Lost Milwaukee

The previous post mentioned Richard Koch's collection of glass plate negatives, and the Southeastern Architectural Archive's current efforts to digitize them. Many of the plates document the 1915 hurricane and its effects on Orleans Parish. Some images record Mardi Gras festivities, masks and costumes in Storyville and other neighborhoods (circa 1902-1906). One photograph is a bird's eye view of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (circa 1905, shown above).

We gleaned the identification from the enormous advertising signage on the building in the lower left corner.  It reads:  "Jacobi & Richter Foreign Produce and Fancy Groceries." The business enterprise specialized in imported meats and cheeses, and was located at 510 and 512 Market Street, near the city's Cathedral Square. The Milwaukee Public Library has digitized a more recent image of the store here (circa 1920s).

Image above:  Unidentified photographer. Bird's Eye View of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Circa 1905. Richard Koch Papers and Photographs, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

NEW! Koch & Wilson Finding Aid

The Southeastern Architectural Archive (SEAA) recently finalized the processing of the Koch and Wilson Office Records. The expansive collection consists of architectural records and correspondence files associated with the partnership of Richard Koch and Samuel Wilson, Jr., as well as the earlier partnership of Charles R. Armstrong and Richard Koch. Also included are independent projects undertaken by Richard Koch and Samuel Wilson, Jr., as well as copies of architectural drawings by other architects whose buildings Koch and Wilson altered.

The Koch and Wilson practice became one of the most significant preservation firms of the twentieth century, undertaking the restoration of the French Market, the Pitot House, the Pontalba Apartments, Gallier House and the Ursuline Convent. Additionally, the architects produced a significant number of contemporary residences informed by French, British and American architectural traditions. Although primarily associated with Louisiana and Mississippi preservation, the firm’s output extended across the southeastern United States and was not exclusively devoted to historic renovations and adaptations. Koch and Wilson completed drawings for projects in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas; and the partners developed modernist designs, such as those for Metairie cemetery’s gates and fountain (1961-63). Their partnership continued until Koch’s death in 1971; since then, the firm has continued to operate under the name “Koch and Wilson, Architects.”

During the early 1970s, Samuel Wilson, Jr. prepared a series of National Register of Historic Places nomination forms for the U.S. General Services Administration. His research files included photographs, sketches and narratives associated with the histories of various Alabama and Mississippi federal buildings, including the James Knox Taylor (1857-1929) Selma Post Office (1908-09, shown above).  These documents are included in the Koch and Wilson Office Records.

Read more about the firm and see an inventory of its projects here.

Image above: Koch and Wilson, Architects. Selma, Alabama Federal Building and Court House; Old Post Office Building. Photograph by Samuel Wilson, Jr.  1974. Koch and Wilson Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

NEW! Richard Koch Finding Aid

The Southeastern Architectural Archive recently finalized the processing of the Richard Koch Papers and Photographs. The collection consists of photographs, negatives, papers and architectural drawings associated with the personal life and preservation work of New Orleans architect Richard Koch (1889-1971). Papers date from the 1920s-1950s and relate to Koch’s support of various preservation advocacy organizations, including the Vieux Carré Association, the Vieux Carré Commission, the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the American Institute of Architects’ Historic Preservation Committee. A majority relate to Koch’s historical reports concerning municipal squares comprising the Vieux Carré. Although the majority of correspondence relate to historic preservation efforts, some letters are personal in nature, and Koch communicated with a wide array of artists, property owners and architects, as well as with extended family in Argentina and Germany. Smaller-scaled sketches representing architectural details are included among Koch’s papers.

