Yazoo City, the
Gateway to the Delta, is situated at the transition of the two main landforms that make up Mississippi's geomorphology, the loess bluffs in the east and the flat alluvial Delta to the west. It is still the county seat of Yazoo County and is located on the banks of the Yazoo River about 40 miles northwest of Jackson. It is only about a hour's drive from Vicksburg along Highway 3, which follows the edge of the loess hills.
Yazoo City must have once been prosperous because the central business core has blocks of early 20th century commercial buildings. But it is quiet now; History Channel could have filmed an episode of
Life After People here. Looking down Main Street, I can almost imagine it crowded with merchants and shoppers in a previous era. The limestone-clad Bank of Yazoo City (1876-1904) has the solid and reassuring facade that was supposed to make patrons trust the institution's solidity. Clearly it was built in an era of optimism and wealth.Why has the optimism disappeared from thousands of small American towns like this? How have we destroyed our society?
There are still a few going concerns on Main Street, but not many. Oddly, the city set up loudspeakers on the light poles which play jazz to the lonely sidewalks.
Update August 20, 2014: This is an undated post card of Main Street, from the Tichnor Collection at the Boston Public Library.
The elegant wood mansions on Jefferson Street resemble similar examples throughout the mid-west. I recall Indianapolis having hundreds of magnificent houses like this.
The house in the photograph above is the Oakes African American Cultural Center at 312 West Monroe Street. It is on the Mississippi Heritage Trust's 2009 list of most endangered historic places.
The owners may have done some work recently to preserve the structure, but in 2009, the Heritage Trust was concerned about it's survival:
"In 1884, their son, A.J., founded Oakes Academy, a private school for blacks, and served as principal for the next 16 years. He resigned in 1900 to work full-time for the Oakes Lumber Company and his construction company, which helped rebuild Yazoo City after a 1904 fire destroyed much of the town. The fire did not reach his company, nor did it climb the hill to the Oakes House, thus allowing it to remain in its original state. By 1930, the one-room structure had grown to a two-story home with Colonial Revival detailing, including a wrap-around two-story gallery supported by Tuscan columns.
Currently the Oakes House is being used as a museum that not only tells the history of the Oakes family, but it also tells of the struggles and triumphs of African Americans in Yazoo County and the State of Mississippi. In the 1990's, an intense project helped restore the leaded-glass entrance doors, original mantels, chimneys, walls, and stairs."
The Bethel AME church, also on South Monroe, is a fine example of church architecture.
The Amtrak train from Chicago comes through Yazoo City and stops here. I took the sleeper from Chicago in June of 2006 and was a bit surprised how many people disembarked here and in Greenwood. There once must have been a depot but am not sure of its fate or whereabouts.
The photograph above, taken through the train window, shows the station in Greenwood, but the scene in Yazoo City is similar.
Some trivia: The actress, Stella Stevens (née Estelle Eggleston) was born in Yazoo City on October 1, 1936. She moved away at age 4.
Please click the link to see my article on the historic
Afro-American Sons and Daughters Hospital, also in Yazoo City and now deserted and collapsing.
Heading south on Hwy 3, the town of Satartia is also pretty quiet, and the convenience store is closed.
Of interest to archaeologists are the Indian burial mounds off Satartia Road between Satartia and Holly Bluff. One is tree-covered, and on the rainy day when a group and I visited the site, the rain had washed out numerous pottery shards. Another mound has a modern home on it. There is a lot to see in the Delta, and I need to do more exploring.
I took these photographs with an Olympus E-330 digital camera or a compact Fuji F31fd.
In the following days, we learned from the Vicksburg Post that the building was being renovated by a couple who moved here from New Orleans. Some workers had cut some joists in the morning of the 25th, and in early afternoon, heard ominous creaks and groans. They rushed out just in time to avoid being squashed.
So what happened? Look at the way the building was built, which was typical of late 1900s commercial buildings in the United States. The vertical bearing walls are three bricks thick. To support a joist, it is inset into the wall by only the width of one brick. The reason why the joist did not penetrate completely through the wall was that, theoretically, if it broke or failed, it would pop out of its support ledge rather than cantilever out and pull the wall down as it rotated downward. As long as the walls continued to stand, new joists could be installed and the building rebuilt. By the way, this kind of construction is deadly in an earthquake.
In the enlargement above, look at how the horizontal beam on the left only penetrated one brick into the wall. The top was tapered away from the wall to ensure that it would tip down without catching the wall. The beam on the right failed exactly as designed. But obviously, something went wrong and the front part of this building collapsed along with the floors.
The sordid saga continued for four years. The city and the building owners argued over who was responsible for cleaning up the street. Half of Clay Street was blocked for over a year. Then the owners wanted to raze the whole structure; the city wanted part of it saved. Years went by with almost nothing happening. We're not known for high speed action here in Vicksburg. As you can see in the last photograph, now all that remains is a piece of the cast iron framework and a window. Sad, another piece of our architectural heritage lost.
