Delirious New Orleans

by Stephen Verderber

  2.23: Lucky Dog vendor, Bourbon Street, 2005 (preKatrina).

  Bowling Alleys

  Within the canon of populist roadside architecture, the bowling alley has yet to receive the credit it is due. At this writing, some scholarly work has appeared, although no full-length books have been devoted solely to this unique American building type.29 Bowling was a major American pastime from the 1940s through the 1970s, and bowling places—alleys—could be found in most cities and towns from coast to coast. These places were associated with the proliferation of the auto and rise of suburbia. One could drive to the nearest bowling alley, park out in front amid a sea of asphalt, and spend an evening with friends in a relaxing social atmosphere while pretending to get a bit of exercise playing an indoor sport. Most bowling alleys saw their best days pass long ago, although three remaining vintage bowling alleys in New Orleans aptly represent the best of this building type from the 1940–1975 period.

  The first is Mid City Bowling Lanes, since 1988 known locally simply as the Rock ’n Bowl. The Rock ’n Bowl is an eighteen-lane facility located at Tulane and Carrollton, across the street from the site of the former White City amusement park and later Pelican Stadium, a minor-league baseball venue (see Part 4). Mid City enjoyed many glory years within a busy sports neighborhood until the stadium was razed in 1958. Larger, more modern-moderne bowling centers opened in the surrounding suburban areas. By 1988, the local chapter of the Knights of Columbus, the then owner, found itself saddled with an aging relic. This bowling establishment is unusual in that it was built on the second floor, above a row of street-level stores. The building, constructed in 1941, is the city’s oldest bowling alley, and was set back from the street to allow for a parking lot in front. The look and feel of the bar and the lanes remain original. On a stage off to the side, live bands perform many nights during the week. It is known for Cajun, zydeco, blues, and straight-ahead rock and roll. Large murals on the walls near the stage depict New Orleans street scenes from the 1940s and 1950s. Rock ’n Bowl is not typical of most bowling alleys, since it is in a dense urban context and was built at a time when bowlers could have gotten there by streetcar as easily as by automobile.30 The strip mall of which this establishment was a part was renovated in 2008. Fortunately, the vintage neon “bowling” sign was retained.

  A second example, this from the age of the roadside strip, is Orbit Lanes, built in 1963 on the Chef Menteur Highway strip in New Orleans East. The Orbit lanes were meant to be reached by car. The name was inspired by the space race occurring at the time between the United States and the USSR. A large globe with spikes revolved atop a large pole next to the main entrance. The building began at the front sidewalk property line, with parking to the side and rear.

  A third example is Gretna Lanes, on the west bank. Also built in the 1960s but set back far from the street to allow for a large parking lot in front, Gretna Lanes was noteworthy for the mural on its front façade: a bowling ball crashing into a set of pins against a sky blue backdrop.

  Drive-ins in the Big Easy

  The drive-in restaurant was a popular building type in mid-twentieth-century New Orleans, and its popularity was paralleled in other large U.S. cities. Few sites were available for their construction, because of rising land costs and because only three major commercial strips led into the city from the American mainland. In the Vieux Carré, the old Morning Call coffee stand in the French Market had long been a purveyor of French-drip coffee. Established in 1870, it was patronized by locals and tourists alike before being relocated to Metairie in the 1960s. Where horses once were hitched, now autos were parked, as depicted in a postcard scene from the 1940s (Fig. 2.24). As the city expanded outward into the drained swamps that surrounded the city during the interwar period, the three main roadside commercial strips remained Airline Highway (from the west), Chef Menteur Highway (from the east), and Highway 12 (from Slidell). These arteries soon were packed with an array of drive-in restaurants, drive-in theatres, and assorted other commercial building types. Later, in the post–World War II decades, the Veterans Memorial strip would be built in Jefferson Parish, along with numerous others throughout the metropolitan area.

  2.24: Morning Call coffee stand, French Market, 1949.

  By 1957, the Frostop regional drive-in fast-food chain had established a particularly strong presence in New Orleans. Frostop is a name that at its zenith was familiar to millions of Americans. In 1926, L. S. Harvey opened the first Frostop root-beer stand in Springfield, Ohio. It was an immediate success because of the creamy root beer served in frosted mugs. Frostop drive-ins were built in many parts of the United States until 1941. During World War II, expansion was greatly curtailed because of shortages of materials, labor, and the ingredients needed for root beer. By 1960 there were seven Frostop outlets in the New Orleans area. The chain flourished during the early days of rock and roll, when the pioneering AM station WILD boomed the Top 40 hits of Fats Domino, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and others from dashboards as teenage carhops served teenage customers in their cars. The main attractions included root beer, malts, sodas, and “Castle Burgers,” modeled on the White Castle chain’s small hamburgers in the Northeast.

  Distinctive, appointed with fixed exterior seats and tables so that you could eat outside as well as in your car, they were noteworthy architecturally for their flat roofs and thin diagonal “strut” roof supports. By night, the roof elements appeared to form a shimmering wafer-thin plane hovering above the carhops, and by day they looked like legs holding up a stainless-steel-bordered pearl-like Formica kitchen table. The brown, beige, and yellow trademark color palette was artfully highlighted in neon. The most notable feature, architecturally, was the revolving frosted mug of root beer that gently rested atop the roof (see Figs. 1.15 and 1.16 in Part 1).31 The New Orleans flagship opened at 3321 St. Charles Avenue in 1952. It possessed most of the classic attributes of Googie architecture (also known as populuxe or doo-wop architecture)—an open-air, carhop format; ultramodern larger-than-life iconic elements (the illuminated rotating mug); an in-vogue 1950s color palette of brown and beige; stainless-steel and glazed-tile interiors; and neon tracing around the perimeter of the roof.32 Eventually, the Frostops in New Orleans would be eclipsed by newer and more aggressive fast-food chains, such as Rally’s, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and others.

  One of the competitors that grabbed market share from Frostop was the Rally’s drive-in chain, a unit of Checker’s Drive-in Restaurants, Inc. Rally’s copied many of Frostop’s attributes, but does not provide indoor sit-down dining. It has become one of the nation’s largest chains adhering to the traditional concept of the drive-in. Rally’s was founded and incorporated in Tennessee in 1984, opened its first restaurant in 1985, and adopted a double drive-through configuration for its restaurants; most also provide outdoor patio seating. The imagery clearly is reminiscent of the 1950s. This set it apart from its larger competitors such as McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s, and for this reason Rally’s was a particularly appropriate fit with vintage neighborhoods and commercial strips in New Orleans and with the city’s “the past is safer than the future” mentality. Before Katrina there were over a dozen outlets in the area. The theme colors are black, white, and red. An outlet on South Claiborne opened in 2005 on the site of a former A1 Appliances store (Fig. 2.25).33

  Similarly, the Airline Drive strip is home to a strong example of a Dot’s Diner. Dot’s is a national chain, but the New Orleans location on Airline embodies the charm of a classic streamlined deco diner from the 1930s. It has a stainless-steel overhang; corrugated metal sides in horizontal bands of red, white, and blue; and a stainless-steel interior with a sit-down counter.

  New Orleans is well known as the home of the first Popeyes Chicken restaurant in America. This chain grew from a single location in Chalmette in 1975. In time, outlets were established across the United States. In 1972, Popeyes founder and New Orleans native Al Copeland opened a fast-food restaurant called Chicken on the Run, serving a
traditional mild chicken recipe. After several months of lackluster sales, he rechristened his fledging restaurant Popeyes, after the Popeye Doyle character in the movie The French Connection. With this new concept, Copeland would make his mark on the world. He tinkered with his chicken recipe by adding Cajun spices to the batter. In 1976, the first Popeyes franchise restaurant opened, on Airline Highway in Baton Rouge. The marketing tagline “Love That Chicken from Popeyes” quickly caught on with the public, and the five hundredth franchise outlet opened in 1985. This placed the brand on an equal footing with earlier competitors such as Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC).

  Popeyes opened its first “double drive thru” in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, in 1987. By 1988 there were 700 restaurants operating in the United States. Popeyes bought the Church’s Chicken restaurant chain in 1989. By 1991, the first international location opened, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Outlets also opened in Germany and elsewhere throughout Europe, and in 1993, AFC Enterprises bought out both Popeyes and Church’s and moved the headquarters from New Orleans to Atlanta. At that time, sixty Pioneer Chicken restaurants in Los Angeles were purchased, increasing Popeyes’s presence on the West Coast. An agreement with the Kroger grocery-store chain resulted in the opening of a number of outlets in Kroger stores. The hundredth Popeyes in South Korea opened in 1997, and by 1996 the thousandth location opened worldwide. In 1998, sixty-six former Hardee’s restaurants were purchased. By 2000, worldwide sales had reached $1.2 billion. The chain continued to expand globally in subsequent years.34

  2.25: Rally’s drive-in, South Claiborne, 2005 (preKatrina).

  2.26: Popeyes, Carrollton and Earhart, 2005 (preKatrina).

  By 2005 it was decided that an architectural facelift was called for. Most franchise locations underwent a major renovation. Gone were the gaudy red-tile mansard roofs, the faux black stonework on the building’s sides, and the original signage. Instead, the chain attempted to attract a more upscale clientele, as did many of its competitors (Fig. 2.26). Faux stucco (Dryvit) was applied to the exteriors, a modest red-trimmed parapet was wrapped around the building, a “New Orleans–style” wrought-iron railing and a faux balcony were added, and large murals were painted on the building’s sides in an attempt to depict and celebrate the local culture of Louisiana (Fig. 2.27). At night, these modifications were rather successful, since the murals and the balcony were dramatically bathed by floodlights carefully positioned along the perimeter of the parking lot.

  Other fast-food chains founded in New Orleans include The Ground Pat’i. Founded in 1971, this chain struggled over the years to gain a regional foothold. By 2006 it was operating only a handful of outlets in the metro area, including a strong example on Causeway Boulevard in Metairie.35

  Another growing national chain, Smoothie King, was founded in New Orleans in 1973. Steve Kuhnau and his soon-to-be wife, Cindy, were its founders. Kuhnau suffered as a teen with severe allergies and hypoglycemia. He was a soda jerk during high school at Hoppers Drive In, and began experimenting with a high-protein drink in his off hours. He discovered that his concoctions elevated his blood-sugar level while simultaneously suppressing his appetite.

  By the time he met his future wife, he was working at Dixie Health Foods, a local health-food store. He was surprised at how successful his drinks were, and in 1989 he and his wife opened their first Smoothie King, on Baronne Street in the central business district. Three other locations opened soon thereafter. Unfortunately, no attempt was made to develop an architectural identity for the chain, at least at its fixed-site stores. However, the nomadic Smoothie King outlets are very colorful, with a larger-than-life Smoothie King Styrofoam cup surrounded by graphics of succulent fruit depicted on the front panel (see Part 5). The tradition of enjoying fine yet very fattening food in New Orleans made it very difficult for this health-food chain to flourish on its home turf. Therefore, the decision was made to expand the chain practically everywhere except New Orleans. By 2006, as a result of this strategy there were more than 350 Smoothie King locations across the United States.36

  2.27: Exterior mural, Popeyes.

  Masker Buildings: Make Your House Anything It Wants to Be

  New Orleans, as the above discussion makes clear, has played a significant role in the franchising of America, in the form of the locally founded Popeye’s, Smoothie King, and, to a lesser extent, The Ground Pat’i restaurant chains. On the other hand, some unique, even peculiar, homegrown building types have for the most part remained indigenous to the city. The masked, or masker, building, is perhaps the best example of these indigenous types. A partial definition of mask is “a covering for a part of the face, worn to conceal one’s identity … anything that disguises or conceals … a covering, as of wire or gauze, a protective shield … a cosmetic preparation applied to mask one’s intentions.”37 In the case of a building, a shield or mask functions much like a person’s mask. The act of masking denotes a deliberate change, although in people this change is usually temporary, as when taking on an entirely different persona at a Carnival ball. Masking requires a desire or need to alter how one is perceived, and the before-after condition establishes the visual and behavioral limits of this experience.

  Buildings also may masquerade briefly, and in New Orleans this most often occurs during the Mardi Gras season, when houses and commercial establishments are festooned with brightly colored banners. Such draperies cover façades and balconies, often in the form of flags, and are not intended to completely or permanently obscure a building’s underlying identity.

  2.28: Coin Laundry, South Claiborne, 2005 (preKatrina).

  2.29: Coin Laundry, axonometric view.