Image above: Richard Koch, photographer. Chartres Street [619 Congress Street]. Contact prints mounted to index cards. Richard Koch Papers and Photographs, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Unbuilding: Rubble

In her first visit to New Orleans in 1974, Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for the New York Times Ada Louise Huxtable described a "demolition derby" underway in the Central Business District (CBD):

"Rows of Greek Revival commercial buildings, of the kind New York ruthlessly demolished in lower Manhattan in the 1960's still stand, often enhanced by the iron filigree galleries added from the 1850s on. But many are gone and more are being knocked down almost daily, as are the later Italianate, Renaissance and cast-iron structures nearby, that make up the 19th century commercial city."¹

At the time Huxtable was writing, the French Quarter had been spared an earlier threat, in large part due to the creation of the Vieux Carré Commission. The 1930's New Orleans of architect- photographer Richard Koch had witnessed a tendency towards what Los Angeles Times writer Christopher Reynolds has called erase-atecture. Koch recorded some of these demolitions while conducting work for the Louisiana Historic American Buildings (HABS) program. The photograph reproduced here depicts an unidentified man at the site of the just-razed Office of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company (former Old Morgan Building aka William Brand House), 331 Magazine Street. Over the course of its lifespan, the building originated as a private residence, was redeveloped to serve the purposes of banking, and finally housed a succession of two railroad companies before it was demolished in the autumn of 1938. The Works Progress Administration reported on September 14: "The Old Morgan Building, Magazine & Natchez Alley has been torn down to its foundations. Negro laborers are now scraping and stacking the bricks. . . [which] are a bright vermillion, and because of their being covered with cement have retained a brilliant hue."²

Jeff Byles' Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition (New York: Harmony Books, 2005). [TSA Library TH 447.B95 2005] is a cultural history of rubble-making. Describing demolition as a particularly American approach to urban renewal, Byles nonetheless presents European programs such as Baron Haussmann's percée/arterization of Paris alongside the razing of New York's Penn Station and the clearing of vast tracts of housing in Detroit and Los Angeles. This is a very generalized book, and those who seek an in-depth analysis of "Demolition for Progress" will find it lacking. For those interested in the current demolition of housing projects in New Orleans, Byles' chapter 7 discussion of the Captain W.O. Pruitt Homes and the L. Igoe Apartments in St. Louis will be provocative.



Demolition-as-Spectacle: More than 4,000 pounds of dynamite and 21 miles of detonating cord were used to raze Seattle's Kingdome in March, 2000. [gwrash youtube video].

¹"Outside Eyes Turn to CBD Demolition," The New Orleans States-Item 23 April 1974 (Lifestyle Section B) page 1.Box 4, Tulane School of Architecture Records Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

²Report dated 14 September 1938, Louisiana Works Progress Administration Collection, The State Library of Louisiana.

[Photographs above: Alfred Eisenstaedt, Architecture Critic Ada Louise Huxtable, LIFE 1974 (available via http://images.google.com/hosted/life and Richard Koch, 331 Magazine Street, autumn 1938. Richard Koch Drawings and Photographs Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries].

Richard Koch (1889-1971)

Richard Koch was a New Orleans-born Tulane University football letterman and architecture graduate (class of 1910). After continuing his studies in Paris and serving apprenticeships in New York and Boston, Koch returned to his birthplace. Appointed in 1933 as District Officer for the Works Progress Administration's Louisiana Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Koch toured the state documenting its architecture in photographs, measured drawings and written reports. The fruits of his labor may be viewed in the Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs Division; his photographs and negatives in the Southeastern Architectural Archive. His personal papers reside in the Historic New Orleans Collection.

The SEAA's Richard Koch Collection consists of over 5,000 individual photographic works, covering much of the Mississippi River delta, including sites in rural Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as the city of New Orleans. The vast majority of the photographs date from the 1930s, although Koch continued his photographic work into the mid-1960s.

The photograph shown here was taken in June 1936 of a woman leaning on a cast-iron railing at 1441 Magazine Street. Cast-iron architectural ornament proliferated in late 19th-century New Orleans, and could/can be found on tombs, fences, cornices, verandas, columns, lintels, and railings such as this. Typically, the New Orleans cast iron work was painted to simulate the appearance of bronze or in a bright greenish hue. The rose trellis pattern was a popular one in the city.

Want to read more?

Ann Masson and Lydia Schmalz's Cast Iron and the Crescent City (1995) in the Special Collections Division's Louisiana Collection.

John G. Waite, "The Maintenance and Repair of Architectural Cast Iron." National Park Service Preservation Brief 27 (October 1991). Click here.

[Photograph: Richard Koch, 1441 Magazine Street, June 1936. Richard Koch Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries].