Delirious New Orleans

by Stephen Verderber

  2.30: Neeb’s Hardware, Gretna, 2005 (preKatrina).

  2.31: Neeb’s Hardware, axonometric view.

  2.32: Kid’s World, St. Claude Avenue, 2005 (post-Katrina).

  Tee-Eva’s, a restaurant on Magazine Street near Napoleon Avenue, was built as a hamburger and sno-ball stand. Its mask, with its walk-up window, is a holdover from its earlier incarnation. Tee-Eva’s continues to sell sno-balls, and this mask device conceals a private dwelling in the rear. The brightly rendered, animated murals on the face of this mask were painted by Miami artist David LeBatard, who signs his work as LEBO (Figs. 2.33 and 2.34). The menu is ambitious, including Creole soul food in addition to sno-balls, pies, and pralines. Tee Eva is the cousin of Antoinette K-Doe (see Part 3). Tee-Eva’s mask, unlike the previous four maskers, contrasts with the building it conceals. This is due to the façade’s bright color palette and playful graphic imagery. This strategy is necessary since Tee-Eva’s is situated midblock in a pedestrian-oriented commercial strip where many densely sited buildings compete for the attention of auto traffic.

  Another masker, the Meauxbar (pronounced meow-bar) Bistro, on the corner of Rampart and St. Philip, on the edge of the Vieux Carré, was even more architecturally daring. The mask applied to the building was a total concealment, semiautonomous from the dwelling it concealed, almost as if rejecting what was being masked. Nevertheless, the Meauxbar achieved its individuality through an aesthetic vocabulary of composition, surface pattern, and materiality that was generally similar to that used in the preceding examples. If Tee-Eva’s succeeds in conveying a loose funkiness for locals, Meauxbar seeks to project a “proper” or more formally upscale image for tourists. The Meauxbar Bistro’s formidable masonry walls conceal a mid-nineteenth-century Creole cottage that was initially classically proportioned and that abutted the sidewalk on two sides in a zero-lot condition (Figs. 2.35 and 2.36). The masking of this cottage was constructed autonomously from the frame house it conceals. The cottage did not serve either as a structural aperture for the mask or as a surface upon which the mask was directly applied. The repositioning of the main entrance to a corner diagonal position from the initial entry on the Rampart Street side completed the transformation. In the end, the walls appear formidable, even institutional. Here, the Creole cottage seems to be held captive within the strict confines of its mask.

  2.33: Tee-Eva’s Creole Soul Food, Magazine Street, 2005 (post-Katrina).

  2.34: Tee-Eva’s, axonometric view.

  2.35: Meauxbar Bistro, Rampart Street, 2005 (post-Katrina).

  2.36: Meauxbar, axonometric view.

  2.37: Steiner Electronic Service, North Galvez, 2005 (post-Katrina).

  2.38: Steiner Electronic, axonometric view.

  In the case of Steiner Electronic Service, on North Galvez near Iberville, a Bavarian-village storefront, a streetscape in Old Amsterdam, or a rural village in Switzerland seems to have inspired its mask. It stands in sharp contrast with its neighbors, all of which were typical New Orleans Victorian or Creole cottages, some one level in height and others two levels. Most were raised on pier foundations with open undersides, but only slightly above the base elevation level. The building concealed was a two-level frame residence with a front porch. The mask, constructed in the late 1940s, contained small-paned windows, wood shutters, a rusticated wood door, and a stucco exterior (Figs. 2.37 and 2.38). In the accompanying illustration, the tin-roof cladding appears to have originally been a mansard roof of tile or patterned shingles. In this post-Katrina photo, the high floodwater line is visible, and is indicative of the severity of the damage sustained within. Steiner’s is threatened with demolition as it sits at the center of the seventy-four acres targeted for the new LSH and VA replacement hospitals. The National Trust placed this neighborhood on its most endangered list in 2008.

  A final example of a masker, Jolie’s/Gretna Gun, on the corner of Lafayette and Third Streets in Gretna, was a highly ironic expression—a fusion—of two building types: an unusual, even bizarre, synthesis of a decorated shed with a sidesaddle mask. Their combined expression in this long-established residential neighborhood, a block from the river levee, was ironic both aesthetically and functionally (Fig. 2.39). A private shotgun residence was demolished on the site of the gun shop that was subsequently built on the corner. A side yard once separated the two residences with a white picket fence. This was demolished as well. The remaining structure (nearest the levee) was retained, and the gun store now abutted its side elevation. A portion of the site of the demolished residence became a parking lot. Finally, this hybrid composition, with its juxtaposition of an exquisite wall mural in collision with the stark functionality of a gun store, straddled a fine line between playful illusion and surreptitiousness. The plastic handguns on the exterior were stolen (together with all the guns inside) in the widespread looting that ensued in Katrina’s aftermath (see Part 1).

  2.39: Jolie’s/Gretna Gun Shop, Gretna, 2005 (preKatrina).

  Most architectural masking in New Orleans occurred in the older, more established residential neighborhoods. By 1940, many of the private residences along North and South Claiborne Avenue, as well as other commercial streets, including Canal Boulevard in Mid City, Carrollton Avenue, St. Claude, Elysian Fields, Broad Street, Magazine Street, and Tulane Avenue, had acquired commercial masker buildings, not unlike the examples discussed above. Many dozens of these transformations from single use to mixed use, or to a completely commercial zoning classification, occurred, e.g., barbershops (Big Al’s), drugstores (Carrollton Rexall), hardware stores (Neeb’s Hardware), restaurants (Liuzza’s, Mandina’s), bars (Igor’s, Madigan’s), sno-ball stands (Plum Street Sno Balls, Hanson’s), and bakeries (Gambino’s, McKenzie’s). This trend was fueled by several motivations: expand an existing business that may have been operated entirely out of the original house, capitalize on a prime location that was previously a private residence, “modernize,” or simply keep up with the Joneses. Much innovation occurred despite the tight lot sizes in a pedestrian-scaled city, zero side-lot lines, and minimal setbacks from the street or one’s neighbors—seldom more than three to five feet—in dramatic contrast to the excessive setbacks mandated by most current suburban building codes in the United States.

  Of the eight masker buildings discussed above, four were situated midblock (the Coin Laundry, Bluebird Café, Tee-Eva’s, and Steiner Electronic Service) and four were on corner lots (Neeb’s Hardware, Kid’s World, Meauxbar Bistro, and Jolie’s/Gretna Gun). In general, the four main architectural attributes of maskers are, first, their small scale, since most were built originally as private residences; second, most such interventions were designed to fit tightly into their immediate site and streetscape contexts; third, the majority were owner-occupied, their mom-and-pop owners living in the none-too-opulent quarters in the rear of the masked structure; and fourth, nearly every such act of architectural masking in New Orleans occurred before the late 1950s—not coincidentally, when white flight spawned the explosive growth of the suburbs around the city and resulted in the abandonment, as mentioned earlier, of these older neighborhoods. Masked buildings have endured in New Orleans for many reasons, including the city’s compact, pedestrian scale, the large number of people who continue to walk or ride public transit to these places rather than drive to the suburbs, and the high percentage of city dwellers who cannot afford to own an auto.

  3

  Soul, Funk, and Hip-Hop

  In New Orleans, music is in the air we breathe.

  —ALLEN TOUSSAINT, 2001

  THE DEBATE OVER THE VALIDITY OF EVERYDAY vernacular folk architecture parallels the debate over the term vernacular in the field of American folk art. The term vernacular has been in use by architectural historians since the 1850s, and was borrowed from linguists. One definition that folklorist Henry Glassie has proposed for studying folk traditions in architecture is rooted in linguistic structural principles used to diagram the lexicon of possible expressions within an architectural �
��grammar.”1 First, the language of vernacular folk architecture—architecture without architects—evolves around a shared understanding of proven architectural conventions between a builder and a client. This relationship dates from the earliest American settlements, where frame farmhouses were designed and built according to shared assumptions regarding occupancy, functionality, construction standards, and symbolic objectives. Similarly, folk art expresses the concerns of everyday, ordinary human activity and endeavor.2 Second, predilections evolve out of a growing self-confidence, self-awareness, and place awareness. In time, there emerges an indigenous set of building types and aesthetic standards that are made by and for the people of a given place. In New Orleans, for purposes of this discussion, it is argued that soul, funk, and hip-hop are the three main visual-musical media through which urban folk-architecture sensibilities are expressed, and that the collective influence of these media is in keeping with Glassie’s definition.

