Squatters in the city, Athens, Greece

Athens is the capital as well as the economic, intellectual, cultural, and industrial center of modern Greece. It is one of the world's oldest cities, with a recorded history of at least 3,400 years. Following the end of the bitter civil war in 1949 and with a degree stability ensured by United States aide (remember the Truman Doctrine?), the sleepy, semi-provincial city exploded in uncontrolled urban growth. What had been an elegant but small European city with olive groves and pine trees on the outskirts morphed into an unplanned mass of concrete filling the entire valley. The population of the urban area now exceeds 4 million. A few suburbs like Filothei and Psychiko managed to preserve trees and parks, but most others districts were totally developed.

A small ridge of limestone hills runs northeast from the center of downtown Athens. In Psychiko, the wealthy built beautiful houses with spectacular views (Photograph 1 above). This is the link to the Google Map showing this area.


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Amazingly, there is still some unused, semi-abandoned terrain near the most exclusive suburbs. Sometime in the past, the hills were quarried for building material. At least one of these quarries must be in limbo regarding ownership because year after year, there appears to be no official government or private presence.

But in December of 2008, I was amazed to see that a peasant lived in the quarry. He had built a collection of shacks with scrap lumber, bricks, and steel roofing. The fellow showed up in a beat-up pickup truck and opened up pens, out of which waddled geese, ducks, chickens, goats, and turkeys.

He looks pretty well-settled to me. What a spot: no traffic, quiet, and a view (no electricity or water, either).

Further northwest, Filothei's most exclusive mansions and embassies run up another hill (house lots here cost well in excess of 1 million Euros). But once you top the crest of the hill, the northwest side, facing the Galatsi District, is another broad patch of terrain in limbo status. The photograph above was taken on a cold December evening with a bit of snow in the air.

Squatters live here in little brick houses with goats and chickens. I know from personal experience that some families have lived here since the 1970s. The have beat-up trucks and keep bees. Do they pay taxes? Who runs the electricity lines? A family friend's father claims ownership. He has been in court fighting for title for four decades. Meanwhile, the peasants have some of the best views in the city.

Shotgun shacks on Avenue E, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Avenue E is a short little street located west of Drummond Street and south of Bowmar Avenue. This area features a maze of narrow streets crowded with cottages and shotgun shacks dating from the early 20th century. Five of the streets were somewhat optimistically named avenues and given the letter A through E. At least they were not named boulevards, which make me think of grand thoroughfares in Paris or London. Avenue E is dead end and has access via Valley Street. At one time, there were at least six matching shotgun houses facing north on the south side of the street. The photograph above, taken from Valley Street, shows house numbers 902, 904, 906, 908, and 910. Let's proceed from west to east. The first house now is number 902, but in 2002, 900 still was standing. In 2007, 902 was rather ratty, but it has been fixed up with new windows and a front porch. This shows that these little houses have potential. This 2007 photograph shows 904 with the red spray paint number from the city inspector, indicating that it had been condemned. As long as I remember, 906 has been painted with this bright green-blue color and had rickety steps. 908 did not look too bad in 2003 with fresh white paint. But, by 2010, 908 has deteriorated. I think the houses are occupied because I may have seen someone peeping out from the curtains when I set up my tripod. This 2002 photograph shows number 910 (behind the car), which was torn down sometime in the mid-2000s. Neighborhoods like this are steadily losing their characteristic architecture. The black and white photographs were taken on 120-size Kodak Panatomic-X film with a Fuji GW690II rangefinder camera. Film developed in Agfa Rodinol.

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.

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.

Railroad Depot in Mound, Louisiana

Mound is a farming community just north of Interstate 20 about seven miles west of the Mississippi River. During the early 20th century, a gent named George Yerger owned the land, which then was well-populated with tenant farmers. Like many farming centers, it once had a railroad depot, which served as the link with the outside world in an era before many people had motorcars.

The depot in Mound was a 1-story wood building with wide eaves to provide protection when material was loaded and unloaded from rail cars. The depot probably dates to the early 1900s, but a January 2005 article in the Vicksburg Post did not list an exact date. It had not been in use since before 1958.

