Ithiel Town & New Orleans

The Southeastern Architectural Archive retains an important letter written by New York architect-engineer Ithiel Town (1784-1844) regarding his improved Lattice Bridge design of 1835. When the document came on the market, William Cullison III acquired it with support from the Marjorie Peirce and John Geiser, Jr. Fund.

Dated 23 July 1836, it gives illustrated instructions for a proposed bridge spanning 250 feet, with trussing extending 300 feet. Town advises the recipient, Boston carpenter John Livermore, to use either spruce or pine planks configured in a repeating diamond pattern, and sets a “lowest” price of $1/foot for “the whole length of the trusses of the bridge.” 

Town was a prominent New York architect and engineer known for his patented bridge. He promoted the innovation in various classified advertisements, professional publications and correspondence, thus securing its use from New York to Alabama.

New Orleans architects James Dakin, James Gallier, Sr., and Robert Seaton worked for Town before moving South; Minard Lafever also knew him. In January 1835, Town expressed an interest in visiting Louisiana to establish new bridge contracts.(1) 

(1)Ithiel Town (New York). Letter to Seth Shine (Tuscaloosa, Alabama). 17 January 1835. Cited by Jim Wilson, "Letter approving the contract to build a bridge across the river at Wetumpka." As viewed 20 November 2015. URL: http://files.usgwarchives.net/al/elmore/letters/w-bridge.txt

Image above:  Ithiel Town. Lattice Bridge Diagram. Pen and ink on paper. 1836. Marjorie and John Geiser II Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Lexicon: Telluric Upheavals

Tales of Telluric Upheavals, Mississippi River

Report on the Lighthouse at Frank's Island & On the Balize, May 8th, 1819, by B.H.B. Latrobe, Esq.

"Frank's Island contains now (May, 1819) 1 acre 2 Rodd 31 P. or about an acre & a half of solid & elevated land. When the commissioners selected it, it was something larger. But the violent gale of Sept'r 8th, 1819, washed away a considerable part of the island, especially on the southeast side, & something also on the north, & has a perpendicular margin, which gives to the surf a much more powerful effect than formerly; & on this account the encroachment of the water upon the shore has been considerable since the gale of September last, without any storm having occurred.

"Very effectual means were therefore immediately necessary to secure the shores from farther waste: nor can there be in my opinion the smallest doubt but that the whole island would be gradually lost unless the measures had been taken, which I have sometime ago the honor to recommend, & that the U. States Government will sanction them, altho' there has not been time to await their decision. In the drawing annexed to the report I have laid down the Island, as it exists together with the line of wharfing which is now in progress. Both with a view to lessen the extent & expense of this work & in order to obtain earth to fill in behind the wharf, I have recommended that the north end of the island be cut off. It is at present the brick yard, but it is daily wasting. A part of the shore fell in while I stood below upon its margin. The southwest end of the island is perfectly secure, being protected by an extensive marsh, across a bayou of no great breadth or depth of water.

"Around the island is a mud shoal, which daily grows shallower."(1)




"The Sinking of the Louisiana Coast." The Daily Picayune 18 April 1894.

"A few days ago the Picayune printed some remarks of Mr. E.L. Corthell, the Civil Engineer, who was associated with Captain Eads in the building of the jetties in South Pass of the Mississippi River, on the sinking of the coast near the mouth of the river.

"Mr. Corthell did no promise to give expression to any opinions as to a general subsidence of the low country of Louisiana, but only of that part to which his attention had been strictly confined. He states that when he was engaged in building the jetties, in the period from 1875 to 1879, an object of great interest was the old Spanish fort, built of brick, on the east side of Garden Island Bay and near the formerly used Southeast Pass, a mouth of Pass-a-Loutre. There seemed to have been a uniform subsidence of this fort, not from settling into the ground -- for there were no indications by cracks or leaning to show that this was the case -- but by evidently going down steadily with the ground on which it rested and which was, no doubt, sinking steadily. The mean level of the Gulf was up near the top of the door, which fact is pretty good evidence that general subsidence caused it.

"As to bench marks at the mouth of the river, there are several there, and also, no doubt, sea-level marks on old trees or buildings; but, until recently, no precise levels were over run from solid ground. The Mississippi River Commission has recently extended its levels to Port Eads and checked on the benches and on the Gulf level there. The results of those levels are of interest and no doubt they will be available in due time.

"Ten or twenty years from now, should these levels be run from the high country again to Port Eads, the progressive subsidence of the delta will be ascertained with some degree of accuracy.

