Delirious New Orleans

by Stephen Verderber

  A Typology of Interventions

  The FEMA trailerization of New Orleans was a sight to behold: banal, shiny white shoeboxes sprang up on neighborhood streets across the city, and large aggregations appeared on parks, football fields, playgrounds, and industrial sites, attached umbilically to a vast assortment of commercial vernacular roadside establishments along the roadways. Five broad types of installations occurred, characterized by density, site planning, and infrastructural support amenities. This typology is as follows:

  5.4: FEMA residential village, Central City, 2006.

  1. RESIDENTIAL VILLAGES

  The residential village, together with its one-off autonomous installations (see below), was the most pervasive of all intervention types in the New Orleans area in the first year after Katrina. The village aggregations of temporary living units typically ranged from four or five units on a single site to as many as two hundred; the numerous examples erected throughout New Orleans represented many variations in scope within the basic theme. They were, without exception, configured in rows, forming, whenever possible, a matrix in plan. The number of units in a row might be as few as two or three and the number of rows as few as two. The smallest aggregations, two rows of three units, for example, were set up in parks, in vacant lots, and as infill units installed beside existing permanent houses. Residential villages, in infill settings, often housed the relatives of people who had returned to repair and reoccupy nearby houses on the same lot, block, or street.

  In the case of larger villages, open lots on school sites, athletic fields, and abandoned fields were deployed. The largest residential village was erected in City Park (680 units) and on the campus of Southern University in New Orleans (400 units). Smaller villages were erected also. A sixty-unit village was erected on South Claiborne Avenue and Jackson, near the downtown area (Figs. 5.4 and 5.5). The Carver Playground residential village across from the Mississippi River levee Uptown housed twenty units on the site.

  2. CORPORATE VILLAGES

  The scale of the devastation required that the private sector in New Orleans adopt a first-responder stance as a provider of emergency housing. In the first weeks after the hurricane, a number of corporations with operations in the New Orleans metropolitan area made a compelling case to their superiors at the national corporate level to initiate the process of securing temporary housing for their employees. FEMA supported this movement for a number of reasons, including the fact that the agency quickly learned that relatively few large open parcels of land were available in the area for emergency housing. FEMA reasoned that the development of corporate villages would reduce the burden on the federal agency as the first-line housing responder.

  5.5: Residential village, axonometric view.

  5.6: FEMA-USDA residential village, City Park, 2006.

  Early corporate villages were installed at the Exxon refinery in Chalmette (200 units) and at the Coke Bottling Plant in suburban Harahan (75 units). Soon, FEMA corporate villages appeared beside factories, warehouses, and office buildings across the metro area. A particularly interesting installation was at the Southern Regional Research Center of the Agricultural Research Service (part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA). Forty-five units were installed for USDA employees and their families in a park-like setting on the edge of the mammoth City Park (Figs. 5.6 and 5.7). Children here, unlike those at the urban encampments, could play on the grounds and be in contact with nature, nor was the village visually sequestered from its surroundings. As with the aforementioned residential villages, corporate villages ranged in size from a few units to the hundreds, on one or more contiguous parcels near a mother ship (a plant, an office building, a research lab, etc.). Top management and their families in many cases lived in downtown hotels, whereas rank-and-file workers and their families typically occupied FEMA trailers.

  3. COMMERCIAL ENCLAVES

  Large corporations were not alone in seeking temporary housing for the hundreds of people they employed before Katrina. Small-business owners and local franchise outlets affiliated with national chains were equally determined to provide housing for workers and their families. Some installations were linear in their siting, others more concentric. Very few of these enclaves were walled off from the street or surrounding buildings. As a result, they appeared far more informal, even randomly placed in some instances, than their large-scale village counterparts.

  Cary’s Furniture & Appliances, located on South Broad Street in Mid City, took on six feet of water in Katrina. This enclave personified the informal appearance of small-scale commercial installations across the city. Three units were installed for use by family members and employees, tethered behind the mother ship. They mediated the space between the commercial side of the block and the adjoining residential side street insofar as their siting corresponded to the narrow shotgun houses immediately next door. The exterior space between these units was cleverly deresidualized by the occupants. An outdoor laundry “room” and activity area was created between two of the units on the side cloaked with shade provided by a large tree (Figs. 5.8, 5.9, and 5.10).

