Gloomy hulk: Union Station, Texarkana, Arkansas/Texas

Texarkana is an old time commercial and transport town straddling the border of northeast Texas and southwest Arkansas. The town's famous local son was Scott Joplin, who was born in 1868 to a musical family of railway laborers. 

The historic downtown is a bit dilapidated but may be experiencing a bit of revival. While driving through town, my wife and I saw a forlorn brick Beaux Arts railroad station with broken windows and obvious signs of decades of neglect. According to Wikipedia, "Texarkana Union Station was constructed and operated by Union Station Trust, a subsidiary organization created as a joint effort between the Missouri-Pacific, Texas & Pacific, Cotton Belt and Kansas City Southern railroads. E. M. Tucker, chief architect for Missouri Pacific, designed the building with a track layout and overhead concourse reminiscent of the style he had used when rebuilding Little Rock Union Depot after a 1921 fire." A cornerstone showed 1929.

We parked and walked to the former entrance doors. Surely they were not open. A dirty glass door swung open. The building was unlocked?

The entrance led the potential train traveler up a flight of terrazzo stairs to the grand entry hall. No one there? No security? No signs?

The main hall was grand and echoey, intended to impress with solidity, prosperity, and permanence. This was not Pennsylvania Station in New York or Union Station in Los Angeles, but the Texarkana train traveler need not feel any less important.

The ticket boots were behind glass framed with mahogany. Note the glazed buff tile, durable for the ages.

Some of the side rooms off the main hall are a mess. Do homeless people sleep here? What are these bags of junk and rags?

Other side rooms may have been waiting rooms. The carpet was a nasty late addition.

The balconies on the rail yard side of the building were fenced off. Amtrak uses a few dingy rooms on the east end of the building for a waiting area and ticket sales but never occupied this main part of the station because there was no access for handicapped travelers (not a priority when the station was built in 1929-1930).

An abandoned kitchen with drop ceiling was rather grim. The machinery was definitely post-1930s, so someone must have tried to use the old station for a function or entertainment venue.

Dark stairs led to the second floor. There was a nice view of the main hall and some empty side rooms. I assume these were offices at one time.

Ah ha, one of these. But definitely not 1930s original. I did not try it.

Finally, back outside. As you can see, this station once also served as a freight operation, where cargo could be offloaded from or placed on trucks.

Union Station was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, less than a decade after the last rail passenger departed in 1971. The problem is, what next? Who can use the building? Who can afford the cost of repair and renovation?

These digital files are from a Fuji X-E1 digital camera, most with the 14mm ƒ/2.8 lens, tripod-mounted. Some of the interior rooms needed long exposures, an advantage to digital capture because there is no need to accommodate reciprocity failure.

Small Towns in Mississippi: Return to Edwards (B&W film)

Kansas City Southern railroad and Front Street, Edwards, Mississippi

Edwards, Mississippi, is a small town just south of Interstate 20, near a bend of the Big Black River. Before World War II, the Big Black was a Federal navigation project and was dredged and kept clear of snags, but now it is no longer maintained for commercial traffic. Like many small Mississippi towns, Edwards was prosperous up through the 1970s, but has slipped into a multi-decade decline and population loss. As usual, I do not understand the causes, considering the town is on the Kansas City Southern rail line between Vicksburg and Jackson and has easy road access to I-20. It is a mystery.

Walker Evans (American, 1903 - 1975) Railroad Station, Edwards, Mississippi, 1936, Gelatin silver print 19.3 x 24.2 cm (7 5/8 x 9 1/2 in.). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

This is supposed to be a picture of Edwards taken in 1936 by Walker Edwards. Was it taken from the same bridge as my photograph no. 1 above? Was there once another bridge or crossover from which Evans took this frame? Where is the church on the left? I think the 1936 photograph may be mis-labeled and show another town. But it is not Bolton nor Bovina.

Front Street parallels the KCS tracks. The city hall is there, with the police department a short distance away.

103 Magnolia St., Edwards, MS

205 Magnolia St., Edwards, MS

Magnolia Street has some gracious old houses, demonstrating former wealth in the town.

This is the former Dodge automobile dealer, at the corner where old U.S. 80 makes a sharp right-angle turn. An old-timer in town told me that Edwards was prosperous enough in the 1970s to have two car dealerships. (Update April 21, 2018: the old car shop is being demolished)

The high school gymnasium was designed by architect James Manly Spain in the Art Moderne style. It was completed just before we entered World War II in 1941 by the National Youth Administration (from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History). I have photographed this building before, and there has been no change in status.

The water tower is a prominent feature at the corner of U.S. 80 and Main Street. I was surprised it was over a century old. The big rivets are an example of early 20th century steel and iron construction. This was solid construction, intended to last the ages.

Main Street, which runs north-south, was once, well, the main street, with stores and small companies.

