Before skyscrapers like Vicksburg’s First National Bank and before airplanes, I guess the tallest vantage point to take a picture in Vicksburg was from the Post Office, as seen in the postcard view below. Here’s a little mid-summer pop quiz. First, what is the current name of the building the photographer is standing on? Second, how many buildings in the picture can you identify? I’ve nabbed only four.
Preservation in Mississippi 
Is that the Jewish synagogue, right of center, tall tower?
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Is there a non-Jewish synagogue in Vicksburg?
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Yes, the Jewish and non-Jewish synagogue. Good eye!
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I believe the photographer is standing on “the castle,” the building that now houses Mississippi River Commission and Mississippi Valley Division of the Corps of Engineers. The building in the R foreground is Vicksburg City Hall, but I am not sure if the statue is still there on the turret. The handsome brick church in the center of the scene has been replaced with a nasty, non-architecture bank
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You are right about Miss River Commission and the City Hall but the church in the middle was the First Baptist Church that went down in 1953 Tornado.
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Isn’t the corner with the Baptist church on it now just an open parking lot?
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In 1982, I was working 2 days a week in Vicksburg. Watched that lovely synagogue come down, bit by bit. Such a loss. Greenwood synagogue recently had some cosmetic repairs, hanging on with only a few families, lost Joe Erber recently. He was a policeman who kept the flame going there, so to speak.
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Old Courthouse, back left. Who is keeping score?
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Lol, you grabbed the easy point!
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Convent behind the little trumpeter?
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Wouldn’t the convent have been over to the far left, out of the picture? Not sure, haven’t looked at a Sanborn map of Vicksburg recently. Will check.
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Are the Sanborns accessible online?
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They are:http://www.proquest.com/en-US/catalogs/databases/detail/sanborn.shtml
But they apparently don’t sell individual subscriptions, only to libraries. Some public libraries and many academic libraries around the state have a subscription, otherwise, it’s to the archives to scroll through the microfilm!
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Got all the ones already noted, but can add the telephone exchange building on the corner of Monroe and Crawford, and across from it is that lovely statue which still stands in the center of Monroe and always looks so beautiful when we get ice and snow. . (Give me a minute and I’ll remember the name of it!)
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Also the white building on the corner of Cherry and Clay is the home of Wells & LaHatte.
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And just above the roof of old First Baptist is a building which has to be the old jail, next to the Morrissey house – but it’s hard to tell detail in a postcard. I just know that’s what IS there. ;)
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You know your Vicksburg! I didn’t get any of the smaller buildings!
But I think the statue in this image is the old trumpeting angel, which adorned both domes on City Hall apparently until the 1953 tornado. Wonder where they ended up?
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The building to the left of the Baptist Church that you can just see the roof of is the Wilson home, which became the Nogales Club.
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The brick building with the bell tower to the east of the Baptist Church on Crawford street is the Washington Fire Company No. 3. My Great Grandfather was the Chief Engineer there. His home was on Clay St. just west of Wells & Lahatte from the early 1870’s until his death in 1884. The house, extant but much changed, is not visable due to the tree in the center of the picture.
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Was that not Sky Polar
Hill?
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City Hall in the right foreground. The Angels with trumpets disappeared after the tornado. Old Courthouse in the background upper left. That’s probably the Baptist church across from City Hall, because the River Commission and old St. Paul’s Catholic church would be on the other two corners of the intersection. I guess the Baptist church was torn down after the tornado as was St. Paul’s. And the Jewish synagogue in the background on the right.
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