Nominate an Endangered Place

John Eberson, architect. Walter Smalling, photographer. Tampa Theatre, Hillsborough County, Florida. n.d. Historic American Buildings Survey.

Since 1988, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has accepted nominations for "America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places," utilizing the designation to raise public awareness regarding threats to the nation's cultural heritage. Do you have a place that you would like to nominate? If so, contact the Southern regional office of the National Trust for a consultation about the appropriateness of your proposed nomination:

Southern Office

(Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, Tennessee, South Carolina, Virgin Islands)
456 King Street, 3rd Floor
Charleston, SC 29403
Tel: 843-722-8552
E-mail: soro@nthp.org

For more information about nomination criteria, click here. Nominations for the 2009 list are due by Friday, December 5, 2008.

The Tampa Theatre, shown above, was once endangered. Designed by Romanian-born theatre architect John Eberson prior to the Great Crash, the theatre opened to the public in 1926. Although it enjoyed decades of great popularity, by the 1960s the structure was under threat. In 1973, Tampa citizens rallied to save the landmark and subsidized a $2 million restoration. Today the theatre hosts over 600 events a year, including performances that showcase its historic Wurlitzer Organ. Last year for Halloween, legendary organist Rosa Rio performed her original score to accompany F. W. Murnau's German expressionist film Nosferatu (1922). She was carried to the stage in a coffin, and revealed to the audience her true age, 105. In a 2006 interview, Rosa conveyed, "I can't explain it. . . when I'm on stage [at the Tampa Theatre], I'm like a kid again." Sadly, this year she is not performing after over sixty years on the keyboards.

It is worth noting that Rosa played both the Strand and Saenger Theatres in New Orleans. She met a young Ginger Rogers while playing at the newly opened Saenger (1927), and when the Mississippi flooded its banks that same year, Rosa and others lifted up the theatre's organ to save it from the rising waters. She and her companions lived for two days in the Saenger and used its curtains for bedding. To read more, click here. The Southeastern Architectural Archive retains architect Emile Weil's drawings for the Saenger Theatre, 143 N. Rampart/1111 Canal Street, 1925-1927. The structure has been closed since Hurricane Katrina. Weil also designed the Pensacola, Florida Saenger Theatre, which opened in 1925 and has been undergoing renovations since this spring.



Rosa Rio Tampa Theatre Performance, 2005. Youtube. Viewed 31 October 2008.

Haunted Libraries of the South

Readers will be happy (or disappointed) to note that none of Tulane University's Libraries made this year's list of "Haunted Libraries" of the southern United States. Despite having served in the past as the physiological laboratory for Tulane's Medical School, with abundant sinks for anatomy classes (i.e. dissections), the Tulane School of Architecture (TSA) Library and Slide Library did not make ALA Librarian George Eberhart's showcase. Joseph Merrick Jones Hall, home to the Southeastern Architectural Archive, was formerly Tulane's Law School -- featured in Alan Pakula's 1993 film The Pelican Brief -- but it also did not instill terror.

Plans for the Richardson Memorial, which houses the TSA Libraries, and Jones Hall reside in the Southeastern Architectural Archive.

New Orleans in New York/New York in New Orleans

From today's New York Times:

"With a star-filled roster of 81 artists and a projected 50,000 visitors from out of town, it may indeed bring benefits to New Orleans. But it is already clear that the arrangement has not been one-sided, and the New Orleans contribution has been rich. With its history of destruction and rebirth, artistic triumph and economic struggle, this crumpled crescent of a city provides a singular interpretive context that acts as a resonance chamber."

To read the rest of Shaila Dewan's piece about Prospect.1, click here. To watch a slide show, click here.

Architectural Lettering & Pop Culture

What does architecture have in common with Wonder Woman?

In the 1930s, the Keuffel and Esser Company (also known as K & E) of New York developed an architectural lettering kit called the Leroy Lettering Set. It was designed to assist architects and engineers in producing uniform, precise lettering that was intended to be no less legible when reproduced in blueprints and other formats. The earliest sets included xylonite templates, scribers and nickel silver/stainless steel lettering pens. To look at some of the company's catalogs, including images of the set shown below, click here.

Many in the comic book industry quickly adopted Leroy lettering. Wonder Woman of the 1940s, the Golden Age of American comics, employed Leroy, as did the EC Comics (Entertainment Comics) edited by Al Feldstein (born 1925) in the 1950s.

