1948 Cornice Collapse

On April 28, 1948 at 12:20 a.m., a series of old brick and concrete cornices attached to shops located at 526-28-30-32 Royal Street collapsed due to heavy traffic vibrations. The cornices were approximately three feet high, one foot deep, and extended some 60 feet from side to side. When they crumbled, they destroyed the iron balconies and some of the plate glass windows below them. Vieux Carre Commission architect-inspector, Walter Cook Keenan, appeared on the scene to take photographs and spoke to Times-Picayune reporters:

'The mortar used in constructing the buildings was of very poor quality and some of the buildings 200 years old have mortar in them which has never dried. You can pick it out with a lead pencil.'(1)

Eye witnesses reported a noise that sounded like an "explosion" prior to the collapse. No injuries were reported.

This week 808-810  Royal Street experienced a more catastrophic collapse and is currently being demolished (above).

(1)"Collapse of Cornices Laid to Vibration, Houses' Age." The Times-Picayune 29 April 1948.

Images above:  Walter Cook Keenan, photographer. 524-530 Royal Street.  30 April 1948.  Walter Cook Keenan New Orleans Architecture Photographs, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries; K. Rylance, photographer. 808-810 Royal Street. 26 October 2014.

French Quarter Fisheyes

In April 1973, New Orleans photographer Frank Lotz Miller took these fisheye lens images for architects Curtis & Davis. Both structures are 1960's era French Quarter motor hotel complexes designed by Curtis & Davis in collaboration with preservation architects Richard Koch and Samuel Wilson, Jr. The first to be completed was the Royal Orleans (top image), which opened in 1960. The second was the Royal Sonesta, which opened nine years later (bottom image).

Images above:  Frank Lotz Miller, photographer. Royal Orleans. 5 April 1973. Curtis & Davis Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Frank Lotz Miller, photographer. Royal Sonesta. 5 April 1973.  Curtis & Davis Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Mid-Century Bourbon Street

Tulane Digital Library and the Southeastern Architectural Archive are happy to announce a new Digital Collection of mid-century New Orleans photographs.

Walter Cook Keenan (1881-1970), the first architect of the Vieux Carré Commission (VCC), took the photographs in order to document violations of the Vieux Carré Ordinance (VCO). Beginning in 1944, the VCC increasingly sought to regulate the appearance of building facades, especially by limiting signage and prohibiting the use of neon. As VCC architect, Keenan conducted daily property inspections to document VCO violations.

Entertainment businesses along Bourbon Street were notably affected by the ordinance and Keenan recorded nearly every property along the artery more than once. Bourbon Street's night clubs, jazz musicians, burlesque shows, restaurants and boarding houses became his photographic subjects. The collection includes images of Sloppy Joe's, Lenny Gale's Sugar Bowl, the Old Barn Bar, Zonia's Cocktail Lounge, Ciro's, the Magic Lock, the Famous Door, 418 Bar, Dixie's Bar of Music, and Stormy's Casino Royale. Signs for burlesque dancers Evangeline, Bubbles, Kalantan, Pam Holloway, and Stormy's Mother also feature prominently.

Image above: Walter Cook Keenan. 327 Bourbon Street. 16 September 1949. Walter Cook Keenan New Orleans Architecture Photographs, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Signage Crack Down 1948

In August 1948, The Times-Picayune published mention of an affidavit filed in recorders' court against the Old Barn Bar, 200 Royal Street. The Vieux Carre Commission (VCC) sought the removal of the bar's murals on the grounds that they violated a city ordinance regulating the amount of front footage such illustrations could occupy. VCC architect Walter Cook Keenan (1881-1970) recorded the violations in photographs taken August 18th (above).

The Old Barn Bar's murals were painted by French Quarter artist George Bohland, a pastelist who frequently sketched tourists in Pirate's Alley. Some of his pastels may be found in the Smithsonian's Duke Ellington Collection.

Images above: Walter Cook Keenan, 200 Royal Street. 18 August 1948. Walter Cook Keenan New Orleans Architecture 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].