home on Saturday. The coroner determined that she had been raped and shot after having been brought to the hospital. The dilapidated old building is a hazard and was unsecured, making it almost inevitable that it would become the site for a crime of this magnitude. I have documented the decay before. Here are some more photographs.

 This is an aerial photograph of the hospital before the modern front section was built.

In 1993, the hospital had only been closed for four years, and the windows were still blocked with plywood and secure. This is a scan of a Kodachrome 25 35mm slide, taken with a Leica camera and 35mm Summicron-RF lens.

By 2014, the building was crumbling badly. Copper wire had been looted, the drop ceiling was dropping into soggy piles, and asbestos and black mold dripped down the walls. The roof has partly collapsed in this section.

The interior was piled with debris and wet ceiling remains.

On June 30, 2015, the Vicksburg Post reported:

"City officials are looking for a way to buy the old Kuhn Hospital building at 1422 Martin Luther King Boulevard to demolish it and turn the property over to a developer to turn the site into a residential area. 

“Right now, it looks as if the best option would be to take it down, get some kind of CDBG or any other grant and turn into a housing complex with individual houses,” North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield said. Mayfield is taking the lead in the city’s attempts to resolve the problems with Kuhn, which has been abandoned since 1989, when the State of Mississippi closed it as a charity hospital. 

Mayfield’s comments followed a brief discussion on the property at a work session of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen Monday in the wake of the abduction and death of Sharen Wilson, whose body was found on the property Sunday night. 

“The hospital has been, in my opinion, an eyesore to the community even before I took public office, which has been 20 years, now. The residents in that community have wanted it taken down.” 

The city has been trying for several years to get the property demolished, but has encountered a series of problems in the process. “Every time we get right at the door of either acquiring it or taking it down, another road block shows up,” Mayfield said.

One problem has been determining exactly who has title to the property. According to Warren County tax rolls, the owner is listed as the Esther Stewart Buford Foundation in Yazoo City, but the 12.8-acre tract has been sold multiple times at tax sales, clouding who has the proper title to the land. 

Community Development Director Victor Grey-Lewis said assistant city attorney Bobby Robinson is researching county land records to determine who has the title.
He said Monday the owner of the property has announced they are abandoning the property for tax reasons. 

The second issue is asbestos, which has been discovered in the building. Having an assessment to determine the amount of asbestos and having it removed is expensive, City Attorney Nancy Thomas told the board. Also, she said, a portion of the main building’s roof has collapsed. 

The city applied for an Environmental Protection Agency Brownfields Grant to cover the cost of assessing the building for asbestos, but the application was denied. No one in Mississippi received an assessment grant this year, Grey-Lewis said. Grey-Lewis said the roof’s collapse could help the city get a waiver to have the building assessed for asbestos from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality.

“If the roof is beginning to collapse, we don’t want to send asbestos inspectors into a building that’s collapsing,” he said, adding he has been talking with DEQ officials about a waiver. He said the city may try to acquire the property for the back taxes owed, which presently total $2,798.61. “I’d like to see us acquire it to take it down,” Mayfield said. 

If the city can acquire the property and remove the building, Grey-Lewis said, “Then we have the right under state statute to turn the property over to a developer for a period of two years to work with developing the property. If they can’t, the property can revert back to the city.” 

“I want people to know we have not dropped the ball on this property,” Mayfield said, “but it has been a long process and a lot of stones have been thrown in our path.”
Kuhn Memorial Hospital was built on the site of city hospital that had been in operation since 1847. 

The city deeded the property to the state in 1956, and the hospital became a state-run charity hospital in 1959. It was closed in 1989 under the administration of former Gov. Ray Mabus, when state officials decided to close its three charity hospitals in favor of an expanded Medicaid program."

We are lucky to still have a local newspaper. The Post's stories on Kuhn have been picked up by papers around the country.

Update, November 2016: According to the Vicksburg Post on November 8, 2016,

The City of Vicksburg now officially owns the Kuhn Memorial Hospital property, City Attorney Nancy Thomas told the Board of Mayor and Aldermen Monday. 

