Architecture Research

Lexicon: Trembling Prairies

2012-01-27T16:19:00.000-06:00

Trembling prairie. [Tr. F. prairie tremblante : limited in use to parts of Louisiana : also called shaking prairie.] Also, in the vicinity of the numerous lakes of the parish [LaFourche, Louisiana] exist immense tracts called trembling prairies. These seem to be a surface composed of the matted roots and decayed stalks of the marsh vegetation, floating upon water in some instances, and upon very soft mud in others. Over these prairies it is practicable to walk, and cattle graze upon them, although they vibrate at every tread, and a cut of a few feet in depth will always discover a substratum of water. S.H. Lockett, Sec. Ann. Rep. Topog. Surv. of Louisiana, 1871, p. 10. From The Century Dictionary and Encyclopedia, 1911, p. 6457 available via googlebooks.

Above: Plat of T. 19 S. - R. 16 E. South Eastern District, La. East of the Mississippi. Surveyor General's Office, Donaldsonville, La. October 24th, 1854. Photostat of old plat. Bohemia Spillway Files, Guy Seghers Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

To find other historic Louisiana plats, see the Louisiana Division of Administration's Historical Records page, and select under "Document Type" "Plats, Old." Then enter appropriate Land District, Township and/or Range.

To ascertain Township and Range coordinates related to the Public Land Survey System [PLSS], consult the Land Survey Information System online.

DeBuys Commercial Buildings

2012-01-25T10:50:00.000-06:00

This blog has mentioned New Orleans architect Rathbone De Buys (1874-1960) a number of times. Two of his extant commercial buildings are currently undergoing changes: one a paint job; the other a demolition.

Federico's Grocery, the Central City business of Mrs. Joseph Federico, was located at 1503 Dryades Street (now 1503 Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard). Over time, the structure lost its theatre-like signage and its contrastive color scheme. Recently, the building was once again painted.

Nolde's Furniture Store, operated by August W. Nolde, was located at 215-217 North Rampart, directly behind Emile Weil's Saenger Theatre (1927). The building has been cordoned off for some time, and today the demolition started. The land is needed for the proposed expansion of the Saenger's stagehouse.

Images above, top to bottom: Unidentified photographer. Rathbone DeBuys, architect. Federico Grocery, New Orleans, LA. undated. Rathbone DeBuys Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Joseph Schnetzer, photographer. Rathbone DeBuys, architect. Dudley & Wikle, Contractors. Nolde Furniture Company Addition, 215 North Rampart Street, New Orleans, LA. 1928. Rathbone DeBuys Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Wrightian Letterhead

2012-01-17T16:30:00.001-06:00

The Southeastern Architectural Archive recently opened its new exhibition, Following Wright, which acknowledges Frank Lloyd Wright's influence in southeastern Louisiana. While the exhibit highlights architectural drawings by Edward Sporl, Albert C. Ledner, Philip Roach, Jr., and Leonard Reese Spangenberg, we are posting some Wright-inspired letterhead designs by other local architects. Gordon Illes Kuhn († 1983) and A. George Ducorbier, Jr. both adopted Wright's saturated red as part of their graphic layouts in the 1960s.

Images above: Correspondence Files, 1965-1966, Guy Seghers Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Anthropomorphic Alphabet

2012-01-09T12:21:00.000-06:00

Louis Xavier Magny (born c. 1800 in Avignon, France) was a prominent antebellum New Orleans lithographer who frequently produced cartographic prints for local auction sales. The Southeastern Architectural Archive has two such auction maps -- printed for auctioneer Norbert Vignie -- each of which features different letter forms.

The lettering reproduced above was printed for the December 1854 auction of the Third District properties of the late Louisiana Supreme Court Justice, François-Xavier Martin (1762 - 1846). Some of the letter forms characterize episodes from Martin's life, for he had been one of the Vice Presidents of the Louisiana State Temperance Society and had briefly served in the Continental Army of Virginia.

To read more about antebellum lithography in New Orleans, see Priscilla Lawrence's "A New Plane: Pre-Civil War Lithography in New Orleans," chap. in Printmaking in New Orleans, edited by Jessie J. Poesch (Jackson, MS: U Press of Mississippi, 2006), pp. 117-134.

To read more about Judge Martin, see Charles Étienne Gayarré's "The Old Chief Justice and His Black Servant, Tom" in Fernando De Lemos: Truth and Fiction, a Novel (New York: Carleton, 1872), pp. 243-256, and Michael Chiorazzi's "Francois-Xavier Martin: Printer, Lawyer, Jurist," a paper delivered at the 80th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries (7 July 1987), as presented at: http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1062&context=aallcallforpapers.

Image above: Detail, X. Magny, printer, 117 Exchange Alley. 35 Lots of Ground at Gentilly Being Part of the Property of the Late Judge Martin. New Orleans: December 1854. Guy Seghers Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division,Tulane University Libraries.

Lincoln Memorial Park

2012-01-06T15:28:00.000-06:00

In 1954, the Theosophical Foundation of New Orleans began advertising a new cemetery located on Old Gentilly Highway near Lee Station and the Louisiana and Nashville Railroad Line. Surveyor/Engineer Guy J. Seghers (1898-1986) had surveyed the land and developed a drainage scheme that included a semi-circular 25' canal and an adjacent 20' levee. Seghers also designed the cemetery, a vast axial complex divided into alphabetical sections conjoined by a central artery with a chapel. Advertised as the "largest park plan cemetery in the South" and intended as an exclusive African-American cemetery, Lincoln Memorial Park attracted speculators who purchased lots in bulk, and later individually sold them. Sellers touted the park's "Baby Land," a special area within the necropolis dedicated to infant burials (image above, right).

Two years later, Hurricane Flossie hit the Gulf of Mexico. Lincoln Memorial Cemetery was inundated with water, and its protective levee and canal ostensibly trapped the storm water within the park. By October 1957, the city's director of public health sanitation closed it, declaring a health hazard. The Times Picayune reported that local children were using the park as a crawfish breeding ground (October 8). In 1960, Seghers was solicited to develop a proper drainage plan and estimate costs of maintenance and operation for a five-year period. He proposed a gasoline and electrical pump that would be replaced at five-year intervals.

In 1966, the cemetery was rededicated as Resthaven Memorial Park (10400 Old Gentilly Road).

Image above: Guy Seghers, Section "A" (Entrance), Lincoln Memorial Park, New Orleans Third Municipal District, LA. 1952. Guy Seghers Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Exhibit Highlights Wright's Influence

2011-12-21T10:02:00.000-06:00

Tulane University’s Southeastern Architectural Archive has announced a new exhibit:

Following Wright
Co-curated by Keli Rylance and Kevin Williams
17 January -- 7 December 2012

From Frank Lloyd Wright’s earliest appearances in American and German architectural publications to his mid-century speaking engagement at the New Orleans International House, this exhibit traces his influence on architects working in southeastern Louisiana.

Wright’s relationship with the state was dualistic: he disparaged its “decadent” architectural traditions and regaled its native red cypress. While there are no definitive Wright buildings in Louisiana, his impact was nonetheless significant. Younger generations of New Orleans architects passionately adopted his design principles. Some absorbed Wright-ian elements from popular magazines such as Ladies’ Home Journal and The House Beautiful; others studied Wright directly, by entering the Taliesin Fellowship and traveling coast to coast documenting his buildings.

This exhibit acknowledges Frank Lloyd Wright’s regional impact using the rich holdings of the Southeastern Architectural Archive, and includes architectural drawings by local architects Edward Sporl, Albert C. Ledner, Philip Roach, Jr., and Leonard Reese Spangenberg.

Image above: Leonard Reese Spangenberg and Albert C. Ledner at Florida Southern University. Lakeland, FL. Undated color transparency. Albert C. Ledner Collection, Southastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Lazy Susan Tanning Beds

2011-12-20T12:35:00.002-06:00

Portable, revolving tanning beds constructed of sugar cane bagasse? Indeed, there were such things . . . invented by a snowbird newspaperman who became a sun-cure proponent.

"Sun-bathing de luxe in the privacy of your own little solarium is the latest fad among the winter residents of St. Petersburg, Florida, the winter resort famous the world over for its sunshine.

Obtaining a coat of tan on the beaches is no longer sufficient for those who believe in the health-giving qualities of the sun's rays. It remained for A.D. Brewer, former Indiana and Vermont newspaperman, to devise a method of taking an 'all-over' sun bath, hardly possible even in the skimpiest of modern bathing suits.

Mr. Brewer, having been cured of a serious ailment through the application of ultra-violet sun rays, some years ago became a sun-bath enthusiast and perfected the solaria now being used in St. Petersburg.

The tiny individual houses which compose the solaria are constructed entirely of Celotex -- excepting the floors -- with adjustable roofs and windows of Celloglass, a glass which admits ultra-violet rays that do not penetrate ordinary window glass.

Mounted on a sort of pivotal arrangement, the little houses revolve with a slight pressure of the hand on a corner, thus assuring the occupant the full rays of the sun at all times.

All openings are screened to exclude annoying insects, and small windows, placed low down on the sides, admit cross-currents of air. The inside of the houses are painted white with the finishing strips in green. A spotless white cot and stool, a mirror and a rug are the furnishings.

The units are portable and are shipped to all parts of the United States."

As reported in "Sun Bath Houses of Celotex New Fad in Florida." The Celotex News 3:10 (April 1930): pp. 1, 4.

Surveyors' Records

2011-12-16T11:52:00.000-06:00

While primarily known for its architectural holdings, the Southeastern Architectural Archive (SEAA), a private research archive located at Tulane University, houses cartographic materials associated with four generations of surveyors/engineers that document over 150 years of mapping endeavors. The records chronicle the region’s division into long lots, the creation and expansion of canals and sewerage systems, and the development of faubourgs and later subdivisions. The collection includes survey sketches, field notebooks, chain of title research, historic maps, auction announcements and correspondence.

In 1972, surveyor Guy Seghers, Sr. sold his tracings to Lawyers Title Company. In 1978 – two years before the SEAA was established -- his son Guy Seghers, Jr. – known as “Buddy” -- attempted to sell the family’s remaining records to the Louisiana Land Surveyors’ Association (LLSA). The LLSA refused the offer, but expressed their concern that the family’s records be available to local surveyors. When Buddy died the following year at the age of 49, his father decided to donate the records to Tulane University in memory of his son. The LLSA was grateful for this donation, as it ensured that the records of what its President referred to as the “vanishing American” would be accessible permanently.

Dominick E. (né Dominique Édouard) Seghers (1849-1911) had established the family’s entry into the surveying business in 1868, initially clerking in his father Julien’s law firm, later working in the office of surveyor Charles Arthur de Armas (d. 1905), and establishing his own business by 1879. Records associated with his patrimony reflect the Louisiana profession’s early domination by arpenteurs, men trained in French civil engineering and civic ordinances. His son, grandson, and great-grandson continued in a profession marked by significant changes, in a region increasingly impacted by water management and petrochemical concerns. Over 100 years of operation, their clients would come to include municipal, parish, state, and federal governments, the Dock Board, the Army Corps of Engineers, plantation owners and major oil companies.

To consult the Guy Seghers Collection preliminary inventory, click here.

Images above from the Guy Seghers Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries:

D.E. Seghers & Son Business Card. c. 1903-1911.

Louis Bringier, Arpenteur General. Plan de la propriété de Mr. Harvey Elkins Levéle 20 Juin 1830. [Detail].

Unknown Surveyor. Second District/Square 110. From Properties A B C D E F G H I J + K/Plan of [illegible] + d H 19 April 1879. [Detail].

Louisiana Pecans

2011-12-09T13:33:00.006-06:00

A recent acquisition in the Garden Library of the New Orleans Town Gardeners, located at Tulane University's Southeastern Architectural Archive, is Gary Paul Nabhan's Renewing America's Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent's Most Endangered Foods (2008).

Among his endangered foods, Nabhan includes the Centennial Pecan, a hardy propagation with a delicate flavor developed by a plantation slave known only as "Antoine," who grafted scionwood from a native tree found on the Anita Plantation onto rootstocks growing at Oak Alley Plantation (St. James Parish). Antoine's pecan became famous when it was named "Best of Show" at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1876).

In the late nineteenth century, New Orleans seedsman Richard Frotscher was selling the pecan under the name "Centennial," and also propagated his own pecan, known as "Frotscher" or "Frotscher's Egg Shell Pecan." Other Louisiana pecans were developed by William B. Schmidt of New Orleans (the "Pabst"), Duminie Mire of Union (the "Van Deman"), and Sebastian Rome of Convent (the "Rome"). The so-called Jewett pecan, named in honor of Colonel Stephen Jewett, originated from a nut purchased in New Orleans that was planted in Scranton, Mississippi by the young son of Charles M. Cruzat. The original Jewett pecan tree was still standing in 1904.

Read more about the history of pecan agriculture in The Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture 1904 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1905), pp. 405-416. Images above by B. Heiges for this publication, which is available via Google Books.

Additional resources related to Louisiana pecans may be found in the Garden Library of the New Orleans Town Gardeners and the Louisiana Research Collection, both part of Tulane University's Special Collections Division. Notable among these holdings are nurseryman William Nelson's Price List of Trees and a Practical Treatise on Pecan Growing and Richard Frotscher's Almanac and Garden Manual for the Southern States, both printed by New Orleans printer George Müller. These and other titles may be searched through Tulane's online public access catalog here.

Civil War Maps Online - NEW!

2011-12-09T12:49:00.006-06:00

9 December 2011. The Wisconsin Historical Society announced today its digitization of over 350 Civil War maps, including a unique copy of Appleton's General War Map of the United States (Fisk & Russell, engravers; New York, 1860), which features colored annotations indicating strategic points of interest (detail above).

The digitized maps -- illustrating major campaigns and battlefields -- are but a small part of an enormous digital collection devoted to the Civil War. Highlights for the Gulf South include an 1862 plan of Fort Jackson and various maps of Vicksburg, Mississippi.

To search Wisconsin in the Civil War, click here.

Image above: Detail. Fisk & Russell, engravers. Appleton's General War Map of the United States (New York: D. Appleton, 1860). © Wisconsin State Historical Society, Madison, WI 2011.

CFP: Fashioning the Global City

2011-12-06T15:01:00.002-06:00

Special Issue of Streetnotes

As posted on Humanities-Net:

“Fashioning the Global City” turns the focus of Streetnotes on the relationship between cities and fashion to explore how the cultural and material production of style informs and performs urban lives and places.

The fashion industry has historically drawn on the metropolis and its association with modernity to stir fascination and desire for novelty and change. Cities spatialize, ground, and give meaning to fashion by providing both its imagery and its physical and social context. Today cities are even more central to an increasingly global fashion system, serving as both sites of legitimation and concrete places from which to construct representations of urbanity.

Editors invite scholarly essays, photography, descriptive poetry, and documentary analysis that explores the powerful relationships between fashion, cities, and urban culture as well those which address the role of fashion in shaping ideas of global urbanity and citizenship.

Deadline 1 February 2012

For more information, see: http://streetnotes.tumblr.com/post/8858465611/cfp-streetnotes-20-fashioning-the-global-city-new

New Orleans 1834

2011-11-23T12:49:00.003-06:00

In 1833, New Orleans appointed Charles Zimpel as deputy city surveyor. By that time, he had already surveyed the city for the construction of the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad, and with financial backing and revenues from subscriptions, he took his map design to Prussia for printing. Each engraved map was printed from six copperplates on paper manufactured in Berlin. In 1836, The New Orleans Bee advertised that five hundred copies were available to subscribers and other purchasers, and explained that the copies had been delayed by a previous shipment’s loss at sea. A reporter for the Washington Daily National Intelligencer who saw the map for sale in the New Orleans Stationer’s Hall in 1840 proclaimed it “the most accurate and beautifully executed map in the United States.” There are only six known surviving copies.