The depot was unusual in that it still had White and Colored labels on the doors. Considering how common this practice was up through the 1960s, it is surprising how seldom you see signs like this now. Sadly, the depot is gone. I do not know who bought it and if it was moved or demolished.


The elegant little green shotgun shack is the only one left on the property. There were probably many in the early 1920s to house farm workers. A reader stated that this was used as a doctor's office by Dr. John Yerger in the early 1900s.

The clapboard farm building is a typical example for farms in the South.

All photographs taken on Kodak Ektar 25 film with a Rolleiflex 3.5F camera with 75mm f/3.5 Planar lens (5-element version), tripod-mounted. Ektar 25 was the finest resolution color negative film ever made. The negatives were scanned on a Noritsu professional system.

Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad Station, Saginaw, Michigan

Saginaw, Michigan, was once a prosperous timber and, later, manufacturing city in northeast Michigan. It was founded in 1816 as a trading post on the Saginaw River and grew rapidly throughout the 1800s. The first railroad to enter East Saginaw was the Flint and Pere Marquette, to be followed by other lines as the city's trade and industrial capacity increased. During the height of their power and industry, the F&PM Railroad built a magnificent brick station on Potter Street. I am not sure of the exact date or architect, but the size of the structure attest to the amount of passenger traffic in the 1880s. The detailing and quality construction also attest to a pride of construction and desire to make a lasting monument that we seldom see today. The Potter Street station was abandoned decades ago, and AMTRAK uses a different station in another part of town. Northeast Saginaw is blighted and no development plans have borne results. Sometime in the mid- to late-1990s, the station was gutted by fire. Several groups have attempted restoration, but the great building remains a gutted shell. Some of the towers and walls have been braced to prevent collapse. I fear this fine example of American industrial architecture will continue to deteriorate.

Our race to t6he bottom continues.

The Junius Ward Johnson YMCA, Vicksburg, Mississippi

In the early 1920s, Mrs. Fannie Vick Willis Ward donated funds to the Young Men's Christian Association to build a new YMCA facility in Vicksburg. The Junius Ward Johnson YMCA at 821 Clay Street was dedicated in 1923. Fannie, a modest and generous lady, sat in the audience. The new building, a handsome brick structure with a red clay roof, was located at the intersection of Clay and Monroe Streets in what was then the bustling heart of a thriving commercial and industrial city. Originally, the building had only three floors, but in 1925, workers removed the roof and added a fourth floor with 33 more residence rooms.

The new building was state-of the art at that time and featured steam radiator heat, bathrooms on each of the residence floors, a gymnasium/theater, and a swimming pool in the basement. The pool was tiled and of the most modern, sanitary construction according to standards of the 1920s.

When I moved to Vicksburg in the 1980s, the lower two floors were still regularly used for civic functions. The swimming pool was the only one in town with heat for winter use. I do not know the original configuration of the locker room. A ladies changing room had been added, but this would not have existed in the 1920s.

YMCA swimming pool in 2005 (Tri-X film, Tachihara 4×5" camera, 75mm ƒ/8 Super-Angulon lens)

On the 3rd and 4th floors, young gentlemen could rent a modest and clean room for weeks or months. This was a common practice in the early-mid-20th century and was less expensive than staying in a hotel. My father lived in YMCAs in the 1930s and 1940s in Providence, Boston, New York, and other cities for periods of weeks at a time.

Up through the 1970s, it was still common practice for single men newly-hired at the Waterways Experiment Station to live in the "Y" for months or sometimes years. They had to dine somewhere else, a service that was fulfilled by boarding houses in the vicinity. The normal pattern was for the young gent to eventually meet a young lady via church, sports, or club activity, get married, and then move to a suburban house. The gentleman in the photograph below is a former resident. He was a world-famous earthquake mechanics scientist in the Geotechnical Laboratory.