“All the parties involved have signed over their titles to the property,” she said. Thomas said after the meeting the city took ownership of the property Nov. 1. 

The news came as the board approved a contract with PPM Consultants to help city officials at no charge apply for a Brownfields grant to help pay the estimated $850,000 cost of removing asbestos and razing the buildings on the property, removing an underground diesel storage tank and clearing and cleaning the property. The city had to own the property to be able to apply for the grant.

Kuhn Memorial Hospital: the Upper Floors

Dear Readers, the old Kuhn Memorial Hospital at 1422 Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard is such a mess, I could not resist showing some photographs from the upper floors. On my own, I was reluctant to venture into the wreck alone, but some paranormal friends joined me and showed me around.

To get to the roof, you walk up some steep steps from the third floor and emerge from a turret. It is a standard graveled industrial roof, now in poor condition. The water tower to the west is in use by City of Vicksburg.

This is the view north towards MLK, Jr., Blvd. (formerly known as Openwood Road). The 2-floor house is very old, possibly Civil War era, and is in poor condition.

This is the building on MLK Blvd. I took this frame with a Leica M2 camera with 50mm f/2 Dual-Range Summicron lens.

 The poison ivy grows all the way up to the roof of the hospital. That is how nature takes over.

The patient rooms on the upper floors in the 1959 wing were probably reasonably cheerful (for a hospital) in their day.

There was once a dumbwaiter to carry food to the upper floors. Notice the sturdy ceramic-glazed tiles.

This was one of the autopsy tables with a convenient drain in the base. My friends said they can detect paranormal activity in this room. I can't, but I am rather oblivious to vibrations and voices.

These cheerful rooms with south exposure were right down the hall from the autopsy room. I suppose that was convenient.

Back down on the first floor was the room with the cadaver refrigerator. Only two stalls in this one. Maybe the upper bin was for bits and pieces (like a removed leg)?

This was the hall leading in from the ambulance entry on the west side. The cadaver room was just off to the left.

On the ground floor out back, there was long room with a fireplace. We thought it might have been a doctors' lounge, but my friend later learned it was a solarium for patients. The open portico is turning to jungle.

This room, just behind the solarium, is collapsing.

Finally, this is one of two huge boilers. I am surprised no one has tried to cut it up for the scrap metal, but it may be too massive.

Urban spelunkers, if you want to look at Kuhn, do it soon. The decay is advancing so quickly, the City will need to act on demolition within the next few years. And, they may have to secure the site prevent someone being injured (and suing the City). On September 29, 2013, the Mississippi Business Journal wrote,

VICKSBURG — The city of Vicksburg has given the owner of a 54-year-old building that once housed the Kuhn Memorial Hospital, once one of Mississippi’s three charity hospitals, 120 days to decide its fate.
The Vicksburg Post reports that the order was issued this week by city building and inspection director Victor Gray-Lewis.
The order came after a Sept. 18 hearing held on the property. No one from Ester Stewart Buford Foundation of Yazoo City, which owns the property, or Long Land Investments of Lauderdale County or Adair Asset Management LLC/U.S. Bank showed up, Gray-Lewis said. The hearing was not open to the public.
Long Land acquired the property at the 2011 county tax sale. Adair got it at the 2012 tax sale. Neither has redeemed the property.
“Someone’s going to have to fix it or take it down,” Gray-Lewis said. “They can’t leave it as it is.”
If no action is taken after 120 days, he said, he will take the matter to the Board of Mayor and Aldermen for a recommendation.
If the property owners do not take action, Gray-Lewis said, the city can decide to demolish the building, which he said is expensive. Under the state’s slum clearance law, the city can sell the cleared property to recover the cost of demolition.
“I hope it won’t come to that,” he said.
The hospital was closed in 1989 along with two other charity hospitals in Meridian and Laurel.
The hospital was built in 1959 on 12.8 acres. The building was given to the city in 1990. While the city owned it, a Louisiana company proposed renovating the building as a 118-bed adolescent psychiatric facility, but the plan fell through.
In 1996, the city sold the property to Frank Lassiter of Lassiter Associates in Baton Rouge, La. Lassiter proposed using the building as an assisted living facility and clinic. The project, he said, would employ 100 to 150 people.
The property was sold in 2000 to Bob Pitts, who donated it to the Esther Stewart Buford Foundation the next year.