  In most cases this ritual is not unlike decorating a house with Christmas ornamentation. Architecturally, decorating a building for a short-term masquerade is related to permanently masking a building’s function, although these are not fully interchangeable rituals in New Orleans. The former tends to occur only in holiday seasons, while the latter denotes an act of permanent alteration. What differs is the means by which a building is permanently masked to conceal some or all of its prior identity. In New Orleans, a long tradition exists of masking everyday small-scale buildings to achieve functional transformation. Building masking occurs, for instance, when a private residence is transformed into a corner grocery store or a Laundromat without necessarily relinquishing its initial function.

  Masking therefore occurs when residences are adapted to a second function, usually a commercial function, or to a mixed-use commercial-residential hybrid. The Coin Laundry on South Claiborne was originally a single-family frame dwelling built in the Craftsman style about 1920. The original residence was built with a setback to provide a front yard. The yard was soon seen as prime real estate, and the family realized that they could continue to live on the premises while operating a business if an addition were built out toward the sidewalk. Note the horizontal frame siding extended to the stucco frontispiece parapet, designed in the late 1920s or early 1930s in the then-popular art deco style and painted in white (Figs. 2.28 and 2.29). The frame for the sign that at one time was likely suspended above the sidewalk, perpendicular to the building, may have doubled as a flagpole. Zoning laws were modified in many neighborhoods to allow for new property uses such as this to be reclassified for light commercial use, their original residential classification having been grandfathered. Hence, these buildings were almost always mixed use, or transprogrammatic.

  Similarly, Neeb’s Hardware, at Lafayette Street and Fourth, in Gretna, was a prime example of masking a private residence, in this case a camelback shotgun residence, into a commercial headpiece-frontispiece. The private residence in this case was of somewhat earlier vintage (circa 1900), and like the Coin Laundry on Claiborne, was sited with its front facing the street. The hardware store has much else in common with the laundry. In the formerly open front yard, a box-shaped extension was constructed with an internal connection to the rear zone. An art deco vocabulary, rendered in white, was incorporated i
nto the front and side street façades, and serves to make its new identity known without completely obscuring its prior identity (Figs. 2.30 and 2.31). Neeb’s has been operated continuously as a hardware store, even in the face of recent stiff competition from the nearby big-box retailers such as The Home Depot and Lowe’s. Both Neeb’s and the Coin Laundry are delicately proportioned and elaborately detailed, with modest side entrances that contribute to their enduring domestic scale, along with modest yet effective signage (for the period), and neither disrupts the scale of its streetscape context.

  The Kid’s World Day Care Center, at St. Claude and Alvar, circa 1920, was also originally a single-family dwelling on a corner lot. Since the setbacks from St. Claude were only eight feet from the sidewalk, there was less room to project a commercial mask element outward. Regardless, a stucco-sheathed mask element was built, then topped with a stepped gable parapet, not unlike a miniature version of the Alamo. This mask extension was first used for a corner drugstore, which was later adapted into its current use. In this post-Katrina photo, note the camelback rear (later) addition to this once double-shotgun house (Fig. 2.32). It was located across the street from a large public high school, and this was likely why the adaptation from drugstore to day care took place. When it was a drugstore, students would walk over from school and sit at the soda fountain. These days, in the age of mega-franchisers such as Walgreens, the city’s soda fountains are long gone, and an acute need exists for affordable childcare.

  The Bluebird Café on Prytania Street across from the Touro Infirmary was also constructed as a single-family shotgun dwelling in the 1920s. In the 1950s a mask-addition was built, extending the building out to the sidewalk’s edge. Great care was taken to conceal this building’s former identity, as was done with all genuine masker buildings in New Orleans. When someone wears a Carnival mask, it usually conceals only the face, seldom extending behind the ears. Similarly, the sides of masker buildings are also usually visible, yet only somewhat. Beyond this, few clues are provided about the true identity of the building lurking behind the mask. In the case of the Bluebird, the mask itself is compositionally stark; only its bright yellow exterior and a blue awning to protect the patrons, who wait in line outside, sometimes for more than an hour, enliven it. Note the caricature of the Bluebird logo painted on the side façade, high above the sidewalk. Its placement ensures its visibility to passersby in autos, and also keeps it out of reach of graffitists (Fig. 3.31). The Bluebird did not continue to house a private residence after its transformation, unlike the prior three examples of maskers. In the case of all four of these masked buildings, however, symmetry ruled: the front door is generally situated in the center and flanked by storefront windows to either side. In addition, in each case the entire building, mask and all, is painted the same color or similar colors.