Cottages on Farmer Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Farmer Street is one of Vicksburg's historic streets, lined with late-1800s and early 20th century cottages. Some are nicely restored, but some are dilapidated. But at least it is vibrant - people live here, and only a few properties are abandoned.  Let's take a tour, starting at the corner of Farmer and 1st East Streets, and proceed north.

735 Farmer Street, Vicksburg

No. 735 is a substantial house with long porch facing Farmer Street.  Although the address is Farmer Street, the main entrance is unused and a sign directs visitors to the side entrance on 1st East.

728 Farmer Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Interior of 728 Farmer Street

Parlor of 728 Farmer Street

The old house at 728 is abandoned.  This house resembles many others in hilly Vicksburg: the main door faces the street on the upper level, while the rear of the house is way up off the ground.  In some cases, the main floor was elevated on posts, while others, like this one, had a partial basement.  In this house, the walls were brick with a facing of plaster, and the original small fireplace is still present.  This would have been for a coal insert.  Vicksburg, being a railroad town, had coal available for winter heating. (This led to burning embers in the air, which led to roof fires, which led to the widespread adoption of  asbestos roof shingles in the 1920s and 1930s.)

726 Farmer Street, Vicksburg

726 Farmer Street is a duplex, now rather rough. The roof eave is faced with asbestos shingles, probably installed in the 1920s or 1930s at the same time that the roof was covered with similar shingles. Asbestos shingles (really a concrete matrix strengthened with asbestos fibers) were popular because they were fireproof, held paint well, and needed little maintenance. The siding is newer aluminum, now peeling off.

725 Farmer Street, Vicksburg

The cottage at 725 has a screened porch, and you can't see details of the house.

507 Farmer Street, Vicksburg

507 is a handsome Victorian-era cottage with nicely-done paint.  The shingles in the eaves may be original. Hmmm, will a contemporary McMansion still have its original siding in 120 years? Will it even be standing?

618 Farmer Street, Vicksburg - possible haunted house?

Around the time when I took the photographs of 618 (on Kodachrome film with a Nikon camera), an article in the Vicksburg Post said the house was reputed to be haunted.  I think someone planned to give tours, but I am not sure if they ever happened. Regardless, it was a substantial Victorian-era house in need of restoration.  Note this is another example of a house built on a steep hill where the front door is on the upper level.

506 Farmer Street, Vicksburg

One block north is the 500 block. 506 is a nice little cottage behind a huge cedar tree.

504 Farmer Street, Vicksburg

504 is a well-used, with cars parked on the yard.

502 Farmer Street, Vicksburg.

502 was occupied by one or more families with energetic basketball players. The  kids asked me to take their portraits.

My friends from Farmer Street.

This fellow wanted his portrait, too.

I made prints for the kids and took them to their house.

417 Farmer Street, Vicksburg in 2013.

417 Farmer Street in 2003 (Kodachrome film).

417 Farmer Street is an immaculate little cottage. Now it is yellow, but in 2003, it was a cheerful green.

415 Farmer Street, Vicksburg

413 Farmer Street

413 and 415 are on the east side of the street.  The land rises on this side, so the houses have steep yards.

1207a Randolph Street

On Randolph Street, a couple of shotgun shacks have been restored and are available for rent. This neighborhood proves that older houses can be restored and used. Isn't this better than tearing them down?

All 2013 photographs taken with a Fuji X-E1 digital camera with Fuji 27mm lens or a manual-focus Olympus Zuiko 50mm f/3.5 Auto-Macro lens (amazingly sharp).  Some frames processed with PhotoNinja software.  The 2003 photographs were Kodachrome 25 taken with a Nikon F3 camera and a 35mm PC-Nikkor lens.

Preserved Ancient Walser Alpine Village: Otro, Italy

The Walsers descended from Germanic peoples over 1000 years ago and settled throughout the Alps.   They usually settled in remote, higher-altitude valleys (above 1500 m), particularly in the region around Monte Rosa, a major mountain massif on the Swiss-Italian border east of the Matterhorn. In return for maintaining and harvesting inhospitable Alpine lands, the Walsers were typically accorded a relative degree of freedom and were able to form communities with a high degree of sovereignty. As a result, they preserved their ancient German culture, traditions, and language.

The villagers of the isolated Walser communities had to work hard to survive the harsh Alpine weather and long, snowy winters.  They had to clear timber, till the rocky soil, shape the land into meadows and fields, build houses, and produce everything necessary to feed their families and animals during the long winters.  The difficulties in transport and their isolation made them fiercely independent and proud.  Among their cultural characteristics are their farm houses.

(The two paragraphs above are paraphrased from Sharp, H.  2007.  Tour of Monte Rosa, A Trekking Guide.  Cicerone Press, Cumbria, UK, 166p.)

This is Alpe Planmisura at altitude 1782 m in the Valle d"Otro.  It is a steep 1000 m drop from the Col d'Olen at 2881 m (you need strong knees).  This little town featured stone architecture and is still partly occupied in the summer.

One of the better preserved examples of a Walser village is Otro Dorf at 1640 m, also in the Valle d'Otro

In Otro, the houses have characteristic Walser wood and stone construction, with wide porches and broad roof overhang.  The porches were used to store wood and hay and protect them from rain and snow. Consider, until the late 1800s, these villagers were probably almost totally cut off from lower-altitude valleys and had to be self-reliant. Preserving wood and grain made the difference between staying warm and the cattle surviving long, harsh winters.  Also, winters were longer and colder in the 1800s, as Europe slowly emerged from the little ice age.

