From the Archives: Bazsinsky Stables

On August 7, 1889, brothers Nathan and Seymour (Bud) Bazsinsky purchased the “Gold Room” property on the northwest corner of China and Walnut Streets from Vincent Piazza. The Gold Room Saloon was a two-story building that housed the bar as early as 1871. Ad advertisement in the Vicksburg Herald on March 24, 1871 announced that the saloon “is now one of the neatest places in the city, and is stocked with the finest Wines, Brandies, general Liquors and the best of cigars. Free lunch served every morning from half past ten to half past twelve o’clock.” They offered ten cent beer and fifteen cent drinks. In the basement was a large cistern that was used by the various fire departments to fill up their steam engines. A contest was held out in front of the building in April 1884 by the Washington Company and the Constitution Company to see which of their engines, Ahrens or LaFrance respectively, could throw streams of water the farthest over the rear Hoffman wall. They filled up at the Gold Room cellar and each shot six streams of water toward the back of the Hoffman building. The Washington steamer won with a throw of 184 feet 2 inches through 300 feet of hose. By 1886 the building housed a meat market on the first floor and an armory on the second.

The Bazsinsky brothers tore down the Gold Room building and hired William Stanton to design a two-story brick livery stable. The building was to be 40 feet on China and 107 ½ feet on along Walnut Street and would “have all the modern improvements now attached to livery stables and the livery business.”

The architectural drawings were the first to be drawn by Stanton’s new draughtsman, F. C. Bartlett, who moved to Vicksburg from New Orleans in July. The building, with its “very handsomely designed and finely finished front,” was completed on November 24, 1889. In December of the next year, the brothers demolished a frame building on Walnut Street behind their building in order to build an extensive addition to their stables. In January 1891, an archway was cut into the rear wall of the original building in order to connect the building with the addition in the rear. In December 1893, Dr. C. W. Heitzman, a veterinarian, moved from Jackson to set up his office in the stables.

By 1900, business was so good that the brothers operated a “branch” stables on Washington Street across from the Piazza Hotel (1500 block). When the transportation industry moved from horses to horse power, Bud converted the front part of his stables into a storage garage for automobiles and according to the Vicksburg Evening Post, by removing the stables in that section and installing a hard cinder floor, the area would accommodate about thirty cars. The paper also reported that Bud would continue to use the north end of the premises for a stable and that he intended to install an automobile repair department with oils and gasoline for sale. But “for the present he will only store the cars and clean and keep them in condition at all times.”

By 1921, the business was called 85 Tire and Vulcanizing Company and then by 1924, it was 85 Tire and Battery Co. In 1925, there were still some stables in the rear addition, in the basement! In the 1930s the front half of the building was removed and a large awning was constructed to cover gas pumps. By the 1970s, the building was vacant and in 1994 it was purchased by the Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation and veterinarian Dr. Bill Lindley and was rehabbed into the Great Animal Adventures Children’s Museum. Unfortunately, dramatic decreases in tourism required the museum to close in 2003 and the building was bought by the present owners who are now converting it into a residence.

-Nancy Bell, Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation.