Deconstruction, Hannah Avenue, Vicksburg

Hannah Avenue is another one of Vicksburg's out-of-the-way streets that few people visit except for local residents. It runs perpendicular to Military Avenue, about one half mile east of Marcus Bottom. I was drawn there by one of the houses on the city's demolition list, number 2631.

This modest house is typical of many late-1930s or 1940s wood-frame units built as single-family dwellings. It was in bad condition with some of the roof caved-in.

Despite its present poor condition, I could tell that it had been built with good materials, and it had served its purpose for six decades. The fireplace probably had a coal stove insert originally.

Like many of these demolition homes I have photographed, this one looked like it had been evacuated in a hurry. Does the child who once owned this little teddy bear miss it? I have also seen abandoned high school yearbooks, bank statements, photographs, and other personal mementos.

Across the street was a classic narrow shotgun house. This one is occupied and has new brick foundation posts. I expect there were more shotgun houses in years past, possibly right next to the one in the photograph.

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

Off the main path: Union Avenue, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Because of Vicksburg's complicated loess topography, a number of roads wind along the ridges and drop into valleys. Some are dead-end and almost unknown except to local residents. Union Avenue is one of these. This is not the Union Ave. in the Vicksburg Military Park that tourists visit but rather a residential road that runs from Sherman Avenue to the edge of the Park.

I did not know Union Ave. was here until I saw the address of a house on the city's demolition list. The house, at 205, is beyond saving.

Neat, modest homes line the road as it proceeds south along the ridge. I saw this snow-covered Chevrolet Bel Aire and asked a fellow if I could take its portrait. He asked me if I wanted to buy it (tempting...).


Union Ave drops down into a hollow and parallels the Military Park. Oddly, this is Warren County and not City of Vicksburg. I was surprised to see a cluster of houses in the hollow. I recall seeing them years ago from the Park. The house in the photograph above, no. 710, is now deserted but when I saw it before, the resident there raised pigs.

The next house, 714, is also deserted. Neither look too bad. This is definitely a quiet, out-of-the-way place to live, another one of Vicksburg's hidden valleys.

Photographs taken with a Sony DSC-R1 digital camera.

More Shotgun Shacks: Arcadia Place, Vicksburg

Arcadia Street and an extension to the south, Arcadia Place, is another one of Vicksburg's hidden streets. Other than residents, there is little reason for outsiders to drive or walk here. The view above shows 6 matching shotgun shacks on Arcadia Place in 2004 and 2014. Arcadia is west of Drummond Street along the bayou, and access is via Avenues C or D. Arcadia runs north-south parallel to Washington Street, but Washington is up on the hill and there is no access. Google Maps shows two connecting streets, but this is impossible topographically (lesson: don't believe everything shown on online maps).

The east side of Arcadia Place features a classic series of six identical shotgun houses. The photograph above shows the group looking north from no, 2909. I do not know who owns them. They have been in various stages of renovation and paint for at least a decade, but a couple of units may now be occupied. With fresh paint, they look pretty good.

This is the house closest to Avenue D, no. 2901 (above).

We follow with No. 2903. This the third in the group, 2905.

Here is 2907. Notice the center pillar is an original lathe-turned post. The one on the right is new and made from 2x4s, but in the open Vicksburg style.

And finally no. 2909. This, too, lost its original posts.

Further north, the houses consist of modest cottages of 1930s or 1940s-vintage. I noticed many have dogs behind the fences, and I assume the residents are fearful of crime.

Some houses have been deserted, like this weed-covered wreck. The red paint means it is on the city's tear-down list. Like many other parts of Vicksburg, this neighborhood was probably more densely-populated and more vibrant in the 1940s. There was probably a community grocery store nearby.

Square photographs exposed with a Rolleiflex 3.5F camera on Kodak Ektar 25 film. Ektar 25 was the finest-grain color negative film ever made and was perfect for architecture.  The 2004 black and white was Kodak Panatomic-X film in a Fuji 690II camera. Panatomic-X was a classic thin-emulsion, fine-grain film and responded well to Agfa Rodinol developer. The 2014 black and white was Kodak BWC400 film (a C-41 type of film. similar to color print film but only containing monochrome dye) in a Pentax Spotmatic camera.

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.


View Larger Map


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.