residential

A Gothic Winter's Day in Civil War Territory

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I recently headed north of Baton Rouge with two new pals I met through this blog to see some Civil War sites and other nearby points of interest.

With battlefield exploration, you have to fill in a lot of blanks with your imagination. My own brain supplied vague jumbles of mustachioed men in double-breasted coats fighting each other with bayonet guns and cannons. I'm not going to front--I have not retained a lot of information about the Civil War from high school history class, not that much of it ever sunk in. For me, any battle descriptions go in one ear and out the other, unless it's told with some compelling human element or perhaps if it is acted out in a movie starring Patrick Swayze. 

But for those interested and knowledgeable on such matters, I can tell you that we visited the site of the Siege of Port Hudson. Back then, it looked like this:

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See those mounds in the illustration? If my sources are correct (and I have no reason to believe they're not), I'll show you what some of those mounds look like now.

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State Street Housing

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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.

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Abandoned Multifamily House

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Apologies for my absence from blogging; I've started a new job and am getting married in less than a month, both factors which are taking up energy I normally direct toward prowling around abandoned buildings like a weirdo. But I've been working on the facilities people at LSU to gain access to the historic condemned Huey P. Long Fieldhouse (if anyone can pull any strings, please do), and I got back to my prowling roots this weekend.

I don't know how I never noticed this huge empty house on the corner of Government and 22nd before, but it took biking right past it to finally notice.

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Endless Buffet of Leftovers


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And now, a bunch of sites I've been meaning to post from two recent excursions, but they were trumped by the showing and telling of the time I saw coffins and the time I could have ended up in a coffin.

First, yet another car repair joint, this one on Florida and more colorful than most. Note the sinkhole in the repair floor, below. 

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

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

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

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

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