Squandered Heritage

City of NO Imminent Danger List August 5, 2007

To request your home be removed from the City�s Imminent Threat Demolition List Contact : Winston Reid, Department of Code Enforcement, whreid@cityofno.com Phone: 915-0092.

City of NO Imminent Danger List August 5, 2007

To request your home be removed from the City�s Imminent Threat Demolition List Contact : Winston Reid, Department of Code Enforcement, whreid@cityofno.com Phone: 915-0092.

City of NO Imminent Danger List August 5, 2007

To request your home be removed from the City�s Imminent Threat Demolition List Contact : Winston Reid, Department of Code Enforcement, whreid@cityofno.com Phone: 915-0092.

City of NO Imminent Danger List August 5, 2007

To request your home be removed from the City�s Imminent Threat Demolition List Contact : Winston Reid, Department of Code Enforcement, whreid@cityofno.com Phone: 915-0092.

City of NO Imminent Danger List August 5, 2007

To request your home be removed from the City�s Imminent Threat Demolition List Contact : Winston Reid, Department of Code Enforcement, whreid@cityofno.com Phone: 915-0092.

City of NO Imminent Danger List August 5, 2007

To request your home be removed from the City�s Imminent Threat Demolition List Contact : Winston Reid, Department of Code Enforcement, whreid@cityofno.com Phone: 915-0092.

City of NO Imminent Danger List August 5, 2007

To request your home be removed from the City�s Imminent Threat Demolition List Contact : Winston Reid, Department of Code Enforcement, whreid@cityofno.com Phone: 915-0092.

City of NO Imminent Danger List August 5, 2007

To request your home be removed from the City�s Imminent Threat Demolition List Contact : Winston Reid, Department of Code Enforcement, whreid@cityofno.com Phone: 915-0092.

City of NO Imminent Danger List August 5, 2007

To request your home be removed from the City�s Imminent Threat Demolition List Contact : Winston Reid, Department of Code Enforcement, whreid@cityofno.com Phone: 915-0092.

City of NO Imminent Danger List August 5, 2007

To request your home be removed from the City�s Imminent Threat Demolition List Contact : Winston Reid, Department of Code Enforcement, whreid@cityofno.com Phone: 915-0092.

City of NO Imminent Danger List August 5, 2007

To request your home be removed from the City’s Imminent Threat Demolition List Contact : Winston Reid, Department of Code Enforcement, whreid@cityofno.com Phone: 915-0092.

This building was previously posted on Squandered Heritage and was approved for demolition. However, the story does not end there. HDLC confirmed that this WAS a Landmarked building. Safety and Permits should not have issued a permit until is went to the HDLC, it should never have gone to HCDRC. HDLC DOES have a representative on the HCDRC and that person should have denied the demo on the property, but we are all overwhelmed.

Architectural Historian, Jack Stewart chimes in;

All of these processes need to change before another tragedy occurs. Unfortunately, I was not aware that the building was posted on the Squandered Heritage web site and that it was up for demolition review. Volunteers like myself or Squandered Heritage can’t possibly police all of our regulatory agencies all of the time. This one is especially tragic because this was an African-American landmark, a music landmark, a theatrical landmark, and a theater building that qualified for inclusion in the planned “Broadway South” program which I had just shown to Roger Wilson

The Gallo Theater opened in 1947 built from plans from 1945. The Gallo family built a small empire on plumbing and also built housing, one assumes from the profile, in Central City. Cental City contains a solid amount of what is now considered, “worker housing”. This is now much more valuable than some new construction because it is built from more substantial material, more substantial than new construction and Modular Housing throughout America because of the special materials available which are no longer available to us today. Fine millwork and Cypress wood mark the difference.

Sam Stone, Sr. The Gallo was by his sons. The late Sam Stone, Sr. was a pre-eminent New Orleans architect. Among his larger projects were the Hennen (Maritime) building on Carondelet Street (with Sully), the Maison Blanche building, the Masonic Temple, and the First Presbyterian Church on South Claiborne. Just before his death in 1933 Stone prepared the plans for the reconstruction of the French Market.

The theater owners at the time were Jules Savin and Gene Calongne, it was built as one of New Orleans’ “all colored” theaters in a part of the city that harbored many jazz musicians as well. It had no balcony and was constructed of concrete block, accomodating 846 patrons. The Gallo Theater originally had scrolled detailed above the marquee. The marquee was intact til it’s death last week, when it advertised Cash America, a pawnshop, which was looted post-Katrina.

