Jackon Street Missionary Baptist Church, Vicksburg, Mississippi

The Jackson Street Missionary Baptist Church is a handsome, imposing brick church at the corner of Jackson and 2nd North Streets. It is one of many churches in Vicksburg, which I hope to feature in upcoming articles.

Photograph 1994 taken with a Fuji GW690II camera on Velvia film. 

I do not know too much about the history of the Jackson Street MB Church, but the cornerstone shows construction in 1901. This was an active and devoted African American community to support construction of such a handsome building. The 1994 photograph was taken on Fuji Velvia film with a Fuji GW690II rangefinder camera.

Once when I was photographing here, an elderly lady told me with pride that the bricks had been made by slaves. She had the chronology off by a few decades, but the pride in the church was clearly there. The church never had stained glass, but many of the window panes are original and display the rippled pattern you see in old glass.  Jackson Street here is still brick-paved, as were most Vicksburg Streets around 1900. Notice the rough pattern, which I was told was designed to let horses get traction. Most of the glazed bricks are amazingly intact.

At one time, the second-floor door led to a fire escape. The church was not originally designed with handicapped access. The congregation hopes to purchase the high-elevation lot next door and pave it for parking. Then elderly members of the congregation will be able to enter the church via a bridge through this door directly into the 2nd floor.

One of the deacons (is this the right term?) showed me around one Saturday. The balcony was originally equipped with theater seats. He told me the church was originally built with plaster walls directly on the brick bearing walls. It was hard to heat in winter and was drafty, so the congregation installed sheetrock on top of furring strips, which provided a degree of insulation. The church is now centrally heated.

This is the late-1800s cottage at 1412 Jackson Street, right next to the church. It is a handsome, traditional wood cottage but now in poor condition. The City inspector marked it for demolition with the spray-painted number on the front. It may have once been multi-family with the three entry doors. This is the lot that the church hopes to buy and use for parking.

This is the view north across Jackson Street from the porch of the condemned cottage. The house below is no. 1413. St. Mary's Catholic Church is on the hill to the north, at the corner of Main and 2nd North Streets.

This 2-floor unit is at 1415 Jackson Street.

At the top of the hill is 1907. A lady told me that it was over 100 years old. Two houses were located in the empty lot in the foreground, but they were torn down. She said the land is sinking because of a large drain below.

This little store is at 1001 2nd East Street. It once served the local community. Note: this building is cinder block, so probably post-World War II. I wonder if it replaced an older wood store?

This cute cottage is at 918 2nd North.

Most photographs taken with a Panasonic G1 digital camera, all tripod-mounted.  (As I have written before, use a tripod for architecture, set your camera at its lowest ISO setting, and use the optimum aperture for your lens.  Optimum is usually 1 or 2 f-stops closed from maximum aperture.)  For some of these frames, I was testing a new Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 lens.. Map made with ESRI ArcMap GIS software.

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.

Condemned Beach Houses at South Nags Head, North Carolina

Long-term readers may remember my 2010 article on the group of condemned beach houses at South Nags Head, North Carolina. In 2010, the surf zone was literally under the piles that supported the houses, and everyone assumed they would soon collapse. The City had condemned them because of exposed septic tanks.
To everyone's surprise, the houses are still standing. And now they are perched on a beautiful wide beach, courtesy of the recently-completed beach fill. I do not understand all the details, but the owners are suing the city to be allowed to re-access their properties so that they can fix them up and un-condemn them. Only in America....

The beach nourishment project was conducted between May 24 and October 27 of 2011. Hurricane Irene on August 27 interrupted the work. For safety, the dredging company moved their equipment to Norfolk, Virginia. Storm waves caused extensive adjustment of the nourished beach profile, but no loss of sand within the project area (Kana et al., 2012).  Adjustment means sand moved deeper on the profile and morphologic features like sand bars formed, but the overall volume of sand remained within the project boundaries. Because of delays in securing federal funds for a comprehensive Dare County beach nourishment project, the Town of Nags Head elected to fund an "interim" beach nourishment locally. Total sand placement amounted to 4,600,000 cubic yards. This may be the largest locally-funded beach nourishment project completed in the United States.
Some notes on beach projects:

When confronted with severe beach erosion, local, county, and Federal authorities can choose four broad classes of technical and management alternatives (Coastal Engineering Manual, 2008, Part V.3):

1. No action
2. Controlled and strategic retreat
3. Hold the line and refuse to retreat
4. Replicate or augment the natural sediment supply to the region with artificial beach nourishment.

