The Strand Theatre, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Vicksburg once had as many as four downtown theaters (cinemas). Some of my coworkers remember how they saw a show at least weekly, often on Saturday night. One of these was the Saenger Theater at 1203 Walnut Street, whose roof was blown off in the 1953 tornado. A number of children were killed. A dramatic post-storm photograph is at this web page: Saenger
The subject of this post is the Strand Theater, located in the Adolph Rose Building at 717 Clay Street. The Adolph Rose is the handsome gold-colored building in the undated postcard, from the Cooper postcard collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

The theater operated from 1932-1963 and afterwards housed a Civil War slide and sound show called "The Vanishing Glory." Glory closed about 2005 and the space has been unused since then. The photograph above shows the configuration when Vanishing Glory used it. The screen was mounted in front of a partition that split the original long seating area, leaving an unused area behind. Originally, this would have been an unusually long, skinny venue to show movies.

The prominent local merchant, Adolph Rose, built the handsome Victorian Romanesque building about 1890 for his goods company (Vicksburg Post, 12 June 2011). At that time, it did not contain a theater. Around 1930, it was sold to Feld Furniture, and the ground floor was renovated to house two long thin commercial establishments, a store on the left (now an antique store), and the theater on the right. The seating area extended most of the way from the lobby to the stage at the rear of the building. It must have been a rather odd tunnel-like geometry where the front patrons were practically under the screen and the rear patrons a long way off. The photograph above shows the original stage at the back of the building. This is the area that Vanishing glory closed off and was unused after 1963.

When the theater was retrofitted into the Adolph Rose building, the walls were made of painted press-board. The fitting was skillful, and you can see how the panels curved at the edges of the ceiling. I suppose press-board was selected because it absorbs sound. The sound came from a huge RCA speaker behind the screen. The box is still present, but the speaker units are gone.

The second floor is rather interesting. The little storage room with the racks was for storing film reels. A trap door on the floor opened and a large fan in the wall drew up air though the room and across the reels. Before about 1940, most commercial film was nitrate-based and could spontaneously ignite when it degassed. Theater designers then knew that the film had to be ventilated to reduce the danger of fire. (As an aside, that is why modern photo film has "Safety Film" printed on the edge: it is Ester or Polyester-base and does not ignite spontaneously.) Archivists now store historic movie reels in refrigerated rooms. 

This is the projection booth. It is lined with steel, again to reduce the danger of a fire burning down the rest of the building. The projectors (long gone) were mounted on the floor and projected out small openings to the screen far away. So much heat was generated, the projectors were vented to metal flue pipes that went up to the roof. The earliest projectors may have used carbide lamps. The booth windows were equipped with guillotine-style sliding panels. The panels were held up with steel wires equipped with a lead plug. If a fire broke out, the plug melted and the guillotine door popped down abruptly, cutting off the air supply.

Here are some papers and remains on a shelf in the projection room, including IRS instructions for tax year 1966.

This is the balcony, where "colored" people had to sit in the old days. When I lived in Asia in the 1950s, we white Europeans sat in the balcony.

The lobby area was extensively changed by Vanishing Glory, but a few remnants from the movie era remain.

The good news is that Westside Theatre Foundation, a Vicksburg theater group, is renovating the old Strand and plans to hold live performance there. They have removed the partition wall and will expand the original 1920s stage. Jack Burns generously let me take photographs a few weeks ago. It is an ambitious project and I'm thrilled they have taken it on. They currently hold their productions at the Coral Room in the Vicksburg Hotel, another historic building in Vicksburg that needs its own blog entry.

I took these digital images with with a Sony DSC-R1 digital camera, tripod-mounted.
Update April 2012: Westside is holding stage productions in the Strand and a movie program has begun. The movies are projected from a digital projector, not film as in the old days, but a 16mm projector is available if ever needed. Here is a poster from the famous (infamous?) Reefer Madness.

