One recent  Saturday, The Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development spearheaded an effort to remove overgrown vegetation and board vacant historic homes in the Holy Cross neighborhood.   PRC’s Mary Ann Miller, a representative of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a few local residents, and a group of students from The Barry Law School joined in the effort in the 400 block of St. Maurice Avenue.

Work focused on cutting high grass, trees, bushes, and vines that overwhelmed a number of blighted historic homes along the street, immediately across from one of the PRC’s renovated properties at —- St. Maurice Avenue.  Volunteers also removed debris and mattresses from interior rooms and boarded up the houses at the request of neighbors with children.  Ms. Warrenetta Banks, Volunteer Coordinator with CSED, directed the effort and provided background on the neighborhood, as well as the particular properties involved.

Despite heat, humidity, and the discovery of an active beehive in one front porch column, the street was looking noticeably better after a few hours of effort.

Holy Cross is located in both a local and national historic district, and the effort served to reduce public safety and quality of life issues without the outright loss of historic structures and a streetscape that gives a sense of place.

Today the Senate Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee will be considering SB 63, the companion bill for the rehab tax credit for income-producing properties. We’ll keep you posted on the results. You can watch the Senate committee hearing online HERE, as well as the House committee meeting tomorrow at 9 am.

To learn more about House Bills 348 and 349 as well as Senate Bill 63, which extend tax credits for owner-occupied and income-producing rehab projects, read our previous blog posts about the State Historic Tax Credits and a more detailed description of the residential tax credit.  You can also read the City Business op-ed piece in support of revising the rehab credits by clicking here.

Rep. Walt Leger has agreed to sponsor HB 348, which extends and also proposes technical changes to the existing state homeowner rehab tax credit passed in 2005. We need your help in urging your State Legislators to co-author this bill! Contact information for legislators can be found here: http://www.legis.state.la.us/

Major points to make in soliciting support are: 

• The homeowner rehab credit expires next year, so it must be extended this year. 
• The total amount of credits to be awarded annually will remain the same.
• Tax revenues are generated prior to the award of the credit. This is good for the state and the economy.
• The tax credit is given out when the project is finished and is spread out over 5 years.
• The percentage of rehab costs allowed as a credit is increased for vacant and blighted properties. Many historic properties are at risk throughout the state, representing a downward trend which could be reversed with this credit.
• The credit as proposed will be an effective tool for revitalization and rebuilding the population of neighborhoods, towns, cities and the entire state.  

Please ask your legislator to contact Rep. Walt Leger to co-author the bill. Rep. Leger’s email address is legerw@legis.state.la.us and his phone number is (504) 556-9970. We are grateful to Rep. Leger for sponsoring this important bill and for his continued support of preservation efforts.

It is critical to act quickly on this as the session starts next Monday, April 25. You can view the bill online at http://legis.state.la.us/billdata/streamdocument.asp?did=740908.

Many thanks, and we can’t wait to find out what properties are eventually restored in your town because of this credit!

The Louisiana Landmark Society (LLS) is compiling the 2011 New Orleans Nine Most Endangered Sites list.  Every year, the New Orleans Nine list brings attention to some of the city’s most important forgotten and endangered architectural treasures.  From individual properties like the  St. Roch Market in New Marigny to groups of buildings like mid-century modern public schools located throughout the city, the LLS considers nominations of properties that are architecturally or culturally significant.  If you are interested in nominating a property, group of properties, or an emblematic feature of the New Orleans built environment, the deadline for nomination submissions  is Tuesday, March 29, 2011.  LLS will publish the 2011 edition of the New Orleans Nine list in May in honor of Preservation Month.  Learn more and download the nomination form at the LLS website by clicking here.

The goal of the Louisiana Main Street program is to promote the cultural heritage of Louisiana, cultural tourism, and historic preservation of America’s historic main streets. Each November, designated Main Streets in Louisiana are required to participate in the Louisiana Main to Main initiative by hosting a festival that celebrates its unique heritage. These annual events are big boosts to individual Main Street communities because it promotes awareness of their efforts, stimulates the local economy, promotes local history, and brings residents together in order to create a sense of community pride.

There are a total of 35 designated Main Streets in Louisiana. New Orleans currently has 5 Main Street communities, and each of them have held festivals over the course of this month. Some of them have already happened, but you still have time to attend the Po-Boy Festival on Oak Street and the North RampART Festival on North Rampart Street. Go out and show your support for our local Main Streets!

Broad Street and the Broad Street Brewhaha
North Rampart Street and the North RampART Festival
Oak Street and the Po-Boy Fest
OC Haley Boulevard and the Make a Joyful Noise Gospel and Arts Festival
St. Claude Avenue and the Fringe Festival

To view some of the historic properties located on designated Main Street districts in New Orleans and pictures from a few of the festivals, please view our New Orleans Main Street Districts set on our Flickr site.

The first property at 718 Mandeville Street is a fabulous two-story Arts and Crafts building located in Faubourg Marginy, a neighborhood which just received recognition as one of the top 10 great neighborhoods in America for 2009 by the American Planning Association. The starting bid for this property is $190,000 with subsequent bids in $200 increments.

The second property at 1421 St. Roch Avenue was built in 1916, and is another great example of Arts and Crafts style located in the New Marigny neighborhood. The starting bid for this property is $85,000 with subsequent bids in $200 increments.

We hope to see these properties sold to loving new owners who will restore them both to their former glory!