If you are interested in black and white photographs, please click here.

Kuhn Hospital is becoming popular. The Tennessee Paranormal Society came to visit.

The extra-wide angle photographs in today's tour are from a Panasonic G3 digital camera with the Olympus 9-18mm lens for micro 4/3 mount, all tripod-mounted. The other frames were from a Fuji X-E1 camera with the Fuji 27mm lens. All RAW files processed with PhotoNinja software.

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June 29, 2015 update:  Paranormal investigators found a body in the hospital. "Police Chief Walter Armstrong confirmed that the body is that of 69-year-old Sharon Wilson, who was reported missing. Wilson's attackers broke into her Drummond Street home and abducted her late Saturday night, police said." (From WAPT News, 06/29/2015). The two thugs were apprehended in Leland because of reckless driving. They were in the victims' SUV. It's hard to believe they could be so stupid.

Return to Kuhn Hospital in Black and White XP2 film

About a month ago, three Vicksburg friends and I toured the old and increasingly derelict Kuhn Memorial Hospital, formerly known as the State Charity Hospital. The address is 1422 Martin Luther King Blvd., Vicksburg, Mississippi, if you want to visit the site. I have written about the hulk before, and it is in worse condition than ever. Every bit of copper has been stripped from the inside. The roof is leaking.

This is the view looking out towards MLK Blvd. (formerly Openwod Road) from the hospital's ambulance entry. The house in the distance, possibly Civil War-era, is empty. There used to be another historic house just to the left.

I really like the gloomy old hallways because they lead your eye to the distance and have dramatic patterns of light and shadow.

This is one of the boilers for hot water, laundry, and heat (via radiators). The fuzz looks like fiberglass rather than asbestos.

This is one of the few pieces of furniture left in a 2nd floor room.

Camera notes: I used film in my Fujifilm medium format GW690II rangefinder camera. As an experiment, I tried Ilford XP2, a chromogenic black and white film that is processed in standard C41 chemicals. It is a color print film that has only monochrome dyes in the emulsion. A big advantage of this product is convenience; you can send it to any laboratory that still runs a C41 processing line. I exposed at ISO 200, measuring light with a Gossen Luna-Pro meter in incident mode. I scanned these XP2 negatives at 3200 dpi, but could have scanned at 4800 dpi and extracted even more data. These are resized jpeg files with no tinting or film simulation (after all, this was film). The lens on the Fuji GW690II has amazing resolution.

Conclusion: The XP2 has a long exposure range from pitch dark to glaring white, and it is amazingly fine grain. But, I just do not like the look, so in the future, I will return to using traditional silver-halide film, like Kodak Tri-X. I still have Panatomic-X in the freezer, Kodak's long-discontinued fine-grain ISO 32 film, which I develop in Agfa Rodinal developer.

Previous photographs of the hospital: March 2014;  July 2012
Mississippi Preservation had an article on the hospital in 2010. It describes some of the thinking behind closing the state charity hospitals.

Thanks to Rob Hood of Mississippi Film & Photo, David Childers of Twisted Carnival, and Kassie Childers.

September 3 update:

Here are two more black and white frames, from the former entry hall in the front building

I took these photographs with a 1962-vintage Leica M2 camera and a 35mm f/2.0 Summicron Type 4 lens. The film was Kodak BWC, also a C-41-processed film. In 35mm format, the chromogenic film may be more successful than in 120 format. The current name for this film is BW400CN. Kodak has discontinued it, so I recommend you stock up for future use.

Update

As of March 2019, the Kuhn Hospital has been totally demolished.