‘“It was so hot inside them cells, every time you lay down within 10 minutes your sheets used to be soaking wet,” said Teddy Tyler, 49, reflecting back on time spent in the House of Detention almost 30 years ago.
The now-closed 10-story city jail at 2735 Perdido St. was known for its harsh conditions and troubling practices. Within its concrete walls, people shivered in the winter and sweat in the sweltering heat of New Orleans summers. There was no air conditioning and almost no heat.
The building is slated for demolition, though no date has been set. Sometimes, when disaster ruins buildings, the Federal Emergency Management Agency simply helps government agencies demolish them. The structures just disappear behind a wrecking ball.
But HOD, a concrete structure that towered over nearby Tulane Avenue, left such a notorious legacy within the city’s criminal-justice system that its history should be carefully documented before demolition, criminal-justice advocates told FEMA.
In the House of Detention, poor jail policy and management harmed incarcerated people, said Mary Howell, a civil-rights attorney known for defending New Orleanians injured or killed by law enforcement. “It was a site of suffering for generations of New Orleans, especially poor Black men,” she said. “Its demolition must be paired with remembrance and reform.”
“You have no programming, so you just got idleness, which is a recipe for harm and abuse,” said Andrea Armstrong, a Loyola University Law School professor and an expert in mass incarceration.
Now, as the recent jailbreak raises scrutiny of the Orleans Justice Center a few blocks away on Perdido, the HOD stands in silent witness to the city’s tragic history within its lockups. The tower’s history includes countless real-life tales just as disturbing as today’s—narratives of cruelty, corruption, survival, and despair.
Vacant since 2012 and left severely flooded after the levee breaks that followed Hurricanes Katrina, the HOD structure was deemed architecturally significant and eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. But its fate was sealed by its deteriorated condition, and its use of asbestos.
Beyond its architecture, its social legacy tells a darker story, which may be more significant to those who chronicle the life of this city.
Built 60 years ago as part of NOPD complex
HOD was constructed between 1965 and 1966 as part of a broader plan for a four-building New Orleans Police Complex, begun in 1962. (The other three buildings are the New Orleans Police Department headquarters, Municipal and Traffic Courts, and a parking garage).
The building was designed by the renowned modernist-architecture firm Curtis and Davis, which had designed structures at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola and at other prisons across the country.
”Stylistically, the district predominantly represents the influences of Brutalism and New Formalism, in its forms, materials, and public plaza design,” notes a report that was commissioned by FEMA after pressure from local criminal-justice advocates. To everyday New Orleanians, it now looks more like a haunted house than a jail.
For those who were held in the jail, even the sight of its empty shell is impactful. “I’m passing and looking at it right now,” said Norris Henderson, who was reached on his cell phone as he came from his office at Voice of The Experienced (VOTE), which he founded two decades ago.
As a younger man, Henderson spent time in HOD. Those memories return at these moments, he said. “Some people drive by and don’t even see it—but if you lived it, or even just visited someone there, you don’t forget,” he said. “That building carries something heavy.”
The 10-story building includes a narrow rectangular tower rising above a broader, two-story concrete base.
Offices, intake, visiting, and medical were on the first two floors of HOD. Though the sheriff’s office listed the building’s bed count as 825, it likely held nearly twice as many people. Five floors — floors three through seven— contained 10-man cells. On those floors, there were 120 beds on each floor—with four tiers on each floor, and 30 men on each tier, for a total of 600 people.
The eighth floor was used to house those on maximum security and juveniles charged as adults. And the ninth floor was “the hole” — disciplinary, two-man cells, with some reserved for protective custody. Most people held in HOD were men, with some women held alongside men in the building’s mental-health unit, on the 10th floor.
The recreation yard was outside, surrounded by thick walls.
Inside, it was hot and crowded. “We were held in a 10-man cell with 10 beds, two toilets, and one wall phone,” Tyler remembered. Often, with extra mattresses tossed on the floor, the population of cells across the jail grew. “There were times when security would cram 13 or more people into a 10-man cell,” Tyler said.
