Built without benefit of a city permit, the Bienville Street driveway straddles a catch basin. photo: Karen Gadbois Much has been made of our resilience. We New Orleanians are so resilient that we pull up entire sections of curbstone to install a driveway where none existed. And we do it without a permit. The owners […]
Category: Squandered Heritage
Posted inSquandered Heritage
Mary Church Terrell Elementary School in Gert Town set to be demolished
With little fanfare and no opposition, the Recovery School District appeared before the Neighborhood Conservation District Committee on July 2 seeking permission to demolish the Mary Church Terrell Elementary School in Gert Town. Lona Hankins speaking on behalf of the RSD said there were no plans to rebuild at the site and that they would […]
Posted inSquandered Heritage
Xavier rankles Gert Town neighbors with demolition plans
At the June 4 public hearing of the Neighborhood Conservation District Committee, often known by the more familiar abbreviation of NCDC (only because it sounds an awful lot like the band AC/DC), at least one committee member expressed concerns about the mission of the committee and about the conservation of one particular neighborhood located next […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Land Use, Squandered Heritage
… and put in a parking lot: Mansion gives way to yet more macadam
With owners claiming Katrina damage, this architecturally eclectic structure on Prytania Street near Touro Hospital was demolished on Thanksgiving Day 2006. While people were basting turkeys or gussying up for a racetrack repast, bulldozers gassed up and tore into a lunch of timbers and cornices, a few blocks uptown of the Garden District. The same […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Squandered Heritage
The news was sometimes buried, but the T-P helped us back on our feet
I saw the headline and thought about the reporters, photographers, editors and staffers at the Times-Picayune and what this means for them. I wondered how they felt reading about their fate in another publication, not their own. Then I began to think about the news we wouldn’t be reading in the refashioned Times-Picayune and what […]
Posted inLand Use, Squandered Heritage
Creeping concrete: Is anyone paying attention at City Hall?
This isn’t a “before and after” story… not yet. It’s more of a “before and during” story. Uptown, on Nashville Avenue, there once stood a humble bungalow, quaint and pretty and respectful of the lot where it stood and the houses adjacent to it. As happens quite regularly to quaint and pretty houses in New […]
Posted inSquandered Heritage
Two council members continue work stoppage
More reporters than City Council members attended today’s non-meeting of the city’s legislative branch, which again was stymied by the absence of Jon Johnson and Cynthia Hedge-Morrell.
Posted inSquandered Heritage
A blog reborn: The 'heritage' that gave rise to The Lens
Newcomers to this site may not be aware that before there was The Lens there was a blog called Squandered Heritage. With help from a wee band of fellow zealots, I devoted Squandered Heritage to the task of chronicling the parlous state of the built environment in New Orleans post-Katrina, with particular attention to the city’s priceless residential architecture.
Posted inSquandered Heritage
Demolition continues unabated
Yesterday while driving down Earhart Blvd. I came across a demolition which was being performed with no dust mitigation. The structure was a substantial Church bldg and generated a large amount of dust and debris.