Councilwoman Stacy Head alerted us after the fact that this was the old Gallo Theater. No one on the HCDRC Committee brought this up at the demolition review meeting. We have only two people on the committee who may have known. At the time of it’s review, it looked like nothing more than an eyesore of a Pawn Shop to us laymen. There were no red flags. No plaques, nothing. Now it is gone forever. New Orleans is laden with old, historically significant structures. Many of them modernized over the years, disguising their true value.

Karen and I have come to realize, “We slap some lipstick and high-heels on it.” We relegate a building to the level of architechtural whore for our modern use, and discard it without consideration for its historical value. The new structure will be another Urban Wear.

Type(s) Registered: TRADE NAME; TRADEMARK
Registered Name: BROTHER’S
Applicant: EDWARD ABDALLA, INC., 101 ARNOLD BLVD., LAFAYETTE, LA 70506-0000
Type of Business: RETAIL CLOTHING STORE

As I have posted previously, many of these are historic to the African American community but they don’t have a line-in on what is happening. We all also suffer from the sort of public burying of these sites through transformation like this one, from a Theater to a Pawn shop. It’s impossible to keep up now as we try to gather as much information as we can on massive lists of demolitions througout the city.

Thanks to Jack Stewart for the historical background on this property.

Housing Conservation District Review Committee Meeting
July 23, 2007
10a.m. Room 7E07
City Hall

NO NOTICE POSTED ON THE PROPERTY

Marshall Ellzey Jr, owner. Reggie White
Foundation/Southern Coast Environmental, contractor. Demolition of a single
Arts & Crafts shotgun. No redevelopment plan submitted.

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Address: 2327 Spain St
Owner: Marshall Ellzey
Tax Bill: 38W201416
Property Description: Sq 1213 Lot 19 Spain 32X105 Fr Sgle 5/Rms A/R
Planning District: Marigny, Bywater, St. Claude, St. Roch, Desire
Flood Zone: A2
Damage Assessment
Estimated Flood Depth: 4.5
Flood Duration (days): 13
Damage Report: 43.48%

Housing Conservation District Review Committee Meeting
July 23, 2007
10a.m. Room 7E07
City Hall

NO PUBLIC NOTICE POSTED ON THE PROPERTY

Geralyn Brown, owner. Reggie White Foundation/Southern Coast Environmental, contractor. Demolition of a post-WWII cottage. No redevelopment plan submitted.

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Address: 2109 Alvar St
Owner: Geralyn Brown
Tax Bill: 39W508015
Property Description: Sq 1083 Lot P Alvar St 45X119 Siding & Fr/Sgle 10/Rms & Garage See E002
Planning District: Marigny, Bywater, St. Claude, St. Roch, Desire
Flood Zone: A2
Damage Assessment
Estimated Flood Depth: 3.5
Flood Duration (days): 11
Damage Report: 53.3

Housing Conservation District Review Committee Meeting
July 23, 2007
10a.m. Room 7E07
City Hall

PUBLIC NOTICE IS POSTED ON THE PROPERTY

Odie Millet, owner. Reggie White
Foundation/Southern Coast Environmental, contractor. Demolition of a double
shotgun. No redevelopment plan submitted.

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Address: 3928 Thalia St
Owner: Odile Millet
Tax Bill: 101112514
Property Description: Sq 482 Lot 15 Thalia 32 X 111 10, Double W/F 3/93 Permit B-11346
Planning District: Mid-City
Flood Zone: A8
Damage Assessment
Estimated Flood Depth: 5.5
Flood Duration (days): 10
Damage Report: 48.87%
Report Detail:

Housing Conservation District Review Committee Meeting
July 23, 2007
10a.m. Room 7E07
City Hall

NO PUBLIC NOTICE POSTED ON THE PROPERTY

Clemontine Emery, owner. Reggie White
Foundation/Southern Coast Environmental, contractor. Demolition of a single
Arts & Crafts structure. No redevelopment plan submitted.

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Address: 3208 Gravier St
Owner: Ellis Emery
Tax Bill: 104106918
Property Description: Sq 665 Lot 26 Gravier 31 3X1 20
Planning District: Mid-City
Flood Zone: A4
Damage Assessment
Estimated Flood Depth: 5.5
Flood Duration (days): 14
Damage Report: 50.82%

Housing Conservation District Review Committee Meeting
July 9, 2007
10a.m. Room 7E07
City Hall

APPROVED

Applicant City of New Orleans Housing Law Unit Demolition Task Force for owner Terry Wilson has applied to demolish this altered Arts-and-Crafts style bungalow to be replaced with a single-family residence of no specific design (no redevelopment plan submitted with application).

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Owner also owns the one next to this one: Kill Me Now

Historic District Landmarks Commission Meeting Agenda
June 8th, 2007
City Council Chambers 9:30 a.m.
City Hall

Proposal for demolition. Chris Robinson, owner. Housing Unit Demolition Task Force, applicant. This is a very historic structure by design and location. The owner is applying for a free FEMA demolition but this damage is due to years of neglect.

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Historic District Landmarks Commission Meeting Agenda
June 8th, 2007
City Council Chambers 9:30 a.m.
City Hall

Proposal for demolition. Douglas George, owner. Housing Unit Demolition Task Force, applicant.

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Historic District Landmarks Commission Meeting Agenda
June 8th, 2007
City Council Chambers 9:30 a.m.
City Hall

Proposal for demolition. Teddie & Trina Griffin, owners/applicants.

Historic District Landmarks Commission Meeting Agenda
June 8th, 2007
City Council Chambers 9:30 a.m.
City Hall

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Proposal for demolition. St. Peter Claver Roman Catholic Church, owner. Housing Unit Demolition Task Force, applicant.

On the drive back from NC today, I got a call to attend a hearing tomorrow morning to save this structure from the wrecking ball. Again. There is a spiritual sense regarding my return and fragile properties. I was not surprised.

The last time I left town and came back, the Apricot St. House in NW Carrollton was mistakenly demolished. On the drive home I had this sense to call Karen, “check on Apricot”. Sure ‘nuf, it was gone. It was lost due to an error on the part of Tony Faciane, which I later learned through documents we obtained from an RFPI. Apricot St. was our sacrificial lamb and the lessons we learned in that case gave us the confidence to work harder to avoid marginal mistakes.

This little house on N. Robertson had been on the imminent danger list last year because it’s in a bad way. However, Miss N. and her husband bought it after the storm along with some other properties in the immediate area of N. Robertson and Ursulines. They have already stabilized and redone most of the properties they assumed in this very high risk block and have made an enormous impact with other investors, including Gladys Marigny and Scott Veazey, two well known historic renovators in Treme. The first thing they did was remove the damaged roof from 1114 N. Robertson in order to stop further deterioration. It has become a race against time.

I jumped through all kinds of hoops to get this off the Army Corps’ Red Sticker list last year, getting an engineer’s report and submitting all the necessary insurance paperwork to City Hall to help save it from demolition. That effort was a success.

Before Katrina it was on the market for a mere 30K and I even gave serious thought to buying it myself but I went ahead with the very large Gothic Eastlake on Gov. Nicholls instead. So this house speaks to me.

Miss N. and her husband are going to rebuild it, it’s in the queue of their projects in this area of critical mass in Historic Treme. As many people know, N. Robertson has been the core problem crime street for Treme. Before the storm, some of the properties here were simply not for sale. After the storm, the Bynums took advantage of their respected position in Treme to acquire some essential properties with the collective goal of bringing the area up out of its slum state. Charbonnet funeral home is one property that backs up on this block and has been completely and beautifully renovated. It’s an historically important anchor in Historic Treme, home to many landmark Jazz funerals and is now fueling this larger effort toward an architectural rennaissance on N. Robertson and Ursulines St.

I got a call on the way home today that it’s on the docket for the Good Neighbor adjudication process for 9 am tomorrow, and N. has to attend a meeting for Women of the Storm so I am going to the hearing, to, yet again, rally hard for giving them every opportunity to get this property back into commerce.

Its brick between post construction is what makes it unique, because even though it looks bad, the walls are only supporting themselves and can be saved. It has the original screen structures on the windows as well. It probably dates to the mid-1800’s and brick between post construction is unique to the quarter and Treme, so it’s worth the all-out effort to save whatever we can. Furthermore, it doesn’t post imminent danger to any structure in the immediate vicinity, making triage completely worth the effort.

This special duty is my welcome home after two weeks of respite . . . I will attend the hearing on the owner’s behalf. They have a construction crew working their way to this architecturally valuable but fragile structure. Having been through this process, I am confident I can buy them some time. We know, with storm season upon us, time is now of the utmost.