Both the east and west sides of South Main have stores with collapsed roofs. (Update April 21, 2018: this southernmost building has been demolished)

On Main Street north of the tracks, the former Woodmen of America building was in poor condition in 2008. A former coworker from the Waterways Experiment Station had bought the historic building to preserve it, but the task may have been too much for her. It is now gone. Other historic buildings on Main Street were demolished in the mid-2000s, with the bricks salvaged for use in McMansion construction (recall, this was in the last gasp of the construction orgy before the 2007-2008 housing collapse).  Much of Utica's former commercial core suffered the same fate.

Drive around the streets and the scene is pretty depressing. Joe's Lounge on Utica Street is a short distance from a collapsed store. (Update April 21, 2018: the collapsed store is gone and the lot is empty.)

On Williams Drive, a store of modern construction, also closed.

Just off I-20, the fellow who restores old cars still has interesting Detroit iron in his yard. I am not sure if all these very cars are still there because the lot looks a bit more empty now. I have not seen any Edsels recently, but there may be some in there under the kudzu.

I took the 2017 photographs with my Yashica Electro 35CC compact rangefinder camera on Ilford Delta 100 film. There was rain and drizzle, and the contrast worked out perfectly with this film and development. I bought this little Yashica as a convenient walkabout camera for an upcoming trip to Nepal. The 35mm ƒ/1.8 Color Yashinon-DX lens, a Sonnar type, is very high quality. Praus Productions in Rochester, NY developed the film.

The 2008 frame of the old Chevrolets is from Kodak Panatomic-X film, taken with a Fujifilm GW690II medium format camera.

Small Towns in Mississippi: Return to Coles on MS 33

If you drive south to Baton Rouge, the woodland route on MS 33 and LA 19 is much more interesting than the four-lane US 61. One of the little towns you drive through in the Homochitto National Forest on MS 33 is Coles (don't blink or you will miss it). The little town consists of a few houses and an abandoned store. I have taken digital snapshots here before but wanted to try some fine-grain film with my Rolleiflex.

An old house at 5599 MS 33 has a shaded porch and some of these old-fashioned steel porch chairs. They remind me of Adirondack-style chairs from cabins in northern New York or New England. The house is secure but appears to be unused.

The lady in the photograph is Mrs. Merit Arnold. She is standing in front of the former store, which was also her brother's home. He was murdered by a person who lived across the street. On the day of the funeral, the Houston, Texas, police called to say they had apprehended the suspect. Mrs. Arnold said the house is empty and deteriorating. Her father or uncle built some of the lumbering railroads in the area in the early 20th century.

Former store at corner of MS 33 and McDowell Road, Coles, Mississippi (Tri-X 400 film, Rolleiflex 3.5E Xenotar camera)

A couple of miles to the north in Crosby, heavy pilings testify to the fact that a railroad once crossed Foster Creek.

A few miles further north in Garden City (just south of Knoxville), I saw an old-fashioned cottage or farm house off the road. Very simple and traditional.

Across the street: one of those great Mississippi yards filled with old cars, metal debris, and other photogenic junk. There is plenty of subject matter here: you just need to slow down and look around.

Photographs taken with a Rolleiflex 3.5E twin-lens reflex camera with a 75mm ƒ/3.5 Xenotar lens using Kodak Panatomic-X film, exposed at ISO 20 (all frames tripod-mounted). The photograph of the old store was on Kodak Tri-X 400 film.

Escape from Berlin, 1945: a Family Journey

Dear Readers, this article is different than my normal Urban Decay topics. Still, it is a story of decay - of the catastrophic collapse of an evil government and the fate of some of its innocent victims. This is the story of how my family escaped from Berlin in April of 1945 during the chaotic final days of the Second World War in Europe, when the Soviet armies were entering Berlin.

My family came from Greece and moved to Berlin in 1938, when my grandfather got a job in Germany. He was a highway engineer. At this time, the Germans were building the autobahns and were at the forefront of highway technology. My grandfather (Opa) and mother were Greek-born, while my grandmother (Oma) and Aunt Hellas were German-born. Needless to say, moving to Germany in 1938 was a terrible strategic decision.

The family moved to a flat in the Charlottenberg area of Berlin, near the Neu-Westend U-Bahn station and near the 1936 Olympic stadium complex. My mother remembers that they lived on the second floor at the corner of Ratzeburger Allee and Ebereschenallee. These buildings survived the war with little damage, and the area is still a quiet residential district. Some of the apartment blocks are rather severe. I have seen similar apartments in Polish cities, as well.

My mother was a young girl then and did not remember the exact the address of the flat. But when I showed her this picture of the door with twin portholes, she immediately recognized it (you can see it in Photograph 1 behind the yellow car). She said when you entered, one flight of steps led up and another led down to the basement, which was very frightening.

This is Steubenplatz today, with Ebereschenallee coming in from the right. My mother remembers that one store facing the platz in the 1940s was a pharmacy.