The wood was worked with hand tools and fitted with very few nails or machine-made fasteners.

At least, pure cold water was plentiful.  Washing clothing by hand in a stone tub was hard work.

After a long day hiking, the Refugio d'Otro offers a tempting place to stop for the night or eat a weekend luncheon feast, as these 50+ trekkers can attest.  Home-made pasta, wine, garden-fresh vegetables, more wine, espresso, pastry - hard to keep trekking after this.

Finally, another architectural note.  This is an example of Walser construction in Zermatt (the sophisticated tourist resort).  The wide circular slab of stone was supposed to dissuade vermin from climbing up the support posts and eating the grain stored within.  I am not sure how effective this technique was, but you see granaries and huts throughout the high Alps with these circular stones on the foundation.

Hiking note:  the Tour of Monte Rosa is one of the grand Alpine treks with spectacular scenery and the opportunity to cross glaciers and many passes. Most people start and end in Zermatt, making a 10-12-day circular route.  Highly recommended!  All photographs taken with a Fuji F31fd digital camera.

References

Sharp, H. 2007.  Tour of Monte Rosa, a Trekking Guide.  Cicerone Press, Milnhorpe Cumbria, UK, 166p.

The Mississippi Delta 16: Highway 1

Highway 1 is the westernmost highway in the Mississippi Delta, running along the mainline levee in some places and connecting small farming towns as it traces its lonely path from a junction with US 49 south of Tunica through Greenville and south on towards Onward. This will be a short tour going from north to south.

It is quiet near Rena Lara, about an hour north of Greenville.  Even on a Saturday evening, there is little traffic.  Summer must be blazing hot.

The day had been gloomy and overcast, with snow flurries.  But just at dusk, the sun burst through and illuminated this odd little taco stand with an burst of  brilliance.  This was at the junction with Alligator-Hillhouse Road.

Proceed south, and you reach Beulah.  It is really quiet there, and this handsome St. Peters MB Church is on a side road.  The day I stopped, a gent told me the bell came from an old steamboat. This photograph is a scan of a Kodachrome 25 slide taken with a Leica camera.

We will stop in Benoit in a future article.  Just a bit north of Greenville is a cluster of houses called Lamont. This small church was on the east side of Hwy 1.

We will also leave Greenville for a future article.  Highway 1 leading south out of town is the "strip," with gasoline stations, shops, fast food poison emporiums, and miscellaneous buildings. There is really not much of interest to see except for the occasional shed.

About 10 miles south of Greenville, some deserted farm worker houses still stand. This one has the classic shotgun shack proportions.

This cottage must have been in use within a decade before I photographed it in 2005.  Was the child who owned this bicycle sad to lose it?

Finally, just off 1 on Hwy 14, west of Rolling Fork, is this old store. It has been empty since the mid-1990s, when  I first started driving this way. This temporarily ends our tour of the Delta. Greenville and Rolling Fork will be the subjects of future articles. (March 2014 update: the store is gone.)

The black and white photographs were scans of Kodak Panatomic-X film, shot through a Fuji GW690II 6x9 medium format camera.  I developed the Panatomic film in Agfa Rodinol developer at 1:50 dilution.  I processed the 2013 digital images with Photo Ninja software.

The Mississippi Delta 13: Anguilla

Anguilla is a cluster of houses and some trees on Highway 61 (the Blues Highway) just a couple of miles north of Rolling Fork, Mississippi.  South of town are some farm road that intersect 61, and on one one of these, Southdale Road, stands a classic rural wooden church.

The Southdale Church is unused now but is still in decent condition.  There are dozens of churches like this scattered across the Delta.

Turn around and face north, and you can see why the Delta was so famous for its rich soil. And most of it is a flat, with only a few Indian mounds and some natural river levees to break the horizon.

A few years ago, I photographed this deserted farm workers' house somewhere in Anguilla, but I can't recall the exact location.  Many of these isolated houses are now empty and slowly crumbling and decaying. A legacy of our past is disappearing.

About 4 miles north of Anguilla, you reach the small town of Nitta Yuma. Here is another country church, perched at the edge of the fields. Nitta Yuma was once much more populated, but now has very few residents.

This formerly magnificent mansion in Nitta Yuma belonged to the Crump family. Nellie Crump came from good stock and was a regular guest of the President, staying in Blair House. Nellie's mansion had electricity before the White House did. After Nellie died, two descendants dug up floors and tore out parts of walls, looking for gold that was purported to be hidden somewhere. The house has been crumbling steadily over the decades. This is how we lose our architectural heritage.

2013 photographs taken with a Panasonic G1 camera with 14-45 mm lens, tripod-mounted. The 2008 photographs were from a Olympus E-330 digital camera.

End of the Road: Downhill Drive, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Downhill Drive is another one of Vicksburg's mystery streets.  It even has conflicting names in the various online map databases. It is a steep road that drops precipitously from Fort Hill Drive down to the west. I think the correct name is Downhill Drive, but it may also be Lower Fort Hill Drive or Elizabeth Street.

Drive down the hill (first gear for engine braking!) and you enter a forest with birds everywhere. It feels like you are far from anything except when a truck rumbles along just below on North Washington Street.


There are only a few cottages here, possibly 1940s-vintage. The blue one was deserted.  The previous resident owned a collection of electric trains and the plywood-mounted layout was in the porch along with a lot of equipment.


A nice lady came out of one of the houses while I was photographing and said she had owned the Chrysler since new. She might entertain an offer to sell it.

All photograph taken with a Sony DSC-R1 digital camera, tripod-mounted.