  Turner’s Tire Repair, on Felicity Street in Uptown, and a neighboring business had four units installed on their adjoining open space in the midsection of the block. The units were placed along the outer edges of the site, thereby creating a courtyard in the center. They were screened from the street with a wood fence built by FEMA. Largely because of the damage sustained from the hurricane, the ramshackle appearance of Turner’s starkly contrasts with the outward image of uniformity conveyed by the adjoining trailer enclave (not pictured).

  5.7: Residential village, axonometric view.

  5.8: FEMAtrailers in a commercial enclave, Mid City, 2005.

  5.9: Commercial enclave, Mid City, 2005.

  5.10: Commercial enclave, axonometric view.

  5.11: Platinum Auto and Beauty Salon, Broadmoor, 2005.

  5.12: Church’s Chicken, St. Claude Avenue, 2005.

  Platinum Auto Detailing and Beauty Salon, on Washington and South Galvez, in the Broadmoor section, epitomized the type of FEMA enclave associated with an adjacent momand-pop business. Here, four units were arrayed as two rows of two units in a parking lot. In contrast to Turner’s, however, they were not walled off from view. The policy of FEMA in this regard was very inconsistent: in some situations it insisted on some sort of screen, while in other situations this did not appear to be a priority. This enclave was adroitly installed between a single-family residence and the family business (Fig. 5.11).

  In post-Katrina New Orleans, mom-and-pop businesses and local franchise outlets of national chains were in equally desperate straits in their quest for emergency housing for their employees. Church’s Fried Chicken, on St. Claude in the Seventh Ward, installed two units on its site. This outlet is located on the main route to the Lower Ninth Ward and was the first franchise to reopen in this part of the city. The bright colors of the mother ship stood in sharp contrast to the stark imagery conveyed by the pair of FEMA trailers tethered to its backside (Fig. 5.12). Mother’s restaurant is a landmark, located on the corner of Poydras and Camp in the heart of the tourist zone in the central business district. A small enclave of ten units was installed on the parking lot behind the restaurant. These housed cooks, waitresses, managers, and their families. Mother’s worker village was dwarfed by neighboring buildings (Figs. 5.13 and 5.14).

  The largest examples of the three types of villages described above were in most cases served by on-site support facilities that provided central security, laundry services, sidewalks, lights erected on telephone poles, and access drives constructed of crushed aggregate stone. Some even provided day care on site for young children. These services were housed in separate trailers on the site. Second, a key feature of these places was that access to the site was controlled: one had to present photo identification to gain access. This policy was enforced around the clock, 24/7. During the site-prep stage of construction, chain-link fences were erected
around the site perimeter. The result was unfortunate for both habitability amenity and visual aesthetics: from outward appearances, it was difficult to tell whether the overriding intention was to keep the dislocated residents in or unwanted intruders out. These intrusive wire-mesh barriers gave the village a cold, cage-like, walled-off, even hostile appearance.

  4. AUTONOMOUS INSTALLATIONS

  These places stand in sharp contrast to the FEMA villages built across the metro area, defining the opposite end of the range. This type of installation is one-off, autonomous. It is the individual unit installed on the site of a small business. Weegee’s Tavern on Jefferson Highway in Jefferson Parish was built in the 1930s. Jefferson Highway and Airline Highway served as the two major East-West thoroughfares linking Baton Rouge and New Orleans before the construction of Interstate 10 in the 1970s. A roadside fixture for generations, it has achieved the status of a classic roadside attraction—despite the intrusion of a generic McDonald’s that was built next door in the 1980s—with its rounded art deco windows on the front façade and its neon signs. The trailer at Weegee’s blends rather seamlessly into the larger commercial context in appearance and composition; it and the mother ship share similar colors, massing, setbacks, site orientation, and silhouettes (Figs. 5.15 and 5.16).