This is the Neu-Westend U-Bahn station. The location and shape is likely the same as in the 1940s, and the vertical beams with rivets may be pre-war.

My mother and Hellas went to school. My mother remembers that girls and boys were separated by a barbed wire fence. The teachers were very strict, and everyone had to rise and say, "Heil Hitler." She also remembered seeing Jewish people wearing the large yellow stars on their clothes. A correspondent from Germany wrote that jews in the Reich were forced to wear the yellow star as late as September 1941 (I thought it was much earlier). Jews of German origin were first deported in October of 1940 in south Germany, and mass deportations were as late as October 1941. 

School class portrait, 1942? Mobile phone scan from paper print in album.

After the war started, the family applied to leave Germany, but because my grandmother and Hellas were German-born, they were not allowed to leave. The family was not in a wealth category in which they could buy an exit permit by turning over valuable assets (such as art) or properties.

Opa in his office, 1943 (photographer and exact location unknown)

As the war progressed, my grandfather lost his job. Oma's Uncle Max and his wife took over the apartment so that it would appear to be leased to a German family. Opa had to remain hidden in one room in the flat for fear that he might be arrested. My mother said that other residents surely knew that a Greek family was in the flat, but no one ever turned them in to the police. The ladies were blond and spoke fluent German, so they could leave the flat and move about. The family sold possessions to raise money for food. They had only two food vouchers, for the two German-born  members of the household.

For 18 months, the Allies bombed Berlin day and night, and for most nights, residents had to shelter in the cellars. But Opa had to remain hidden upstairs even during the bombings. One day, a bomb fell through the bathrooms and the tub from above crashed through the ceiling. Luckily, the bomb did not explode. She remembers Opa listening to the BBC on a wireless receiver with a blanket over his head to muffle the sound. Listening to foreign radio was an offense that would lead to execution.

Late in the war, Aunt Hellas and other school-age girls were evacuated to the woods of Prussia to escape the bombing. But she and a young actress or opera singer knew someone important in the Goebbels propaganda organization and they secured travel permits to return to Berlin.

My mother said one day she and Oma were out shopping for vegetables and heard noises of gunfire. The civilian population had been so thoroughly insulated from real news by the government's propaganda, they had no idea the Soviet army was entering the city. Today, we find this hard to believe. But totalitarian governments know that control of the media means they can dominate the populace. 

This is a map of Soviet advance from:
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/rkkaww2/maps/1945W/1BF/Berlin/1BF_1UF_Berlin_Apr19-28_45.jpg

They rushed home, grabbed a few possessions, and went to the train station. Prior to this, residents were not allowed to leave Berlin, but all order must have broken down. Amazingly, even as the Nazi government was collapsing, trains were still running. I assume they went to the Westend Bahnhof. My mother and Oma went one day, while Opa and Hellas followed a day later. 

The 1946 photograph above shows a tank graveyard near Westend Bahnhof, from :
https://www.stadtmuseum.de/sites/default/files/styles/mfp_popup/public/mediapool/gallerie/berlin-1945-panzerfriedhof-gueterbahnhof-westend.jpg.

Their destination was a small town in the Schwarzwald (southwest Germany) named Reichental, where the family had vacationed before the war. Everyone with any sense tried to flee to the west, away from the Soviets. The train ride was terrible. When allied planes flew overhead, everyone got off and sheltered in ditches or fled into fields because the planes strafed the trains. People were packed tight into cattle cars. 

Oma had a brother, Kurt, who had died near Kursk (Russia). His wife was on the train with two children. The baby died, and my mother said they threw the baby out because there was no room. It is hard to believe horrors like this. I do not know if the family was ever in touch with Kurt's wife after the war and do not know what happened to Max and his wife. 

My mother, her sister, sister, Oma, and Opa survived and moved to a United Nations refugee camp. Three of them briefly returned to the apartment in Berlin, I assume to recover documents and possibly some possessions. But essentially they had lost everything. They eventually made it back to Greece in the late-1940s. They had endured a decade of war, tragedy, and turmoil. 

Dear Readers, this was only 72 years ago, in what had been one of the most urbane, educated, and developed countries in the world. So many millions of innocent people suffered and died. But despite the lessons of history, many people are still susceptible to the hollow promises of demagogues and frauds. Consider the 2016 election in the USA and the scammer who entered the White House. Note how he adopted the classic techniques of fascists to ferment discord within the nation, feign victimization of a particular demographic, and then make hollow promises that only he can save the nation. 

Be eternally grateful that we still have an open press free of government censorship in USA. Beware of propaganda tools that parrot the party line and manufacture an alternative fantasy (i.e., Fox News). And beware of banning books in schools and libraries to control the narrative of history and deceive the populace. These are classic tools of totalitarian and fascist governments.

Remain vigilant and never let a war like this happen again.