Impossible Mansions of the Delta, Mount Holly, Lake Washington

Mount Holly, Lake Washington, Mississippi

Lake Washington is a quiet little town on the banks of a lake of the same name, about 20 minutes south of Greenville just west of Hwy. 1. The crescent-shaped oxbow lake is a peaceful, bucolic setting, where cormorants and anhingas sit on branches of cypress trees, and ducks quack in the distance. Drive slowly on Eastside Lake Washington Road past modest one-story houses, and you come across this impossibly grand Italianate mansion sitting on an equally grand lawn. What kind of wealth was there once in the Delta to allow this kind of extravagance? What were the original owners thinking in 1856?
MS Preservation wrote about the history of Mt Holly; recommended reading, as are all the interesting posts dealing with Mississippi's architecture and history.
At first glance, the structure appears to be in reasonably good condition. But look more closely, and you see that it is deteriorating badly. Some of the roof is intact, but trim around the soffits is rotting, and some parts of the roof are failing.
Walk around to the back, and you see broken windows and decay. A gent I met a few houses to the south said someone started repair work a few months ago, and indeed, there is a commercial work-foreman's trailer parked on the front lawn. But the trailer has been vandalized, and little work appears to have been done in many months (or years?). Previous owners used the mansion as a bed and breakfast, and the rear section of the house has a modern kitchen and redecorated rooms. They are now seedy, but at least this was a going concern in the late 1990s or early-2000s.
The front and side porches show the effects of years of neglect.
This porch, on the north side of the house, would have been an inviting place to laze away a hot summer afternoon in the pre-air conditioning era.
As pointed out in the MS Preservation blog, many sections of brick are crumbling. Areas were repointed with modern concrete rather than soft mortar, which would have matched the mortar used in the 1800s. I thought anyone buying a historic house would know enough to not use the wrong mortar, but obviously some people are really stupid.
The drawing rooms were elegant and even today do not look too bad. The windows are intact so far, but vandalism will take a toll if the present owners don't secure the property.
The Susie B. Law home is another fine mansion only a short distance south of Mount Holly. A reader commented that it was built in 1902 for Sidney Law and may have been ordered from Sears, Roebuck & Company (yes, they sold very fine kit homes for decades - why don't we do this now?). I don't know the recent history of this handsome wood house, but the weeds are taking over and it looks unoccupied. 

Please see this post for a 2014 update on the Law House.
See this post for some 2014 black&white film photographs.

Not far south in Chatham is Roy's Store, still thriving, and a fun place to visit.
Also see the Preservation in Mississippi article on Mount Holly.

These are digital images taken with an Olympus E-330 digital camera, tripod-mounted, with the Olympus 14-54 mm ƒ/2.8 lens.

UPDATE June 18, 2015: Mount Holly burned early in the morning on June 17, 2015. The damage is overwhelming. The Lakeport Plantation blog posted photographs of the destruction. I am saddened to see another piece of our heritage so badly damaged that it is unlikely to ever be restored.

Margaret's Grocery, Vicksburg, Mississippi: revisited 2010 and 2011

On February 19, 2011, Governor Haley Barbour proclaimed the week of March 20 to 26 the "Rev. Herman D. Dennis and Margaret's Grocery Awareness and Preservation Week." To remind viewers who are not familiar with the story, the Rev. Dennis married Margaret in 1984 and spent two decades decorating the old grocery store as a "Bible Temple to God." Margaret passed away in 2009 and the Rev. now lives in a nursing home in Vicksburg.



In some earlier posts, I showed how brilliant the colors where in the 1980s and 1990s. Since the Rev. moved away, the Temple has deteriorated from weather and vandalism. The paint has faded, ornaments have fallen down, and termites are eating the building. In this post are photographs from late 2010 and early 2011. The three scenes above show the front porch area.




The Reverend's creativity was amazing. He used any material he could get his hands on and painted, glued, and reassembled these items as part of his art.



Posted in the porch were old newspaper clipping describing Margaret's Gro. Some reported on the many international tourists who sought out the site, including Germans, who were particularly interested. According to Reverend Dennis, he learned his skill of brick laying from German prisoners at the POW camp, where he was a camp guard. He told me many years ago that he admired their skill.


Here is the bus that the Rev. used for his ministrations.



On March 20, Congressman Bennie Thompson met with a group of Reverend Dennis' supporters and local citizens at the King's Empowerment Center. They discussed options for preserving the store and the art. The Rev. came and was delighted to be there. Afterward, a few of the group went to the old store and had a chance to look inside. The Rev. preached in his bus, in as good form as ever.

St. Patrick's Day in Chicago

This article is in celebration of St.Patrick's Day, and in Chicago, they celebrate it seriously!!

Chicago River, St. Patrick's Day, 2007

First of all, they dye the Chicago River green. It's pretty impressive, as you can see in these photographs from a 2007 visit to the Windy City. The view above is from the North Michigan Avenue Bridge looking along the river east towards Lake Michigan.

