Partial Reuse: Cotton Mills of Tupelo, Mississippi (B&W film)

Former Knitting Mill, S. Green St., Tupelo, Mississippi

Knitting Mill from S. Spring St., Tupelo

Dear Readers, I am continuing my ongoing exploration of towns in Mississippi with this short visit to Tupelo.

Tupelo is a city in northeast Mississippi just off the Natchez Trace Parkway. In the early 20th century, the city was a major cotton processing center, as demonstrated by huge brick mills. They are now mostly unused but may have future life as apartments, stores, or wedding/party venues. (I am specifically not using the term "repurposing," which is trendy today.)

These postcards from the Cooper Postcard Collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History give you an idea of the industrial power of cotton processing early in the 20th century.

I stayed in Tupelo in May of 2018 and spent a morning exploring.

The Tupelo Cotton Mill (300 Elliott Street) formerly housed a wholesale supplier but now is being used as an event venue. I could not go in but walked around the hulking building.

A shed across the parking lot housed a serious coffee roaster.

The Gravlee Lumber Company on Spring Street has closed. I can't tell if this part of town is being revitalized or not.

Some interesting old industrial equipment was on the lot next to Gravlee Lumber.

Oh oh, Elvis is back. Maybe he never left. After all, he was born here in Tupelo.

The BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) and KCS (Kansas City Southern) cross lines at an interesting X-crossing just east of Spring Street.

For now, that is all. Tupelo warrants a return for some more exploring. The rectangle black and white photographs are from 35mm Fuji Acros 100 film in my wife's 1971 Pentax Spotmatic camera with various Pentax Takumar lenses. The two square frames are from Ilford Delta 100 film exposed with my Rolleiflex 3.5E medium format camera with its fabulous 75mm ƒ/3.5 Schneider Xenotar lens.

Small Towns in Mississippi: Holly Springs

Holly Springs is the county seat of Marshall County, Mississippi. It is near the border with southern Tennessee and is southeast of Memphis. It is in the hill country east of the Mississippi Delta, but its early history was intertwined with cotton cultivation and processing.

Holly Springs Depot, from Cooper Postcard Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

The post card from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History shows cotton bales stacked near the railroad depot.

The depot, with its distinctive towers is still standing and in good condition. I was there late in the day and the building was empty; I am not sure who uses it. The 1800s brick shed still has railroad equipment in and around it.

Mississippi Industrial College, from Cooper Postcard Collection, Mississippi department of Archives and History

For years, I had wanted to visit Holly Springs to see the remains of the Mississippi Industrial College. According to Hill Country History:

Mississippi Industrial College was an historically black college founded in 1905 by the Mississippi Conference of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church under the leadership of Bishop Elias Cottrell (1855-1937).  Bishop Cottrell’s goal was to create a college for African Americans and provide them with liberal arts education and industrial training. Mississippi Industrial College’s campus was located on a 120 acre lot, across the street from Rust College, a competing historically black liberal arts school.

Classes began at the College in January of 1906, and in May the school already had over 200 students.  By 1908 Mississippi Industrial College had 450 students.  Mississippi Industrial College was one of the most important black colleges in Mississippi for many decades, until the end of segregation resulted in increasingly low student populations. The college closed in 1982 and remained empty.  During the 1990s, the Holly Springs Police Department and other businesses moved into the newer of the buildings, but they eventually abandoned the property as well.

The once-handsome buildings at the College have been deteriorating for three decades. One of the more modern structures housed the police department and some other city offices for a few years, but I think all campus buildings are empty now.

Preservation Mississippi wrote about the deterioration of the Carnegie Auditorium in 2010. Consider, at one time, the auditorium could seat 1000 people. In a small college in a rural area! The builders had lofty ambitions that they could bring the arts and culture to their students and members of the surrounding community. As of 2018, the building is structurally unsound and dangerous. (The color image above is a digital file.)

Sadly, there is not much left to explore at the site. The historic buildings are unsafe. Notice the stone slab steps.

On Rte 7, we came across an old-fashioned Texaco station, complete with its horizontal stripes on the roof above the pumps. Someone is using the property as a repair shop and storage depot for old trucks.

That is all for Holly Springs. The town was not too inspiring photographically. It suffers from serious poverty and decay. And the historic college is is very poor condition. The black and white photographs are from Kodak TMax 100 film, exposed at EI=80 and developed in Xtol developer. I used my wife's 1971 Pentax Spotmatic camera and scanned the negatives with a Plustek 7600i film scanner.

Travels on the Mother Road, Route 66: Part 6b, Seligman, Arizona (2019)

Dear Readers, on my recent trip to the US southwest, my friends and I stopped in Seligman, Arizona. It is a small town in Yavapai County at 1600 m elevation on the historic Route 66. During my 2016 Route 66 trip, I drove by and totally skipped the town. Poor choice; it is full of Route 66 kitsch. It is hard to tell how much is authentic, but the current residents are certainly capitalizing on nostalgia. Mid-day on October 21, 2019, the town was bustling with tourists from many countries.

At least 2 or 3 stores feature ice cream. A hot day in the desert under the blazing sun: why not indulge in an ice-cream-cold cone or cup of sugary and calorific goodness?

Eddie and Spencer checked out the old Chevrolet police car.

OK, it is not authentic Route 66, but who cares? J&R's Minimart sells Haagen Daz ice cream.

You can stay in Seligman, if you want. The motel (or motor court) may be authentic Route 66.

After rafting on the Colorado River for 16 days and using a groover, the device in the last photograph looked quite luxurious.

Stay tuned for more Route 66 updates soon. For older Route 66 articles, type "Route 66" in the search box.

All digital images were from my Fuji X-E1 digital camera.

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.