Stones of New Orleans

We recently came across the New Orleans Geological Society's 1982 "Building Stones of New Orleans," a section of its publication, A Tour Guide to the Building Stones of New Orleans, available through the AAPG Datapages/Archives.

"Building Stones" includes listings of important New Orleans structures along with an identification of the relevant veneering stones that were selected by the architects.

For example, Thomas Sully's New Orleans National Bank (201 Camp Street, 1884-88), shown above and referred to in the publication as the Calhoun and Barnes Building, utilized Lake Superior Brownstone. Commonly referred to today as Jacobsville Sandstone, it was primarily quarried in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Ontario and was popular in the years after Chicago's Great Fire due to its perceived fire resistance. After the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, it declined in popularity as architects increasingly sought lighter-colored sheathing stones.

Many of the structures listed in "Building Stones" have been altered since 1982, a number have been razed and one is currently being demolished. The Woolworth Building, 1041 Canal Street, features Canadian black granite on its ground floor facade. Designed by Roessle & Olschner in 1939 for F.W. Woolworth Company of New York, the structure was altered after the Second World War by Jones and Roessle (1948) and then renovated by J. Buchanan Blitch & Associates (1969). The upper portion of the building facade was demolished in October 2014.

Images above:  A.J. MacDonald, photographer. Thomas Sully, architect. New Orleans National Bank, 201 Camp Street. Undated.

J.W. Taylor, photographer. Thomas Sully, architect. New Orleans National Bank, 201 Camp Street. Undated.  Both Thomas Sully Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

NEW! Digital Collection

The Southeastern Architectural Archive (SEAA) and the Tulane Digital Library (TUDL) recently completed an exciting digitization project.

The new digital collection consists of architectural drawings made by various nineteenth-century New Orleans architects.

"The Architect's Eye" incorporates highlights from the Southeastern Architectural Archive, the largest repository of architectural records in the southern United States. Selected drawings illustrate nineteenth-century architecture as practiced by the Crescent City's leading designers, many of whom were educated in Europe. Building types include residences, commercial and institutional buildings. Selected drawings hint at the ways in which architectural drafting techniques separated the specialist from the layman. In an era of increasing professionalization, one's ability to render the third dimension on a two-dimensional surface elevated the socioeconomic level of one's clientele and the scale of one's commissioned projects. The collection represents some of the most accomplished architectural designs produced in nineteenth-century New Orleans.

To browse the collection......

http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/collection/id/125

Image above: James Gallier, Sr. architect. Mechanics' Institute.  Canal Street Elevation. Tchoupitoulas and Canal Street.  Circa 1850-51.  Sylvester Labrot Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

NEW! Thomas Sully Finding Aid

The Southeastern Architectural Archive recently finalized the processing of the Thomas Sully Office Records. The collection consists of architectural drawings, specifications and photographs associated with the career of Thomas Sully, a Mississippi-born architect (1855-1939) who is credited with designing New Orleans' first skyscraper, the Hennen (AKA Maritime) building.

Thomas Sully was born in Mississippi City, Mississippi, the great nephew and  namesake of the English-born artist renowned for his American portraits and history paintings. The younger Thomas Sully obtained his early education at Dr. Sander’s School in New Orleans, followed by architectural apprenticeships with Larmour & Wheelock (Austin, Texas) and then J. Morgan Slade & Henry Rutgers Marshall (New York City).

Read more about the architect in the online finding aid here.

If you are unfamiliar with the Southeastern Architectural Archive's holdings, consult its list of "Finding Aids by Collection Name."

Image above: Thomas Sully, architect. The Medical Building, 124-126 [formery 17-19] Baronne Street. As it appears in New Orleans Through a Camera, Louisiana Research Collection, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Polder Pontchartrain

In 1925, retired architect Thomas Sully (1855-1939) proposed an engineering project for Louisiana . . . creating a giant polder out of Lake Pontchartrain. He envisioned  that home builders could utilize the newly formed land and that there would no longer be a need to construct a bridge linking New Orleans to the North Shore. Sully conveyed:

'Lake Pontchartrain is a shallow lake, the average depth being about fourteen feet and the greatest depth sixteen feet. A mile from shore you would construct the levee in water from six to twelve feet deep. Just what it would cost I will let the engineers and contractors, who are familiar with such work, figure it out.

As to the value of the land after the completion, it should pay for the construction. Permission would have to be given by the United States, the state of Louisiana, and the city or a corporation could do the work. The land should be worth on an average $500 per acre, and as there is [sic] about 227,500 acres, it would mean $113,750,000.'

An avid sportsman, Sully spent considerable time on Lake Pontchartrain, the Tchefuncta River and the Gulf of Mexico.

Image/quoted matter from: "Here is Proposed Lake Levee." The Times-Picayune (8 January 1925): p. 6.