This is the shoreline and river in 1833 (courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers).

The river has an interesting engineering history. When European settlers first occupied the land here, the river flowed east into Lake Michigan. But when the famous stockyards developed in the late-1800s, the carcasses flowed into Lake Michigan and threatened to pollute the city's drinking water source. So the river was artificially elevated and made to flow west into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, thereon to the Des Plains River, and eventually to the Mississippi River. This way, nasty organic debris flowed west to the Mississippi and did not foul Lake Michigan. Instead, the debris had the opportunity to foul St. Louis and Baton Rouge. The map above is from Wikimedia Commons.

This is an oblique aerial photograph of the Chicago River in 1944.  The photograph is from the archives of the Beach Erosion Board, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. At this time, Chicago was still a pretty gritty industrial city.

The historic stockyards are closed and the dead cows long gone. The river is still a Federal navigation project but now mostly carries tourist boats, pleasure craft, and water taxis through the city. To gain access to the river from Lake Michigan, boats have to enter locks and be raised a few feet (the amount varies depending on Lake level, which varies throughout the year). The Sanitary Canal to the south carries significant commercial barge traffic. The view above is from Michigan Avenue looking west.

Finally, the big parade. You see hundreds of policemen in formation, floats from fraternal organizations from surrounding states, and high school bands. I am not sure how you get to march; I suppose fill out an application and pay a fee. A good time is had by all.

Chicago River, view east towards Lake Michigan.

For a summertime view, here is the Chicago River looking east towards Lake Michigan. This photograph is from the 34th floor of the Hyatt Regency Hotel. If you are really rich, the condominiums in this area are pretty spectacular.

There are expansive views from these glittering new condominiums.

View of Chicago River mouth and Navy Pier from former Days Inn Hotel, October 1996

The mouth of the Chicago River is protected from storm waves by breakwaters.

Even Marilyn lived near the Chicago River for a couple of years.  Now she resides in Palm Springs, California - I suppose the Illinois winter was too much for her lack of garments.

More photographs from Chicago, including some from South Chicago, fit my theme of urban decay more closely than the prosperous Gold Coast.

All photographs taken with a Sony DCS-W7 digital camera except for the 1996 scene, which is a scan of Kodachrome film.

Crumbling: the Yazoo County Agricultural High School, Benton Mississippi

In August of 2009, Mississippi Preservation wrote about the abandoned Yazoo County Agricultural High School in Benton, MS. This inspired me to visit Benton with an out-of-town friend who shares my interest in exploring fading architecture and the remnants of our industrial society. We did not expect much but were disappointed to see that: 1. The 1930-vintage brick school building is deteriorating quickly; 2. The wood building housing treachers' apartments had just been demolished.

The brick building, built in 1930 by Lumbergh & Hayes (Canton architects/builders), had the classic school architecture with large windows to let in light and, in a pre-air conditioning era, fresh air. I like the arch over the main door. Students pass through with a sense that they are entering an important place. Also, windows allow the students to have a connection with nature, so much nicer than modern mega-schools that resemble prisons.

From the outside, the building appears sound, but look in through the windows and the deterioration is evident. The main hallway runs longitudinally through the building. Transoms would have allowed air flow on hot days. Notice the radiator, originally for a hot water or steam heat system.



The rooms were high-ceilinged and had been painted with the ghastly industrial green pigment (the stuff that resists body fluids). Notice in last photograph, the floor has caved in and fallen down to the former crawl space.

The wood teachers' apartment building had just been razed. I met the owner of the property, a builder (investor?) from Vicksburg. He recently bought the land from Yazoo County and had to knock down the wood building because it was imploding and dangerous. He was concerned that vagrants might get hurt in it. As you can see in the photograph above, all that is left is a pile of sticks and rubble. I'm surprised they could not recycle joists, but maybe the rot or termite damage was too extensive. The owner said someone had approached him to buy the bricks in the school building, but he was not interested in the offer.

Some of the books were rather interesting, basic science texts without the fluff and political correctness idiocy found in contemporary textbooks. Who read these books, and did they continue on to college?

All photographs taken with a Sony DSC-R1 digital camera, tripod-mounted. Hint: always use a tripod for architecture and static subjects.

For more information: Mississippi Preservation