Lost architecture: Pearl Street, Vicksburg

Pearl Street is one of Vicksburg's older streets and one of its more interesting. It parallels the railroad line, which has run along here since before the Civil War. The architecture ranges from beautiful bed-and-breakfast homes to shotgun shacks. In the photograph above, the brick building to the left once housed Tuminello's Restaurant. It has been closed since the 1990s and the building stands empty. Visitors who have not been here recently occasionally ask me about it.
The land drops off quite steeply to the west, as you can see in this view of no. 1806. Like many early 20th century Vicksburg houses, the builders placed the front at ground level and had no qualms about supporting the rear on stilts, often 10 or 12 ft above the ground. This building has been razed. Houses can no longer be built on these steep lots anywhere in town.
Number 1804 was its neighbor, seen here in a 2002 photograph. It, too, has been razed.
At one time, there must have been tens of shotgun houses facing the tracks, but most have been torn down. The two above are at 2302 and 2304 (all square photographs are from a Rolleiflex camera using Kodak Ektar 25 film).
No. 2330 is a classic neighborhood store. In an era before people had private cars, the city had dozens of stores like this serving neighborhoods, but most have closed now.
Many of the houses on the 2400 and 2500 block dated from the late 1800s or early 20th century. One by one they have been torn down. The one above is no. 2414.

1997 photograph of 2521 Pearl Street, taken on Agfa Scala film.

The two houses above are 2515 and 2521. They had a view over the tracks and the railroad yard further down the hill along Levee Street. During the steam era, coal smoke must have deposited grime whenever a locomotive puffed by. Now the residents have to listen to the deafening horns of the diesel locomotives.
These two cottages above (nos 2529 and 2531) were identical architecture and are now gone. They were near the corner of Pearl and Fairground Street. Fairground will be the subject of a future essay.
No. 2607 was a handsome duplex.
Further north, near the former Vicksburg Lumber Co., was a trio of shotguns, nos. 2004, 2006, and 2008. As of 2016, the one on the right has been razed, and the two others are empty.

The photographs above are from a variety of early-vintage digital cameras and from film. The square frames are scans of Kodak Ektar 25 film shot through a Rolleiflex medium-format camera.

 UPDATE JULY 2021:  For a more complete inventory of Pearl Street houses, please click the links below

South of Fairground Street

Central section

North of Klein Street

Disappearing Architecture: Shotgun Shacks, Main Street, Vicksburg

According to Wikipedia,

The shotgun house is a narrow rectangular domestic residence, usually no more than 12 feet (3.5 m) wide, with doors at each end. It was the most popular style of house in the Southern United States from the end of the American Civil War (1861–65), through to the 1920s. Alternate names include shotgun shack, shotgun hut, and shotgun cottage.

The examples in this essay are from Main Street, downtown Vicksburg.


Often, shotgun shacks were built by a developer in a cluster to house factory or farm workers. This group of five on Main Street is one example. Sometimes shotgun shacks were built on a double row facing a short, dead-end road known as a court. Several years ago, I spoke to an elderly gent who remembered when the courts were teeming with families. In the morning, a truck would come around and pick up the men to take them to farms. The women often did domestic jobs in town. In the evening, the trucks would return with the men and the families would get together again.


When I first moved to Vicksburg in the 1980s, there were still dozens of shotgun shacks in the older parts of town. As the years passed, many succumbed to fire or demolition. The house at 1402, the second photograph, was destroyed by arson on February 23, 2010, only a few weeks after I took the photograph.


In many ways, these little houses are not well suited to modern residential patterns. They are small, and most people want more space now. Because they have a lot of surface area in proportion to their volume, they are high maintenance. And with thin walls and post foundation, they are hard to heat in the winter and expensive to cool with air conditioners. Often they were rental units in low-income areas, and maintenance was neglected. In some places, two units have been joined with a hallway, but they still end up being high-maintenance homes.


In the early 20th century, there must have been hundreds of thousands of shotgun houses throughout the South. But we are losing these characteristic forms quickly. Near the Martin Luther King memorial in Atlanta, two or three have been restored and are on display. I was amused to see how many tourists were curious to see them. Then I realized that in the last few years, so many have disappeared, possibly many suburbanites have never seen one up close.


In the future, I'll post more photographs of shotgun houses from other neighborhoods. This group was photographed in January, 2010.