Picture credits: Upper: Detail of the Compass Rose from Lower image: Charles Zimpel. Map of New Orleans and its Vicinity embracing a distance of twelve miles up, and eight and three quarter miles down the Mississippi River, and Part of Lake Pontchartrain representing all Public Improvements existing and projected and important Establishments, accompanied by a Statistical table, containing the most accurate Illustrations; prefaced by a Splendid View of New Orleans, & Compiled from actual surveys and the best authorities. 1834. Digital Scan of 50% Scale Photostat, Guy Seghers Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Rippley's Whitewash Machine

2011-11-22T09:19:00.003-06:00

In the early twentieth century, Rippley Manufacturing Company of Grafton, Illinois, was selling a whitewash & painting machine, a 24-gauge galvanized steel drum fitted with a ball valve brass cylinder pump, a hose and a spray nozzle.

The company provided recipes and specific instructions for operating the machine and applying various washes.

Images above: Upper: "Rippley's Whitewash & Painting Machine." Sanitary and Heating Age (1 March 1902): p. 35 available via Google Books.

Lower: "Rippley's Three Whitewash Recipes, and Directions for Applying Washes and Operating Whitewash Machines." (Grafton, IL: Rippley Mfg. Co., n.d.). Trade Catalogs Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Wright's New Orleans Mission

2011-11-18T14:02:00.008-06:00

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) visited Tulane University in 1950. He had been invited to address New Orleans business leaders by Buford L. Pickens, then director of the School of Architecture.

Years later, Pickens recounted the event:

"Well, about Frank Lloyd Wright's visit--Ken Landry drove Wright from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. During this two hour ride down, Wright had 'confessed' to him that he had done the design of the old Illinois Central railroad station, that Sullivan was busy doing something more important at the time and Wright had actually done that building. I think Wright was the chief draftsman. At the time it would have been difficult to satisfy the needs of the railway people and to keep that building. What could have been done, however, would have been to have Wright design the building to replace it. That was the whole purpose of this visit, to come down and have him present his pitch to the Chamber of Commerce or its equivalent with its big wheelers and dealers, prime movers in New Orleans. People coming down from Chicago would get off the train and walk through a palm tree garden and have a very botanical kind of setting. Prominent alumni architects in this school helped to sponsor that meeting because they were influential in agreeing with me that if we got Wright personally to confront these people, that maybe he could pull it off and get the job."

Buford L. Pickens, interview with Bernard Lemann, recorded April 1988. As transcribed in Bernard Lemann, et al. Talk about Architecture: A Century of Architectural Education at Tulane. New Orleans: Tulane University School of Architecture, 1993, p. 112.

Image above: Unknown photographer. Frank Lloyd Wright at Tulane University. 1950. Color diapositive. Frank Lloyd Wright Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Following Wright

2011-11-14T11:25:00.006-06:00

As the Southeastern Architectural Archive prepares to install its new exhibit that focuses on Frank Lloyd Wright's influence in the southeastern Gulf Region, we have pulled out some travel slides.

During the 1950s, New Orleans architect Philip Roach, Jr. visited many of Wright's then-newly constructed buildings, taking photographs along the way. Roach's admiration for Wright took him to Arizona, Mississippi, South Carolina, Florida, California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Slides above, from top to bottom:

Welbie L. Fuller Residence, Pass Christian, MS (1951; destroyed by Hurricane Camille, 1969)

Auldbrass Plantation [C. Leigh Stevens Residence], Yemassee, SC (1940-51)

Anderton Court Shops, Beverly Hills, CA (1952)

All images taken by Philip Roach, Jr. Courtesy of Philip Roach, Jr. Office Records, Southeastern Architetural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Lexicon: Stair-Travelor

2011-11-01T11:16:00.006-05:00

A previous post introduced Otis Company's Autrotronic Elevator of 1950. Over a decade earlier, New York- based Sedgwick Machine Works advertised elevators and "stair-travelors" for residential architecture. The company emphasized its products' health benefits, posting product claims in The New Yorker as well as House and Garden. These stair-travelors may still be found in some old New Orleans homes.

Image above: Sedgwick Advertisement. House and Garden (July 1938): p. 2.

Heated City of Abundant Life

2011-10-27T10:14:00.003-05:00

This blog has previously addressed utopian views of future cities, and recently we came across a scheme designed by M. Mark Feldman and Olindo Grossi for the Exhibition Salon of various subsidiaries of the American Radiator and Standard Sanitary Corporation. Feldman and Grossi envisioned a future Sixth Avenue, New York City as a glass skyscraper-lined, terraced and heated artery:

"Buildings, built of glass that admits light without images, are set well back from the street and well apart to permit maximum light, and terraces, thus created, are utilized, according to district, for sports, restaurants, etc. All terraces are heated by individual reflectors.

"Street traffic is warmed by radiant heat plates that are worked into the architecture of the buildings just above the ground floor. The plates are flared at the corners to cover the space between buildings.

"Winter and summer sports are available simultaneously in all seasons since the reflectors, which are broadcasters of radiation in winter, become absorbers of heat in summer, or vice versa. Thus skating rinks are installed at the tops of the tallest buildings and other sports, such as swimming, tennis and bowling, below.

****

"In summer, heat from the sun is turned back from the glass buildings by metallic insulating reflectors that can be rolled in and out at each floor. In restaurants, theatres, etc., special metal backs for chairs and seats are used as an added means of transmitting and reflecting the radiant heat."

As reported in Pencil Points August 1937, pp. 49-50. Many issues of Pencil Points can be made available at Howard-Tilton Memorial Library through the Center for Research Libraries.

Field Trip: Oscar-Zero

2011-10-26T09:54:00.016-05:00

North of Cooperstown, North Dakota on Highway 45 in Griggs County there sits the Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility that was once manned by members of the United States Air Force's 321st Missile Wing. Prescribing to George Washington's words that "to be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace," the missileers trained daily for a job they hoped they would never perform. . . releasing the country's arsenal of Minuteman missiles.

Decommissioned in 1997, Oscar-Zero is now a State Historic Site. Largely constructed of #18 rebars, concrete and steel plating, Oscar-Zero took two years to complete, from 1964-1966. Southern miners were transported to North Dakota to handle digging operations for this and other such launch facilities and missile silos. Both the silos and the launch control facilities had subterranean chambers with floating floors linked to enormous shock absorbers developed by Boeing. The steel was supplied by the United States Steel Company (aka The Corporation).

Oscar-Zero's two subterranean pods were protected by thick sheathing described in a previous post, as well as by enormous blast doors, one weighing 6,000 tons, the other 13,000 tons. The missileers stationed command posts in one underground chamber (shown above), while the second chamber housed equipment. Suggestive of the many hours spent underground, the pods are adorned with murals, graffiti, and wall paper depicting more idyllic tourist destinations.

Image above: Oscar-Zero Command Station, Griggs County, North Dakota, as photographed 21.10.2011 by K. Rylance.

$50 House 1945

2011-10-25T15:27:00.005-05:00

I was recently at the Midwestern Region Friends of Dard Hunter Conference at the Paper Discovery Center in Appleton, Wisconsin. The Discovery Center's permanent exhibition references a paper house designed for emergency shelter (fires, flooding, or other disasters) by the Institute of Paper Chemistry. With the exception of plastic windows and metal hardware, the house (shown above) was built entirely of recycled paper products.

The structure was erected in less than one hour by two men, using chipboard that was made from waste paper (newspapers, etcetera). A fortifying agent strengthened the chipboard against water and humidity, and the house was coated with a fireproof paint. The 8 x 16' structure was intended to safely house a family of four.

Paper houses were not completely new. In 1924, a Massachusetts mechanical engineer named Elis F. Senman designed a timber-framed paper house and its furnishings. It remains a popular tourist attraction. Read more here.

Read more: "Paper House Costs $50." Popular Science (March 1945): p. 85 available from Free E-Journals. [Image above from article]

Baptist Church & School

2011-10-07T08:21:00.003-05:00

The Southeastern Architectural Archive recently received a donation of historic photographs associated with Swan Lake Plantation (aka Doss Plantation) located in Morehouse Parish, LA at Doss. They provide documentation of the tenant properties, Baptist Church and school. Handwritten notes accompany the mounted photographs, identifying each structure, its function, and the disposition of rooms . There are no descriptions or name identifications of the people who populate the images, and we are hoping that readers may be able to provide some of this information. Note in the image above the interrupted baseball game, as the fellow on the left sports a catcher's glove and the fellow on the right sports a pitcher's glove and a baseball.

The property was apparently purchased by David Washington Pipes (1845-1939), a Civil War Veteran who owned two cotton plantations, the Doss Plantation and Avondale. His son Windsor Pipes eventually took over operations at Doss.

Any additional information would be much appreciated!

Image above: Unidentified photographer. Swan Lake Baptist Church and School. Undated. Miscellaneous Photographs Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

19th-Century Obsequies

2011-10-05T10:20:00.005-05:00

As the city of New Orleans observes funerary obsequies for former Archbishop Philip M. Hannan, it seemed timely to pull together images from earlier celebrations.

In December 1852, the city commemorated three deceased statesmen: John C. Calhoun (1782-1850); Henry Clay (1777-1852); and Daniel Webster (1782-1952). A temporary mausoleum was designed by A. Mondelli and erected in Lafayette Square (in the background of top image, shown above). M. Catoir devised the illumination for the square, so that the cenotaph could be bathed in light until 10:00 pm. Mr. Dubuque designed the funerary cart (top image above), which was some 11' long and 16' tall. Both the cart and the cenotaph were surmounted by an eagle.

In February 1878, the city observed commemorative funeral celebrations for Pope Pius IX -- fondly referred to in New Orleans as "Pio Nono" (1792-1878) -- and New Orleans architects James Freret and J.A. d'Hemecourt were commissioned to design the catafalque (middle image, shown above) and the funerary cart (bottom image, shown above). The Daily Picayune covered the events as well as the decorations and the music performed (21 February 1878).

Images above:

Top: Dubuque, designer. Funerary Cart for John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay. 1852. Wood engraving by Stevens. From: A History of the Proceedings in the City of New Orleans on the Occasion of the Funeral Ceremonies in Honor of Calhoun, Clay and Webster…. New Orleans: Office of the Picayune, 1853. Louisiana Research Collection (LaRC), Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Bottom: James Freret & J.A. d’Hemecourt, architects. Catafalque & Funerary Cart for Pope Pius IX. February 1878. Graphite. James Freret Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

$1500 Tangipahoa House

2011-09-21T10:55:00.006-05:00

In the late 1950s, New Orleans architects Mary and John Mykolyk designed a family retreat on the Tangipahoa River, north of Lake Pontchartrain. LIFE photographer Nina Leen (1909-1995) visited the young family in 1959, producing a series of playful and contemplative images, some of which were incorporated into a feature article titled "Second Homes for Family Vacations" (3 August 1959).*

The raised structure -- accessible via collapsible stairs -- was roofed with corrugated plastic panels and protected from flood-time driftwood by tension wires at the gable ends. The expansive roof was designed to shield the walls from heavy rains, and was surrounded by a deck which could be used as a fishing perch.

See some of Leen's photographs in Google's LIFE Image Archive:

Exterior View/Night

Exterior View/Day

Living Area

Louise Mykolyk in Hammock

*Available in the Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

New Orleans Architect, Mary Mykolyk

2011-09-14T13:55:00.006-05:00

Ismay Mary Mykolyk († 1985) was a New Orleans modernist architect. Born a British citizen in East Africa, Mykolyk obtained her architecture degree at the University of Manitoba, Canada in the 1940s.

In the 1950s, she began working for Curtis & Davis & Associated Architects & Engineers. She served as chief architect on the firm's Tulane University Student Center, the Guste Housing Project, the Algiers Louisiana Power & Light Building, & the US Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam.

By 1965, Mykolyk established her own firm, collaborating with other New Orleans modernists on such projects as Loyola University's Law School and Science Complex, as well as independently designing private residences, including the Bert Levey Residence on the Tchefuncta River.

To learn more, see the Beverly Willis Dynamic National Archive or read "Ismay Mary Mykolyk dies; crafted New Orleans architecture." The Times-Picayune 20 September 1985, A-26.

Image above: Frank Lotz Miller. Mary Mykolyk. [Detail of photographer's proof]. 1961. © Curtis & Davis Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

War of the Trees

2011-09-12T10:17:00.009-05:00

This blog has previously addressed New Orleans' growing parking concerns and the development of private motor stations after the invention of the automobile.

In the winter of 1920, the city's Parking Commission provoked public outcry when it began to fell live oak, sycamore and elm trees along Esplanade Avenue between Liberty (now Treme) Street and North Claiborne Avenue. With the support of architect and Commissioner of Public Property Sam Stone, Jr. (1869-1933) and under the authority of Parking Commission President W.H. Douglas, Superintendent E.A. Farley coordinated the tree removal. Esplanade Avenue residents voiced their outrage, especially when Douglas admitted that the railway company was financing the activity. Dentist George Bernard Crozat, who lived at 1222, expressed to The Times-Picayune:

'It would appear as if some commission or other is constantly trying to wipe out every vestige of historic interest in the Vieux Carre* . . . It is an inexcusable outrage to cut down the beautiful trees of our avenue. Look at them! They tell us they are dead. Their hearts are as sturdy as our own. See the splendid foliage which will never wave again. We must save what remains at all costs.'

Residents claimed that some of the avenue's trees had been planted by Jean-Baptiste LeMoyne, Sieur de Bienville (1680-1767), and "threatened to shoot if certain trees were destroyed."

Read more in The Times-Picayune 6 February 1902, p. 2.

*Another earlier post addressed changing notions of the Vieux Carre. See "The Heart of the French Quarter." Architecture Research 23 June 2009.

Image above: Copy print from glass plate negative. George F. Mugnier (1855-1936). Esplanade Avenue from St. Claude Street. n.d. [Detail]. Miscellaneous Photographs Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

NEW: The Autotronic Elevator

2011-09-01T12:16:00.005-05:00

New Orleans was one of the first cities to boast an Otis Autotronic Elevator.(1) When Benson & Riehl's California Company Building (1111 Tulane Avenue) opened in October 1950, it featured four of the new attendant-less elevators. Not only were they designed to save staffing costs, but the elevators were choreographed so that when one ascended from the first floor, an elevator on the top floor would simultaneously descend to replace it.

The California Company Building inaugurated a post-war commercial office building boom that had followed a two-decade dormancy. Owned by General Enterprises, Inc., the building also included air conditioning, glare-resistant glass, automatic telephone systems, and a two-story-high mechanical plant "penthouse."

(1)The first new office to feature the self-service elevators was the Atlantic Refining Company in Dallas, TX, which opened a few months before the NOLA California Company Building.

Image above: Otis Autotronic--Without Attendant--Elevator, 1950. In The First One Hundred Years: Otis Elevator Company. New York: Otis Elevator Company, 1953. Available in the Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

CFP: Nationalism & The City

2011-09-01T11:15:00.002-05:00

CRASSH Conference, Cambridge, United Kingdom - February 2012

Applicants are encouraged to engage with the existing theoretical literature on nations, nationalism and the city. Suggested focal points include: urbanization/modernization and the conditions of nationalism’s emergence; Urban intellectual networks and the global diffusion of nationalism; Cities as battle-space and/or as sites for mobilization; National unity and the urban/rural ‘divide’; the city as metaphor for nation; Globalizing cities, ‘post-nationalism’, and notions of urban reclamation; Cosmopolitanism, nationalism, and layers of belonging; Multiculturalism, heterogeneity and the urban; and disintegration, dystopia and ‘spaces of alterity’.

A special emphasis will be placed on integrating the insights of those focused on dynamics in the city and those addressing the broader phenomenon of nationalism, to enliven debates on space, identity, and politics and to illuminate important convergences and contradictions, conjunctures and disjunctures.

The task for researchers is as follows: how are we to conceptualize the role of cities/urban environments in the origins/spread/perpetuation/undermining of nations and nationalism?

For guidelines & additional information, see: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1684/

Field Trip: Chicago, IL

2011-08-30T08:33:00.004-05:00

The Chicago Architecture Foundation's exhibit Chicago Model City features an extraordinary 320-square-foot model of the downtown area. Using data sets from different sources -- including the Skidmore Owings & Merrill archive -- Columbian Model & Exhibit Works, Ltd. designers used Google SketchUp to develop the forms of individual structures. After grooming the data, designers employed a stereolithography machine to fabricate the resinous building models, which were then cured, embellished, and assembled.

Image above: Columbian Model & Exhibit Works, Ltd. Downtown Chicago Model. Chicago Architecture Foundation, the Santa Fe Building, Chicago, IL. 2009. As viewed 24.8.2011 by K. Rylance.

Burnham in NOLA

2011-08-29T13:07:00.004-05:00

In the summer of 1902, Chicago architect and urban planner Daniel Hudson Burnham (1846-1912) visited New Orleans, along with his mechanical engineer, Charles Wilkes. The two registered at the St. Charles Hotel while they met with representatives of the Hibernia Trust & Banking Company to discuss plans for a new skyscraper to be located on the corner of Carondelet and Gravier Streets. The structure was intended to rise in tandem with a 12-story addition to the St. Charles Hotel so that a common wall could be created.

The Hibernia Bank utilized Burnham's steel and masonry building for nearly two decades, when the company moved to a new skyscraper designed by the New Orleans firm Favrot & Livaudais. The Burnham structure was renamed the Carondelet Building, and more recently renovated as the Hampton Inn (226 Carondelet Street).

See:

"Buildings to Go Up Fast: The Hibernia Trust Company and the St. Charles Hotel to Construct Their Skyscrapers Simultaneously." The Times-Picayune 27 June 1902, p. 3; "Hibernia Trust." The Times-Picayune 10 July 1902, p. 3; "News and Notables at the New Orleans Hotels." The Times-Picayune 8 July 1902, p. 13;

The Chicago History Museum's Research Center maintains D.H. Burnham & Company plans for Bank & Offices, Hibernia Bank, New Orleans. [DHB-NC11]. The Art Institute of Chicago's Ryerson & Burnham Library maintains office correspondence for Burnham & Wilkes in its Daniel H. Burnham Collection (Series I, Business Correspondence).

Neutra in NOLA

2011-08-22T15:37:00.006-05:00

On Monday, 17 November 1952, Austrian-born architect Richard Neutra (1892-1970) gave an evening address at Newcomb College's Dixon Hall. Co-sponsored by the Tulane University School of Architecture and the New Orleans Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the public lecture focused on contemporary architecture.

The Newcomb College Art Gallery had displayed photographs of Neutra's projects ten years earlier, in conjunction with an educational exhibit on the theme of surfaces, textures and colors of structural materials. Local merchants loaned samples of brick, wood, metal, glass and stone.

Read more in "Architect Neutra to Deliver Address." The Times-Picayune 17 November 1952, p. 7. "Exhibit at College Art Gallery Nears." The Times-Picayune 15 April 1941, p. 12. W.M. Darling, "Pen, Chisel and Brush." The Times-Picayune 20 April 1941, p. 40.

Beekman's Haberdashery

2011-08-19T11:46:00.009-05:00

We recently came across a wonderful sketch in one of the Benson & Riehl Office sketchbooks, circa 1950. It represents the facade of Beekman's Men's Clothing Store, which was located at St. Charles Avenue & Commercial Place, municipal numbers 328-330 (top image). The Beekman haberdashery operated from this location for nearly fifty years, from 1901-1951.

In January 1926, the newly-founded firm of Andry & Feitel (1925-1966) collaborated with interiors specialist Harry Moses (1877-1935) to design a new Beekman's marquee (bottom image), display windows and a musicians' balcony. By the spring of 1951, the building was sold to an unknown investor, and the Petroleum Club of New Orleans entered into a ten-year lease agreement for the second floor.(1) The 1951 sale inaugurated a series of dramatic alterations to the building.

Businessman Henry Lewis renovated the storefront and first-floor interior for his men's and boy's clothing store in 1953. (2) Within four years, the Greater New Orleans Federation of Churches acquired the property and transformed the building into its Church House. (3) The Federation announced its intent to sell the structure in 1974. Within months the building was extensively damaged by "a hammer-wielding vandal intent on destruction." (4) The Old Spaghetti Factory Restaurant chain then acquired the property, and converted it into a pasta parlor.(5) Four years later, Mayor Ernest Morial announced plans to demolish the structure and replace it with a 2,000-room hotel that would cater to Pan-American travelers.(6) The site is now a parking lot.

(1)"Sale of Beekman Building is Largest Reported Transaction of the Week." The Times-Picayune 15 April 1951, Section 5, p. 1.

(2)"Clothing Store to Open Today." The Times-Picayune 25 March 1953, p. 6.

(3)"Dr. Grey Named President of New Orleans Federation of Churches." The Times-Picayune 23 February 1957, p. 20.

(4)"Church House Sale Planned." The Times-Picayune 9 March 1974, Sect. 2, p. 4; Wesley Jackson, "Vandalism & Theft." The Times-Picayune 25 January 1975, Section 1, p. 12.

(5)"Spaghetti is Speciality of New Restaurant." The Times-Picayune 28 July 1976 (Morning Edition), Sect. 4, p. 16.

(6)Joe Massa, "Hotel Catering to Foreign Travelers Planned." The Times-Picayune 27 April 1980, Sect. 1, p. 33.

Images above: Beekman's, 328-330 St. Charles Avenue. Graphite on ledger paper. Circa 1950. Benson & Riehl Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive; Andry & Feitel, architects. Half of Elevation of Marquise, for Bob Beekman. Blueprint. January 1926. Harry F. Moses Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive.

Otis Elevator Company of Chicago

2011-08-17T08:27:00.006-05:00

In 1909, Otis Elevator Company of Chicago's President Baldwin journeyed to New Orleans to secure a land deal. He negotiated with businessman Peter O'Brien to acquire the latter's elevator manufacturing plant located at the corner of Carondelet and St. Joseph Streets.(1) The Otis Company wanted to establish a showroom for its elevators, and the O'Brien property provided a good location.

The Otis Elevator Company secured the architectural services of Favrot & Livaudais to design a two-story showroom/office structure that would prominently display the company's mainstay (1910-1912). The architects selected an Italianate form that nodded to the company's Chicago home and its emergent Prairie School style. Built at a cost of $25K, the Otis Elevator Company maintained its New Orleans office for decades.(2)

The short-lived trade magazine Building Review of the South -- published in New Orleans -- featured the structure in a 1919 article devoted to the "elevator pent house":

"In most cases elevator pent houses are made obnoxious by careless treatment. In large cities where the roofs of the business section are in constant view of thousands of people from the taller buildings it seems that some attention should be devoted to roof appearances, or to that most prominent feature of the roof, the pent house. The designers of the two examples published this month realized the advantages of emphasizing the pent house. Anyone who views the two buildings will concede that the tower treatment is the single thing that gives especial distinction to the buildings,--that is, sets them apart from other commercial structures by adding a feature of interest that ordinarily would be absent."(3)

(1)"More Good Realty Sales Involve New Buildings." The Daily Picayune 16 January 1909, p. 5.

(2)"Real Estate the Real Thing Here." The Daily Picayune 9 January 1912, p. 40.

(3)"Elevator Pent Houses: Two New Orleans Examples Which Are Models of Proper Treatment." Building Review Feburary 1919, p. 14. The image above precedes the article, appearing on p. 13 of the same issue. Photograph was taken by Schnetzer.

The Art Institute of Chicago maintains certain records of the Otis Elevator Company. You can read more about the company's history in The First Hundred Years (New York: Otis Elevator Company, 1953).

Changing Hands on Carondelet

2011-08-16T09:33:00.011-05:00

A large number of properties along Carondelet Street changed hands in the years between 1920 and 1930. A series of residential lots came up at auction in the summer of 1923 (map shown above), and by 1926, the Presbyterian Hospital Group (PHG) expanded its existing holdings by purchasing adjacent Baronne Street lots for a new medical complex.

The PHG retained the services of New Orleans architect Rathbone DeBuys (c. 1874-1960) to design a "skyscraper type" hospital. (1) He and Charles Armstrong (1887-1947) had designed an earlier PHG structure, the Corinne Casanas Free Clinic, in 1915 (814-820 Baronne Street, completed 1916). After various revisions, his PHG skyscraper hospital resulted in a single five-story structure, named the James H. Batchelor Building, which was completed in June 1928. Built at a cost of $200K, the fireproof building contained an elevator and was sheathed in limestone with polychromed "marble" embellishments. (2)

In 1930, the School Board -- then operating out of the City Hall Annex -- successfully negotiated the acquisition of the Casanas Clinic and the Batchelor Building, and relocated to the latter in January 1931. Rathbone DeBuys' building is now named after former School Superintendent Nicholas Bauer.

Image above: Advertisement, The Times-Picayune 6 October 1923, p. 35.

(1) "Presbyterian Hospital Buys Three Old Homes." The Times-Picayune 14 February 1926, p. 13.

(2) Although DeBuys designed the building, the Albert Weiblen Marble and Granite Works supplied the ornamental stone carvings. Its staff architect, Albert Rieker (1887-1959), developed the requisite drawings. The Southeastern Architectural Archive retains a cartoon for Rieker's stone caduceus in Collection 39 The Albert Weiblen Marble & Granite Works Office Records. Consult the Archive's online inventories here.

Keck in NOLA

2011-08-15T11:26:00.007-05:00

In the spring of 1955, Chicago architect George Fred Keck (1895-1980) visited New Orleans for an extended stay, as guest to the Tulane University School of Architecture. Then Dean John F. Dinwiddie (1902-1959) had invited Keck to serve as a visiting critic for the school's Fifth-Year students, and Keck challenged the group with designing a small residential structure.

The Chicago architect had visited Tulane approximately five years earlier, at the invitation of then Dean Buford L. Pickens (1906-1995), who had worked for Keck after attending the University of Illinois. Pickens reminisced about the visit to a Tulane audience in 1988:

"He lectured to the students and gave his spiel on modern architecture and the necessity of seeing things in a different way than the traditional. But at the same time, that's one reason I wanted him to come down here--so that he could see the affinity between the old architecture down here and the new architecture that we were talking about, because the two seemed to come together. The two ideas, architectural concepts, came together here because historical and modern blended--the openness, the columnar quality you get when you drive down St. Charles or any other street in New Orleans."(1)

Keck was especially renowned for his 1933 Chicago World's Fair "Home of the Future" and his 1934 Crystal House. After World War II, he entered into an architectural partnership with his brother William, practicing as Keck & Keck. Together they focused on passive solar systems and prefabrication.

You can learn more about his practice by consulting the Chicago Architects Oral History Project, which includes a transcript of the 1991 interview with William Keck (1895-1995) here.

(1) Talk About Architecture: A Century of Architectural Education at Tulane, ed. by Bernard Lemann, Malcolm Heard, Jr. & John Klingman. New Orleans: Tulane University School of Architecture, 1993, p. 111.

Image above: Brochure Cover. Green's Ready-Built Homes Present the Solar Home as Created by George Fred Keck. 1946. Ptak Science Books, as viewed 15 August 2011 at http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2009/09/paleofuturology-solar-house-1946-.html

Sullivan in NOLA

2011-08-15T09:56:00.008-05:00

In the spring of 1906, Chicago architect Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) and his wife visited New Orleans. They spent a few days in the city before traveling on to Ocean Springs, Mississippi for an extended stay.

Sullivan's Ocean Springs bungalow was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina (2005). Read Michael Martinez's Chicago Tribune article about the destruction here.

See: "Chicago Architect on a Visit." The Times-Picayune 14 March 1906 page 16.

To view the iconic 1890 photograph of Louis H Sullivan at his bungalow in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, go to the Art Institute of Chicago. Click here to access image & related collection.

The Hotel Grunewald Caterers

2011-08-11T15:48:00.005-05:00

New Orleans architects Toledano, Wogan & Bernard (TWB; 1914-23) designed this 926-928 Canal Street structure for the Hotel Grunewald Caterers in 1916 (completed 1917). Noted for its enameled terracotta, the building served the caterers' purposes until the mid-1920s, when candy sellers Fuerst & Kraemer renovated the interior for a candy store and second-floor tea room.

TWB and its predecessor firm Toledano & Wogan (1898-1914) often used ornamental terracotta on their buildings, and maintained a business relationship with F. Codman Ford, who was the local agent for the Chicago-based Northwestern Terra Cotta Company (1877-1956).

The Southeastern Architectural Archive retains certain records for TWB and its successor and predecessor firms. For an inventory of their drawings, click here. The National Building Museum in Washington, DC retains records for the Northwestern Terra Cotta Company.

Image above: "Canal Street Lease." The Times-Picayune 02 September 1923, Section 2, Page 1.

Brooke Winter Garden 1906-07

2011-08-10T15:08:00.006-05:00

In 1906, New Orleans architecture firm Toledano & Wogan designed an entertainment space for Thomas Preston Brooke (1856-1921), leader of the Chicago Marine Band and supporter of ragtime music. Known for his two-step "The Buffalo March," Brooke obtained financial backing for his 522 Baronne Street winter season venue from the Jackson Brewing Company, amongst others. Brooke's venture lasted one abbreviated season, after which the conductor declared bankruptcy.

The Southeastern Architectural Archive retains a microfilm copy of the original drawings.

Image above: The Harwell Evans Company, New York, photographers. From A Few Examples of the Work of Toledano & Wogan, Architects, Macheca Building, New Orleans, LA. n.d. The Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries. Harwell-Evans, with offices on East 28th Street, published The New York Architect, a monthly periodical.

CFP: Preservation

2011-08-03T14:30:00.001-05:00

Journal of the Future is now accepting articles and opinion pieces on the focus of preservation of items of historical value in the world today whether pertaining to personal, social, political, the future of humankind without preservation, or a combination of these areas. Articles should be closely related to this subject. The goal of this journal is to present these articles for all to access without hindrances. Journal of the Future: Preservation is a publication that is free for all to read in its electronic form.

Article Deadline: August 31, 2011

Acceptances/Rejections Prepared by: September 30, 2011

Anticipated Publication Date: November 2011

For other guidelines, see: http://journalofthefuture.wordpress.com/preservation/

Recycled Architectural Drawings

2011-08-03T12:32:00.005-05:00

As reported by The Times-Picayune 7 October 1919:

"A curious war expedient has just been declared no longer necessary and the books are about to be closed on one of the most remarkable makeshifts which were resorted to during the era of universal shortages. One of the most distressing of war needs, we all know, was bandages, and what our war ladies did to supply the deficiency was one of the bright spots in efficiency, but 'over there' it was not as with us merely as a matter of woman-power that was needed, but still more the cloth of sufficient softness and fineness to wrap upon wounds and to bind fractures.

The old rags crop was quickly exhausted and a partial resort was had to various [illegible] that when dried were soft and absorbent and non-septic enough for clinical purposes. But there was still grave need for cloth, especially of linen cloth, and out of the emergency came an idea. It was remembered that thousands upon thousands of architectural and engineering plans were printed on heavily sized linen tracing papers--the kind from which blueprints are made--and also that home builders and engineers have a certain sentimental respect for their used plans, so that instead of casting them into the discard when their purpose is accomplished the architect and engineer are in the habit of rolling up the originals and stacking them on the top shelf, to accumulate dust and dream away the declining years of their lives.

The war idea was to appeal to the builders and surveyors and all others who might have on hand such stocks to sacrifice them for the good of the armies.

The War and Navy Departments, shipbuilding concerns and many other industrial enterprises turned over their stocks, and literally thousands upon thousands of willing donors added to the stacks of materials, described as 'linen, calico, butter-muslin, brown holland, etc.' which were then passed through no less than seven processes before they were freed from their glue and coloring matters and finally were rolled into neat bandages to be shipped to the several military hospitals near the front and in England, where the chief supply of such materials was secured."

To read more, consult America's Historical Newspapers, an online database available through Tulane University's Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. If you are interested in other databases that cover historic Louisiana newspapers, consult the "Databases of Historical Louisiana Newspapers" Research Guide page here.

Field Trip: Iron River, Michigan

2011-08-01T14:29:00.005-05:00

A mining boom in the early twentieth century resulted in rapid population growth for Iron County, Michigan. Designed in 1902 and constructed 1904-05, Iron River's Central School (218 West Cayuga Street) was intended to serve the community's entire public school system. The student population grew so rapidly that Milwaukee architects Van Ryn & DeGelleke's initial building proved insufficient shortly after its completion, and Chicago architect John D. Chubb completed wing additions in 1911 (one shown above). Annex buildings were constructed in 1923, and by 1928 high school students were moved to a new structure, while primary and secondary students remained at Central.

By the mid-1970s, the local economy and population had dwindled, and Central School was closed in the spring of 1980. Listed on the National Register since 2008, the structure's fate remains uncertain despite periodic proposals for its adaptive reuse.

Image above: Central School, as photographed 23.07.2011. K. Rylance.

Parking Skyscraper

2011-07-07T10:16:00.004-05:00

In March 1921, the Standard Motor Accessories and Garage Corporation of New Orleans proposed a nine-story parking skyscraper above Canal Street. Architect Rathbone De Buys (c. 1874-1960) drafted plans for the structure, which were published in The Times-Picayune on March 13th (above). The need for off-street parking was becoming a pressing concern. In 1917, hotel and other business owners were charging exorbitant fees for the privilege to park on city streets adjacent to their properties. In August of that year, the City Commissioners announced a hearing for the purpose of developing a municipal parking ordinance. Increasing legal restrictions led to the establishment of private "motor stations" that offered vehicular storage as well as lubrication and upholstering services.

Recommended reading: John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle. Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture. U of Virginia P, 2005. Available in Tulane University's Howard-Tilton Memorial Library.

Image above: "What about your Automobile?" The Times-Picayune 13 March 1921 Section 4, page 10.

Emile Weil's Cadillac

2011-07-06T13:46:00.005-05:00

In 1916, New Orleans architect Emile Weil (1878-1945) purchased a new Cadillac Type 55 seven-seater touring car equipped with Kelly-Springfield wire wheel tires. Cadillac introduced the model in August 1916, listing it for $2250. By October 1916, The Times-Picayune ran an advertisement featuring Weil's new acquisition photographed along St. Charles Avenue (above). The wire wheel tires were available for an additional cost through Kelly-Springfield's local distributor, Southern Hardware & Woodstock Company, which posted the ad.

At the time, Weil and his wife Marie lived in the former Isidore Newman mansion, designed by Thomas Sully (1885-1939) and located at 3607 St. Charles. The couple inherited the property upon the death of Marie's mother, Mrs. Isidore Newman. Not long after Marie's death in 1931, Weil sold the building, and moved to a smaller residence on Versailles Boulevard. The St. Charles Avenue property changed hands again before becoming the Tulane Medical School Phi Chi Fraternity house in 1947. Despite efforts to save the building, the structure was razed in 1970. Drawings for the building are maintained in the Southeastern Architectural Archive's Thomas Sully Collection.

Cities, Airplanes & Civil Defense

2011-06-29T14:47:00.005-05:00

In 1941, New Orleans architect Nathaniel C. Curtis, Sr. (1881-1953) addressed the topic of urban planning & civil defense:

"The city planner is now confronted with a situation unforeseen through the centuries. The fighting airplane has come upon the scene. By night or day, in clear air or fog, it can search out or be directed over focal concentrations of population, over places where man works and where he stores his goods, and on these dump its cargoes of death and destruction. The more concentrated the objectives become the better the chances of making a hit and the more wholesale the destruction. Moreover, in a time of war most of the factories of a warring nation are turned over to the production of war equipment and munitions, and it becomes a part of the military defense system to safeguard these against disruption or demolition, while bomb-proof shelters must be provided for all the workers in the plant.

Modern warfare requires the regimentation of large numbers of the population. All the people are ultimately concerned, civilian as well as military, and no one's safety is guaranteed.

Of all the means for carrying on offensive warfare that human ingenuity has devised, the airplane is by far the most potent, and it is no exaggeration to say that without airplanes there could hardly be a reason for any radical changes in city planning such as will be put into effect. There is no effective way so far developed to defend cities or other objectives of a widespread nature against airplanes and their destructive charges except by the employment of more airplanes. The only other way to neutralize or minimize the power of the airplane is to scatter and make less the value of its objectives."

Curtis was particularly concerned with New Orleans' vulnerability, should its pumping stations be destroyed and its air-raid shelters inundated with water:

"Would the Charity Hospital continue to function? It would as long as doctors and nurses could hold out and the essential services could be maintained. A building like the Charity Hospital cannot be destroyed except under repeated bombings. A few upper floors would be demolished--all glass windows would be shattered, but otherwise the interior would remain intact."

Read more of his address in The Tulanian (April 1941): pp. 11-12, 14. Available from Tulane University Archives.

Subterranean Steel

2011-06-27T15:28:00.007-05:00

We recently came across an article related to the U.S. Minuteman Ballistic Missile System Program. Engineers William J. Hartdegen and John A. Quigley published their configurations for 150 subterranean missile facilities located near the Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota. The pod-like launch and control facilities were comprised of several layers of #18 rebars (top) that were designed to withstand "the high, dynamically applied pressure resulting from a nuclear attack." Dynamic strength capability tests conducted at the University of Illinois suggested that all splices of reinforcing bars of #11 and larger size required butt-welding. The pods were additionally lined with 1/4-inch steel plate in order to provide electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and radio frequency interference (RFI) shielding. A typical launch facility with a 90-foot launch tube and its adjacent capsule-shaped equipment storage space is depicted in the lower image.

Travelers to North Dakota can now visit the Ronald Reagan Minuteman State Historic Site, and journey down an elevator shaft to enter the last* post-disarmament launch control center. Learn more here.

To read more about the construction & view more images, see: Hartdegen & Quigley. "Welding Solves Problems in Multibillion-Dollar Minuteman Program." Chap. in Modern Welded Structures, Vol. III (Cleveland, OH: The James F. Lincoln Arc Welding Foundation, 1970), pp. I-16 to I-20. Available in the Southeastern Architectural Archive.

*Post-Script: As part of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, most of these siloes have been imploded. Read more here.

Selling Braithwaite

2011-05-19T16:25:00.005-05:00

In 1927, the Braithwaite Land and Liquidation Company commissioned surveyor D.G.W. Ricketts to map Braithwaite Plantation -- formerly Orange Grove -- and its newly subdivided tracts in Plaquemines Parish Township 13 & 14 South / Ranges 12 & 13 East. The E-Z Opener Bag Company, United Railway & Trading Company, and the Orange Grove Refining Company purchased properties here.

Ricketts, Seghers & Dibdin, Civil Engineers & Surveyors published the requisite map, including its inset "Key Map Showing Braithwaite, La. and its locations with reference to the City of New Orleans and Rail & Water Facilities as well as accessibility to chief national centers of population" 13 March 1931. Not only was proximity to other industries emphasized, but so too were express services and the region's average annual temperature, rainfall and humidity.

Image above: Guy Seghers Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries. Detail of Map of Braithwaite Plantation formerly Orange Grove Plantation (New Orleans: 1931).

House Numbering New Orleans

2011-05-18T12:28:00.004-05:00

In the early nineteenth century, the city of New Orleans codified its system of numbering houses:

ART. 1. The numbering of houses in the city of New-Orleans and its suburbs shall be established by one series of numbers for each and every street, and for this purpose the front part of each square, road, or alley, shall be divided in sections of twenty feet, if practicable, or in sections of nineteen or thirty feet, the one or the other, as circumstances or conveniency may require. Each of these sections shall bear one number. The corner, lots, or houses shall be subject to the same division on the fronts of both streets.

ART. 2. Each series of numbers shall be formed of even numbers for the right side of the street, and of odd numbers for the left side, excepting such of the streets as may have a row house on only one side, for which the natural order of numbers shall be followed.

ART. 3. The right side of the street shall be determined in the streets perpendicular to the river Mississippi, by the right of a person going down from the river towards the back part of the city, and in the streets parallel to the river, by the right of a person going down from Canal street in the direction of the current of the river; and by the right side of a person going up from Canal street in a direction contrary to the current of the river.

ART. 4. The inscription of numbers shall be made on tin or iron plates of an oval form, and of suitable proportions, painted in black oil color. The numbers shall be written in Arabic figures of at least three inches in length, painted with white lead ground in oil. The plates shall be well varnished so as not to be injured by the rain or dampness.

ART. 5. The numbers shall be placed above the main door of each house whenever it can be done, and in case of any obstacle, the numbers shall be placed on the right side of the door, and at least ten feet above the soil.

ART. 13. The City Surveyor is hereby required to superintend the said numbering; and when let out by contract, the undertaker shall affix no number without the presence and consent of said Surveyor; and in proportion as each house or lot shall be numbered conformably to the above provisions, the undertaker shall have the right to demand from each proprietor or tenant the payment of the amount to him due by reason of said work.

If you want to read more early city ordinances, including those that dictated building materials, paving guidelines, slaughterhouse and market restrictions, consult: A general digest of the ordinances and resolutions of the corporation of New-Orleans. Made by order of the City council, by their secretary, D. Augustin. New Orleans: 1831. Multiple copies of the publication are available in Tulane University Libraries.

A Surveyors' Plea

2011-05-17T11:14:00.003-05:00

In the summer of 1948, New Orleans surveyor Guy Seghers entered a plea (and endorsement) to the city:

"There has never been a complete survey of this city nor has this vast area a single legal monument; thus the differences in opinion among surveyors as to street lines. The basis of all surveys consists of maps compiled prior to the War Between the States. Present-day precise instruments disclose shortages or surpluses over these old maps as well as angular differences.

Surveying requires considerable knowledge of mathematics, city and state laws and ordinances, local custom and history, plus an abundance of horse sense.

Surveying, like other professions and trades, often differs in opinion and procedure, but there exist surveyors whose knowledge of their business is tops, and who are called upon by courts and corporations as experts, in untangling the mess caused by the inexpert 'tape-man.'

The trouble the reputable surveyor finds is that an owner will agree to pay for title examination, notarial acts, title insurance, real estate costs, etc., but generally tries to avoid paying for the smallest fee of them all for the most important item--a survey. Owners will grudgingly shop like a housewife buying a can of peas, and when the owner gets what he pays for he squawks.

The solution of this problem is not a question of making bond, but of a good city survey, well monumented, thus eliminating all differences that will continuously arise with conditions as they are.

In the meantime, if I were in need of a surgical operation, I would not shop around for the doctor quoting the lowest fee, but go to a well-established specialist."

Guy J. Seghers, Letter to the Editor, The Times Picayune (June 2 1948): p. 12.

Huddling Place

2011-05-15T07:31:00.002-05:00

In recognition of the British Library's new exhibition Out of this World, The Guardian recently asked science fiction writers to reminisce about their favorite novels or authors. Science fiction historian John Clute chose Clifford Simak's 1952 novel, The City:

"We know better now, of course. But they still entrance us, the old page-turners from the glory days of American SF, half a century or so ago, when the world was full of futures we were never going to have. In the mid-1940s, when he began to publish the episodes that would be assembled as City in 1952, Clifford Simak, a Minneapolis-based journalist and author, could still carry us away with the dream that cars and pollution and even the great cities of the world – "Huddling Place", the title of one of these tales, is his own derisory term for them – would soon be brushed off the map by Progress, leaving nothing behind but tasteful exurbs filled with middle-class nuclear families living the good life, with fishing streams and greenswards sheltering each home from the stormy blast.

Fortunately, Simak soon gets past this demented vision of a near-future world saved by technological fixes, a dementia common then to SF writers and gurus and politicians alike, and launches into an astonishingly eventful narrative of the next 10,000 years as seen through the eyes of one family and the immortal robot Jenkins, and all told with a weird pastoral serenity that for a kid like me seemed near to godlike. In its course City touches on almost everything dear to 1940s SF, and to me remembering. Robots. Genetic Engineering. Space. Jupiter. Domed cities. Keeps. Hiveminds. Matter transmission. Telepathy. Parallel worlds. Paranormal empathy. Mutants. Supermen. It's all there, and, thanks to Simak's skilled hand at the wheel, it's all in place: suave, sibylline, swift. The whole is framed as a series of legends told by the uplifted Dogs who have replaced the human race, now gone for ever. They have been bred not to kill. At the end, only Jenkins remains to keep them from learning how to repeat history and die.

It all seemed immensely sad and wise then, but fun. It still does."

Segregation Forms

2011-04-29T10:15:00.009-05:00

We have addressed architectural segregation in an earlier blog post, and recently came across a a relevant plan among the records of the New Orleans firm Sporl & Maxwell (1946-1951).

Edward Sporl and Murvan Maxwell had been hired by bar owner Vincent Joseph Birbiglia († 1976) to draw the "existing conditions" of his Central City corner store. The structure served a variety of functions, with two lounges, a liquor store, laundry, barbershop and a camelback residence. The lounges were divided by a wall board barrier, with egress across the mahogany bar backs. Restrooms, the heater, jukebox and cigarette machine were all located in the "colored" section; the telephone situated in the "white" section.

Image above: Sporl & Maxwell, architects. Jackson Liquor Store (1833 Jackson Avenue), c. 1951. Detail of first-floor plan. Maxwell & Le Breton Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Recently, Tulane School of Architecture alumnus Tim Culvahouse addressed the neighborhood-building attributes of the New Orleans corner store. Read his article here.

Birbiglia's former corner store has been torn down since Hurricane Katrina.

Thermo-Con Home 1948

2011-04-27T12:02:00.010-05:00

The New Orleans firm of Sporl & Maxwell worked on a number of Thermo-Con projects, including this May 1948 design for a parapeted residence. Previous blog posts have addressed Thermo-Con cellular concrete, a New Orleans product developed by Higgins Incorporated and named for its heat insulating capabilities. The company controlled all aspects of Thermo-Con's use, manufacturing the product as well as its wooden forms and mixing/pumping machines.

In March 1948, the Federal Housing Authority approved financing for mortgage loans on Higgins-type cellular concrete dwellings, whereupon company president Andrew Higgins, Sr. announced that franchised contractors across the country would begin building. In New Orleans, McLaney Construction obtained a Thermo-Con franchise and commissioned Sporl & Maxwell to design this two-bedroom home. McLaney built this house TWICE: once in Lake Vista at 98 Egret Street; the other in Lakeview at 6372 Vicksburg Street.

By the mid-1950s Sarasota, Florida changed its building code to accommodate the new material. Beall Construction Co. Incorporated was the community's franchised Thermo-Con contractor, responsible for the Arlington Street Medical Arts Building (1953), the Main Street H & H Cafeteria (1955; razed), the Star Lite Restaurant, Uncle Otey's Steak & Pancake House & Phillips 66 Station (late 1950s; razed), and a seven-unit office/store structure at 1258-1276 North Palm Avenue (1954).

Image above: Front Elevation. Sporl & Maxwell, Architects. Thermo-Con Residence for McLaney Construction Company, 13 May 1948. Maxwell and LeBreton Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

NOLA Cultural Center 1963

2011-04-18T13:12:00.005-05:00

As part of the new exhibit at the Southeastern Architectural Archive, we have featured this presentation drawing of the proposed Cultural Center for New Orleans. Designed by local architects Mathes, Bergman, Favrot & Associates, the project was conceived as a part of a "downtown triangle" development project that included the Civic Center and International Trade Mart Complex. Modeled after New York's Lincoln Center, the Cultural Center was intended to consist of theaters, an auditorium, an art museum, community facilities, and copious parking lots.

With an estimated cost of $18 million, the plaza was to extend from the Orleans-Basin Connection to St. Philip Street, and from N. Rampart to N. Villere Streets. Widespread site clearance began in 1966, after the relocation of 122 families. Hampered by financial shortfalls, the CC was delayed and eventually abandoned.

If you want to learn more about the project and the history of Louis Armstrong Park, read Michael Crutcher's new Tremé: Race and Place in a New Orleans Neighborhood. The author will be reading from his book 21 April 2011 at 6:00 pm, Octavia Books, New Orleans. Click here to learn more.

Image above: Mathes, Bergman, Favrot & Associates.

Cultural Center of New Orleans. Scheffer Studio. 1963. Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Feet James

2011-04-10T07:18:00.008-05:00

As attention turns once again to the Red River of the North, Winnipeg Free Press reporter Barley Kives has explained the Peggers' peculiar unit of measure:

If you're following the flood in Winnipeg this spring, you may be wondering why the city makes such a big deal about some guy named James.

Thanks to a quirk of history, the city's shorthand for the height of the Red River happens to be the "number of feet James." Unfortunately for circuses everywhere, this is not a question about a man with too many appendages.

James actually refers to the James Avenue Pumping Station, a facility on the west bank of the Red River in the Exchange District. For nearly a century, this site has been used to monitor river levels.

Originally, this data determined the operation of the St. Andrews Lock and Dam at Lockport. Measurements were live human beings and the station was staffed 24 hours a day. Now, the James Avenue station operates automatically. It's basically just a culvert with an electronic water-pressure gauge that transmits river-level data every 15 minutes. The city uses feet instead of metres to express this information, mainly for the sake of consistency. The "number of feet James" is also easier to digest than the number of feet above sea level, a far bigger number.

On Friday afternoon, the Red River in Winnipeg stood at 9.7 feet James. That's still well below flood stage, as you can see from the following milestones on the scale. . .

Zero feet James

This is the famous "normal winter ice level" in Winnipeg -- 727.6 feet (or 221.7 metres) above sea level. This level is an average of mid-winter measurements at James Avenue dating back to 1912. The actual river ice level varies from year to year.

6.5 feet James

The average summer river level in Winnipeg, again based on measurements taken over the past century. St. Andrews Lock and Dam maintains this level during years when the Red River would otherwise drop even lower.

18 feet James

While river levels above 15 feet are recorded as floods on the city's website, the city is in de facto flood mode at 18 feet James. River levels of 18 feet or higher require significant flood-mitigation efforts, such as sealing up drainage gates or sandbagging low-lying homes.

20.2 feet James

The peak of the 2005 summer flood. The Red River crested on July 3 and 4 due to unusual rains over the Canada Day weekend.

20.4 feet James

The peak of the 2006 spring flood, when the Red crested on April 7. At the time, this was the largest flood in the Red River Valley since the Flood of the Century in 1997.

22.6 feet James

The peak of the 2009 spring flood, which confounded flood forecasters who initially predicted a milder spring deluge. Ice jams downstream created two smaller crests before the Red finally peaked on April 15.

24.5 feet James

The peak of the Flood of the Century. The Red River crested on May 3, to the relief of Winnipeggers who watched the same deluge destroy downtown Grand Forks, N.D. and inundate Ste. Agathe.

30.3 feet James

The peak of the 1950 flood, the most destructive disaster in Winnipeg's history. The Red crested on May 19 and did not recede below the flood stage until mid-June of that year. The flood forced 100,000 people to evacuate and caused $600 million in damage, in Winnipeg alone.

34.7 feet James

Estimated peak of the 1852 spring flood in what was then the Red River settlement.

Reported 2 April 2011 at: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/james-my-waders-119110909.html

EcoInformatics International -- based in Ottawa -- has done a fine job compiling historic & contemporary GIS data for Glacial Lake Agassiz. Click here for access.

1930's Germany

2011-04-08T09:25:00.007-05:00

New Orleans architect and preservationist Samuel Wilson, Jr. (1911-1993) visited Europe in the late 1930s, venturing through France, Austria, Germany and Finland. As he traveled, he documented historic and contemporary architecture, public monuments, and countryside.

Judging by his photographs, he had a heightened interest in what he saw in Bayreuth, Dresden, and Nuremberg. He recorded Otto Ernst Schweizer's (1890-1965) modernist Nuremberg Municipal Stadium and Swimming Baths (1926-28); Albert Speer's newly constructed Zeppelin Grandstand (1935-37); and National Socialist banners along Richard-Wagner Straße in Bayreuth.

Architects' travels have been discussed in a number of previous posts, which can be accessed by following the Label Link "Travel and Tourism" (at right).

Images above from the Samuel Wilson, Jr. Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries:

Samuel Wilson, Jr., photographer. Albert Speer, architect. Zeppelin Field Grandstand, Nuremberg. c. 1937.

Samuel Wilson, Jr., photographer. Otto Ernst Schweizer, architect. Stadium Swimming Baths, Nuremberg. c. 1937.

Samuel Wilson, Jr., photographer. Richard-Wagner Straße, Bayreuth. c. 1937.

Tulane's Lost Owls

2011-03-31T13:39:00.008-05:00

Tulane University's Joseph Merrick Jones Hall, located at 6801 Freret Street, was designed by Moise Goldstein & Associates, Architects (1939-1941). Tulane School of Architecture faculty member Nathaniel C. Curtis, Sr. (1881-1953) was chief designer at the time, and created the building's dedicatory inscription and accompanying intaglio sculpture.

The structure was originally the institutional library, drawing together the combined holdings of Newcomb College and Tulane University, and named Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. Its Freret Street entranceway features carvings of historic printers' devices, including those of Plantin-Moretus and Aldus Manutius.

Moise Goldstein hired a young Nathaniel C. "Buster" Curtis, Jr. (1917-1997) to design two owls -- symbols of wisdom and knowledge -- for placement atop the entrance facade's granite obelisks. Buster drew full-sized sketches of his stylized owls, his "own idea of what an owl should look like," and the sketches were sent to Indiana, where the stone was cut.

When Buster's owls arrived in New Orleans, they were positioned atop the entrance obelisks and Mr. Goldstein escorted Tulane University President Harris to see them. Buster Curtis later recounted:

"No one was prepared for the violent disapproval and disappointment of the good doctor over those owls and Mr. Goldstein's distress cannot be expressed. That very night he arranged for a pickup truck into which the owls were loaded and just he and I, in utmost secrecy, buried those birds in the darkness of the early morning in the back of Audubon Park. I think Mr. Goldstein paid for the owls out of his own pocket because nothing was ever said again about them -- either by him or Dr. Harris or by me, but the granite obelisks are still there."

Curtis added, "It has been said that a doctor buries his mistakes and an architect just plants ivy. But is is not always that easy. . . "

Quoted matter from: Nathaniel C. Curtis, Jr. Undated typescript. c. late 1960s. Biographical Files, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Blueprints & Jazz

2011-03-28T12:15:00.010-05:00

New Orleans' Warren Easton High School was originally founded as a public school for boys, formed by the consolidation of earlier schools located "above" and "below" Canal Street. With a new building designed by E.A. Christy (completed 1913), Warren Easton boasted a centralized Canal Street location and modern educational facilities to match. By the 1930s, the school was particularly noted for its mechanical drawing course.

John W. Hyman (1899-1977) taught mechanical drawing at Warren Easton High School for nearly two decades, from the 1920s-1940s. Tulane School of Architecture faculty member Milton Scheuermann, Jr. was one of Hyman's students, and tells the story of how Professor Hyman and fellow student Pete Fountain (born 1930) used Easton's blueprinting machine to copy music. Hyman and Fountain washed the prints, then "pasted" the wet blueprints on the chalkboard; when the blueprints dried, they naturally detached from the chalkboard and fell to the floor.

During the period he was teaching mechanical drawing, Professor Hyman had an important side gig performing jazz cornet. He made his first recordings under the name "John Hyman's Bayou Stompers," eventually adopted the stage name "Johnny Wiggs" and retired from teaching. Read more about Wiggs in The Jazz Archivist.

Images above: TOP: Wickes Bros. Blueprint Machine, Southern Architect and Building News (March 1919). The Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries. BOTTOM: Joan Whitehead, photographer. Johnny Wiggs "Congo Square" and Other Vintage Material Album Cover from OffBeat: Louisiana Music and Culture. URL: www.offbeat.com/2011/01/01/johnny-wiggs-congo-square-and-other-vintage-material-ghb-records/

Architecture Lab

2011-03-25T12:53:00.006-05:00

An earlier post addressed the 1907 founding of Tulane University's School of Architecture, and Professor William Woodward's (1859-1939) conviction that New Orleans provided the perfect crucible in which to study architecture.

By 1915, Southern Architect & Building News reported on emerging schools of architecture in the South, cautioning that such programs "do not thrive unless the conditions of their environment are right" and commending Tulane University as one of the real "pioneers," echoing Woodward's earlier emphasis on geography and the city's distinctive architecture:

"New Orleans offers a particularly favorable location for a thriving school of architecture. In the first place, it is the only large city in the South which possesses a large number of examples of a unique and beautiful historic architecture. In fact, competent critics would place her, in this respect, above any other city in America. This is a distinction the inspirational value of which cannot be overestimated. Next in importance to a worthy past, should be mentioned the fact that New Orleans is also a thoroughly up-to-date and thriving modern city, and so added to the inspiration of antiquity are added the practical object lessons of modern building construction. To the architectural student the city streets are of the nature of a vast laboratory and he who walks may learn perhaps quite as much as he who spends his spare hours in the draughting room."

Reported in Southern Architect and Building News 36:1 (November 1915): p. 17-18, extracted from New Orleans Building Review.

Image Above: Tulane School of Architecture's early home, Stanley Thomas Hall, as it appeared in Architectural Art and Its Allies (1912). Stanley Thomas Hall was designed by the New Orleans firm of Andry & Bendernagel (1911); its fourth floor was added in 1929.

Wright the 'Love Philosopher'

2011-03-24T12:10:00.004-05:00

As reported in Southern Architect and Building News 36:3 (January 1916):

Frank Lloyd Wright, noted architect and social anarchist, has been tied again to the 'provincial whipping post.'

The lash of public criticism that fell so heavily upon Mamah Bothwick Cheney, his first 'spiritual affinity,' strikes this time at Mrs. Maude Miriam Noel, an artist of note, who has won honors abroad and in this country and was fellow-worker in Paris with Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney.

Mrs. Noel is very beautiful, and a woman of rare intellectual charm, but as she is the mother of married daughters, it was beauty and brains, not youth, that lured the love philosopher of Taliesin from the shadow of grief into the light of new love, and establishes her in the love bungalow in the woodland retreat in Wisconsin where Wright and his first 'soulmate,' Mamah Bothwick Cheney, sought seclusion when they defied the world, and he forsook his wife and she her husband, six years ago.

The tragic death of Mamah Cheney and her two children -- Cheney's children, not Wright's -- in a fire that destroyed the bungalow about a year ago, was said to be the final chapter in Wright's romance. Love died for the architect when his soulmate died, so his friends said. But they reckoned without his capacity for romance.

As he reared again the destroyed love bungalow and renamed it Taliesin, love was resurrected from his soul-mate's grave. Less than a year after she perished he met Miriam Noel. Love bloomed again in the death-blighted soul; the bungalow in the forest became a 'love castle' once more.

But the Mann act, invoked upon them by a discharged housekeeper, Mrs. Nellie Breen, intruded its slimy suggestiveness into the paradise of love and polluted it with a federal investigation, which brought Wright, his 'soul's affinity,' his strange love philosophy, his unsanctioned moral code to the 'whipping post of public opinion' again.

The investigation has been abandoned, the housekeeper may be prosecuted for slander, but Frank Wright and Miriam Noel have learned that conventionality rules the world, and the world is cruelly unkind to those who place 'personal liberty' above social convention and the moral code.

Wright's wife, whom he abandoned for Mamah Bothwick Cheney six years ago, has steadfastly refused to give him a divorce; she lives with her children at Oak Park, Ill.

New Orleans Architecture in Moscow 1958

2011-03-23T13:41:00.005-05:00

An earlier post addressed Charles Colbert's Phillis Wheatley Elementary School and its inclusion in the important 1958 US State Department/American Institute of Architects "Cities U.S.A." Exhibition in Moscow, which was part of the 5th Congress of the Union Internationale des Architectes. Colbert's work was selected along with projects by Pietro Belluschi, Marcel Breuer, Eero Saarinen, SOM, Mies van der Rohe, TAC, & Minoru Yamasaki. The New Orleans firms of Freret & Wolf/Andry & Feitel/Ricciuti, Stoffle & Associates also contributed photographic documentation of their Tulane University Women's Graduate Dormitory Building, Johnston Hall, which had garnered international acclaim (razed).

Image above: William Wilson Atkin, Booklet for "Cities U.S.A." Exhibition, Moscow 1958. Folder 1956, Freret & Wolf Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Tulane University Libraries.

Read more about the dormitory in Architectural Forum 104 (April 1956): pp. 154-159.

Central City 1964

2011-03-17T16:26:00.003-05:00

In 1964, New Orleans photographer Frank Lotz Miller (1923-1993) took aerial views of the newly constructed Guste Housing Project, designed by Curtis & Davis (altered 2002-2005). Miller's negative captured a broad expanse of Central City beyond to the Mississippi River and the West Bank.

Image: Frank Lotz Miller, photographer. Guste Housing Project, 1964. © Curtis & Davis Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries. Do not reproduce without written permission.

Architecture & Carnival

2011-03-15T15:13:00.005-05:00

As reported by Architectural Art and Its Allies March 1912:

"Now that the carnival is past and gone for another twelve month [sic], the decorations have disappeared, the stands come down, the props been knocked from under many a veranda, and life has assumed its normal flow again, we may well dismiss the subject; but before doing so, it might not be out of place to stop to consider for an instant a matter which is but incidental to the festivalbut which has a marked effect upon the appearance of the business portion of the city and the comfort of the people.

From time immemorial it has been custom to span at will the sidewalks of any and all New Orleans streets with verandas, which take many and divers shapes, from the attractive and architectural balcony to the mere shed roof, without which no corner grocery is complete. By far the prevailing type on the main thoroughfares has been a light structure, resting on iron columns at the curb and railed above with one or another of the few designs of cast iron rail for which the foundries have carried patterns since the forties. These verandas serve throughout the year to shelter the shopping crowds from sun and rain, and would seem to suggest Bellamy's Eutopian [sic] general umbrella. They are not different from isolated examples elsewhere, but their prevalence in New Orleans makes them conspicuous.

During the carnival, with their tiers of seats filled with laughing people, they add much to the enjoyment of the pageants, but they have their drawbacks. Thus far they have not received the serious consideration of architects that they should have. Their frail construction makes it necessary each year to shore them up with row on row of braces, which greatly impede the circulation of crowds beneath, at a time when the uninterrupted space is most seriously needed, and give the stranger the impression the buildings of which they are part, are unsafe.

They obstruct light and some architects have essayed to reduce them to mere suspended awnings at impost heigh, with transoms of prism glass above, but to those who recall the old days, when cafes made hanging gardens of them and spread their delicacies al fresco as on a Parisian boulevard, it would seem that the proper regulation as to height and strength to carry any carnival load, without obstructing the sidewalk, the veranda might be retained upon Canal and other broad streets of the business section, and given architectural effect as that of the Madison Square Garden of New York, but the veranda should be banished altogether from the narrow streets and residential avenues, where every impulse should be for light and air and freedom from unsightly objects, which impair the vista. As these verandas are an encroachment on the public domain, and are only permitted on sufferance, the city would be justified in refusing to issue permits for them altogether on neutral ground boulevards and in the business section, when their construction will require obstructive bracing to carry a crowd. The money spent year afer year for bracing these galleries would pay many times over for members of larger size in their original construction." [unknown author, p. 12]

Addendum: The Times-Picayune reported that a French Quarter balcony collapsed on Friday, 18 March 2011. See Chris Granger's photos here.

An Architect's Drawings for Sale 1881

2011-03-03T14:54:00.004-06:00

As reported by The Daily Picayune 12 November 1881:

"Special Notice to Architects and Builders. -- For sale at the office of Howard and Thiberge. No. 13 Commercial Place, a valuable Architectural Library Black Walnut Book Case; also a large Black Walnut Chest of Drawers, containing 578 Architectural Drawings. Original Designs. Plans. Elevations, and Sections with Preliminary Studies, Rough Sketches, Tracings, Specifications, and several selected Plates of American Architect and Building News, all belonging to the undersigned, who will state terms and give all other particulars at his room. No. 8 Hotel Dieu. HENRY HOWARD, Architect."

Henry Howard, the Irish-born architect noted for designing the Cyprien Dufour Residence (1707 Esplanade Avenue) and the First Presbyterian Church on Lafayette Square (destroyed by the Great Hurricane of 1915), died in November 1884 after a prolonged illness.

Soldier-Builder

2011-03-03T14:07:00.002-06:00

Reported by The Daily Picayune 3 June 1913:

"Joseph Thompson Kendall, an old Confederate soldier and builder of Carnival floats, died peacefully at the Soldiers' Home last night at 9:20 o'clock, after an illness of several weeks. A native of Grand Well, Miss., the deceased lived in the city practically all his life, and was noted for his skill as a builder, his work in that line and in the construction of Carnival floats having attracted wide attention. His first attempt at float building was several years ago, when the Phunny Phorty Phellows turned out, when he was said to have constructed all the floats in that parade."

James Lamantia (1923-2011)

2011-02-28T13:21:00.009-06:00

New Orleans architect and artist James Rogers Lamantia, Jr. (1923-2011) passed away on Saturday, 19 Feburary 2011. A graduate of Tulane University's School of Architecture (B.S. 1943) and Harvard University's Graduate School of Design (M.Arch. 1947), Lamantia received the Prix de Rome in 1948. He was a Fulbright Fellow to Italy in 1949, before returning to the United States to work for The Architectural Forum. He regularly taught art and architecture courses at the Tulane School of Architecture, where he was appointed full professor in 1974, and where he was the first recipient of the Richard Koch Chair in Architecture.

After spending a few years in New York City, Lamantia established a professional practice in New Orleans. By 1955 he was a partner in the firm Burk, Le Breton and Lamantia, which was noted for its church and school buildings. In 1958, he worked with Arthur Q. Davis to design showrooms for the Orleans Gallery, a cooperative artists' organization of which Lamantia was a founding member. He directed the renovation of of the Presbytere Building and contributed to the renovation of New York's Central Park.

A prolific artist and designer, Lamantia exhibited oil paintings in the Whitney Museum of Art's "Fulbright Painters" show in 1958. He designed room schemes and furnishings for Interiors magazine, and collaborated with Louisiana-based sculptor Lin Emery on a brass fountain for Edgar A.G. Bright. His most recent works were collages, assemblages from his Hurricane Katrina-ravaged collection of Piranesi prints.

James Lamantia was an early and lifelong supporter of Tulane University Libraries' Southeastern Architectural Archive. His donations included his own drawings, Frank Lotz Miller negatives and photographs, Piranesi prints, and countless rare books, including a first edition of John Ruskin's The Seven Lamps of Architecture and Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc's Habitations Modernes.

Top: Graduation Photograph, James Rogers Lamantia, Jr. Tulane University Class of 1943. Courtesy University Archives, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Bottom: Robert Helmer (1922-1990). St. Catherine's of Siena Church Baptismal, Metairie. Serigraph. James Lamantia Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Lost New Orleans (23 December 1952)

2011-02-18T14:23:00.009-06:00

In 1952, the New Orleans firm of Curtis & Davis was commissioned to design an L-shaped parking garage in the square bounded by Canal, Common, S. Rampart Streets & University Place. The architects hired professional photographer Frank Lotz Miller (1923-1993) to document the surrounding properties.

The Metro Hotel was located at 1021 Common Street, Yank's Cocktail Lounge was at 1017, and Gonzales Tailors was at 1015. Kay's Shoes was located at 136 S. Rampart Street. The Common Street structures remained standing through the 1960s & 1970s, but the Rampart Street store was razed sometime before 1978.

Eglin's Parking Garage was built in 1953, a six-deck steel-framed structure with an 800-car capacity.

Images above: Frank Lotz Miller, photographer. Buildings on Common & Rampart. 23 December 1952. photographic negatives. © Curtis and Davis Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Architectural Records & the Law

2011-02-18T09:44:00.009-06:00

On January 23 1897, The American Architect and Building News reported on the architect's right to retain property ownership of drawings:

Notwithstanding the decision of the Courts as to the question of ownership of plans, we find clients still contending for what they regard as their legal right, and the architect as pertinaciously maintaining the usage of the profession in declining to part with documents prepared for his own special use. One would have thought that, after the many disputed cases that have been decided on this question, architects would have shown their appreciation of the old maxim, 'Discretion is the better part of valor,' by making it a stipulation in their agreements with building owners that all designs and drawings they prepare should be retained by them, in case of the abandonment of the work from any cause. As 'custom' of the profession in this particular matter has been overruled, and the profession have been straightly told by judges of the law that any rules they make among themselves have no binding force beyond their own societies, it seems all the stranger that members should go on incurring the risk of making claims which they cannot maintain. The property in plans, particular rates of commission, the authority of the architect to bind his employer by all acts and orders, as a general agent, and other matters, are points which are continually being brought before courts of law with the presumption that, owing to the uncertainty of the law, the conflicting opinions of judges and juries, what has been decided before may be reversed. And it is in this 'glorious uncertainty of the law' that the disputants and their advisers try their luck, even after the points have been theoretically decided against them.

***

We have not yet very clear legal definitions of the duties of architects in regard to this matter. There are numerous instances where the architect's drawings and specifications are abandoned through want of funds, or some other reason, and where the client claims the drawings prepared when he pays for them. He supposes he has a right to the work which is represented in the drawings; he thinks, naturally, that when he comes to build he can use them, or at any rate, they will be of service. With a strange perversity such men do not understand what they pay an architect for -- namely, his brains and experience -- in other words, a design; for the time he has taken in preparing necessary drawings to assist him in carrying out the work, and that if he parts with these, he is throwing away his chance of employment another day.

To read more, see "The Ownership of Drawings," The American Architect and Building News 55:1100 (23 January 1897): p. 29.

Newberry Symposium

2011-02-15T08:25:00.000-06:00

"Mechanisms of Exchange: Transmission, Scale, and Interaction in the Arts and Architecture of the Medieval Mediterranean, 1000 to 1500"

Friday, February 25, 2011, 8:45am to 5pm

The Newberry Library, 60 E. Walton Street, Chicago, IL

Organized by Heather E. Grossman, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Alicia Walker, Washington University in St. Louis

Sponsored by the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library, the Newberry Consortium Committees of UIC and Washington University in St. Louis, and the Dean of the College of Architecture and the Arts, UIC.

The symposium brings together scholars working in art and architectural history and archaeology to consider the mechanisms of cross-cultural exchange in the medieval Mediterranean world, and specifically the question of how styles, motifs, and techniques were transmitted in architecture and the monumental arts versus the portable arts. Speakers include specialists in western European, Islamic, and Byzantine art and architectural history. Speakers will present individual case studies, followed by a roundtable discussion reflecting on methodological questions relating to transmission and scale in interaction.

For the full schedule of the symposium, including abstracts of the papers, please see:

http://www.newberry.org/renaissance/conf-inst/MechanismsOfExchange.html

Registration

While there is no fee to attend this program, participants must register in advance with the Newberry Library. Use their online form; e-mail renaissance@newberry.org; or call 312.255.3514. Lunch will be provided to registered participants.

Faculty and graduate students of Center for Renaissance Studies consortium institutions are eligible to apply for travel funds to attend CRS programs. Contact your Representative Council member for details.

WDS Project No. 703

2011-02-14T14:01:00.002-06:00

After The Times-Picayune published photographs of the Green Mansion being relocated to clear the footprint for the new Veteran's Administration medical complex, my colleague Kevin Williams noted that the house was designed by the New Orleans firm of Weiss, Dreyfous & Seiferth (1928) and pulled the drawings.

Smith Wendell Green (d. 1946) commissioned the structure in 1928, with Weiss Dreyfous Seiferth drafting plans in September. The draftsman for the project was "A.R."

Above: A.R. for Weiss, Dreyfous & Seiferth. Sheet No. 3 (Detail); Plan No. 703. 4 September 1928. Weiss, Dreyfous & Seiferth Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

New NARA FEMA Resource Online

2011-02-14T11:53:00.004-06:00

The National Archives and Records Administration has recently made available over 8,000 digital images relating to disasters and emergency management programs. Wim Henderson took the photograph above on 5 October 2005 in order to record Hurricane Rita wind damage at Holly Beach, Louisiana.

To search the photographs, go to NARA’s Online Public Access search page at

http://research.archives.gov/search?v%3Aproject=opa&query=626166

Researchers may browse the photographs by clicking the link that reads “View all Online Holdings” in the top right corner of the search results. For more refined searching, key words may be entered into the search box at the top of the page.

New Orleans Architects & E.J. Bellocq

2011-02-10T15:07:00.002-06:00

New Orleanian John Ernest Joseph Bellocq (1873-1949) is most renowned for his photographs of Storyville prostitutes, but he also worked for local architects to record their events and accomplishments. The journal Architectural Art and Its Allies is riddled with reproductions of Bellocq photographs, some with attributions and others not.

On 19 August 1908, the city's architects and contractors participated in an "Exchange Outing Day" on the Tchefuncta River across Lake Pontchartrain. They boarded the steamer G.H.A. Thomas, after assembling at Canal Street and the Half Way House (recently razed) to catch a train to the West End. E.J. Bellocq captured part of the journey, as Roy C. Moyston acknowledged in Architectural Art and Its Allies:

"After reaching the further neck of the canal, however, the steamer slowed down in order to attitudinize for the benefit of Photographer Belloc [sic], whose effort is here reproduced."

Image and quoted text from Moyston, Roy C. "Exchange Outing Day." Architectural Art and Its Allies 4:2 (August 1908): p. 3.

Architect Frederick W. Brown

2011-02-10T12:52:00.003-06:00

Architectural Art and Its Allies reported in September 1907 the arrival of a new architect:

Mr. Frederick W. Brown, of the firm of F.W. Brown, Ten Eyck Brown & P. Thornton Marye, of Atlanta, architects of the new courthouse, will open up permanent offices here under the name of Brown & Brown, and expects to make New Orleans his home. He is a strong believer in the great future of this city, and that the advance along the lines of building cannot be retarded. Mr. Brown will be joined here next month by his daughter, Miss Kathleen Ten Eyck Brown, who is now in Chicago, engaging in the woman's golf tournament for the national cup.

In speaking of the courthouse work, Mr. Brown said that it was progressing finely. While the public may not be able to see signs of material progress, much of the most difficult work of preparing foundations has been done and it will not be many weeks before the superstructure will begin to rise.

"Frederick W. Brown: Court House Architect Makes New Orleans His Home." Architectural Art and Its Allies III:3 (September 1907): p. 7.

St. Charles Avenue 1940s

2011-01-31T11:28:00.003-06:00

Over the last two decades, the Louisiana Landmarks Society has donated many important records to the Southeastern Architectural Archive. Included are photographs taken by former New Orleans city engineer Clem P. Binnings (1918-1991).

Binnings compiled his photographs into albums by subject, creating typewritten annotations which he wrote or gleaned from historic sources. His "Know New Orleans" album includes the above photograph, accompanied by his text:

"Walgreen Drug Stores have gone to a great expense to put in one of the most expensive and modern drug stores in New Orleans, located on a very prominent intersection and where thousands of uptown residents pass daily. For some unaccountable reason they have seen fit to rent space for this sign to DH Holmes Co. Ltd. It is such a dominating sign that it overshadows the remainder of the location and in passing about all the average motorist can see is the DH Holmes sign. Holmes knows this and always maintain a seasonable, well executed institutional sign."

Image above: Clem Binnings. Holmes Sign, St. Charles and Napoleon Avenue, 1940s. Clem P. Binnings Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Dallas Tout Ensemble

2011-01-13T08:24:00.009-06:00

In the late 1940s, the modern design firm Knoll began to establish its Dallas showroom located at 2909 Fairmount Street, then a residential district. Designed by Florence Knoll Bassett (born 1917), the showroom utilized a preexisting "Texas-Colonial" structure modified with enlarged showroom windows. Knoll opted to paint the structure black, added a white roof, and incorporated a Knoll-red door emblazoned with the firm's name in distinctive slab-serif capitals. Chicagoans architect Robert Bruce Tague (1912-1985) and photographer Arthur S. Siegel (1913-1978) contributed artworks for the front room, which was organized as a conversational grouping. Knoll adopted bold contrasts of black, yellow and gray that was meant to attract passing motorists (lower image).

Want to see/read more? Consult:

Bassett, Florence Knoll. Papers. Smithsonian Archives of American Art. Series 5: Subject Files, circa 1930s-1999. Box 3, Folder 11. URL: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline/knolflor/container224319.htm

"Famous Designers Visiting Dallas." Dallas Morning News 29 July 1956.

"Firm Plans Branch Here." Dallas Morning News 29 January 1950.

"Outpost in Dallas: Knoll opens a Lone Star Branch." Knoll Showroom in Dallas. New York: Knoll, n.d. Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries. [Images above are by Arthur S. Siegel for Knoll and from this publication]

Charlie Smith AKA Rathbone DeBuys

2011-01-12T14:02:00.007-06:00

In 1930, New Orleans architect Rathbone DeBuys (1874-1960) reminisced about his post-graduate training:

"It was after I had graduated from Tulane and Yale and was about ready to hang out my shingle as an architect. W.W. Bierce, Southern representative of the Illinois Steel company, and a friend, advised me to learn the steel business from the inside out so I'd be able better to understand its use in buildings. He gave me a letter of introduction to the company.

Up there, they thought it was a joke, but when I insisted that I wanted to work as a laborer, they gave me a job. They were interested in my name--its derivation and all that sort of thing, so I took the tip and changed it to Charlie Smith, and that's the alias I went under all the time.

My first job was in the rivet gang. I had the dirtiest job in the pit, and the pounding and fumes of lamp black and linseed oil gave me a splitting headache, but I got used to it in a couple of weeks. Men can get used to anything.

****

Well, I stayed with this steel work for two years, and I worked up through the shops into the designing department. I consider this experience one of the most valuable in my life. And the friends I made among those laborers--they don't come any finer, I'm here to tell you."

DeBuys graduated from Tulane University in 1896, and Yale University in 1897. He went on to design the International Trade Mart, Loyola University's Holy Name Church, various New Orleans subdivisions, the Texas Company Building, and Hecht Japanese Gardens. During the 1920's Florida building boom, Rathbone DeBuys established a Miami office.

Excerpt above from Rathbone DeBuys, "I Remember: When I was a Boy." 30 December 1930. Newspaper clipping, Rathbone DeBuys Biographical File, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Lexicon: Nogged

2011-01-04T12:20:00.006-06:00

An early blog entry addressed the use of bousillage, bouzillage, barreaux, and briquette-entre-poteaux to describe Louisiana wattle and daub construction. The 1895 Sanborn Atlas for New Orleans uses another term altogether, nogged. Some structures are labelled "br. nogged" for "brick-nogged." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term was first used in the late seventeenth century, in reference to a wall. The related term "nogging" was used in medieval accounts of the late fifteenth century. By the early twentieth century, the expression was associated with a South Worcestershire dialect. For the 1895 Sanborn atlases, brick-nogged structures are indicated with alternating pink (masonry) and yellow (timber) bands along the perimeter walls.

To view historic Sanborn atlases for the region, consult the Southeastern Architectural Archive's collection of fire insurance atlases. Some atlases are also available through Digital Sanborn online, a subscription database available via Tulane University Libraries. Do note that the digital format lacks the color indicators and holographic additions of the physical copies.

Field Trip: Lincoln Square (Chicago) Illinois

2011-01-03T08:36:00.005-06:00

Louis H. Sullivan (1856-1924) designed this facade for William C. Presto's Krause Music Store, which was completed in 1922. His last commission prior to his death, the Krause Music Store facade is profusely ornamented with Sullivan's distinctive naturalistically-driven terracotta.

After property owner William Krause died in 1929, the property eventually was sold to a funeral company. The structure functioned as a funeral parlor for over five decades and during that period its facade was altered and neglected.

Preservation architects McQuire Igleski & Associates researched historic architectural and terracotta shop drawings in order to restore the building for adaptive reuse. Their project was the recipient of the AIA Illinois' Crombie Taylor Award and a Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award.

Preservation architect Gunny Harboe was recently honored by the City of Chicago for his significant efforts to restore its notable buildings, including Burnham & Root's Rookery and Louis Sullivan's Carson Pirie Scott Building.

The Art Institute of Chicago maintains a website that identifies Louis Sullivan's extant buildings in the Chicago metropolitan region. Click here to access.

Exhibit Highlights Historic New Orleans Neighborhood

2010-12-07T08:56:00.003-06:00

TREMÉ: People and Places

10 December 2010 -- 4 November 2011

Tulane University’s Southeastern Architectural Archive has announced a new exhibition.

TREMÉ: People and Places celebrates the bicentennial of New Orleans’ historic neighborhood. Often considered the birthplace of jazz, Faubourg Tremé was the city’s first municipally-founded subdivision. Developed in 1810, when Claude Tremé sold his Bayou Road plantation holdings to the city for $40,000, the district rapidly changed from French long-lot habitations to urban squares filled with Creole cottages and shotgun houses.

Stretching from Canal Street to St. Bernard Avenue and from Rampart to Broad Street, Tremé was populated by a diverse mixture of people. With cultural ties to the Caribbean, Africa, Spain, France, China and England, the district featured vibrant public spaces that included boulevards, churches, shrines, squares, parks and markets. It served as a primary port of entry for railroad travelers, who frequently lodged in its rooming houses and inns.

Significantly altered by nearly one hundred years of urban renewal programs, Tremé retains much of its historic vitality. This exhibition highlights Faubourg Tremé using the rich holdings of Tulane University’s Special Collections Divisions -- its Louisiana Research Collection, the William Hogan Jazz Archive, and the Southeastern Architectural Archive.

Co-curated by Keli Rylance and Kevin Williams, TREMÉ: People and Places opens 10 December 2010 in the Southeastern Architectural Archive (SEAA) and runs through 4 November 2011. The SEAA is located at 6801 Freret Street/300 Jones Hall, on Tulane University’s campus. Hours are 9-12 and 1-5 Mondays-Fridays. Admission is free.

Image above: William Toye, Jr. & Al Rose. Scale Models of Lulu White’s Mahogany Hall and Mahogany Hall Annex, 235, 239-41 Basin Street, circa 1965. Courtesy William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

North Claiborne Avenue 1972

2010-12-06T12:01:00.004-06:00

In 1972, Tulane School of Architecture faculty member John Rock (1923-2009) took his camera on the road, recording the sites along North Claiborne Avenue underneath the elevated I-10 and the construction of the newer I-10 sections near the Orleans Parish Prison. Taken from a moving vehicle, some of his slides are quite blurred, yet they provide strong documentation of North Claiborne and the shaded artery provided by the expressway.

Images above: John Rock, photographer. I-10 Expressway, New Orleans. February 1972. John Rock Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Proto-ATMs: the Curbside Teller

2010-11-24T08:39:00.004-06:00

In 1955, Duplex Electric Company patented a Curb Teller designed by inventor Clarence D. Ellithorpe. The company marketed the product to urban banks that did not have adequate space to accommodate a drive-up window. Ellithorpe's CT required a bank employee be lodged in a subterranean chamber (diagram above).

The customer, described in company brochures as the "autoist," would push a button to signal the teller, who could see the customer above via a bullet-proof glass protected periscope. The teller would then send a miniature elevator up the shaft to collect transaction documents, which could then be sent down to the teller.

Images above: Duplex Electric Company. "Curb Tellers" Brochure. New York: n.d. Architectural Trade Catalogs Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collection Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Visiting Scholar Opportunity

2010-10-25T14:42:00.002-05:00

The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) Study Centre has announced its 2011-2012 Visiting Scholars Program. The Program welcomes applications from scholars and architects conducting research at post-doctoral or more advanced academic levels. The Study Centre also offers a limited number of Associate Scholars positions to non-stipendiary residential fellows. To find out more, consult the CCA's website: http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/study-centre/visiting-scholars-application

New Digital Resource Available

2010-10-13T13:30:00.004-05:00

The Association for Preservation Technology (APT) special project -- the Building Heritage Research Library -- is up and running and will continue to expand via the non-profit Internet Archive. Presently there are 100 documents available online, but the expectation is that over the course of time, this collection will expand to some 20,000 titles. The Canadian Centre for Architecture has partnered on the project, and will add some 4,000 of its documents to the public access web site.

For those interested in historic building trade catalogs, the Southeastern Architectural Archive retains a large collection that predominantly came directly from architects practicing in the New Orleans metropolitan area who received them in the course of doing business.

Image above: Cover design, J.G. Braun Company. Architectural Shapes in "Alcoa" Aluminum. Chicago, 1935. Available through the Building Heritage Research Library.

Shannon Lee Dawdy MacArthur Recipient

2010-09-29T10:16:00.005-05:00

University of Chicago anthropologist Shannon Lee Dawdy has received a 2010 MacArthur Grant in recognition of her scholarship. In recent years, her work has largely focused on New Orleans. Read more/watch a video here.

Building the Devil's Empire: French Colonial New Orleans is available through Tulane University Libraries.

Fifth Wheel of the Wagon

2010-09-22T15:38:00.003-05:00

As reported by The Daily Picayune 2 September 1889:

"Architects say their business is constantly increasing and that people are beginning to learn more readily that money is saved and other profit gained by employment of the architect. People used to believe an architect constituted the fifth wheel of the wagon. Nowadays, however, that opinion is giving way in the face of returning prosperity and the development of architectural tastes. Style in residences and stores, as stated before, is changing along St. Charles avenue, Prytania and other residence streets there is a greater prevalence of European and modern American architecture and a constant broadening of lines.

Another matter of note is the fact that stone is coming into more general use than ever before. Many of the lately constructed residences up town are COMBINATIONS OF BRICK AND STONE, and in the selection of the granite there is the utmost catholicity of taste. The Morris building, the Howard Library, and the Whitney National Bank, are all for the most part part built of red granite."

Excerpt from "Brick and Mortar: The Past Year's Building Operations," p. 2.

Field Trip: Cloquet, Minnesota

2010-09-17T11:37:00.004-05:00

Frank Lloyd Wright designed only one automobile service station (1956-1957), a commission for a Phillips 66 station. The structure is located at the intersection of Highway 33 and Cloquet Avenue in Cloquet, Minnesota. The cantilevered roof shelters a glass-enclosed visitors' waiting/observation room that overlooks the Cloquet River bridge, railroad tracks, and busy intersection. As with many of Wright's buildings, it employs the use of Louisiana cypress. In 1984, the building was listed on the National Register; in 2008, it celebrated its 50th anniversary. View digital reproductions of drawings and construction photographs here.

Image above: Frank Lloyd Wright, architect. R.W. Lindholm Service Station (1956-1957; opened October 1958), Cloquet, MN. Fujifilm. K. Rylance 1992.

Lexicon: Brunspile

2010-09-08T10:26:00.003-05:00

As reported in Engineering News-Record 6 August 1964:

A 45-story, steel-framed skyscraper under construction in downtown New Orleans will set several structural records. The tallest building in the Old South, Plaza Tower will sit on pre-stressed concrete piles designed for bearing values of 180 tons, the greatest pile load ever approved in that city.

The $10-million tower will rise from one corner of an 18-story base building devoted largely to parking 500 cars. Duranodic aluminum will sheath closely spaced exterior columns. Between the columns, white marble spandrels will alternate vertically with bronze-tinted windows.

Before approving the 180-ton pile value, city building officials required load tests held for at least two days at more than double the allowable design load. Driven successively through strata of compressible clay again into a hard Pleistocene stratum (glacial till consisting mainly of hard clay) about 155 ft below grade, a 168-ft pile passed the test with ease. It held 400 tons for two days with only 3/8 in. residual settlement. At 462 tons, the test pile failed in compression (5,600 psi); the foundation soil still held.

Known as Brunspile, the piles are pre-stressed, precast units up to 70 ft long, octagonal in cross section. The splice detail comprises a cast-steel, cylindrical wedge connector into which fits the ferrule end of the top unit. The pile units are separated by a steel impact plate, and pile hammer blows wedge the two sections together in a moment-resisting joint...

To read more, consult ENR in Howard-Tilton Memorial Library. Architect for the Plaza Tower was Leonard Spangenberg, Jr. & Assoc. Tulane University's William J. Mouton was consulting engineer, George A. Fuller of Dallas was general contractor, and Stephen K. Whitty of New Orleans was pile subcontractor.

New SEAA Website

2010-09-03T15:53:00.003-05:00

The Southeastern Architectural Archive has launched its new website this month! The url has changed to http://seaa.tulane.edu. Click here to access information about collections, donations, and outreach programming.

Architectural Photography Symposium

2010-09-03T08:27:00.001-05:00

Documenting History, Charting Progress and Exploring the World: Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Photographs.

Indiana University South Bend and Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame

October 3 - 4, 2010

Held during the The Snite Museum exhibition Documenting History, Charting Progress and Exploring the World: Architecture in Photographs from the Janos Scholz Collection of Nineteenth-Century European Photographs (September 5 - October 31, 2010), this symposium is a collaboration between the Snite Museum at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, and Indiana University South Bend. It will bring together scholars who approach the study of 19-century photographs of architecture from a thematic point of view. The cultural role of architectural photography will be examined in 12 papers and two lectures by established and junior scholars. Participants from Canada, Ireland, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States will provide varied perspectives and insights on the cultural, social, and professional significance of 19-century architectural photography.

The symposium is free and open to the public.

Indiana University South Bend is located at 1700 Mishawaka Avenue, South Bend, Indiana and the Snite Museum of Art is located on the campus of the University of Notre Dame, near South Bend, Indiana. Directions to the two conference venues are available at www.iusb.edu and www.nd.edu/~sniteart/. For Symposium program, itineraries, and additional information, please contact Micheline Nilsen, (mnilsen@iusb.edu or 574-520-4277).

New Architecture Database Available

2010-09-01T16:16:00.005-05:00

Columbia University Libraries have announced the launch of their New York Real Estate Brochure Collection, an online database representing some 3,000 buildings described in advertising brochures. Researchers can search by address, architect, property owner/agent, building name, and neighborhood. Most structures are illustrated by interior and exterior views and floor plans, and have been geo-referenced using Google Maps. To access the database, click here.

The printing company that produced the advertisements retained samples of all its brochures, and a successor firm inherited the comprehensive archive. Yale Robbins, Henry Robbins and David Magier were able to acquire the complete printing archive and donated it to the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library in 1986.

Image above: 53rd at Third. Architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee. Promotional advertisement. New York Real Estate Brochure Collection, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library Online.

Wright's Building Blocks

2010-08-30T11:54:00.016-05:00

Jori Finkel of the Los Angeles Times has recently reported on the uncertain future of Frank Lloyd Wright's textile-block homes. The 1923 Millard House (AKA La Miniatura, shown left) has been on the market for years, and its listing price has dropped from $7.7 M to $4.99 M. The 1924 Ennis House (lower two images) went on the market last year at $15 M but is now being offered for $7.49 M, not including the $6 M the buyer must keep on reserve for future preservation efforts. The Millard House may be sold only to be dismantled and reassembled in Japan.

Wright designed his four textile block system homes in southern California after returning from Japan, where he had used cast brick on the Imperial Hotel (1912-1923). Although the latter was razed in 1968, its entrance lobby was preserved, reconstructed at the Meiji Mura Architecture Museum in Nagoya.

The Southeastern Architectural Archive retains a drawing of a full-sized detail of the Imperial Hotel's cast brick, which was once exhibited in the Max Protech Gallery in New York, and was the gift of New Orleans architect James Lamantia.

A number of New Orleans architects visited Frank Lloyd Wright structures in their youth, and brought back photographs and kodachrome slides of their destinations. Tulane School of Architecture graduate Philip H. Roach, Jr. documented La Miniatura and the Ennis House during a long architectural road trip that he took during the 1950s.

Images: Philip H. Roach, Jr., photographer. Frank Lloyd Wright, architect. Circa 1950s. Philip H. Roach, Jr. Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Ex Votos

2010-08-27T15:47:00.003-05:00

Ex Votos. St. Roch Cemetery, New Orleans. Spring 2010. K. Rylance.

Field Trip: Helsinki, Finland

2010-08-23T10:40:00.007-05:00

The Suomen Rakennustaiteen Museo (Museum of Finnish Architecture) is Finland's national architectural archive, library and museum. Located in an 1899 neoclassical structure designed by Magnus Schjerfbeck (1860-1933), the museum hosts rotating exhibitions and serves as a contact for scheduling local architectural tours.

"Finnish Architecture 0809" (shown above) is an exhibition designed by architect Roy Mänttäri, a juried biennial survey of award-winning and innovative structures. It includes the work of Heikkinen-Komonen Architects, their Hämeenlinna Provincial Archive (2009), with its grey street facade that incorporates graphic design elements extracted from archival documents (image below); and a portable solid timber sauna (Kyly Sauna, Roseborg) by Avanti Architects Ltd. Jurors for the exhibition were Heikki Aitoaho, Selina Anttinen, and Johan Celsing.

Architectural Archive for Sale

2010-08-09T17:33:00.002-05:00

As reported by Robin Pogrebin in The New York Times 8 August 2010:

A huge and previously unknown trove of archival material from Philip Johnson’s architectural practice — including his hand-drawn sketches for towers that helped define postmodern architecture — is to be put up for sale by one of Johnson’s former partners, who has had them in storage for years.

The cache contains more than 25,000 design sketches, working drawings, renderings and photographs from the second half of Johnson’s architectural career, covering more than 120 projects from 1968 to 1992. While there are collections of his early work at the Museum of Modern Art, the Getty Museum and the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library at Columbia University, documentation from this later period, in which he became known for his tall buildings, is much rarer. Included in the archive is material on the AT&T Building in Manhattan (now Sony’s American headquarters); the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif.; PPG Place in Pittsburgh; Pennzoil Place in Houston; and smaller-scale structures that Johnson built around his celebrated Glass House of 1949 on his property in New Canaan, Conn., now owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

That period was “the pinnacle of Johnson’s career” as an architect, said Willis Van Devanter, an appraiser of architectural materials hired to examine the archive by lawyers for the archive’s owner, Raj Ahuja. Mr. Van Devanter described the archive as “absolutely essential to the study of modern architecture,” given Johnson’s stature as “the major influence in world architecture of the latter 20th century.”

Still, that stature was arguably based more on his role as a leading advocate for Modernism and subsequent architectural movements — beginning with the International Style show he helped organize at the Museum of Modern Art in 1932 — than on his own design work. Aside from a few of his almost universally praised projects, Johnson has been regarded by some critics and fellow architects as dilettantish, more slave to fashion than serious practitioner.

He was criticized in particular for focusing on aesthetics at the expense of more fundamental issues of function. But Michael Robinson, an expert on 20th-century documents and another appraiser of the archive, said its drawings would do much to help counter that notion.

Mr. Robinson was especially struck, he said, by the degree to which the drawings concern themselves with the surrounding context.

“Nobody thinks of Johnson as a planner,” Mr. Robinson said. “They think of him as an antiurbanist. He really was concerned with how life interacted with these buildings. You get elaborate plans for walkways, roads, the works.”

Calling the archive “extraordinarily complete,” he added, “You literally see him thinking on paper all the way through to the final drawings necessary to actually build a building.”

The archive also offers insight into aesthetic matters, like the evolution of Johnson’s approach to shaping buildings, said Christy MacLear, who until recently was executive director of the Philip Johnson Glass House. For example, she said, the drawings demonstrated similarities in the massing of several notable but modest buildings on the Glass House property and of the vast Crystal Cathedral that Johnson worked on around the same time.

And there are also working drawings for at least 50 unbuilt projects, including London Bridge City, an office complex on the Thames; four Times Square office towers; and a house for Johnson’s companion, David Whitney. The archive “has a lot of things Johnson thought about but never got off the drawing board,” said Wilbert R. Hasbrouck, who was also consulted on the collection and was an owner of the Prairie Avenue Bookshop in Chicago, which has gone out of business. “This archive is going to open up a whole new field of study about his work, particularly on the unbuilt buildings. It fills out a lot of gaps that we didn’t even know existed.”

Mr. Ahuja, the archive’s owner, was a former design partner of Johnson’s. An Indian-born architect, he joined the firm as a young man in 1971 and ran its Iranian office before becoming a partner with Johnson and John Burgee in 1984. During his tenure Mr. Ahuja developed a strong affinity for Johnson, who left the partnership for a consulting role in 1986 and left the practice entirely five years later.

Mr. Ahuja and Mr. Burgee clashed over Johnson’s level of involvement. “I was more for keeping Johnson in the firm as a consultant and as a designer, and Burgee was more determined to get Philip out,” Mr. Ahuja said in an interview. “I thought, without Philip Johnson, we would not be getting the assignments we were getting. He was the man.” (Speaking by telephone from California, where he has retired, Mr. Burgee said he had not forced Johnson out, adding, “He voluntarily withdrew.”)

Mr. Ahuja, now 69, said he ended up with the archival material in 1995 as part of a Chapter 11 proceeding in which Mr. Burgee sought bankruptcy protection for the firm and for himself. The bankruptcy followed an arbitration between Mr. Ahuja and Mr. Burgee in 1988, when Mr. Ahuja left the firm.

Since then, Mr. Ahuja said, he has kept the archive in a warehouse: “The court awarded me the drawings, which I have safeguarded because they are our legacy.” But having paid for its maintenance for years, he added, “it is time to transfer it to respectful hands, and I have my family’s security to think of as well.”

Mr. Ahuja said that he did not know when or how the rest of the collection would be sold. (It has received two separate appraisals, but lawyers for Mr. Ahuja, James Frankel and Andrew Ross of Arent Fox in Manhattan, declined to disclose the valuations.)

Mr. Burgee played down the importance of the archive. “It’s mostly working drawings and drafting drawings,” he said. “We purposely didn’t keep design sketches because they weren’t good enough. Philip was sensitive that he didn’t want his hand drawings shown anywhere.”

Ms. MacLear said that Johnson was known for weak drawing skills. He had a “high-concept” sketching style, she said.

But Mr. Ahuja said standard office procedure had been to roll and store all drawings, and that there had been no policy of destroying Johnson’s.

So far one significant piece of the collection has been sold, in what Mr. Ahuja’s lawyers described as a kind of market test: a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall presentation drawing of the AT&T skyscraper’s facade at 550 Madison Avenue, which the Victoria and Albert Museum of London acquired at auction for $70,000 in April.

However the rest of the archive is sold, Mr. Ahuja said, he hopes it will be bought en masse by a single institution so that it will be available to scholars and students. The architect Robert A. M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture, said he was sorry that even the single rendering had been sold separately. Although he has not seen the materials, he said, it was clear to him that “the worst thing would be breaking the archive up.”

The Treeless Plain

2010-08-06T08:22:00.004-05:00

One of my drawing professors claimed that he could never teach perspectival drawing techniques to children of the northern Great Plains, stating that because they grew up without any spatial referents, they had no inherent sense of perspective. Tulane University School of Architecture faculty member Milton Scheuermann has developed a concise guide to perspectival drawing, titled "Perspective Drawing: A Practical Approach for Architects." For those who wish to consult his summary of one- and two-point perspective drawing, go to Tulane University's Architecture Research Guide (http://libguides.tulane.edu/architecture) and scroll down the left-hand column to download the pdf files.

The photograph above depicts my great-grandfather's ranch, the Lazy SS, which was located in Triumph Township, Ramsey County, North Dakota, c. 1930s.

Brookings Institute New Orleans Study

2010-08-04T08:38:00.002-05:00

The Brookings Institute has published a new study focused on the recovery of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The New Orleans Index at Five summatively assesses the community's resilience and prosperity over the five-year period since the levee breach disaster. Tulane faculty contributed to the related essay series: Karen DeSalvo (Tulane School of Medicine); Mark Davis (Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law & Policy); and Richard Campanella (Tulane Center for Bioenvironmental Research).

Field Trip: Biloxi, Mississippi

2010-08-02T09:38:00.004-05:00

Tulane School of Architecture faculty member Milton Scheuermann organized a driving tour of Mississippi's Gulf Coast architecture. The tour included a stop at Frank Gehry's Biloxi Ohr-O'Keefe Museum, scheduled to open 8 November 2010. This is the second grand opening scheduled for the museum: the multiple pavilions that comprise the new arts campus were assaulted by Hurricane Katrina fifteen months prior to its initial opening date. As the structures near completion today, visitors may walk along its connective brick pathway and ascend to the "Shoo-Fly" lookout tower perched amidst the branches of ancient live oaks (trussing above).

It should be mentioned that Frank Gehry participated in another Gulf Coast project over twenty-six years ago. Drawings for his Louisiana World Exposition Amphitheater reside in the Southeastern Architectural Archive's 1984 Louisiana World Exposition Collection (Number 86).

Image above: Trussing in "Shoo-Fly" Lookout Tower, Ohr-O'Keefe Museum, Biloxi, Mississippi. Frank Gehry, Architect. As photographed by K. Rylance 31 July 2010.

Architectural Photography

2010-07-28T13:21:00.006-05:00

New Orleans architectural photographer Frank Lotz Miller (1923-1993) maintained a prolific career photographing the city's architecture, food and festivals. Although born in Shreveport, his family moved to the Crescent City when he was a child. By the late 1950s, he was a regular contributor to Architectural Form, Architectural Record and Progressive Architecture, frequently drawing comparisons to modernist architecture photographers Julius Shulman (1910-2009) and Ezra Stoller (1915-2004).

In the mid-1960s, Frank Lotz Miller wrote essays for The Louisiana Architect magazine. He used this forum to articulate the aims and principles of architectural photography, and to establish guidelines for architects hiring photographers:

"To truly appreciate architecture one must experience it first hand; be present in the space it encompasses, walk through and around it. The ideal is not always possible, but the best substitute, and I will be the first to admit its limitations, is photography."

"The photographer should not be asked to work on speculation. This is another reason why whenever possible the architect and the photographer should visit the site together."

To read more, see: "Photography and the Architect." The Louisiana Architect (May 1965): p. 10. Louisiana Research Collection, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

The Southeastern Architectural Archive retains Frank Lotz Miller photographs and negatives for the following architects/firms: James Lamantia, George Saunders, John Lawrence, and Curtis & Davis. To view a selection of digital reproductions, click here.

Image above: Frank Lotz Miller Advertisement. The Louisiana Architect (October 1964): p. 15.

Field Trip: Colorado Springs, Colorado

2010-07-27T10:18:00.005-05:00

The subject of Googie architecture has been addressed on this blog a number of times, and Colorado's state highways feature many well maintained mid-century motels. Along Colorado Avenue between Manitou Springs and Colorado Springs, there is an especially high density of interesting Googie signage.

Image above: Mecca Motel, Colorado Avenue, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Photograph by K. Rylance 24 July 2010.

Urban Environment: Communication Patterns

2010-07-26T16:31:00.004-05:00

The subject of New Orleans as a conference destination has come up in a previous post. The Urban Communication Foundation will award its annual Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Book Award at the 2011 Annual Conference of the National Communication Association. The award recognizes an outstanding book that exhibits excellence in addressing issues of urban communication. It is named in honor of the late social activist and author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961). The book award brings with it a $500 prize.

On 12 March 2010 the Urban Communication Foundation also announced a new prize co-sponsored with the Center for Environmental Design Research. Named after architect Michael Brill, this grant encourages innovative research projects that provide a bridge between the fields of communication and environmental design. The grant supports new research or research in progress. Read more here.

House Eater

2010-07-16T15:53:00.002-05:00

Macfadyena unguis-cati (Cat's Claw Vine) is an invasive woody vine that can rapidly envelop a house. The plant can grow to 120' lengths, with 1/2" diameters. As the plant grows and becomes heavier, it can cause building collapse. There is a native counterpart called Bignonia capreolata (Crossvine), which may be distinguished by its reddish-orange flowers rather than the yellowish flowers of Cat's Claw Vine.

Image above: Unidentifed photographer. Unidentified House, New Orleans, c. 1980. Miscellaneous Photographs Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

The Modern Age: Waiting Room 1954

2010-07-14T12:11:00.005-05:00

The New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, located at 1001 Loyola Avenue, and designed by the collaborative team of Wogan and Bernard, Jules K. de la Vergne, and August Perez & Associates, opened to public acclaim in 1954. Noted Louisiana muralist Conrad Albrizio (1894-1973), who studied fresco techniques in Rome and Fontainebleau, designed the murals to depict the history of Louisiana. Divided into four chronological panels spanning an aggregate of four hundred years, the panels represented four distinctive "ages": that of Exploration, Colonization, Struggle and Modernity. Albrizio, in a self-published pamphlet explaining the murals, defined Louisiana's Modern Age as that which followed the Civil War, when:

"secret groups oppose the dishonest political practices of the Carpetbagger Government, which not only exploited the chaotic conditions caused by the passing of 'plantation days' but also rendered helpless the impoverished landowners. A new State Constitution was adopted in 1879; the Capital is moved to Baton Rouge; the negroes, uncertain of their future, return to the fields. Paul Tulane's gift makes possible the founding of Tulane University. This leads to the center motif of the panel which represents Western Civilization contrasting the past Indian Civilization. Symbolized are three aspects of Man; the Material, the Spiritual and the Creative. The idead of resurrection, basic to the Christian doctrine, is expressed by the center figure soaring upward, transcending the material world. There follows the advancement of education wherein all races have equal opportunities, and New Orleans becomes a medical center. Emphasis is placed upon the development of the sciences: Physics, Medicine, Sociology and Anthropology. Reference is made to the importance of New Orleans as a port through the exchange of goods with other countries. The panel ends with symbols of industry and atomic power with an allusion to the conquest of outer space and the unknown" (1955).

The Southeastern Architectural Archive retains forty cartoon drawings by Conrad Albrizio related to his murals for the Waterman Steamship Company Building located in Mobile, Alabama, as well as Albrizio's small brochure, Mural Paintings in the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal (New Orleans: Conrad Albrizio, 1955). Additionally, the SEAA houses architectural records associated with the New Orleans firm Toledano, Wogan and Bernard.

Image above: Leon Trice, photographer. Waiting Room of the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, 1954. Toledano, Wogan and Bernard Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Venice Sojourn 1927

2010-07-09T12:40:00.007-05:00

In 1927, Shreveport architects Samuel G. Wiener (1896-1977) and William B. Wiener (1907-1981) traveled to Venice, Italy and recorded their journey in photographs and drawings. Guido Pellizarri, then Superintendent of Fine Arts of Venetia, introduced the brothers to buildings throughout the city, many located in what Samuel described as "obscure places." Drawing on the tradition of architectural pattern books, the elder Wiener designed his resultant book's baroque title page (image above) and included his delicate sketches of ornamental ironwork, stone cartouches and balusters. Affirming his modernity, he wrote in the Foreward:

"The illustrations contained in this book give some idea of what may have been the Venetians' attitude toward their building. The value of their architecture to the modern designer is not the offering of a wealth of curiously beautiful details to be copied that they may grace our modern buildings. Venetian architecture can teach us that buildings can be beautiful without being grave, and they can delight us with their delicate charm and flaunting disregard of established principles without becoming trivial."

Samuel Wiener returned to Europe in 1931, focusing his energies in Germany and the Netherlands, and visiting Walter Gropius' Dessau Bauhaus and Erich Mendelsohn's Einstein Tower.¹

Image above: Samuel G. Wiener. Venetian Houses and Details. New York: Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1929. Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

¹ Karen Kingsley. Modernism in Louisiana: A Decade of Progress 1930-1940. New Orleans: Tulane School of Architecture, 1984.

Firon & Oil

2010-06-30T11:49:00.006-05:00

In the late 1950s, the New Orleans-based Industrial Electric, Incorporated was the local dealer of a porcelain enamel product called Firon. Utilizing a base of 16-18 gauge vitreous enameling steel coated with acid-resistant enamel frits and oxides, Firon boasted durability, weather resistance, and easy maintenance. Its popularity was in part due to an increasing demand for color in modern buildings, and it came in a wide array of colors, with varied textures and finishes.

Curtis and Davis utilized stippled cream, blue-gray and blue semi-matte Firon for their Pan-American Motor Hotel (1957), August Perez, Jr. incorporated Blue No. 53 Firon for his Blue Plate Foods Plant (1941), and Katz & Besthoff commissioned a purple color theme for one of its drug store/soda fountains. Firon proved quite popular amongst oil companies; American, Esso, Gulf, Phillips, Shell, Standard and Texaco all used the architectural porcelain.

Images above: Industrial Electric, Inc. Brochures, Box 60, Freret & Wolf Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.