Richard Nickel dedicated his life to photographing the buildings of reknowned Chicago architects Adler and Sullivan. He died while photographing the ruins of the Chicago Stock Exchange thirty-five years ago. As Karen and I, and now, also Randall do, Nickel chased the wrecking ball and often captured the last photographs of some of Chicago’s most magnificent architecture. The structures we chase on Squandered Heritage are much more humble but their loss will be realized years from now in the sheer magnitude of our situation post-Katrina.

Lynn Becker, in Chicago, wrote the piece linked to above. Lynn is one of my favorite architectural writers and I cut my baby teeth on my knowledge of architecture from the very thorough writing on Chicago architecture in the Chicago Reader.

Finally, it all came down to one last, doomed battle to save Sullivan’s incredible 1893 Stock Exchange Building on LaSalle. Although its remnants would be eagerly sought by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the city scarcely thought twice before it threw it all away to build a skyscraper so mediocre it’s all but invisible. Again, Nickel swung into action to document the building through his photographs, including the great trading room, which his close friend John Vinci would later reconstruct inside the Art Institute. On April 13, 1972, Nickel snuck unnoticed into the building one more time and was killed as it collapsed around him. It took 28 days to find his body.

I grew up in Chicago and worked downtown for some time. The recreated trading room of the Chicago Stock Exchange at the Art Institute was a periodic inspiration. It is here where my my utter fascination for the masterful skill of the architects and builders of America’s great architecture began in my early teens. Like Nickel, I had never given my passion serious thought. I followed the renovation of the proto-skyscraper, the Monadnock Building in the Chicago Reader and I was so compelled by its design and dilemma that I had to visit it, to feel the spirit of this building being reborn.

This inspiration has evolved over a lifetime into my current passion for the unique architectural culture of New Orleans. We find ourselves today, in New Orleans, in the same painful place of loss that Nickel expressed only a couple years before his haunting demise, In a city of slums, Nickel wrote in a 1971 letter,

Why must the quality buildings be doomed? . . . you can’t convince me there are no alternatives.

Please visit Lynn Becker’s blog entry on the release of Richard Nickel’s Chicago.

Lynn Becker encounters much of the same backlash that we do here on Squandered Heritage.
He writes,

It’s scarcely different today. Just this year, three more of Sullivan’s twenty-three surviving Chicago buildings have been destroyed, two in little more than ten days in disastrous fires. And while there’s been no shortage of dismayed reaction, I also regularly get comments on my blog along the lines of, ‘Get a life. No one wants to preserve crap’, and, ‘The idea that a group of people can impose their will on the property rights of others economic self interest is a slap in the face to the modern business spirit.’ When the market economy remains our one true religion, there’s never a shortage of those who would destroy beauty with malice and replace it with shit for spite.

Let us not waste our architectural identity in haste, because in it, we throw away generations of lost materials and hand construction which are no longer within reach in rebuilding. We risk throwing away the historical attachment to our city’s unique cultural past. It is not just buildings, within these buildings are the spirits of the lives and mastery that built New Orleans under great social and geographic duress. One way we, as one of the world’s most beloved cities, can survive this disaster, is by saving all we can of our fragile connection to our world renowned architectural history.

I was honored to meet and tour the city with Anthony Tung this past weekend. Here is his website: Anthony Tung: Preserving the World’s Great Cities. It made me wish Richard Nickel were here to share his experiences with us as well.

More links on Nickel:

Richard Nickel on City File Press

The Richard Nickel Committee

HDLC

Historic District Landmarks Commission Meeting Agenda
May 11th, 2007
City Council Chambers 9:30 a.m.
City Hall

RESULT: Approved

Joseph Tolliver, owner, represented by the Housing Unit Demolition Task Force. Right now, we are in the vortex of the demolition process we could see coming 6 months ago.

It could be an Imminent Danger declaration at the City level that brings this to the agenda or a FEMA demolition. Because of the timing, I think it’s a FEMA list, voluntary application, for a taxpayer sponsored demolition. In the minds of the owners, these are FREE demolitions. There is no free demolition. The taxpayers pay or a lien is put on the remaining vacant lot.

Even though this building has been altered in design from it’s original contributing status as an architecturally important structure, at one point it was contributing. Regardless of the provenance of demolition, there will be a lingering and unrecompensable cost to our city’s architectural heritage that is lost forever. The Imminent Danger properties listed by the city as part of their code enforcement program are just now going coming to the point where they will actually be demolished.

Nevertheless, this demolition is not due to Katrina. It’s due to neglect. It’s a lack of responsibility on the part of the owners to maintain or sell the property, and also many years of complete lack of real code enforcement in New Orleans.