Abandoned Baton Rouge

I Love You Sugar Kane: Historic Cinclare Plantation

My first expedition with co-urban explorer Joshua took us across the Mississippi and south, to a land dominated by old sugar cane fields and crawfish shacks. We stopped at an industrial site on the site of the former Cinclare Plantation, a onetime sugar plantation "company town."

Innocent as it looks, it was to become the site of the scariest ABR incident to date. Although admittedly I am a complete pansy as explorers go. 

The Turkish Baths of Baton Rouge

On the first day the bf and I came to Baton Rouge back in July to look at rentals, a most intriguing old building caught my eye. It was an abandoned Turkish Baths/ old-time health spa. It was to become my ABR white whale. I couldn't find it for months after moving here. Not having a vehicle certainly didn't help matters. But recently, I finally found it again, and I believe the area is called Beauregardtown.

Triple A Cleaners, plus empty houses...or not?

(I know: again with the AAA-naming business! Have a little confidence, Baton Rouge businesses!)

AAA Cleaners is another place with that Night of the Comet feel...as if people just vaporized, leaving their everyday items.

But this time...they left enough clues that even from outside, I know when this place closed down.

Takin' care of buisness...

...of the non-abandoned kind. Sorry I've been away, but sometimes the paying jobs take precedent over the abandoned documentation job. Also I haven't had use of a car or the good camera. However, in about three weeks I will have my beloved wheels back in my possession, and because of that, I will have much more access to the good camera.

Since my last post I made two trips to New Orleans, and the first one took me to an area I had never seen, one which had so many abandoned businesses and homes that I nearly drove off the road a few times gawking at them.

Driving past the still-prominent damage from Katrina (including another abandoned Winn Dixie with weeds coming up throughout the parking lot) while listening to the people on the radio discuss the nooses that were recently hung across the state in Jena was enough to give me the hair-standing-on-end shiver I used to get whenever I got near the Ground Zero site in lower Manhattan. Time to change the channel or I'll cry. I don't feel qualified to even go there in New Orleans, not to mention that (to make another Big Apple comparison), the crime rate there is comparable to New York in the '70s, I'm told. No wandering around down there for me, although that is a fascinating project just waiting to happen, photographers!

But here's an article about how homeless people have taken over some of the abandoned buildings in New Orleans.

Also, remember the Lincoln Hotel? I couldn't find anything about it when I first shot photos of it a few weeks ago, but I just read this article in The Advocate mentioning that Aretha Franklin stayed there! So, probably, did James Brown, B.B. King, and Nat King Cole. The article is about the barbershop next door but mentions that all of those cats had their hair did there, so I assume they were also staying at the Lincoln Hotel. Very cool. What's not so cool is my hypothesis that they stayed at this rather plain hotel becuase they were not welcome at the elegant downtown hotel that's now the Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center Hotel. That's pure speculation on my part, of course.

I really want to go in there.

Purpera Building, Romano's Pack & Save, Mason lodge, and more

I had usage of a car today, so I was able to expand my territory, but sadly I was forced back to the Old Blue Eye camera. No matter, because I shall make it up to you with a cavalcade of sites...and my first confrontation.

This is the Purpera Building, as proudly announced on the crown of the building. You'd think there'd be some mention of it somewhere on the world wide Interwebs, right?

LoBianco's Gro. & Beer, Unknown car joint, Winn Dixie

Last Friday was an epic photo-gathering expedition for me. I was out nearly three hours in the midday sun, covering five abandoned sites, also stopping for excellent Lebanese food at Arzi's and narrowly avoiding heat stroke. Problem is, this is a photo blog and my g-damn digital camera won't stop washing everything in blue. So I've decided to post the remaining three sites I shot that day all in one post, before switching over to use my bf's fancier camera. After this post, say goodbye to the blues!

Here we have LoBianco's Gro. & Beer at Government Street and Steele, in the classic Old South style that I have actually never seen outside of movies and TV.

Could this sun-faded promotional Stroh's poster be sadder right now? Not really.