Another friend and coworker said when he moved to the "Y" in 1968, the rent was $30/month. For breakfast, many of the gents went to Crawley's Pool Hall, which put on a generous spread for $1. In the evening, they ate at the Glass Kitchen for a home-style $1 dinner or at other downtown eateries. Every night from 7-9 pm, a basketball game was open to anyone, after which the guys would go out to a bar for a beer. At that time, there were numerous bars downtown.

On our contemporary standards, the residence rooms are tiny, cramped monk's cells with a narrow bed and one electric outlet. The one tiny closet would barely hold our clothes, let alone all the other junk we drag around as part of our modern lifestyle. The rooms were not air-conditioned, but the doors had wood louvers. In hot weather, hall fans provided a constant breeze, and by leaving a window open, a breeze would keep the rooms bearable (on pre-1970s standards).

Residence room (Kodak Panatomic-X film, Rolleiflex 3.5E camera, 75mm Xenotar lens)

The Junius Ward residence floors ceased operation between 1978 and 1980. First, the YMCA closed the upper 33 rooms on the fourth floor, and then closed the third floor. This was the result of increasing competition from apartments around town, and possibly also a trend for YMCAs to convert to family-style recreation facilities. With lack of use, this part of the building deteriorated steadily thereafter.

Vicksburg YMCA moved to a new location in 2002 and sold their historic Clay Street building to a Nashville developer, who planned to convert the space to condominiums. The plans never materialized. The building remained unoccupied until about 2003 or 2004, when Keystone Ministries moved in. Pastor James Hartley kindly let me take photographs at that time. The ministry did some renovations, but the building needed too many repairs for them to be able to continue. Since about 2006, the building has been unused. Several potential developers have looked, but the cost of renovations has scared them off. Before it could be reoccupied, it would need fireproof stairs, major roof repair, and other significant upgrades. It languishes empty, slowly deteriorating.

Photography technical notes:

• Rectangle black white photographs: Taken in 2005 with Kodak Tri-X Professional film in a Tachihara 4x5 inch camera.
• Square black and white: Kodak Tri-X film and Panatomic-X in a Rolleiflex 3.5E camera (75mm ƒ/3.5 Xenotar lens)
• Square color: Kodak Ektar 25 Professional film in a Rolleiflex 3.5F camera (75mm ƒ/3.5 Planar lens)
• Rectangle color: Kodak Kodachrome 25 film in a Leica rangefinder camera

Click any photograph to enlarge it. Thank you to many Vicksburg friends who provided information and history.

UPDATE: November 2019, the old Y remains empty with no signs of activity or renovation.

Historical Hinds County Armory, Jackson, Mississippi

The historic Hinds County Armory is located on the State Fairgrounds in Jackson. Most people never see the building and it stands unused and neglected. Mississippi Heritage Trust describes this unusual building (http://www.mississippiheritage.com/list09.html):

"Completed in 1927 for the Mississippi National Guard, the Hinds County Armory is believed to be the oldest surviving 20th century armory in the state. It may be the only building from that era intentionally built as an armory. The National Guard used the building as a training facility for nearly 50 years. The armory was one of the primary mobilization sites for Mississippi troops who served in World War II. Many returning soldiers mustered out in the armory. It is one of the state’s finest examples of Gothic Revival architecture and one of the few secular buildings employing the style."

"The building was damaged in Jackson’s 1979 Easter Flood and has not been used since. The roof leaks, and the building continues to suffer from water damage and a lack of maintenance. Located on the state fairgrounds, the Mississippi Fair Commission has no current plans for the structure."


It was a handsome building, but as you can see from these photographs, it is in poor condition. The roof is collapsing and much of the wood flooring and stage has rotted. I toured one rainy day, and the water was pouring through the roof onto the debris below. It is sad or rather, disgusting; many servicemen must have memories of passing through this facility many years ago. What an outrage that the State will not take care of its property. And what happened to the $100,000 grant from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History back in 2002 to fix the roof? Who benefited from these funds?


Photographs taken on 12 December 2009 with an Olympus E-330 camera and 14-54 mm lens, tripod-mounted. I also took some Kodachrome slides with a Leica film camera.