Places That No Longer Exist

Studios, juke joints, boarding houses, train stops—mapped, photographed, and erased.

The geography of the blues is mostly gone. Not metaphorically. Literally. The buildings where it happened have been demolished, paved over, or repurposed into something unrecognizable. What remains are addresses, faded photographs, and the occasional historical marker that tells you nothing useful.

The Erasure Pattern

Urban renewal in the 1960s and 70s wiped out entire neighborhoods where blues culture thrived. In Chicago, the South Side lost dozens of clubs. In Memphis, Beale Street was gutted and rebuilt as a tourist attraction. In the Delta, juke joints that operated for decades simply closed when the owners died, and no one thought to preserve them.

What We Can Reconstruct

Through property records, city directories, and oral histories, we can sometimes pinpoint exact locations. A studio that operated on the second floor of a building that's now a parking lot. A boarding house where musicians stayed between gigs, now a vacant lot. A train station where they arrived from the South, now a highway overpass.

Why It Matters

These weren't just venues. They were ecosystems. The proximity of a studio to a boarding house to a club created networks. Musicians heard each other, learned from each other, competed with each other. When the places disappeared, so did those networks.

Filed: 1920s-1970s / Locations: Chicago, Memphis, Clarksdale / Status: Demolished