"The fact of this subsidence of the coast is very interesting, and it is entirely possible that it is not confined to the region immediately near the mouths of the Mississippi River. It may cover an area much more extensive, and, if so, it will be of much scientific importance to determine its rate and range. The forces that work great telluric changes commonly operate with extreme slowness; but there have been within the historic period movements of upheaval and of subsidence of the earth's surface that were not only of great violence, but also of great extent.  The entire subject is one of much interest to a large body of people."


(1)As reproduced in Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe. Impressions Respecting New Orleans: Diary and Sketches, 1818-1820.  Edited and with an introduction by Samuel Wilson, Jr. New York: Columbia University Press, 1951.

26.2.1 General records. Correspondence of the Secretary of the Treasury, Commissioner of Revenue, and Fifth Auditor of the Treasury, relating to lighthouses, 1785-1852. Records of the United States Coast Guard. National Archives, Washington, D.C.

New Orleans=Number One

Last  year we posted information about New Orleans architect Thomas Sully's suggestion for filling Lake Pontchartrain.

We recently came across a 1966 proposal for reducing the Mississippi River from the Garden District to the Industrial Canal. Engineer Simeon O. Coxe, Jr. of B.M. Dornblatt & Associates developed the ambitious plan as a means of "eliminating all the physical barriers preventing the progress of New Orleans towards the goal of becoming NEW ORLEANS = NUMBER ONE."

Coxe's land reclamation bid centered on the Mississippi River rather than Lake Pontchartrain, in the interest of creating 2,000 acres of real estate development sites. He felt that dredging a new Mississippi River channel from the River Bend towards the Gulf of Mexico would obviate the need for levees, railroads and warehouse buildings from Napoleon Avenue to the Ninth Ward. The area could then be utilized for modern hotels, apartment buildings, office buildings and parkways.

Coxe supported the restoration of the New Orleans riverfront circa 1790.  By blocking much of the Mississippi, he felt that the river could be brought to sea level along Jackson Square, and that a proposed Riverfront Expressway could be built along the Algiers side.

To read more, see:  "Directions." Vieux Carre Courier 3:26 (11 November 1966), pp. 4-5. Louisiana Research Collection, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

The Raymond Arch

In 1941, New Orleans civil engineer Harold E. Raymond patented an efficient means of constructing a steel-framed arch that had been adopted by architects Diboll-Boettner & Kessels (DBK) on their 1520 Canal Street bus terminal (1936-37).(1)  Raymond claimed that his parabolic arch minimized stress and increased wind resistance. Louisiana and Mississippi builders were attracted to its use for gymnasiums, auditoriums, garages and livestock pens.

Raymond published his arch and its uses in a trade brochure.  DBK's Teche-Greyhound Bus Terminal -- adjoining the Jung Hotel -- featured prominently as one of hundreds of buildings that had employed the method.  Built for $250,000, the depot opened in January 1937. Teche-Greyhound utilized the structure as a regional hub that served municipalities to the East, North and West. The company estimated that some 1,500 people entered the city via the bus line daily, with an annual $1 million impact on the city. As the 1950s waned, Greyhound planned a grander terminal that rendered the Canal Street location obsolete. It ceased operations in 1961 and the Jung Hotel demolished it the following year as part of its own modernization.

Read more about the building's features and dedication in The Times-Picayune, Thursday, 28 January 1937.

The Southeastern Architectural Archive retains original drawings, as well as Harold Raymond's promotional work, Raymond Arch Construction.  The latter was recently digitized by the Association for Preservation Technology International as part of a summer digitization project.  Read it and other New Orleans building trade catalogs via the Internet Archive's Building Technology Heritage Library.

(1)In April 1938, Pencil Points claimed that DBK designed the structure in association with New York industrial designer Raymond Loewy.

Images above:

Top:  Teche-Greyhound Bus Terminal.  Harold Raymond. Raymond Arch Construction. New Orleans, c. 1937. Architectural Trade Catalogs, Southeastern Architectural Archive.

Second and Third:  Diboll-Boettner & Kessels, architects. Bus Terminal for Greyhound Lines. July 1936. Pencil on tracing paper.  Details.  Southeastern Architectural Archive.

Bottom:  Greyhound Lines. "Presenting the Finest Bus Terminal in America." The Times-Picayune, Thursday, 28 January 1937.   Advertising image.

Impassable Cypress Swamps

As so many tilling and paving projects are currently underway in New Orleans, we thought it timely to quote from city paving engineer Bryson Vallas' 1926  lecture to the Realtor Salesmen's Division on "Paving and Allied Projects."

