This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

“here”:http://www.artofeurope.com/eliot/eli2.htm

Last week when the I received the agenda for the November 17th meeting I didn’t have a lot of time to take the photos. So it was late in the game before I realized this building was on the agenda.

Who was “Samuel Green”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Methodist_Episcopal_Church and where were the people who cared about this building, this monument?

Would anyone show up at the hearing? Would we have another “Gilbert Hall”:http://www.squanderedheritage.com/2006/10/04/saved-to-serve-5323-pitt-street-uptown/ , one that the Neighbors fought to save? But in the end lost.

While looking for some history of this Church I stumbled upon this article written by Coleman Warner “Growth, Identity, and Loss in a New Orleans Neighborhood”:http://www.jstor.org/pss/4233764 this is only a small portion of the article but the theme resonates. Especially when you see where this Church is located.

When I went to view the building I was struck with the location. Smack dab in the middle of the Guste Housing project. Between the newly constructed row houses and the unbearable ugly stacks of bricks and steel.

This Church and the Freedoms Hall continue to exist here, but do they serve? The Church is boarded shut and people move around the building not through it. There seems to be no connection to this Neighborhood. When I go out to look at the buildings I usually try and find someone to talk to about the impending demolition. But in the case of this building there was no one to talk to. It made me think abut the function of the Church within a neighborhood. What would that function be if the residents of the houses were transient as is suggested by the new attitude towards public housing residents. Would a person form attachments to the neighborhood and the institutions within the neighborhood such as this Church if the ideas about public housing being that they were built to serve a population who was not going to stay. So much has been written about public housing and I still am unsatisfied by the argument that public housing serves those who are on the way to an upward mobility instead of the working poor. With a City economy based on tourism the need for an uneducated population is greater than a need for skilled well paid workers. Maybe that will change but in the meantime public housing is not a lifestyle choice but a fact of life.

So many of the Churches in Central City serve people who live outside of the Neighborhood so the need becomes a need for parking a need for places to put cars, not people.

So the Church will continue to stand but the Freedom Hall will fall. The contractor presented his plans which I was unable to see, but according to his verbal presentation Phase 1 is demolition and Phase 2 is unknown.

When I bought my house I was glad to see this beautiful Church across the street. Something so grand and so permanent. I never thought I would see the day when it was closed. Unlike the parishioners of “Our Lady of Good Counsel”:http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/our_lady_of_good_counsel_membe.html the parishioners of Incarnate Word said a sad farewell, with a whimper they allowed the Archdiocese to close the facility.

So what was left was the School, a half block long building that had educated many in this Neighborhood. And served as a community gathering spot, daycare and poll location before the storm.

Last month the School reopened. The kids can be heard now and again life returns to part of the block. But the Church remains silent.

Communities all over the United States are feeling the loss of congregations and the centralized notion of “mega churches”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megachurch is now the norm. Churches as “political machines”:http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2008/11/10/a-church-should-not-be-a-political-machine.html and influence. Has the Church “lost sight of it’s mission?”:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081113/ap_on_re_us/obama_catholics;_ylt=Ai2ZkRpnEz0h3G9H5t22eF6s0NUE and decided that the community where it is located is no more than a literal parking lot? The “parking lot functioning as the place where influenced is exerted”:http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/2397 And now the “Catholic Church spends more time, money and effort on housing than it does on ministering”:http://www.providencecommunityhousing.org/Sponsoring%20Me.html

Lots to digest in a small post about one piece of history. More questions than answers. Who will save a Church if no one is there? Who will save a City if no one cares?