Huey Long Field House Renovations

Look familiar?

Alex Box Stadium

Behold, the remains of the original Alex Box baseball stadium, which was built in 1938 as a WPA project. (Click here for a series of recent "before" shots.)

State Street Housing

My job takes me onto State Street a lot, which strikes me as a sort of shantytown ghetto of off-campus LSU student housing. As for the non-students living on the street, most of them don't look like they're faring so well in the game of life. There is always at least one person of questionable sobriety on State Street, no matter the time of day. When I finished these photos around 5 p.m. yesterday, one red-faced shirtless man was past the questionable stage and was on his way to rip-roaring drunk. When traversing State Street on foot, I just hope I won't get run down by a car as I step into the street to avoid a huge puddle, turn an ankle on one of its many pedestrian hazards, step on discarded underwear, or get hassled by the dudes drinking on the porch who once tried to summon me over.

I'm not sure why it took me so long to notice that these three large buildings were empty, but I suspect it's because their ramshackle appearance is not all that different from most other buildings on the street. I had to visit three times, as the first time my battery died, and the second time there was a team of guys working on the buildings. Are these being renovated, or torn down? It appears they're being renovated, as they're clearing out the junk. I like that they may be preserving old structures, though it's surprising to see such dilapidated buildings get a makeover.

Huey P. Long Fieldhouse Pool

 

 

The Huey P. Long Fieldhouse was completed on the LSU campus in 1932. Hearsay says that Huey Long intended it to be the biggest pool around, longer than any run-of-the-mill Olympic-sized pool. It was designed by Weiss, Dreyfus and Seiferth, the same firm that designed the new state capitol.

UPDATE: This originally said "old state capitol" and a few commenters pointed out that I had my information wrong. Please forgive this damned Yankee.

Until the 1970s, it was required that every LSU student take a swim class, but by then the pool was already in decline. It has been closed since approximately 1999 and has been silently crumbling ever since, relatively unnoticed amidst the thriving campus.

In early June, I was allowed access to the condemned structure housing the pool *with police escort.* Gotta say, I love having a police escort. They can escort my scared ass any time around abandoned buildings.