  5.13: Mother’s Group Catering, Poydras Street, 2006.

  5.14: Employees’ trailer enclave at Mother’s, 2006.

  5.15: Autonomous trailer installation at Weegee’s Tavern, Jefferson Parish, 2006.

  The operator of Charley’s Sweet Shop, on Elysian Fields near the Vieux Carré, had his unit installed on the site of the sno-ball stand. The housing unit and the stand appear engaged in a dialogue, sharing a similar outward orientation toward the street (Fig. 5.17). A vintage filling station at the corner of Washington and South Galvez, in Broadmoor, was built in the 1920s. The gas station was converted in the 1970s to a car wash and an auto-detailing business. The housing unit appears to have been barely inserted beneath the overhead canopy, between the now-defunct gas pumps and the front door of the former gas station. This tight fit was a testament to the proprietor’s determination to get back to the city as soon as possible (Fig. 5.18). The proprietor of the used-car lot on the corner of St. Claude and Elysian Fields, near the Vieux Carré, proudly displayed his FEMA trailer. In this case the trailer doubled as a business office and a private residence. Whether by design or through mere serendipity, the trailer and the residence to its rear appear to be coordinated, as if both formed a single composition, one framing the other. In addition, both express horizontal siding, rectangular windows, and sloping rooflines converging into one as they cascade to the ground (Fig. 5.19).

  5.16: Weegee’s Tavern, axonometric view.

  5.17: Charley’s Sweet Shop, Canal Street, 2006.

  5. UNTETHERED NOMADS

  These are the ad hoc entrepreneurs—squatters who relocate from site to site, sometimes during the course of a single day or week. There are two types of untethered nomads: sanctioned and unsanctioned. Sanctioned nomads apply for their municipal operating permits and make an effort to “do the right thing.” But the others are outlaw enterprises, at least as judged by conventional standards in “normal” times, and may move frequently in order to keep one step ahead of the law. Perhaps the owner of a roadside tamale stand did not apply for a commercial retail food license, or maybe the business is outlawed by neighborhood zoning laws. Boldness and rapidity are the nomads’ trademarks. They set up shop along well-traveled streets and parish highways in order to be clearly seen by passing motorists. Some of these entrepreneurs are more territorial than others, even going so far as to set up their own picnic tables, strings of lights, and neon signs near the roadway as a means to attract attention. The unsanctioned nomad might set up shop on the front lawn of a single-family house, as was the case along Paris Road in Chalmette. These are usually mom-and-pop operations, so much so that dining at them feels like enjoying a picnic at a friend’s house (Figs. 5.20 and 5.21). After speaking with a number of employees and owners of these places, I realized that they were no less passionate than their sanctioned counterparts in their determination, commitment, and even sense of mission to create a place, an oasis, for their customers amid the devastation. It is about the noblest qualities of placemaking, qualities expressed in European cultures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the aftermath of war.

  5.18: Auto-detailing shop, Broadmoor, 2006.

  5.19: Used Cars, St. Claude Avenue, 2006.

  In the weeks after the receding of Katrina’s toxic floodwaters, at a time when the community was virtually depopulated, a number of ad hoc roadside food establishments quickly popped up. The most interesting of these places quickly began dispensing hamburgers, catfish po-boys, beer, and other much-craved local food for first responders and a vast array of disaster-relief workers. Many such places were set up weeks before the city’s health department could regroup and restart its “normal” inspection enforcement protocols. One example, the Hot Food roadside stand set up ad hoc in the parking lot of a Lowe’s home-improvement store, on Elysian Fields Avenue near the I-610 interchange, thrived in Gentilly. Food was prepared and dispensed from a modified mobile home, which was festooned with Christmas lights and sported a motley assortment of cookers, signs, tables, and chairs in front. It was impossible to miss. It was sited at the entrance to the parking lot, adjacent to the roadside (Fig. 5.22).

