Clay Street Collapse - the Remnants

Long-term readers may remember that in 2011, I summarized the sordid story of how the late-1800s commercial building at 515 Clay Street, Vicksburg, collapsed in January of 2006. Fortunately, no one was killed, but a car was squashed. Thereafter, the City of Vicksburg and the owners of the building fought in court for years about whether they could demolish the remains, and Clay street was partially blocked for months with a pile of bricks. It was a comedy of errors.

Well, eight years later, the street is clear, but there is still debris in the old lot. This is a view looking north across the lot.

This is the view from Clay Street looking east to the site where 515 Clay once stood. The building in the back is the Adolph Rose Building.

This is a portion of the basement that survived.

This is the view east along Clay Street from the newly renovated 1903-vintage First National Bank building. Some very nice apartments, known as The Lofts, have opened there and will offer high-end downtown residences. It is nice to see the downtown revitalized.  The Adolph Rose building, in the center left, lost a big section of brick wall when no. 515 collapsed (see the first figure). The light-colored section of bricks shows the repaired section. As another example of revitalization, the old Strand Theater in the basement of the Rose has reopened. The Strand, operated by Westside Theater Foundation, offers independent international films. I wrote about the Strand in a 2011 article. Folks, support your downtown businesses and merchants!

Aug. 24, 2014 update: here is a post card from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. It is an undated view of Clay Street with the Adolph Rose building in the center of the block, behind the trolley car.

Margaret's Grocery, Vicksburg, Mississippi: the Early Days

Margaret's Grocery at 4535 North Washington Street is an amazing piece of folk art crafted by the Reverend H.D."Preacher" Dennis. Many people have photographed the site, including the talented local photographer Marty Kittrell (see his blog), but I would like to add some photographs from my 1980s and 1990s archives. This first photograph is from December 1985, soon after H.D. married Margaret Rogers. At that time, it really was a local grocery store catering to nearby residents from the Kings neighborhood. There were just a few of the hand-crafted decorations that later transformed the humble shop.

By 1988, look at the brickwork! Reverend Dennis is the tall gent framed by the brick arch. He was proud of his work, and as many locals know, once he started talking about his love for the Lord and his temple, he went on, and on, and on... He told me that at the end of World War II, he worked as a prison guard for German prisoners and learned his brick skills from them. He said they were the best craftsmen anywhere. Germans had an affinity for Rev. Dennis because many German tourists visited, as proven by testimonials in German in the guest book. The photograph above is a scan of a 4×5-inch Fujichrome transparency.

You can see how brilliant the colors were when fresh. It was a difficult site to photograph because you needed to be there in the morning when the sun shone on the front. (The two frames above are from Fuji Reala film exposed with a Rolleiflex camera.)

Here is a 1990 detail of one of the towers.

Here is an April 1996 photograph, with a yellow motif along the roof line. The Coca Cola signs along the awning have been painted over.

Along with the exterior, Rev. Dennis was working on the inside. He eventually covered almost the entire ceiling and most of the walls with flowers, clocks, paintings, crosses, and things I can't name. This was a badly underexposed Kodachrome slide from 2002 that took some effort to scan and bring out details from the darkest areas.

I am not sure when the famous bus appeared on the property, but it was there in 2002, already decorated. This was another difficult Kodachrome to scan because the windows were overexposed while the ceiling was dark. Nowadays, digital imaging handles the exposure range much more gracefully.

Margaret passed away in 2010 and the Rev. Dennis had to move to a nursing home. Since then, vandals have stolen art and architectural features, and rain and weathering are taking their toll. In a later blog I will show readers what the Gro looks like today. The Vicksburg Post has featured Margaret's Grocery several times over the years, with the most recent article on 15 August, 2010.

Back in the 1980s, North Washington Street had a number of odd places to see. Here is a former Corvair junk yard. I wonder where they all went? People restore Corvairs now.

The Packard Showroom: 913 Washington Street, Vicksburg, MS

North Washington Street was once a busy commercial thoroughfare, but over the years, many of the warehouses and shops have been torn down. One of the few survivors is this 1911-vintage automobile showroom at 913 Washington Street. A Vicksburg Post article (27 December 2010) states the building was originally used for wagon and carriage manufacture but was later a Packard showroom. I found a June, 1990, Kodachrome slide in my archives which still shows a Packard sign.

