These four houses are just some of the homes that have found their way onto a Demo List at City Hall, and the owners are trying to get them removed. One has been succsessful.

The Family was camping out in the house to prevent the demolition but with the help of the Neighborhood Org. and the PRC it was removed.

Do Not Demolish
Broadmoor
Unwanted Demo Tulane Ave

Tulane Ave. Owners do NOT want it demolished

Baudin Street

Owners Do NOT want it demolished

Unwanted Demo Baudin

N.Broad, another unwanted demolition.

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Karen Gadbois co-founded The Lens. She now covers New Orleans government issues and writes about land use. With television reporter Lee Zurik she exposed widespread misuse of city recovery funds and led...

4 replies on “City Demolition List”

  2. I learned of this site from the Times Picayune today and thought I would check it out. On your “Front Page” you state that if a house is to be demolished, you would document it for historical purposes. While I applaud your efforts, I wanted to let you know (in case you didn’t already) that FEMA historically documents every house on its demolition lists. This documentation includes photos, addresses, house style, age, damage, alterations etc. It also notes if the houses are in local and/or National districts. In the course of these surveys, the surveyor must detemine if the house meets the crtieria for inclusion to the National Register. The State Historic Preservation Officer must then chose to agree or disagree with the surveyors assesment. In addition, FEMA is resurveying several of the city’s National and local districts to document any changes that have taken place since they were last surveyed. Finally, FEMA is also surveying possible extensions to the prexisting National districts as well as evaluating houses in areas chosen for the possible creation of new National districts.

    As for the demolition of historic homes, I can tell you that they are being demolished because of owner request or because of public health dangers. (ie rats, danger of collapse etc.). The considerable number of houses that have yet to be cleaned out (refridgerators and all) would probably surprise you. I would not like to live next door to that, would you? Unfortunately in the case of voluntary demolitions, if a house is not in a local protected district (Vieux Carre or one of the HDLC districts) the owner can have FEMA tear their house down. It is unfortunate that this is the case however, some people prefer to save time and sometimes money rather than repair a heavily damaged house. Its saddens me that this is the course they choose however, there are many people out there (including myself) who are choosing to repair their historic hurricane damaged homes. Please be assured that there are many people out there working to preserve the city’s historical architecture.

  3. Not every house on this list is being advocated for. Some clearly need to be torn down. But you may have not noticed that we have homes on the Demo list in which the owner DOES NOT want demolition. We have homes that are privately funded, thus not be cataloged or documented by FEMA.

    In addition FEMA, which does a great job, by the way, does not make those photos and documentations public. We do.

    We have asked the City to release the criteria for demolition. That has not been done.

    Thanks for stopping by. And feel free to check back anytime!

  4. Someone told me today that our home was on the FEMA demolition list. Could you please check the list and let us know. We have recently put on a new roof and are presently wiring the house and doing the plumbing. We were not notified nor aware of this status. The address is 4427 Walmsley Ave. New Orleans, LA 70125. Should we have gotten some type of notification?

    Thanks, Mary Harrison

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