Jackson Street Branch YMCA, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Long-time residents of Vicksburg will remember that the YMCA once had two branches in town. The main facility was the handsome brick building at 821 Clay Street (see the 2010 article for interior photographs). A prominent local citizen, Mrs. Junius Ward, provided funds for this structure as a memorial to her husband.  But this was the era of segregation, so Mrs. Ward generously provided funds for a separate YMCA building on Jackson Street for African-American men. The Jackson Street Branch opened in 1924 and remained in service until the early 1990s. It was demolished in 1995 to make way for a new community center (the formal address is 923 Walnut Street).

As the photographs show, the Jackson Street branch was a handsome and formal 2-floor brick building with "1924" engraved in the panel above the entry door. It contained some residence rooms like the ones in the Clay Street branch.

I never went inside while it was in operation, but took photographs when it was being demolished.

Interior view of auditorium, taken during demolition.  Leica M3 with 135mm Tele-Elmar lens.

Photograph taken with a Leica M3 and the 8-element 35 mm f/2 Summicron-RF lens.

The gymnasium once occupied a big section of the building. Up through the 1970s, the famous Red Tops held rehearsals every Monday evening at the Jackson Street Y, possibly in this space. As you can see, construction was substantial. I often wonder why the wood beams and bricks were not recycled rather than just crushed and trucked away.

Finally, here is another interesting structure, a remnant of the architecture that once dominated Vicksburg. This Queen Anne-style building is at 916 Walnut Street. In 1992, it was used by the Elks Club, but another fraternal organization occupies it now. As of 2013, it is on the City's condemned list. Notice the roof, covered with zinc or galvanized roof shingles.

The first photograph was taken with a Pentax Spotmatic camera with 150 mm Super-Takumar lens on Kodachrome 25 film. Black and white photographs taken with a Leica M3 rangefinder camera with 35mm f/2.0 Summicron-RF lens (the famous first generation 8-element version) and 135mm Tele-Elmar lens on Kodak Tri-X film. The square frames were taken with a Rolleiflex 3.5E camera on Kodak VPS HC film (another great emulsion that is now discontinued).

Update: Shotgun shacks demolished, Mary's Alley, Vicksburg

In 2010, I posted some photographs of the cottages and shotgun shacks on Mary's Alley, in the Kings area of North Vicksburg. The houses had been condemned by the City because they frequently flooded.

As of mid-2012, the houses are gone. This is a recent aerial photograph taken with 6-inch pixel resolution. The footprints of the former houses are outlined in yellow. The footprints were based on 1995 aerial photography.  I converted one of the layers in the 1995 Microstation .dgn files to ESRI Shapefiles.  As you can see, many of the houses in this area have been demolished. Deconstruction...

 Map created with ESRI ArcMap GIS software version 10.0

Dinks Alley: Another Hidden Vicksburg Road

Dinks Alley is another one of those off-the-beaten-path roads that you would not know exists unless you live there or have a specific reason to visit. Dinks Alley is parallel to Mission 66, with access on the west side of the road close to the intersection with East Avenue. One can hear the traffic on Mission 66, but because of the thick brush, most drivers on the main road probably have no idea that the alley is just to the west. I learned about it from the City's demolition list, printed in the Vicksburg Post. The house at no. 251 was on the list, so I drove there to check it out.


No. 251 had already been razed, but the cottage next door, no. 249, was deserted with its roof collapsing. It looked like it was 1930s or 1940s-vintage and may have once been a cheerful place. The paint was decent, so someone took care of it less than a decade ago.

The roof over the front room collapsed. The nasty paneling suggests this had been a rental unit, although I have seen plenty of privately-owned houses with this stuff on the walls.

The back lost its steps or porch. The house next door was in much better condition and was occupied.

All photographs taken with a Panasonic G1 digital camera. Map drawn with ESRI® ArcMap software.

Fading commercial block on Grove Street, Vicksburg

View north, from "Vicksburg: A Study in Urban Geography" (1931).

As late as the 1930s, a view to the northwest from a tall building in downtown Vicksburg would have revealed a bustling commercial city with warehouses, shops, small manufacturing concerns, and homes. The black and white photograph is 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). Today, many of those shops, warehouses, and commercial buildings are gone, lost to fire and neglect. Empty lots leave few clues as to what was once on those sites. Old-timers tell me that the 1970s "urban renewal" was deadly to historic architecture.

917-921 Grove Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi

In this article, we concentrate on a partial block of commercial buildings at the corner of Grove and Walnut (see the circle on the map). Once, the block must have continued downhill to Washington Street, but since the mid-1980s, these are the only remnants. The middle building is 917 Grove, the one on the right 921 Grove.


The simplicity and symmetry of these buildings always intrigued me, and I photographed them many times. The color views above are scans of Kodachrome 25 film taken with a Leica M3 rangefinder camera.


These two black and white photographs from 1990 are prints on Polaroid Type 54 film, taken with a 4x5" camera with a 90 mm Kodak Ektar lens.  Type 54 was a wonderful, full-tonal range print medium. A good friend told me she used to visit a club or lounge in one of the buildings. A hair-dresser also occupied one of the shops for many years.

Here is the same front-on view in color, another Kodachrome scan. Notice how the architect had to fit the building on a steeply-sloping hill.

Kodachrome, Leica camera with 20 mm Russar lens

In 2004, the building on the left was ready to collapse and the roof had partly fallen. This interesting stair led up to a door on the back. Photographs taken with Kodak Panatomic-X film in a Fuji GW690II camera.

Afterwards, someone partly rebuilt the building, but a recent article in the Vicksburg Post said the city was ready to condemn one of the units (I am not sure which one). As usual, fate unknown.

Update July 2013:  Here are two interior photographs from the corner building, no. 721.  You can see a small fireplace.  Most of these small fireplaces were used with a coal insert, not for open wood fires. With Vicksburg being a railroad junction, there was always coal available, and coal burned hot and long.

Grove Street commercial block from Washington Street, 2013

(If any readers know more of the history of these buildings, please comment. Thank you!)

Kuhn Memorial (Charity) Hospital, Vicksburg, Mississippi

The long-abandoned Kuhn Memorial Hospital, in Vicksburg, Mississippi, has become a popular site for urban archaeology, or at least for decay photography. The spooky old buildings are only a half mile northeast of the Warren County Courthouse on a large lot south of Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard, formerly known as Jackson Road.

The site was the original location of the Vicksburg City Hospital in the 1830s. The State took over the operation of the facility in 1871 and re-named it the State Charity Hospital at Vicksburg. For an excellent summary of the hospital's history, readers can refer to a 2010 article in Preservation Mississippi. The red brick building ("a substantial house") in the antique postcard (from Mississippi Department of Archives and History) was in use until 1962. A modern annex was built in the rear in 1959 and the institution was renamed Kuhn Memorial Hospital. One of the comments written in response to the Preservation Mississippi article noted that the 4th floor was a minimum security prison. Another noted the presence of mental patients.

The building on the right was an annex for Confederate veterans. It burned under mysterious circumstances in 1918. The site is now forested. Today, we forget that for well over a half century following the Civil War, veterans from both sides of the conflict needed medical care and, often, housing and food. Many were crippled or in very poor health.

The state replaced the original brick house in 1962 with this substantial and rather stern modern building. In 1993, it was still secure and intact. (Kodachrome slide taken with a Leica M3 rangefinder camera and the 35 mm f/2 Summicron-RF lens (the famous 1st generation 8-element version)). 

The hospital is still visible from MLK Boulevard, but is now moldering and nasty.

These photographs show the east and west sides of the 1962 building, with the 1959 annex in the back.

On December 31, 1989, The Vicksburg Post ran an article titled, "Closing of Kuhn Memorial Is Vicksburg's Top 1989 Story." The article summarized the convoluted arguments in the 1989 legislative session regarding funding for Medicaid versus continuing to fund Mississippi's three charity hospitals.