  Folk art and folk architecture are rooted in pride, principles of self-expression, and individuals’ search for self-empowerment. The buildings and places that host this expression of community pride and spirit include schools, housing, commercial establishments, places of worship, resorts, places devoted to recreation, and, in particular, food and drinking establishments. The overriding emotion conveyed by the wealth of American folk art and architecture illustrating these themes is a pride barely contained within the physical boundaries of a given artwork, sign, or building.3 This pride has ripple effects, as can be seen with urban folk architecture in New Orleans as it has evolved to express indigenous cultural traditions.

  In the American South, and in New Orleans in particular, the average home was generally more modest than its northern counterpart. New Orleans’s origins were in shipping, as the United States’ southernmost link with Latin and Central America and the Caribbean. Shipping ties with West Africa during the main decades of the slave trade, specifically Senegal and the Ivory Coast, played a significant role in the origin of Afro-American folk arts and crafts.4 Jazz was born from these diverse influences, and this fact is accepted around the world. In the case of architecture, the norm was small houses with kitchens built separately and to the rear of the main structure because of the warm, humid climate and the need for ventilation. This division gave rise to the shotgun house: a narrow one-story building with gabled roof, one room wide and one or more rooms deep, with circulation bisecting the rooms from front to back. This housing type first appeared in New Orleans in the early nineteenth century, and is rooted in Haitian and West African origins. This early appearance meant that New Orleans urban folk architecture had a seminal role in American roots architecture, just as New Orleans indigenous, or roots, musical traditions—namely, jazz, rhythm and blues, and, most recently, hip-hop—have had a seminal role in American roots music.

  Later, with the spread of railroads across the North American frontier, architectural styles, like music, could be broadly disseminated.5 The rise of international shipping lanes and American railroads coincided with the Victorian era in architecture and design (1840–1900).6 Not surprisingly, Victorian house designs and architectural details were widely disseminated. Industrialization, combined with new modes of transportation, meant that decorative architectural trim, paints, and tools could be sent inland via ship or rail freight from New Orleans to remote points across the continent. To this day, the bright hues, including yellow, red, tangerine, magenta, blue, maroon, violet, and mauve, that were extolled in New Orleans Victorian-era shotgun-house exteriors are traceable to the city’s Caribbean and West African roots. New Orleans was therefore both a receiving point and a distribution point for roots-influenced cultural invention.

  New Orleans’s eclectic culinary traditions similarly date from its inception as a port and trading center. These traditions remain alive today in the city’s kitchens, and this is why food remains at the heart of the city’s culture and its importance to the rest of America. The culinary tradition of borrowing from Latin and Caribbean immigrants extends to a desire for the interiors and exteriors of restaurants to express their influence. The exterior of Jacques-Imo’s Café on Oak Street, with its animated color palette, is a folk-inspired reinterpretation of a Victorian shotgun. In this case, the basic residential type is elevated, allowing a commercial storefront on the ground level. An artist named Rain Webb painted the pair of vehicles that are eternally parked in front of the restaurant, colored in festive hues to match those of the restaurant.

  The residence and studio of folk artist Dr. Bob, in the Bywater neighborhood on Chartres Street, is an interesting blend of a subset of these influences. Dr. Bob (Shaffer) resides in a vintage Airstream trailer on the site. He has decorated his trailer home with a mural of a street scene of Chartres, looking from his studio toward his Faubourg Marig ny neighborhood (Fig. 3.1). Dr. Bob included himself in the mural (at far right). An array of popular-culture artifacts, at first appearing randomly placed, creates the visual effect of being in a garden of plastic icons. The gate to his studio and workshop is made of an array of highly colorful hand-painted surfboards (Fig. 3.2). The main themes in his paintings and sculptures include colorful shotguns, his friends in the neighborhood, and scenes of nature, all rendered in his folk-inspired visual vocabulary.7 Dr. Bob’s spread and Jacques-Imo’s are two examples of the eclectic passions of a chef and an artist, both white, seeking to create (and perpetuate) a multicultural visual eclecticism through an assimilation of African and Caribbean influences.