1. The first option is often followed on undeveloped coasts, such as in National Seashores. But even the National Park Service is now selecting to add sand to some of their eroding parks.

2. The second option, strategic retreat, is politically difficult because property owners lobby their politicians to "do something" to protect their valuable beach-front property. And, towns and municipalities derive major tax revenue from beach property, whose owners are often wealthy and often only occupy the premises temporarily.

Nevertheless, in the face of rising sea level, many communities are confronting the previously unthinkable fact that some areas will be impossible to protect and maintain. Also, taxpayers from inland areas complain that wealthy beach residents voluntarily purchased their properties in hazardous geographic locations. Why should general taxpayer revenues pay for storm recovery to let wealthy people live at the beach and profit from the appreciation of their houses (i.e., capitalism for the profit, but socialize the risk)?

3. The third option, "hold the line," was popular in the early-mid 20th century. It consists of building massive sea walls or shore-front stone revetments to mark the permanent position of the shoreline. One side is ocean, the other is city. The 1900-vintage Galveston Seawall is an example of this type of project. Seawalls have many disadvantages. They:

• Are difficult to design and expensive to construct.
• Have aesthetic issues
• Require maintenance and are vulnerable to major storms.
• Are environmentally troublesome (there is little habitat in front of a concrete wall).
• Offer only limited recreational opportunities.

Because of cost, environmental, and permitting issues, we will probably not see new major seawall construction in the United States.

4. The fourth option is more and more popular around the world. A beach nourishment project has as its intent to replace sand onto a shoreface from where sand was lost over the years due to natural and man-made reasons. Most beaches around the United States are far from "natural" any more, and most are sediment-deficient because of various man-made reasons. These include:

• Dam-construction on rivers
• Sediment trapping by jetties at inlets
• Sand lost offshore due to harbor and channel dredging, followed by deep-water disposal.
• Sand-mining from beaches
• Loss of sand sources due to paving and urbanization
• Armoring of bluffs and banks

The concept of a beach fill is to pump sand onto the beach from an offshore deposit or bring in sand using trucks. The South Nags Head project is an example of hydraulic pumping from an offshore deposit.

Many critics state that a beach fill is fundamentally a failure because eventually the sand will wash away. Of course it will - that is the function of a beach! The beach serves as a flexible and sacrificial buffer to dissipate storm wave energy and protect upland development. Regular maintenance is one of the costs of living at the beach. The cost of periodic renourishment is low compared to the economic activity generated by wide recreation beaches. Think of the alternative: who comes to the coast to look at a seawall?
This is a view of the barrier island at Duck, about 25 miles north of South Nags Head. Unlike Nags Head, Duck has been relatively stable and has not suffered net beach erosion over the last half century. In this view, the Atlantic ocean is to the left and Currituck Sound to the right. The undeveloped land in the foreground belongs to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is used for their Field Research Facility. It was originally a bombing range in World War II and reverted to the Corps of Engineers in the late 1960s. It is obvious where commercial property begins beyond the Army property. Much of the island has been so thickly developed, it is essentially urban.

On the Federal land, the first row of sand dunes is thickly vegetated. The frontal dune all along the Outer Banks was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the 1930s - another example that the beaches are not "natural." This is a photograph from the 43-m (120 ft) observation tower, which is used for experiments and continuous video imaging.
This is a view of the research pier.  Long-period swells are approaching almost perpendicular to the shore. This is the best view in Duck other than from an airplane!

The view north from the tower shows some palatial vacation "bungalows."
This photograph shows workers planting grass on a beach restoration project. The date and location were not recorded, but the scene is likely the Outer Banks. The National Park Service and other Federal agencies sponsored many dune and beach restoration during the late 1930s. These also served as work relief efforts during the Great Depression. Photograph from the Beach Erosion Board Archives, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (from the Coastal Engineering Manual, Part I, Chapter 3).  For more information on dune construction, see Schroeder, Dolan, and Haden (1976).