Sully's Penthouse Office

New Orleans architect Thomas Sully (1885-1939) designed his own offices on the eleventh floor of the Hennen Building located at 201-203 Carondelet/800-814 Common Street. A previous post included photographs of the building exterior and his office interior. His suite included a drafting room, individual offices, a vault, blueprinting operations and access to the roof garden. The drafting & blueprinting room skylights provided natural illumination. Two stairways accommodated access to an attic; one of them provided access to a tenth-story bath house and barbershop.

Between 1896 & 1898 Sully, Burton & Stone Company expanded the Hennen Building's top floor to create additional office spaces. The roof garden was lost in the process.

In 1921, Emile Weil altered the Henenn for the Canal-Commercial Trust & Savings Bank by adding two additional bays on the upriver Carondelet Street side and extending the eleventh story. He significantly transformed the lower portion of the street facade by removing the original  fenestration and surface ornamentation.

The Hennen Building -- now called the Maritime -- has been on the National Register since 1986.

Image above:  Thomas Sully & Company, architect. Eleventh Floor alterations, The Hennen Building. Undated. Sam Stone Jr. Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Emile Weil's Cadillac

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.

Lost New Orleans Tiffany Windows

This spring, there are twenty authentic Tiffany windows on Tulane University's campus.  Normally, there are thirteen such windows, but the Woldenberg Art Center's In Company with Angels: Seven Rediscovered Tiffany Windows  introduces seven apocalyptic angels to the mix.  

There used to be three more publicly viewable Tiffanys in New Orleans, but they disappeared in the 1950s.  The windows are well documented and historic photographs have survived of the seasonal subjects:  Spring, Summer and Winter.   They were part of the building program for the Thomas Sully-designed Richard Milliken Memorial Hospital for Children, the gift of Mrs. D.A. Milliken in memory of her husband, who died in 1896 of injuries sustained after being hit by a St. Charles Avenue streetcar.  

When the structure was dedicated 4 May 1899 with Louisiana' governor Foster and New Orleans mayor Flower presiding, a Daily Picayune reporter was present to record the event.  The following day, the paper published a lengthy summary of the dedication ceremony, including this description of the Tiffanys:

"In the rear of the rotunda are the handsome windows erected by Mrs. Milliken.  William Morris' idea of the window through which might at all times be seen the several seasons is realized as the Winter, Spring and Summer, in those to the memory of Richard Allen Milliken and his daughter, Fanny Allen Milliken.  Through the central window appears a Spring landscape, green leaves and flowers and blue distance. On the one side is Summer, gay with lotos [sic] blossoms and tropical foliage, while on the other Winter shows snow-covered hills, bare branches and evergreen pines. . . The gradation of color that runs through the three windows, from the rose-pink of the large, open lotos [sic] flowers, to the cold white and gray of the wintery landscape, is very delicately managed, and in the latter window there is a suggestion of the return of the flush of summer, which aids effectively in carrying out the ideas.  The work does the greatest credit to the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company, of New York, by whom it was designed and executed. The third window will serve in time to commemorate the donor, Mrs. D.A. Milliken."

The windows disappeared in June 1952, when the Richard Milliken Memorial Hospital was razed.  The Daily Picayune article gives their dimensions as 4' x 10' each.

Historic issues of The Daily Picayune (1861-1899) are available through the subscription database Nineteenth-Century U.S. Newspapers.  The Southeastern Architectural Archive retains plans of the Milliken Memorial Hospital for Children in its Thomas Sully Office Records Collection.  Historic photographs of the hospital may be found at Tulane's Rudolph Matas Library in downtown New Orleans.  Charles L. Franck photographs of the structure's demolition may be found in the Historic New Orleans Collection and online via the LOUISiana Digital Library.

Birds of a Feather: Architects Row

New Orleans architect Thomas Sully (1855-1939) designed the Hennen Building located at 203-11 Carondelet/800 Common Street in 1893. The eleven-story structure is frequently cited as the Crescent City's earliest skyscraper. Sully had his offices on the top floor, in Number 1103. Other architects whose offices were located in the building included the Williams Brothers, Burton & Fraenkel, Emile Frederic, F.P. Graveley & Co., Edwin Oliver, and Robert Soule. Sully also designed the building across the street at 200-204 Carondelet; the Liverpool, London and Globe Insurance Company Building; which housed the offices of James Dinwiddie and Charles Charlton. During the mid-twentieth century, local architects flocked to Canal Street; Curtis & Davis, August Perez, and Sol Rosenthal all having offices along the mercantile artery.

Images above from the Thomas Sully Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries. Upper left: Thomas Sully, Hennen Building (800 Common Street), undated photograph. Upper right: Thomas Sully's Office, 1103 Hennen Building (800 Common Street), circa 1896.