[Images above: Scenes from Wonder Woman #25 (1947); Leroy Lettering Sets Brochure, 1937]

Building by the Letters III: Lettering

Doug Patt's Two-Part Architectural Lettering Series on youtube.
Viewed 26 October 2008.

New Orleans Business Archive: Blaise Garages

George Blaise owned a number of New Orleans parking garages, including this one located at 200 N. Rampart Street, designed by Diboll, Kessels and Associates (13 March 1950). The SEAA retains records for the following Blaise projects:


Garage, 200 N. Rampart Street, NOLA 1950
Garage, Canal and Marais Streets, NOLA 1928
Garage, Baton Rouge, LA 1931
Garage, 213 Tchoupitoulas Street, NOLA 1925
Unidentified parking garage and lot, NOLA 1925
Garage, 163 University Place, NOLA 1930
Gas Station and Parking Lot, Girod and Carondelet, NOLA 1925
Garage, 708 Iberville Street, NOLA 1929

Want to read more about parking?

Henley, Simon. The Architecture of Parking. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2007. ARCHITECTURE TL175.H45

Jakle, John. Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture. Charlottesville: U Virginia Press, 2004. HTML TL 175 .J34

McDonald, Shannon. The Parking Garage: Design and Evolution of a Modern Urban Form. Washington: Urban Land Institute, 2007. ARCHITECTURE TL 175 .M385

Photograph above: Diboll, Kessels and Associates, Architects. Blaise, Inc. Parking Garage, 200 N. Rampart Street by K. Rylance 09.2008

Maps and Models

I mentioned Professor Emeritus Yi-Fu Tuan in an earlier post, his importance as a humanist geographer and teacher. Recently a group of former students and librarians from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Geography Department began to make his "Dear Colleague" (1985-2008) letters available to the public via the portal here. See, for example a letter inspired by a lunch with noted cartography historian David Woodward (15 December 1985):

"A map is a two-dimensional model of reality. Or, as David puts it, a model is a three-dimensional map. Maps and models are both artifacts, but a model can be a feature in the landscape -- indeed, a monumental feature. In traditional societies, the house can often be interpreted as a model of the cosmos. The floor plan of the house, with its partitions and directional points, are a two-dimensional map of the cosmos. The three-dimensional house is a model -- a three-dimensional map -- of the larger reality of the heavens and the earth."

Photograph above: Marjory Collins, Camouflage class in New York University, where men and women are preparing for jobs in the Army or in industry, New York, N.Y. They make models from aerial photographs, re-photograph them, then work out a camouflage scheme and make a final photograph, March 1943. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. on flickr.

Building by the Letters II

Buildings that appeal to typographers: Japan's The Fukutake House, an art gallery space, which was featured in Business Week 25.05.2007.

Typographer Catherine Griffiths had this to say about the house:

"[It] was a well-executed design that harmonized typography and architecture with a feeling for space, scale, material, and form."

The design group FLAME, Inc. created the signage for the Fukutake House, which received a 2007 D&AD Award in its Typography/Graphic Design Category, given by the non-profit organization annually as reward for "outstanding creativity, mould-breaking thinking and the highest standard of design and innovation."

The D&AD Awards 2009 are now available for submission entries. They also offer awards in the category of Environmental Design. Click here for more information.

[Above: Fukutake House, press release photographs by Kozo Takayama, D&AD Awards 2007. URL: http://www.dandad.org/awards2007/entry.asp?entry_id=26915. Viewed 21 October 2008].

Language and Space: Call for Papers

The graduate students of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Florida cordially invite submissions for their 4th Annual Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Spanish and Latin American Literatures, Linguistics, and Cultures. The colloquium will bring together graduate students and professors from a wide variety of disciplines whose work explores the concepts of "Language & Space: Lenguaje y espacio".

Open to all relevant topics, with thematic emphasis on the following: Language Contact; Transmutations of Art; Cities and Spaces; Literary and Film Space; Globalization; Bilingualism and Multilingualism; Race and Ethnic Relations; The Other / The "Outsider"; Biculturalism; Second Language Acquisition; Picturing Women's Voices and Silences; Code-Switching; Memory; Language Change and Variation; Syncretism / Hybridism; New Technologies and Literary Communication; Language and Gender; Migration; and Exile and Diasporas.

Please send your one-page, single-spaced abstract attached as a Word documento to coloquiouf@gmail.com by December 12th, 2008. Specify in the subject line whether your abstract is intended for Linguistics, Literature, or Culture Studies. With your submission, please make sure you include: the title of your paper, your name, institutional affiliation, and email address. The selection committee will respond to proposals as soon as possible. Papers being read will have a limit of 20 minutes. There is a donation fee of $30. For further information, click here.