References:

Coastal Engineering Manual. 2008. Shore Protection Projects, Part V, Chapter 3. Engineer Manual EM-1110-2-1100, US Army Corps of Engineers, Washington, DC (avail. online, http://publications.usace.army.mil/publications/eng-manuals/EM_1110-2-1100_vol/PartV/Part_V-Chap_3.pdf, accessed 22 June 2012).

Kana, T.W., Kaczkowski, H.L., Traynum, S.B., and McKee, P.A. 2012. Impact of Hurricane Irene during the Nags Head Beach Nourishment Project. Shore & Beach, Vol. 80, No. 2, pp. 6-18.

Schroeder, P.M., Dolan, R., and Hayden, B.P.  1976.  Barrier-dune construction on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  Environmental Management, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 105-114.

On the Beach, South Nags Head, North Carolina - 2010

East Seagull Drive, South Nags Head, North Carolina

South Nags Head is a summer playground of sun, surf, beer, and jolly good times. It's also an area of uncontrolled overbuilding on the rapidly eroding barrier island. These cottages on East Seagull Drive have been condemned because they are in imminent danger of collapsing into the surf. The view above is looking to the north, with the Atlantic Ocean to the right.The dune line is well landwards of the cottages.

The cottages were originally built on piles because in this environment, occasional flooding is inevitable. But as you can see in the photograph above, the beach has eroded so severely, the original piles were undermined. To keep the houses from collapsing, extension piles were added below the original ones. The bags are geotubes filled with sand to protect the houses. North Carolina law only allows such bags when a house is threatened. Also, North Carolina no longer allows any hard structures like rock seawalls to be erected as shore protection devices (Update: this may no longer be true as of 2020). I wish other states would follow this example.

Exposed septic tanks, South Nags Head, North Carolina

When the septic tanks are exposed (the concrete tubs above), the town or county condemns property. But then a major problem arises: what to do with the structures? FEMA formerly funded removal of houses, but I was told that the program ended. The town is taking legal action against the homeowners to remove them, but the town will not pay any of the costs. If the owners walk away and the structures collapse, the town would have to foot the bill for hazardous debris removal, not a trivial issue in the marine environment. Consider also that taking over the properties would not yield a salable commodity for the town. The town might do a beach nourishment to add enough sand to un-condemn the houses. Then they would be back on the tax rolls and generate revenue. It is an odd twist of logic.

Notice that even though only five years have passed since the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, we still are politically too cowardly to ask serious questions about whether people should live in hazardous locations, and whether municipalities have a responsibility to provide protection and services to residents of these hazardous areas. 

• Should developers be restricted by means of setback lines? 
• Why don't building codes require highly robust construction, thereby thwarting the quick buck artists who build shoddy homes and move on after selling to naive buyers? 
• Should the buyer beware? 
• Is uncontrolled building "capitalism," while spreading the rebuilding risk throughout the town/county is not considered "socialism"? 

These are all troubling questions.
The scene above shows swells from Hurricane Danielle on August 29, 2010. I took this photograph from the U.S Army Corps of Engineers' Field Research Facility (FRF) pier at Duck, NC. They are about 9-10 second period and approaching the coast at an unusually steep angle. The FRF has an excellent web page with live cameras, wave statistics, and other oceanographic data:

http://www.frf.usace.army.mil/

Lost architecture, Martin Luther King Jr., Blvd., Vicksburg, Mississippi

Vicksburg was once a city of many churches. But we have lost many of these elegant wood frame houses of worship over the last decade. The example below was located at 1205 Martin Luther King Jr., Blvd., next to a brick commercial building occupied by Gore's Hardware Store and near the intersection with Main Street.
I do not remember the full story of why the church was dismantled, but I recall some sort of mistake was made in issuing a permit to the property owner. The building dated from the late 1800s and was not supposed to be torn down.
Notice the building's simple but classic symmetry, with a steeple in the center and even rows of windows on all sides. In an earlier era, the windows allowed maximum air flow on hot summer Sundays.
MLK Jr. Blvd. still has some historic architecture, such as the old filling station and warehouse.
The filling station has become Mamma's Super Burgers. Great logo: "You bite the meat before the bun."
I will post more photographs from MLK Jr. Blvd. and more churches in the future.