In the summer, mattresses on the floor were the best place to be because it was cooler down low, said a 42-year-old man who asked to be named only as Blakk, who was held in HOD a few years before Katrina hit. “The main focus was getting you a spot on that floor, to catch some breeze from the fan,” he said.
Within HOD, people remember waking up to the sounds of loud, industrial stainless steel-toilets flushing and the tier rep’s early morning call — “Feed Up!! Feed Up!”
Two to three pans of food were delivered for each of the first two meals, with sandwiches delivered for the third meal. The tier reps, fellow incarcerated men that represented each tier, usually placed the sandwiches between the iron bars. For the earlier meals, delivered in metal cafeteria pans set inside brown hard-plastic containers, men would line up and wait while the tier rep served them portions, which were seldom equal. Those who were strong got bigger portions. Those who were not got smaller portions or none at all.
”For the men in the jail that was weak, they didn’t eat,” Tyler said.
Blakk remembered that some guards like to play games with food that left some people hungry. “They’d put a plate in a cell with bread and seven slices of ham on it. Knowing that there were 10 people in there.”
Also, during the mid-1990s, whenever the New Orleans Police Department needed to put together a line-up of suspects, deputies would walk the tiers choosing men who resembled suspects accused of violent crimes.
The selections were made without evidence, warrants, or formal identification—just a visual guess and a nod. For those chosen, it could mean being pulled into criminal investigations with no real connection to the crime, raising lasting concerns about civil rights, mistaken identity, and systemic abuse.
Torture also was not uncommon. “They used stun belts for people who were HIV positive. So anytime they left their cell, they had to wear an electric stun belt that deputies could just stun them with,” Armstrong said.
HOD floods as levees break in 2005
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the House of Detention became a symbol of systematic failure. As the storm surged, levees broke, and floodwaters consumed New Orleans, HOD lost electricity, water, and all communication.
Officers abandoned the facility, leaving hundreds of incarcerated people locked inside without access to food, clean water, or functional toilets. Survivors later recounted the life-threatening ordeal, with those incarcerated screaming and pounding on the walls, fearing they would drown or be forgotten.
Many prisoners were left for days before being rescued. When help finally came, a number of people were transferred directly to distant facilities without contact with their family or defense lawyers.
Human Rights organizations later called the conditions “tantamount to torture.” The full extent of death and medical emergencies during this crisis remains unclear, due in most part to lack of official records and transparency.
Amid mounting legal pressure and widespread public criticism, HOD was finally closed in 2012, a few years before the new jail down the street was completed.
The long-planned demolition of the former House of Detention (HOD) now remains on hold until $11 million can be appropriated, according to the city’s Capital Projects Administration. FEMA had given the city $8.3 million for the demolition, but the city redirected that amount to Phase III, the jail’s $109 million, 89-bed mental-health annex. That decision followed a federal court order mandating that the city build Phase III “without delay.”
Preservationists argue that the building represents an unique era in civic design. Others contend that preserving a structure so closely tied to abuse, neglect, and systemic injust does more harm than good.
“There’s value in remembering, but not in revering,” Andrea Armstrong said. “This building’s architecture tells one story. But its human history tells another— and we need to confront both.”
HOD and its troubles remind us that New Orleans’ struggles with incarceration go far beyond architecture.
Part of the problem, Howell said, is the split in governance — historically, the city has owned the jail buildings and is responsible for funding, while the sheriff is in charge of operations. Every year, Howell said, the sheriff would go to the City Council and complain about fundamental problems with the buildings—broken locks, electrical, plumbing, elevators, etcetera—and insufficient city funding for maintenance and repairs. For almost 50 years, we’ve heard the same thing — “Not enough money,” she said.
Part of the problem, Howell said, is the split in governance — the city has long owned the jail buildings while the sheriff has to run them. So every year, Howell said, the sheriff would go to the City Council and complain about fundamental problems with the buildings, which the sheriff could not maintain for lack of money. “For 50 years, we’ve heard the same thing — ‘Not enough money,” she said.
It goes beyond money, to a larger philosophy, Armstrong said. “We historically have just built a new building every time there has been a problem in the jail — and we think that the building will solve things,” she said. ”What that experience shows is that buildings don’t solve the challenges that we see in incarceration.”