Rusty Larsen looks at a photograph taken in 1951 by Charles J. Faulk of the Mississippi River bridge. (MEREDITH SPENCER The Vicksburg Post)

[1/25/05]It’s a new location and a new look for Rusty’s Riverfront Grill following a fire that closed the downtown restaurant a month ago.

“It’s been a rough four weeks,” Larsen said Monday as he discussed moving the restaurant to its new home at 901 Washington St.

The building on the north end of the downtown area was the J.M. Nosser and Son Grocery for many years. More recently, it briefly housed a sandwich shop, followed by a Greek-Lebanese restaurant known as River Front Cafe.

Larsen had been in the building at 615 Crawford about five years before the early morning fire on Dec. 20 resulted in extensive damage. He and his staff were able to reopen almost a month to the day after the fire. The actual renovation took about three weeks because Larsen and his staff spent about a week digging through the debris at the old location.

“We were able to salvage and refinish the bar from the old place,” Larsen said.

Linda Harris, a designer, said they also saved a copper sun from the old building and placed it in the new location.

Where the old grill featured small photos of riverboats, the new building is decorated with large photos of Vicksburg with a river theme.

Of the seven, poster-sized photos, five were taken by the late Charles J. Faulk Jr., longtime managing editor of the Vicksburg Evening Post, and two were taken by Faulk’s son-in-law, Vicksburg professional photographer Bob Pickett.

Harris said she got the idea to use the photos after seeing prints of some of Faulk’s photographs at Peterson’s Art and Antiques in downtown Vicksburg.

“We wanted to tie together the location, the name of the restaurant and Rusty’s interests,” Harris said.

After the photos were selected, Pickett and his wife, Geneva, Faulk’s daughter, took the negatives to a New Orleans company where they were scanned into a computer. They were then reproduced in brown tones on canvas. The canvas was then placed on wooden stretchers for display without frames.

Subjects of the photos by Faulk are the Mississippi River choked with ice taken in 1941, a steam locomotive and the steam towboat Sprague at City Front, North Washington Street taken in 1938 showing the Nosser building, a woman in an antebellum dress welcoming a riverboat and a photo of the U.S. 80 bridge take in 1951.

Pickett’s photos are an aerial of downtown Vicksburg taken before the urban renewal of the 1970s and one of the Interstate 20 and U.S. 80 bridges.

Larsen gave the credit for the new look to Harris and the Picketts.

“They wanted to do something for us, they wanted to help,” he said.

Geneva Pickett was pleased with the way the photos turned out and with the display some of her father’s pictures now have.

“Daddy would have been proud,” she said.

After the fire, officials from the Vicksburg Fire Department said the origin was at a back door. Flames then spread up the wall and into the attic before destroying the ceiling and most of the roof.

At the time, fire investigators said they were investigating the fire as probable arson and said they thought it may have been linked to a fire at McRaven, an antebellum tour home at 1445 Harrison St.

Fire investigator Leslie Decareaux said fire and police officials are still investigating.