Spooky NOLA

We hear a lot of ghost stories in the Southeastern Architectural Archive -- from building managers, homeowners, genealogists, electricians, facilities staff, general contractors and shorers. In past years, I presented a Halloween lecture to former Tulane University faculty member Milton Scheuermann, Jr.'s "Architecture and Mysticism" class. Since he retired in June, I decided to post the presentation online.

View the images here.



& if you want to know my favorite SEAA Ghost Story:

Two electricians came into the archive one day to suss out some issues pertaining to a building they were hired to rewire. They needed to examine the SEAA's blueprints.

As they were consulting the drawings, they conveyed that about twenty-five years ago they were working on a CBD skyscraper building (they didn't want to say which one) because the manager was reporting frequent electrical problems.

They ultimately examined a ceiling crawl space.  As they shimmied across the floor, they started to discover artifacts. A shoe.... another shoe.... some pants.... a hat ... the BONES.

Startled, they backed out immediately and called authorities.  They said they never heard a convincing outcome.

The only report that they could find in the local paper described two workmen coming across horse bones in a building.

One electrician remarked, "Horses don't wear pants!"

2517-2519 Columbus Street

In 1938, New Orleans architects Andry & Feitel developed plans for a two-story frame structure for Reverend Alphonse Janssens for the St. Rose of Lima parish. Paul Andry (1868-1946) had already designed a new church (1914) and brick school (1925) for the parish before receiving this commission.

The two-story weatherboard building was intended to function as a school annex, accommodating restrooms, additional classrooms, an auditorium and a cafeteria. Reverend Janssens contributed personal funds towards the building, as he had with earlier parish building projects.(1)

The Southeastern Architectural Archive retains plans for all three St. Rose of Lima structures, as well as block plans for the properties the parish acquired. The Louisiana Research Collection has additional holdings relevant to the church that have been described in the department blog.

(1)Roger Baudier, Sr. Centennial/St. Rose of Lima Parish/New Orleans, LA. New Orleans: 1957, p. 56. Louisiana Research Collection, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Images above: Andry & Feitel, architects. Raised Frame Parochial School Building for St. Rose de Lima Parish. [2517-2519 Columbus Street] 30 June 1938; Revised 7 July 1938. Andry & Feitel Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

NOLA Cultural Center 1963

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.

Exhibit Highlights Historic New Orleans Neighborhood

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.

New Orleans Architect William Surgi

William Surgi, architect. 918 N. Tonti Street. From Souvenir Sketchbook of the Fifth Ward, 1910.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Surgi family was associated with the New Orleans building trade. Eugene Surgi was an active architect from c. 1860 to c. 1906. He formed a partnership with Edmund Topp, practicing as Surgi and Topp, from 1892-1894. George Surgi advertised his private practice in New Orleans city directories in 1887, 1890, 1892-1893. William Surgi was featured in the Souvenir Sketch Book of the Fifth Ward 1910:

"William Surgi, the prominent architect and builder, has been a resident of the Second District all his life. During the five years that he has been established he has designed and erected many of the handsomest as well as substantial commercial structures in the Fifth Ward. In connection with his business he has a well-equipped factory for the turning out of doors, frames, windows and other building material. Mr. Surgi is a large property holder--he makes a specialty of the erection of modern, up-to-date homes, which are sold on the easy payment plan." (1)

Surgi designed, built, and operated his practice out of the shotgun double illustrated above. By 1914, this structure located at 918 N. Tonti was seized and sold at a sheriff's auction on 2 January. (2)

(1) Souvenir Sketch Book of the Fifth Ward (New Orleans: The Southern Manufacturer, 1910). Louisiana Research Collection, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

(2) "By the Civil Sheriff" The Daily Picayune (19 December 1913): p. 10.

The House That Jack Built: North Prieur Street

Left: North Prieur Street House before Renovation; Right: During
[02.2008-08.2008 by K. Rylance]

This is the Seventh Ward house that Jack built that once was a Greek Revival three-bay three-room-deep galleried house that was elevated to provide for a garage that was sheathed in siding to become a rental property that grew to fill the lot that became a six-plex that flooded during Katrina that was gutted after Katrina that is being renovated today.

It was built in the late nineteenth century on lands referred to as the Morand Concession, named after the French settler Charles Antoine de Morand, who was a surveyor's assistant to both Adrien de Pauger and LeBlond de la Tour. He established a brickyard on Bayou Road on behalf of the Company of the Indies, and after its financial demise in 1731, he purchased the property and moved his family from Chartres Street to a plantation near the yard and clay pits. After his death in 1756, the property passed hands many times until it was developed by investor Louis Bringier in the 1860s.

The Seventh Ward is especially known for its craftsmanship. The Slidell construction crew working on the site today expressed they had never seen anything built like this. . . with all the framing joints hand-cut, flexible, and strong. They said they could kick out the siding, but that the frame could withstand an earthquake, move with it and remain structurally sound. They conveyed that the only right angles were the ones they put there.

In 2002, the New Orleans Museum of Art published its catalog Raised to the Trade: Creole Building Arts of New Orleans, in conjunction with its similarly-themed exhibition. Many of the craftsmen featured in both exhibit and publication were natives of the Seventh Ward, where knowledge of carpentry, lathe-work and plastering passed from generation to generation. Structures were raised in a communal spirit, as carpenter Sal Doucette expressed for the project's oral history:

"My mother and daddy, my grandfather, Peter Mercadel, everyone practically, was raised in the Seventh Ward. . . through my father and grandfather and my uncles. Everybody in the family was a carpenter. . When I was eight years old, my grandfather, every weekend used to have about thirty carpenters parked out in front of the door. During those days you could have your house built within maybe three weekends just for gumbo and beer! The wife would cook the gumbo and her husband would have the beer on the job site and you had your house built for practically nothing. . . The majority of the Seventh Ward was built in that manner." (p.140)

Want to read more?

New Orleans Museum of Art. Raised to the Trade: Creole Building Arts of New Orleans (New Orleans, LA, 2002).

Toledano, Roulhac and Mary Louise Christovich. New Orleans Architecture, Vol. VI, Faubourg Tremé and the Bayou Road (Gretna: Pelican Publishing, 1980).