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Highways and Neighborhoods

The transformation of live oak-filled public boulevard space along Claiborne Avenue into the roadway deck for elevated Interstate I-10 dramatically altered Sixth and Seventh Ward New Orleans, much as the routing of Interstate I-35 affected the Rondo neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota and Interstate I-275 impacted West Tampa, Florida. All three areas were home to tight-knit, fiercely independent and mixed race communities. Rondo's identity as a neighborhood was nearly erased by the highway construction; today it is largely known through oral histories and individual memories. West Tampa is being altered once again, this time by I-275 expansion for Florida's burgeoning population of motorists. To read a blogger's perspective, click here.

Thirty-eight years ago, the New Orleans Tambourine and Fan Club, a neighborhood-based cultural organization associated with the Sixth and Seventh Wards, initiated a revitalization effort for the Claiborne Avenue Corridor. By November 1973, the Claiborne Avenue Design Team (CADT) was formed and began a three-year multi-disciplinary planning process to revitalize the corridor that involved architects, engineers, community members, and social scientists. Participants included Ashe Cultural Arts Center co-founder Douglas Redd (1947-2007) and musicians Alvin Alcorn (1912-2003), Harold Dejan (1909-2002), and Freddie Kohlman (1918-1990). The team focused its attentions on potential development between Poydras Street and Peoples Avenue, and published its comprehensive plan that included supplementary architectural drawings, graphs, maps and statistical data. The CADT I-10 Multi-Use Study may be found in Tulane University's Special Collections Division, Louisiana Collections [NA 9127.N46 C 55] and in the Hogan Jazz Archive.

At the time the team conducted its surveys of CADT area residents, 62.8% of those responding selected recreation for children as the preferred use for the land. When asked the question, "If you had the choice, what three things would you select for general improvement of your community," the primary responses were:

Recreation for children 25.8%
Better streets 24.5%
More jobs/employment 17.4%
Misc./other 6.7%
DK/NA 14.7%


Photograph above: Claiborne Avenue Corridor, July 1966. From CADT I-10 Multi-Use Study. New Orleans: The Team, 1976, p. 44.

Building by the Letters

Can you read the plans?
As related to the previous blog post, the plans above are devised based on the Roman (or Latin) alphabet. Reading from top to bottom, left to right, the plans spell out: "LOVIS LE GRAND" (doubled mirrorwise); the initials of Prince Christian Carl Friedrich Alexander of Anspach, and "IHS," the Monogram of the Name of Jesus (The Jesuit Order). These architectural follies were never built.

Upper: Thomas Gobert, Traitté d’Architecture dedié à Louix XIV (n.d.). Collection of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich. Published in Josef Ponten, Architektur die nicht gebaut wurde. Stuttgart, Berlin, and Leipzig: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1925, Vol. I, pp. 60-61, and Vol. II, figs. 119-125. As it appears in Conrads, Ulrich and Hans G. Sperlich. The Architecture of Fantasy: Utopian Building and Planning in Modern Times. New York: Praeger, 1962.

Center: Johann David Steingruber, Page from his book, titled Architectonisches Alphabet: bestehend aus dreyssig Rissen, wovon jeder Buchstab nach seiner kenntlichen Anlage auf eine ansehnliche und geräumige fürstliche Wohnung, dann auf alle Religionen, Schloss-Capellen und ein Buchstab gänzlich zu einen Closter, übrigens aber der mehreste Theil nach teutscher Landes-Art mit Einheiz-Stätte auf Oefen und nur Theils mit Camins eingerichtet ... : zu welchen auch die Façaden mit merklich abwechslender Architectur aufgezogen find : ueber diss sind noch zwanzig Plans auf Kayserlich, Königlich, Chur- und anderer hoher Fürsten Namen, Risse auf aleiche Art mit aller Geflissenheit und distincter Architectur dergestalten auf einen Bogen aufgezogen, dass solche eingeschlagen mit denen vorstehenden in einen Format gebunden werden können. Schwabach: Gedruckt Mizler, 1773. As it appears in Conrads, Ulrich and Hans G. Sperlich. The Architecture of Fantasy: Utopian Building and Planning in Modern Times. New York: Praeger, 1962.

Bottom: Anton Glonner, plan for a Jesuit college and church, 1774. Published in Die christliche Kunst, Monatschrift für alle Gebiete der Christlichen Kunst XI:10 (1915). As it appears in Conrads, Ulrich and Hans G. Sperlich. The Architecture of Fantasy: Utopian Building and Planning in Modern Times. New York: Praeger, 1962.

Want to read more?

Conrads, Ulrich and Hans G. Sperlich. The Architecture of Fantasy: Utopian Building and Planning in Modern Times. New York: Praeger, 1962. TSA Library & HTML NA 8460 .C613

Steingruber's Alphabet

Johann David Steingruber's Architectural Alphabet, published in 1773, is a compendium of imaginative building designs that correlate to the letters of the alphabet. Steingruber (1702-87) was the son of a master mason who became a surveyor and later a Principal Architect of the Board of Works under the Margrave Friedrich Carl Alexander. His attempt to reconcile the alphabet with building configurations was not an anomaly; his contemporary Anton Glonner developed a Jesuit college and church plan based on the Order's monogram "IHS" and a French architect named Thomas Gobert (1625-90) wrote a manuscript entitled Traitté d’Architecture dedié à Louix XIV which included building plans that spelled out "LOVIS LE GRAND" ("Louis the Great"). The Italian Antonio Basoli (1774-1848) followed suit with his Alfabeto Pittorico (1839) which was reprinted in 1998 by Ravensburger, with translations of Basoli’s text into German and English, and with additional commentary and notes by Joseph Kiermeier-Debre and Fritz Franz Vogel.

Steingruber's Architectural Alphabet will be on display in the Southeastern Architectural Archive beginning in November, through the courtesy of Rachel Lambert Mellon, the noted landscape/gardening historian and landscape designer whose work on the White House's Rose Garden during the Kennedy Administration and the White House's East Garden/Jacqueline Kennedy Garden under the Johnson Administration brought national attention. Her publication The White House Gardens: A History and Pictorial Record resides in the Library of the New Orleans Town Gardeners, located in the SEAA, and was the gift of New Orleans landscape architect William S. Wiedorn (1896-1988).

The Southeastern Architectural Archive is home to the William S. Wiedorn Collection.


Header Image: Johann David Steingruber (1702-1787) , The "S" Page from his book, titled Architectonisches Alphabet: bestehend aus dreyssig Rissen, wovon jeder Buchstab nach seiner kenntlichen Anlage auf eine ansehnliche und geräumige fürstliche Wohnung, dann auf alle Religionen, Schloss-Capellen und ein Buchstab gänzlich zu einen Closter, übrigens aber der mehreste Theil nach teutscher Landes-Art mit Einheiz-Stätte auf Oefen und nur Theils mit Camins eingerichtet ... : zu welchen auch die Façaden mit merklich abwechslender Architectur aufgezogen find : ueber diss sind noch zwanzig Plans auf Kayserlich, Königlich, Chur- und anderer hoher Fürsten Namen, Risse auf aleiche Art mit aller Geflissenheit und distincter Architectur dergestalten auf einen Bogen aufgezogen, dass solche eingeschlagen mit denen vorstehenden in einen Format gebunden werden können (Schwabach: Gedruckt Mizler, 1773). Collection of Rachel Lambert Mellon, Oak Spring Garden Library, Upperville, Virginia.

Lexicon: blog

The Media Ecology Association list recently advertised Andrew Sullivan's piece "Why I Blog," published in November 2008's The Atlantic. Sullivan began blogging eight years ago, as a means of publishing new writing in a spontaneous fashion. What began as an outlet created by a web designer friend developed into an addiction "like taking a narcotic."

Sullivan traces the etymology of the word blog and delves into the early and recent history of blogging. He also acknowledges a historic legacy of written expressions of immediate thought:

"If you compare the meandering, questioning, unresolved dialogues of Plato with the definitive, logical treatises of Aristotle, you see the difference between a skeptic’s spirit translated into writing and a spirit that seeks to bring some finality to the argument. Perhaps the greatest single piece of Christian apologetics, Pascal’s Pensées, is a series of meandering, short, and incomplete stabs at arguments, observations, insights. Their lack of finish is what makes them so compelling—arguably more compelling than a polished treatise by Aquinas."

To link to the Top 30 Design/Architecture Blogs, click here.

Nuclear Reactor on the Horizon?

DOCOMOMO-WEWA has announced that the Washington state Governor's Advisory Council on Historic Preservation will be meeting Friday, October 17th to review the National Register of Historic Places nomination for the endangered 1961 University of Washington-Seattle Nuclear Reactor Building.

The Architect Artist Group (TAAG); a collaborative group comprised of architects, an engineer and a painter; designed the campus structure. The singular TAAG building, the Nuclear Reactor garnered significant media coverage, in part because it was completed in advance of the Century 21 World's Fair in Seattle. To read more, click here.

TAAG Members:

Wendell Lovett, architect
Daniel Streissguth, architect
Gene Zema, architect
Gerard Torrence, structural engineer
Spencer Moseley, artist

Update (23.10.2008): The Governor's Advisory Council on Historic Preservation voted to list the building on the Washington Heritage Register and to forward the nomination to the National Park Service and the National Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. To read more about the nomination campaign led by a UW graduate student, click here.

UPhO #3: Unidentified structure, undated

The Southeastern Architectural Archive has no information on this historic photograph. Does anyone know anything about the structure or the photographer?

This is part of an ongoing series of UPhOs (Unidentified Photograph Objects). Speculations appreciated!

[Photograph: Unidentified mounted albumen print. undated. Miscellaneous Photographs Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries].

Architecture Research Guide

Tulane University Libraries have recently adopted the use of LibGuides, a web 2.0 content management system that allows librarians to develop research guides, share content knowledge and connect with patrons. To see the growing number of academic libraries who are implementing LibGuides, click here.

Tulane's School of Architecture LibGuide is located here. It provides lists of recommended resources for finding books, articles, images, and websites as well as links to regional, national and international archives and libraries devoted to the study of architecture and the built environment. Some databases will only be available to Tulane University affiliates, but the majority of the resources cited are open access.

Upcoming Events: Tulane School of Architecture

Sundance Channel Architecture School Screening -
Friday, October 10 6:30 pm
Stan Bertheaud and Michael Selditch, creators.

The screening of all six broadcast episodes will be in High Definition from an original tape source and Michael Selditch will be on hand to answer questions. There will be light refreshments at intermission.

Where: Freeman Auditorium, Woldenberg Art Center on the Newcomb Campus


National Endowment for the Arts Workshop -
Saturday, October 11 10:30 am - noon
Co-sponsored by Global Green USA and the Tulane School of Architecture. Maurice Cox, Director of Design at the National Endowment of the Arts will lead a workshop on how non-profit organizations can best prepare themselves for successful NEA design grant submissions.

Where: Global Green USA/New Orleans Office/841 Carondelet Street


Eskew + Dumez + Ripple Lecture: Maurice Cox "Design for All" -
Monday, October 13 6:00 pm

Maurice Cox, Director of Design at the National Endowment of the Arts supervises the grant-making process, oversees the Mayor's Institute on City Design, and Your Town programs.

Where: Richardson Memorial Hall, TSA, Room 201

Architects in the Movies: Top Twenty Films

The Black Cat (1934)
Starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi

Dangerous (1935)
Starring Bette Davis and Franchot Tone

Mrs. Miniver (1942)
Starring Walter Pidgeon and Greer Garson

Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House (1948)
Starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy

The Fountainhead (1949)
Starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal

The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1957)
Starring Ray Milland

Twelve Angry Men (1958)
Starring Henry Fonda

Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)
Directed by Alain Resnais

L'Avventura (1960)
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni; Starring Monica Vitti, Gabriele Ferzetti

Strangers When We Meet (1960)
Directed by Richard Quine; starring Kirk Douglas and Kim Novak

The World of Suzie Wong (1960)
Directed by Richard Quine; starring William Holden

Pueblito (1961)
Directed by Emilio Fernandez; starring Fernando Soler

Two for the Road (1966/67)
Starring Albert Finney

Les Choses de la Vie (1969)
Directed by Claude Sautet; starring Michel Piccoli

Pares y Nones (1982)
Directed by José Luis Cuerda

Falling in Love (1984)
Starring Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro

The Belly of an Architect (1987)
Directed by Peter Greenaway; starring Brian Dennehy

Jungle Fever (1991)
Directed by Spike Lee; starring Wesley Snipes

There's Something about Mary (1998)
Directed by the Farrelly Brothers; Starring Matt Dillon and Cameron Diaz

Life as a House (2001)
Directed by Irwin Winkler; starring Kevin Kline

New Orleans Business Archive: Abry Brothers

Abry Brothers published this advertisement in the New Orleans City Directory of 1921. At that time, the family had already been in the New Orleans house shoring/moving business 81 years, since the Frankfurt-born John G. Abry established the company in 1840. By 1921, yet another generation had taken over operations, with three Abrys in charge: George, Emile and John. They lived in close proximity to one another, at 822 North Johnson, 820 North Prieur, and 1021 North Galvez, respectively.  

Over the years, the company worked on a number of important Louisiana properties: Houma House Plantation, the Jax Brewery, and the Stern's House at Long Vue Gardens. The company is still in business, although it is now located on Orleans Avenue, rather than the 604 Canal-Commercial address it had in the 1920's.  To read more about the company's history, click here.

Did you know there are prizes for "greatest feats" in moving buildings? For example, the Guinness Book of World Records maintains an award for the "Heaviest Building Moved Intact."

When the Minneapolis Shubert Theatre was moved in the 1990s, it was then the largest such project undertaken:



Want to read more?

Edmonds, Molly. "The Five Heaviest Buildings Ever Moved." 02 April 2008 HowStuffWorks.com Viewed 06 October 2008.

Gregory, J. "Reconsidering Relocated Buildings: ICOMOS, Authenticity and Mass Relocation." International Journal of Heritage Studies 14:2 (2008): 112-130. [available through Inter Library Loan]

"Building Relocation: Victory or Defeat?" Chap. in J. Myrick Howard, Buying Time for Heritage: How to Save an Endangered Property (University of North Carolina Press 2007): pp. 125-132.
[Available in the TSA Library NA111.H69 2007]

"Nomadic Hotels and Lighthouses" 20 October 2008 Pruned Viewed 20 October 2008.

Diamonds and Rust

Joan Baez's lyrics come to mind on the demolition site of the International Longshoremen's Association Meeting Hall: "We both know what memories can bring. They bring diamonds and rust."


Designed by the New Orleans firm of Lawrence and Saunders and commissioned by legendary union leader Clarence "Chink" Henry, the General Longshore Workers Local 1419 was the site of some of the city's most significant events of the third quarter of the twentieth century. Built for an initial cost of $500,000 with an elaborate exterior truss system and sheathed in Vermont verde antique and marble, the ILA 1419 Hall originally was home to a vast membership of the region's black longshoremen. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference held meetings here, the longshoremen conducted classes to instruct ILA members on how to vote, and they rented their auditorium space out to the city's gay community for its Mardi Gras balls.

Faced with extensive renovation costs and a significantly diminished membership, the longshoremen recently voted to demolish their structure. The lovely Vermont verde antique and other elements are being salvaged to create a monument to the New Orleans longshoremen. Flickr user anthonyturducken has posted images of the hall here.

Dedicated September 1959, razed October 2008.

[Photographs: Top: General Longshore Workers Local 3000. 03.10.2008 by K. Rylance; Bottom: Lawrence and Saunders (architects), ILA Local 1419. 2700 S. Claiborne, 1959. As photographed by Frank Lotz Miller. Lawrence and Saunders Firm Brochure, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries]

We
They bring diamonds and rust

Heritage Conservation Collaboration

The International Working Party for the Documentation and Conservation of Building Sites and Neighborhoods of the Modern Movement (DOCOMOMO) US and Quebec groups are collaborating on a daylong session of presentations and tour of (precast) concrete at the Annual Meeting of APT (Association for Preservation Technology) in Montreal on October 13, 2008.

The APT's 40th Anniversary Conference "Moving Forward, Looking Back" will focus on Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Heritage Conservation, with sub-theme emphases on Sustainable Heritage Conservation and Conservation Technology and Philosophy.

New Orleans from Space - October 1968

NASA's Apollo 7 Spacecraft was the vantage point for this forty-year-old photograph of New Orleans. The image was taken from an altitude of 97 nautical miles, as Apollo 7 made its 120th revolution around the earth. It is one of over 9000 press photographs made available for researchers by NASA's Johnson Space Center through its Digital Image Collection portal, which is also accessible via the metadata harvester OAIster. To view 2005 Landsat Program pictures of New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina, click here.

Why use a harvester? Well, as the metadata specialists emphasize, if you rely on Internet search engines such as google, you are missing out on a lot of what is out there in the so-called "hidden" web. Click here to read more.

The Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas currently houses the Apollo 7 module, which is on loan from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

[Photograph: NASA Technical Report Server (NTRS). New Orleans as Seen from the Apollo 7 Spacecraft. 19.10.1968 AS07-08-1917 ]