"Expansion for most cities, has meant merely the cleaning away of the forrest that surrounded it, and finding that Nature had already provided the land on which to locate the farm, the home or the factory. When our ancestors left the confines of the little settlement nestled behind the two foot levee in the bend of the Mississippi River they found their task of expansion a bit more difficult, especially when this expansion was lakeward, for not only was the cypress and the gum forrest to be cleared away but the land upon which this future expansion must grow, had to be made.

"Old maps of New Orleans made in 1798 show the Old City, or the Cieux [sic] Carre, as we pridefully term it, surrounded by impossable [sic] cypress swamps and by laying out on these old maps such thoroughfares as Canal, Claiborne, Broad and Carrollton, as we know and use them today, we find these these cross through the very heart of this swamp of 128 years ago.

++++

"The unimproved streets of New Orleans consist usually of a fairly hard top crust about one foot thick under which is found a very saturated plastic clay soil. In paving, this top crust is removed and after installing sub-surface drainage the tendency of the sub-soil is to dry out. There is therefore the problem of placing a pavement on a none too stable sub-grade which in later years and after completion of the pavement, will dry out and subside.

"We therefore see in all parts of the City pavement curbs sunken almost out of sight, manholes protruding above the pavement surface and catch basins that were once at the lowest point of the street now occupying a place at the highest point. Treatment of the sub-grade would no doubt result in correction of the unstable sub-grade at the time of paving but only as the soil is drained years in advance will any near correction of the subsequent sub-grade settlement be accomplished."

Bryson Vallas. "Paving and Allied Projects." Realtor Salesmen's Division Lecture. Typescript. 1926. Martin Shepard Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

NOLA Canals 1903

In 1903, engineeres Coleman, Malochee and Villere surveyed landholdings of the New Orleans Land Company between City Park Avenue and Lake Pontchartrain. They recorded the canals that punctuated the subdivision, as well as the historic tracts that formed the basis of the company's possessions. Much of this area had been utilized by charitable groups, including the Firemen's Charitable Association and the Milne Asylums. Spanish Fort is discernible in the upper right-hand corner of the map.

Image above: Coleman, Malochee and Villere. Map showing some lands belonging to the New-Orleans Land Co. situated in New-Orleans. April 1903. Martin Shepard Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Graveley's Arch

In 1930, a Tulane University civil engineering graduate named Eugene Cenas Graveley († Costa Rica 1943) patented a welded steel roof construction method. He founded a company based on the technique and established offices in New Orleans (2126 Poland Street),  Houston and Orlando.

He stressed that his arch construction method was particularly well suited to the tropics:

"This is the only type of Construction which has withstood the TROPICAL HURRICANES 100% unhurt despite the centers of two in one month (including the most destructive one on record) passing through a nest of our Buildings."(1)

He recommended its use for auditoriums, gymnasiums, churches, dance pavilions, theaters, movie houses, railroad stations, hangars, automobile garages, dock sheds, cotton and sugar houses, machine shops, and warehouses.

His earliest buildings were automotive garages in Louisiana, with the first -- a S. Rampart Street structure designed by New Orleans architect Martin Shepard for the Rhodes Undertaking Company -- requiring a tie rod. After stress tests conducted on his building sites and at Princeton University boosted Graveley's confidence, his designs abandoned tie rods altogether.

If  you want to see a Gravely Arch in New Orleans, visit United Machinery at 2530 Canal Street. The extant structure is what remains of the engineer's Felix Garage, shown above.

(1)The Arch Construction Co., Inc. The Resurrection of the Oldest Type of Building Construction: The Arch. New Orleans: Eugene Graveley, 1929. Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries. NEW! View full document via the Internet Archive's Building Technology Heritage Library here.

Images from publication cited above.

New Orleans Business Archive: Ole K. Olsen

Ole K. Olsen Advertisement, as published in Building Review of the South Sept. 1919.
Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division,
Tulane University Libraries

In 1919, Ole K. Olsen had his business at 823 Perdido Street, and was a contractor and a distributor of various building products, including those of Detroit, Michigan's Trus-Con Laboratories. "Trus-Con" was noted for its damp-proof coatings for exposed and underground masonry, as well as its "Asepticote," a hygienic decorative finish for interior walls.

By 1928, Olsen had expanded his operations considerably, with a large office and warehouse located at 325 North Cortez Street.

Ole K. Olsen Office and Warehouse, as published in Ole K. Olsen/New Orleans, LA.  

Associated Equipment Distributors, 1928.
Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division,
Tulane University Libraries

Although he focused on contracting/building equipment sales, Olsen was first registered to practice architecture in Louisiana in 1911 and continued his registration until the 1950s. He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in January 1877 and graduated from the city's Polytechnical Academy in 1900. He was a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Louisiana Engineering Society and the Louisiana Architects Association.