  On the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, in the bedroom community of Abita Springs, the UCM Museum of folk art and architecture was begun in 1992. The UCM Museum seeks to express the diversity and multicultural history of New Orleans. The buildings and grounds express the idiosyncratic vision of its founder, builder, curator, artist, and administrator, John Preble. The collections are housed in three buildings. The main structure was an abandoned filling station. It now houses the gift shop and the main reception area (Fig. 3.3). This is connected to a gallery containing a highly eclectic collection of artifacts on roadside Americana, Louisiana folk culture, and popular culture. A series of miniature dioramas are housed in glass cases. These include “Lil Dub’s BBQ,” a New Orleans rhythm-and-blues juke joint circa 1940, a Mardi Gras parade, a jazz funeral, and a hotel in New Orleans’s infamous Storyville red-light district circa 1900. Thousands of glass and mirror fragments cover the House of Shards, which sits next to the workshop gallery and across from the Bottle House, whose walls are made entirely of soda and beer bottles set in mortar (Fig. 3.4). Near this is the “Wreck of the UFO,” which in fact is a “crashed” vintage Airstream trailer with a family of (mannequin) aliens onboard. The Web site contains many vintage postcards of roadside diners in New Orleans.8

  The work of a young black artist, Terrance Osborne, is rooted in his native New Orleans’s love of color and the poetic urban language of decay in the architecture of its oldest neighborhoods. His most well known works are of shotgun houses stacked on top of one another in random assemblages. In a large mural he was commissioned to paint on the exterior of New Orleans Riverside Hilton (2004) these themes of decay and collage were fused into a large, flamboyant composition (Fig. 3.5). In his words, “There is something comforting about the old houses in New Orleans. I need no ruler to straighten any shutters, gutters, porches or wooden siding. My brush glides along perfectly with the warped lines and edges… . Houses are like people to me. Each has its own space … its own constitution… . I like to think of my work as ripe fruit and vegetables … edible in appearance.”9 The Hilton mural enlivens what was beforehand a forbidding, austere, concrete wall facing Convention Center Boulevard. From left to right, the mural depicts St. Louis Cathedral, the Vieux Carré, Harrah’s Casino, the CBD and convention center (the scene of horrific footage transmitted globally in Katrina’s aftermath), and a neighborhood comprised of frame shotgun dwellings. It is ironic that this urban collage is devoid of people—not unlike the evacuated state of the c
ity in the aftermath of Katrina. In this sense, Osborne’s mural foreshadowed the catastrophe on the horizon. Unfortunately, the siting and scale of the collage depicted in the mural would turn out to be highly ironic: its subject matter suddenly appeared as a mirror of a city in profound upheaval, because it would preside ominously above the misery that unfolded nearby along Convention Center Boulevard in the early days of the Great Flood. Regardless, through the artist’s obvious passion for his hometown, this mural transformed a dull hotel-parking garage into a vibrant work of urban folk architecture. One wishes only that it were much larger in size, covering the entire wall.

  Shrines and Other Places of Worship

  People of all races and income levels in New Orleans are passionate about food, with Jacques-Imo’s being but one of many memorable places to eat in an informal, folk-inspired architectural setting. It is impossible to think of New Orleans without thinking of food. It is a way of life. The adage “eat to live” is turned on its head: “live to eat.” The entire city, in a sense, is a shrine to eating. From nationally known mainstream places such as Commander’s Palace, Antoine’s, Bacco, and The Upperline to little-known mom-and-pop places, the list is extensive. With regards to soul, funk, and hip-hop indigenous folk architecture, the most interesting eating and drinking establishments are generally in areas well off the trodden tourist paths. These informal places look and feel like natural extensions of the proprietor’s home. It is almost as if one were eating at the chef’s own family dinner table, engaged in lively debate on the performance of the New Orleans Saints after just having watched the game on his wide-screen TV. In various neighborhoods there were, preKatrina, dozens of such places, including Dunbar’s, in Uptown, and the late Austin Leslie’s Chez Helene (closed preKatrina), in the Upper Ninth Ward.