On February 23, 2010, The Vicksburg Post ran an article on the hospital titled, "20 Years After." The former business manager remembered how the hospital was a multifunctional facility, with a burn center, occupational therapy, and physical therapy. Kuhn provided free or low-cost health care to residents from all over central Mississippi. Most were Medicare patients after the program began in 1965. The hospital employed a variety of specialists, including doctors from the Philippines, Cuba, and Korea. In addition to medical services, the hospital was also a training facility for nurses and resident doctors.

The hospital closed its doors in 1989, a victim of changing economic priorities and poor economic modeling. Details of the closure can be seen in the Mississippi Code of 1972, as Amended. "(1) From and after July 1, 1989, the Kuhn Memorial State Hospital at Vicksburg, the South Mississippi State Hospital at Laurel, and the Matty Hersee Hospital at Meridian shall be closed, and the Legislature shall not appropriate any funds for the operation of those hospitals after that date." Thus ended the era of state charity hospitals in Mississippi. 

Medical care for the poor continues to be abysmal in this state. And the state government refuses to expand Medicaid, another chapter in the sad saga of marginalizing and degrading the poor.  

In 1994, the State gave the land back to the City of Vicksburg (according to The Vicksburg Post article). In 1996, the City sold the property to Lassiter Associates of Baton Rouge. As of 2012, it belongs to the Ester Stewart Buford Foundation of Yazoo City. 

For a few years, the buildings were locked and windows secured with plywood. Once vandals removed the plywood, deterioration accelerated.

This is the breezeway that connected the 1959 and 1962 buildings.

The interior is a mess of decayed and collapsed acoustic ceiling tile, vandalized electrical fittings, and peeling paint. On my own, I hesitate to venture too far into the building because of security. One day, a policeman drove around the property in his cruiser and seemed most surprised to see me with my large tripod. He did not expel me but warned me of debris and hazards (hint, better clear out).

This is a loading dock on the west side of the 1959 building, near the prominent water tower that is visible from a long distance. This is a height of land, possibly selected in the 1800s because of breeze and fewer mosquitoes.

(April 2014 note: Please click the link for a 2014 update.)

UPDATE: the entire hospital has been razed. There is no remnant left for photography or exploring. 

This is one of the older parts of town, and Jackson Street (Openwood Road) was the historical route to Jackson. This pink wood-frame house at 1499 MLK Boulevard has been deserted since 2010. (2014 update: the house has been demolished.)

A few blocks to the east is Feld Street, another one of Vicksburg's little-known one-way streets (see Figure 1, the road map). The road runs along a ridge crest, and the houses line the road at ground level, with their rear sections supported on pillars. This was a common construction practice early in the 20th century. Nos. 512 and 516 were both deserted and on the City condemnation list. Once lost, these lots canon be redeveloped.

I took the 2010 photographs with a Sony DSC-R1 digital camera, tripod-mounted. The two 2012 photographs are from my Panasonic G1 camera mounting a 1949-vintage Leica 5 cm ƒ/2.0 Summitar lens. At maximum aperture of ƒ/2.0, it produces swirly aberrations around a sharp center.

For later articles and photographs of Kuhn Hospital, please type "Kuhn" in the search box. 

Demolition of Shelter 3 at the Waterways Experiment Station, May 2012 Update

Some readers may remember a 2011 post showing  the interior of Waves Shelter 3 (Building 3100) at the Waterways Experiment Station, in Vicksburg, Mississippi.


After electrical work, removal of some trailers, and rerouting optical cables, the demolition is finally underway. I am surprised what a small work crew can accomplish the project. One or two workers use cutting torches to cut bolts, and the diesel machines literally pull down big sections of roof and girders.


Dealing with the debris is harder work. The metal is cut with big pincers, and the material is placed in large open dump trucks, whence it is taken off station. This makes me realize what an immense amount of junk and waste we generate in our modern society. An old wooden house eventually collapses and rots, but this steel must be actively recycled (melted and reused) or else it will linger in landfills for centuries.

Photographs taken with a Fujifilm F31fd digital camera.