Auction information:
Wednesday October 28, 2009
10 A.M. City Council Chamber
City Hall – Civic Center
1300 Perdido St
New Orleans, LA 70112

For nearly a decade, Jerome “PopAgee” Johnson has been trying to buy the entirety of Rampart’s 400 riverside block, envisioning a Jazz history destination that showcases African American impact on the development of the genre. It’s been a frustrating, complicated and expensive project, full of pitfalls and spiraling costs.

Although there hasn’t been very much of a payoff to this effort- Johnson finally acquired one of the block’s four important buildings in 2008 and hasn’t managed to renovate it as yet- let’s take a look at the history at stake on this block:

Frank Doroux’s Eagle Saloon (401-403 Rampart) Built in 1875, the building was originally maintained by the Odd Fellows Fraternal organization, which maintained its ballroom on the third floor. Downstairs in the saloon, future jazz greats such as Joseph “King” Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Kid Ory, and Buddy Bolden got their starts. Louis Armstrong marveled as the man he referred to as “Papa Oliver” played in the building and he would later play with Oliver in the Creole Jazz Band.

The Model Tailors/Morris Music (427 Rampart)- The owners of The Model Tailors, Karnofsky family, had a profound impact on Louis Armstrong’s development. Armstrong’s own world was rough-and-tumble, and he found the Karnofsky family, Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, to be warm, welcoming and stable and he worked for them and lived with them throughout much of his childhood. After Karnofsky’s closed the tailor shop, it became Morris Music, the first store catering to Jazz records and an African American clientèle.

Frank Doroux’s Little Gem Saloon (445-449 Rampart) (Also David Pailet’s Loan Office from 1926-1949 and Pete’s Blue Heaven Lounge in the 1950s)- this is where the jazz musicians and vaudevillians that played the local clubs would come to unwind and relax after their gigs. It became such a central hotspot that it became the place where Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club’s Jazz funerals and parades both began and ended.

It was in this block where a 12 year old Louis Armstrong fired a gun into the air on New Year’s Eve in 1912. He was arrested and brought to the Colored Waif’s Home where he began to take formal coronet lessons.

While several attempts have been made to renovate these buildings, so far no renovations have been completed.

“Orleanians of later generations will probably take for granted the five-structure Civic Center dominated by the gleaming 11-story City Hall. It is easy to imagine them thinking, ‘We’re a big, proud city. It’s only what we deserve.’ It will be human nature.”

The editorial concluded: “Now is the time to reflect on the vision and energy of the men who planned and built the new heart of the city.”

Wise words, unheeded.

The fate of these buildings is sealed, but the future of City Hall is still a matter of debate. Hopefully, this rare peice of modernist history will be salvaged, repaired, and restored to its original gleaming promise.

Our original Duncan Plaza story can be found here.

Learn more about preservation of the recent past on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s blog, Preservation Nation.

Two-bay Creole cottages are a relatively rare architectural type found only in New Orleans oldest residential neighborhoods. At first glance, these homes may look like a typical two-bay single shotgun house, but there are distinct differences between the two.

Creole cottages pre-date shotguns by roughly half a century, appearing during the late 18th to early 19th centuries, while shotguns appeared around 1840. Creole cottages are more shallow than shotguns, but the easiest way to tell them apart is by the roof line. The roof line of a shotgun runs perpendicular to the street, while a Creole cottage roof line runs parallel to the street.

Additionally, Creole cottages generally have a steep gabled roof that contain a half-story on the second floor, while shotguns usually have hipped roofs and do not contain a second floor (with the exception of camelback shotguns). Finally, Creole cottages have an overhang or abat-vent and are built right up to the sidewalk, while shotguns generally have galleries and are set further back on the property.

Most Creole cottages have four bays (usually two doors and two windows in front). The four-bay cottages are two rooms wide and two rooms deep. There are no interior hallways (which improved circulation before modern air conditioners) and each room opens into the next. Kitchens were initially built in a separate outbuilding in the back of the property, but after 1840 they were built as attachments to the back of the cottage.

The two-bay Creole cottage is small by today’s standards, being half the size of the four-bay with two openings in front, one room wide, and two rooms deep. The earliest examples contained two doors that opened onto the sidewalk, but after 1830 one door and one window became standard. Most of them were weatherboarded, but some were brick-between-post construction or plastered brick.

Although four-bay cottages are still prevalent in New Orleans, the two-bays are fairly rare. They appear in neighborhoods like Treme, Marigny, and New Marigny with greater frequency simply because those areas were being developed during a time when the type was very popular, and before the time when shotguns became more widely used. In an effort to document the remaining two-bay Creole cottages and advocate for their continued preservation, we will be locating and photographing them in the coming weeks. Keep an eye on the PRC’s Flickr page for new photographs of this wonderful, early type of New Orleans architecture!

Do you know where two-bay Creole cottages can be found around the city? Leave us a comment and let us know!

Stanley has dedicated his life to improving the historic fabric and livability of cities throughout the country, including playing a role in New Orleans’ ongoing recovery effort. He had been the vice president of National Trust, recently resigning that post to free up time to play a more active role in New Orleans and his local neighbhorhood.

We at the PRC are particularly saddened as we were privileged to work with him in the aftermath of the storm. Stanley came in and helped us quickly evaluate the condition of the city and determine how best to effectively move forward and assist the our fellows. He arrived full of passion and principle, never flagging in his dedication to the cause. He was and continues to be an inspiration, and we wish him a speedy and full recovery.