The Packard web site does not list McKay Motors but does list a dealer called Christian & Brough Company at 919 Washington Street.
Today, only the southern section of the building stands. The center unit was dismantled by the City of Vicksburg on February 1, 2007. The roof had deteriorated but several people have told me that the building was not in such dangerous condition that it could not have been saved. This section may have once housed a 7-Up bottling plant, which was in operation in the 1950s.

During the 1970s through the early-1980s, the building housed the Monte Carlo club, which booked nationally-known rhythm and blues bands. In the early 2000s, a club named Faces operated here for a short while. The owner put a lot of effort into fixing and decorating, but I am not sure why it closed. The good news is a local businessman, Mr. Malcolm Carson, has bought the building and is in the process of cleaning and renovating it.

The interior still has some of its original architectural decorative elements, like this beautiful support.


Among the remnants of the "Faces" era are piles of furniture and props and some spectacular murals painted on the walls. The one above is on the ground floor on the south side. The props (debris) include chairs, Victrolas, tables, and clocks.


Walk up the stairs to the second floor and you see another wide open space that could have numerous future uses. I was told that this may have once been the automobile repair shop, but I did not see evidence of lifts or hydraulic equipment, and possibly people are thinking of the building next door (the one that was dismantled).


More of these funky murals are on the second floor, the example above at the top of the stairs.


They were painted in 2002 by an artist named Mark McElroy, whose signature appears on the lower right of the mural of the robust lady.


I love the silhouette of the dancing couple, and the scowling lady glares down at the audience from near the ceiling.

There are even movie seats and a signboard amongst the debris.

What can be done with this building? A group of artists and historians may form a non-profit organization to preserve what remains of Margret's Grocery, which is deteriorating rapidly from the weather and vandals. Possibly 913 Washington Street could become a museum of Afro-American heritage. The location is perfect because Vicksburg already attracts tourists, and the Corps of Engineers' Lower Mississippi River Museum and Interpretive Site is right across the street. Maybe we finally have enough momentum to revive downtown.

(All interior images are from a FujiFilm F31fd compact digital camera. Photographs 1 and 2 are scans of Kodachrome 25 transparencies, taken with a Pentax Spotmatic camera and the 150 mm f/4 Super-Takumar lens.)

Jo-Anna Motel, North Washington Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi

North Washington Street runs from downtown Vicksburg to the junction with 61 bypass. On the east side of Washington Street, near the turnoff at Haining Road, which leads to the Port of Vicksburg, sat the Jo-Anna Motel (address 1750 Washington St.). The brick rooms were arranged in an en echelon pattern with a two-floor unit at the north end. A friend told me she remembered when it was built in the late 1940s or early 1950s. According to the Preservation in Mississippi blog, the architect was N.D. Galo, presumably of Vicksburg.

The Jo-Anna was typical of the American trailer court, catering to a post-war generation on the move. With flowers in the planters out front, it was probably a cheerful place in its prime. But since the 1980s, it was nasty-looking, and I recall seeing equally rough cars parked there. However, some renovations had been made, and the asbestos tile roof was replaced with a new metal roof in the 1990s.

The Jo-Anna once had an attached restaurant. My friend said she remembered going there with her parents for Sunday dinner. But as you can see, the restaurant had converted into a beer joint of seedy disposition.

At least they asked patrons to not bring their weapons. Maybe the establishment provided them. All the buildings were purchased by the Park Service and demolished around 2005 or 2006. The land is now part of the Vicksburg Military Park but is not being used.

This scan of a post card is courtesy of a friend who writes the Preservation in Mississippi blog. Notice this shows the units to have flat roofs. Also, the artist took some geological liberty when drafting the post card: the hill behind does not exist. Maybe tectonics since the 1950s resulted in some orogeny (mountain-building).....

Update August 20, 2014. I found the origin of the postcard. It is from the Tichnor Collection at the Boston Public Library. Some 25,000 post cards from the BPL are posted on flickr.