  Other examples, such as the New Orleans Sno-Balls trailer, were poised to be deployable anywhere at short notice. The location may change five times in a single week. The sno-ball stand, as discussed in Part 2, is deeply woven into the fabric of daily life in New Orleans. The typical sno-ball stand, while extremely basic in its scale and imagery, is deeply rooted in its neighborhood. It is a gathering place for people of all ages throughout the long humid New Orleans summer. This tradition persisted in the post-Katrina roadside milieu, where brightly colored stands, both fixed-site and portable, were a comforting sight to those who had returned to reclaim their homes and neighborhoods. Whereas preKatrina one frequented the same sno-ball stand for years, as one would a favorite corner bar, now such allegiances were cast aside. What mattered most was that the institution itself had persevered. Territorial rights had been cast aside. In this example, it is almost as if the house trailer and the sno-ball trailer are competing for a hitching spot on the first vehicle to approach (Fig. 5.23).

  5.20: Untethered roadside nomad, Paris Road, Chalmette, 2006.

  5.21: Untethered nomad, axonometric view.

  5.22: “Hot Food” nomad, Elysian Fields Avenue, 2005 (post-Katrina).

  The nomadic Smoothie King stand set up in St. Bernard Parish was a most welcome sight to returning residents in the aftermath of Katrina. This rapidly deployable roadside version of the fixed-site franchise restaurants was created in (and for) better times and was intended to travel to sporting events, food festivals, school demonstrations, and other civic events (Fig. 5.24). The bright fruit-like colors and the trademark logo depicted on the Styrofoam Smoothie King to-go cup emblazoned across the front of the trailer functioned as the only signage necessary to attract business along this busy roadway. As mentioned in Part 2, this chain of more than 350 fixed-site franchises across the United States was founded in New Orleans. The first outlet opened in the New Orleans central business district in 1989.

  Some occupants chose, either from indifference, necessity, choice, or some combination thereof, to defy the law when it came to self-expression: FEMA banned trailer inhabitants from making any external physical alterations to the trailer unit. This ban on personalization prohibited residents from painting, attaching objects to the exterior (except for ramps and stairs), or modifying the trailer structurally or spatially in any significant way. Despite such bureaucratic authoritarianism, the decorated FEMA box was a renegade occurrence to be found randomly at autonomous fixed-site installations as well as among other untethered nomads. In the former category, for instance, numerous
occupants in residential areas decorated their trailers at Christmas and at Mardi Gras with brightly colored lights and banners festooning rooflines, windows, and side panels.25 In roadside commercial contexts, others applied neon signs and related advertisements to the banal, characterless trailers. An altered trailer thus resembled what Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown described in the early 1970s as a classic “decorated shed.”26

  5.23: Sno-balls nomad, Chalmette, 2006.

  5.24: Smoothie King nomad, Chalmette, 2006.

  Memory, Place, and Authenticity

  These autonomous, nomadic shelters symbolized, above all else, the heroic intentions of their occupants to push on. This demonstration of determination, grit, and sheer will to return were at the core of the movement to repopulate New Orleans. For this reason, these early pioneers often acquired a folk-heroic stature in their communities. Roadside nomads, in their defiant, inimitable style, led the way in resuscitating a delirious city when it was down. The sight of these places along the otherwise bleak, lifeless roadside landscape gave people hope. The sense of gratitude was palpable, genuine, and heartfelt. For these reasons, the unheralded everyday roadside-commercial nomads deserved much praise.

  The power of place in the everyday environment is at the core of human existence. Through the millennia, societies have existed and evolved in the pursuit of common goals in everyday life. When neighbors and relatives are torn apart, the sense of shared purpose or collective mission in a community is lost, since deeply rooted values and traditions fracture, or worse, and become threatened with extinction. The shared values and traditions of a community constitute the core of its basic reason for existence. When the social fabric is torn, the social ecologies formed by interpersonal relationships become radically transfigured, as occurred in the aftermath of Katrina, when the social capital diligently accrued and nurtured over many generations disappeared overnight (Fig. 5.25). Katrina profoundly tested the fragility (and durability) of the construct of place. This predilection to reconnect in order to reestablish place was a part of a deep-seated effort to mitigate the opposing condition—placelessness—that characterized the earliest days after the catastrophe. One story is recounted below.