Lost New Orleans

Aerial View of Charity Hospital and Surrounding Neighborhood.  Alex Greenberg, delineator for Weiss, Dreyfous & Seiferth, architects. Copy print of undated presentation drawing. Weiss Dreyfous & Seiferth Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive (SEAA), Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Front Elevation, Isis Theatre, 1513 Dryades Street, New Orleans, LA. 1927. Weiss, Dreyfous & Seiferth, architects. Detail of alterations. Weiss, Dreyfous & Seiferth Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive (SEAA), Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Preliminary Front Elevation, Ritz Theater, Corner LaSalle & Felicity Streets, New Orleans, LA. circa 1938. Weiss, Dreyfous & Seiferth, architects.  Detail of proposed facade.  Weiss, Dreyfous & Seiferth Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive (SEAA), Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

For more information on the SEAA's Weiss, Dreyfous and Seiferth collection, check out the online Finding Aid. Other SEAA Finding Aids may be found at: http://seaa.tulane.edu/findingaids/bycollectionname.

Cities, Airplanes & Civil Defense

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.

Charity Hospital Redux II

George Riehl, Rendering of Weiss Dreyfous Seiferth Design for Charity Hospital, as photographed by F.A. McDaniels of New Orleans, n.d. Weiss, Dreyfous Seiferth Collection (Gift of George Riehl), Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

The Foundation for Historical Louisiana, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the Louisiana Landmarks Society have identified Charity Hospital as an endangered building.

As reported in two August posts, the Foundation for Historical Louisiana as charged by House Concurrent Resolution 89 of the 2006 Legislative Session, commissioned an extensive analysis of the viability of Charity Hospital to provide 21st-century medical care to the region. International architectural firm RMJM Hillier conducted the feasibility study and reported its fervent belief that Weiss Dreyfous and Seiferth's Charity Hospital could be renovated more quickly and more economically than a new LSU/VA Medical campus could be constructed on the Regional Planning Commission (RPC) site.

Where is the RPC site? It is an extensive 71-acre area of Mid-City New Orleans -- bounded by South Claiborne and Rocheblave, and Canal Street and Tulane Avenue -- and includes 250 homes and small businesses. The National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Preservation Resource Center have put together a flickr set of affected properties. To see them, click here. The site includes important modernist buildings SOM's Pan-American Life Insurance (1951) and Charles Colbert's Olivetti Showroom (1966). Where buildings are concerned, people are concerned: The story of the Mid-City homeowners reminds me of the historic Wimawalas reported earlier this year.

The New Orleans Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the New Orleans Committee to Reopen Charity Hospital, Louisiana ACORN, United Teachers of New Orleans, and C/3 Hands Off Iberville are sponsoring A Call to Action on Friday, November 21st at 12:30 pm in front of City Hall, at Perdido Street and Loyola Avenue.

Charity Hospital Redux

RMJM Hillier and their project team gave their assessment of the feasibility of Charity Hospital to provide 21st-century healthcare to the New Orleans metropolitan area. Commissioned by the Foundation for Historical Louisiana (FHL), in response to Louisiana House Concurrent Resolution No. 89 (HCR 89), the Hillier-led design team concluded their study in three months.

Their response to the critical questions: "yes, yes, yes." Click here to read the Preservation Alert and see the movie.

The team's assessment in part relied on archival documentation of the Weiss, Dreyfous, and Seiferth structure, as well as on non-destructive technologies whose prototypes were developed during the Cold War by the U.S. military. Robert Silman, the structural engineer noted for his work on Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, was hired to test the 68-year-old building's integrity. In the process, he examined original drawings provided by the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center (LSUHSC-MNCLO) Facilities Management Department Archives. Historic photographs revealed that the vast majority of the exterior cracks had appeared during the earliest years of the building's life, as the structure settled into New Orleans' notorious "gumbo."¹ Then the settlement leveled off, became asymptotic. Using infrared thermographs to document differential heat (and therefore moisture retention) as well as radar imaging to reveal the disposition of the steel members, Silman was able to unequivocally state his belief that Charity Hospital as built far exceeded standards of its day, and with minor adaptation could meet current code load standards. To download the full report follow the link here.

To read Times-Picayune coverage, click here.

¹ Anecdotal reports indicated that Charity Hospital had settled approximately 18" very early on. The WPA reported in 1937 that in the first ten years of the U.S. Custom House, it had settled 19.33" in some places; when additional stories were added, settlement maximums had increased to some 28". See: Some Data in regard to Foundations in New Orleans and Vicinity Collected and Compiled by the Soil and Foundation Survey as Requested by Louisiana Engineering Society. Board of State Engineers of Louisiana, 1937, vol. I. The Custom House, on Canal between North Peters and Decatur, is one of the South's oldest federal buildings.

[Detail: Unidentified photographer, Charity Hospital's Facilities, c. 1940. Box 27, Weiss, Dreyfous and Seiferth Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries].

Charity Hospital

The Foundation for Historical Louisiana has announced a public presentation of the Existing Conditions and Facilities Assessment of Big Charity Hospital on August 20, 2008 at 2:30pm in the auditorium in the Port of New Orleans Headquarters Building at 1350 Port of N.O. Place. The facility is located on the riverfront at the end of Henderson Street behind the New Orleans Convention Center.

As charged by the Louisiana Legislature, the Foundation retained the services of the architectural firm, RMJM Hillier, to “…assess the condition of the facility and evaluate its potential uses as a location from which medical services may be offered to the population of the Greater New Orleans area…” and to “…examine and evaluate the entire Big Charity structure to determine the advisability of repairing or restructuring the entire facility…” This assessment will be the first post-Katrina report on the structural integrity and potential reuse of the building.

The Foundation for Historical Louisiana asks interested parties to RSVP to the Foundation for Historical Louisiana at 225-387-2464 or fhla@bellsouth.net because seating is limited. The presentation content will also be available on the foundation's website at www.FHL.org beginning August 21st.

When the Public Works Administration (PWA) authorized a grant to assist the state of Louisiana in financing Charity Hospital, the New Orleans firm of Weiss, Dreyfous and Seiferth was selected to design the structure. When completed in 1940, Charity was the second largest hospital in the country, the tallest building in the city. Sculptor Enrique Alvarez designed the ornamental screen above the main entrance lintel. The Southeastern Architectural Archive houses the collection of Weiss, Dreyfous and Seiferth.