Delirious New Orleans

by Stephen Verderber

  To favor the basest of economic priorities in the rebuilding of a city as important as New Orleans is to deny New Orleanians their rich and unique cultural legacy. No public relations campaign alone could rebuild New Orleans’s shattered image in the eyes of the nation and world. However, this was precisely what was being attempted.61 By contrast, rebuilding needed to occur transparently and democratically. As in a war, individual freedoms had been serially lost, and wholesale acts of aggression had been perpetrated against a victimless built environment, a built environment that could not stand up to defend itself.62 Three years after Katrina, invading forces—whether they took the form of the Roman Catholic Church, a big-box developer, an arrogant private school, FEMA, HUD, an overzealous and ill-informed neighborhood organization, or even Google—appeared more than willing to impose a new order. As for the continued assault on modernism, death row included the Pan American Life Building, the State of Louisiana Supreme Court Building, and the State of Louisiana Office Building. Memorable buildings, places, and artifacts of a suddenly discardable past were now subject to degradation and destruction—and with each loss a part of New Orleans’s extraordinary heart and soul was gone forever (Fig. 6.18).

  6.18: Demolition of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church, 2007.

  Notes

  Part 2

  1. Malcolm Heard, French Quarter Manual (Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1997). Many excellent guidebooks have been written on the city’s mainstream architectural treasures. See Eve Zibart, The Unofficial Guide to New Orleans, 4th ed. (New York: Wiley, 2003). Samantha Cook’s Rough Guide to New Orleans, 2nd ed. (New York: Rough Guides, 2001), focuses on the city’s indigenous cultural amenities and mentions many architectural landmarks. I fondly recall an informal conversation from more than twenty years ago. It occurred only a few weeks after I had moved to New Orleans, although it remains as vivid as if it had taken place yesterday. It was with Eugene Cizek, a colleague I admire greatly for his vast knowledge of the city. I listened to him describe at some length a New Orleans neighborhood and its patterns of growth in the late ’20s and early ’30s. It was not until near the end of his detailed narrative that I realized he was referring to the 1820s and 1830s, not the 1920s and 1930s. Having been born and raised in a city incorporated at the time he was referring to (Chicago, 1833), I was taken aback. I was an ingénue, an uninitiated archi-cidental tourist about to embark on a strange voyage, becoming immersed in a place with ancient roots by American standards. Without question, there was much to learn. Fortunately, this journey was greatly aided by the many insightful books on New Orleans architecture written by the late Samuel Wilson and others. It remains among the most written-about places in the United States. Also without question, the majority of written work on the architecture of the city has centered on the Vieux Carré.

  2. Pierce Lewis, New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 2003). Also see Craig Colten, An Unnatural Metropolis: Wrestling New Orleans from Nature (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2004); Richard Campanella and Marina Campanella, New Orleans Then and Now (New Orleans: Pelican Press, 1999); and Michael Brown, Streetwise New Orleans (Sarasota, Fla.: Streetwise Maps, 1997).

  3. Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (New York: Harvest Books, 1968).

  4. Richard O. Baumbach, The Second Battle of New Orleans: A History of the Vieux Carré Riverfront Expressway Controversy (Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1980).

  5. Professor Cizek has become well known for his forays into the field with his architecture and preservation students at Tulane University. In 1998 he initiated a master of science degree program in historic preservation. He has received many national awards for his work, often in collaboration with Lloyd Sensat.

  6. Samuel Wilson, Patricia Brady, and Lynn D. Adams, Queen of the South: New Orleans in the Age of Thomas K. Wharton, 1853–1862 (New Orleans: Historic New Orleans Collection and the New York Public Library, 1999). The book contains Wharton’s firsthand account of New Orleans’s golden era, a time when fortunes were made and multiplied, the population doubled and redoubled, mansions and grand hotels were built, yellow fever raged, and armed men took to the streets during elections. The era ended abruptly with the outbreak of the Civil War and the capture of the city by the Union Army.

  7. Webster’s Universal College Dictionary (New York: Goldmercy Books, 2001), 726.

  8. Chester H. Liebs, Main Street to Miracle Mile: American Roadside Architecture (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985). Interest in this quirky, idiosyncratic mode of architectural expression dates from a century earlier. See “Colossal Elephant of Coney Island,” Scientific American, July 11, 1885, 21–27; and “World’s Queerest Eating Places,” Science and Invention, April 1931, 12–16.

  9. Toon Michiels, American Neon Signs by Day and Night (New York: Idea Books, 1982). Also see Robert Swinnich, Contemporary Beer Neon Signs (Gas City, Ind.: L-W Books, 1994); John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle, Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1999); Len Davidson, Vintage Neon (Atglen, Penn.: Schiffer, 1998); and Colin Davies, “Lessons at the Roadside,” Architectural Research Quarterly 8, no. 1 (2004): 27–37.

  On motels, see John A. Jakle, Keith A. Sculle, and Jefferson Rogers, The Motel in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1996).

  On gas stations, see John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle, The Gas Station in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1994). Also see Jakle, “The American Gasoline Station, 1920 to 1970,” Journal of American Culture 1, no. 3 (1978): 520–542; John Margolies, Pump and Circumstance (Boston: Bullfinch, 1993); and Margolies’s book of postcards, Signs of the Times (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993).

  On travel lodges and resorts, see John Baeder, Gas, Food, and Lodging (New York: Abbeville Press, 1982). Also see Keith A. Sculle, “Oral History: A Key to Writing the History of American Roadside Architecture,” Journal of American Culture 13, no. 3 (1990): 79–88; and Stephen Sears, The Automobile in America (New York: American Heritage, 1977).

  On bizarre signs, see Jack Barth, Doug Kirby, Ken Smith, and Mike Wilkins, Roadside America (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1986). Also see Philip Langdon, Red Roofs, Golden Arches: The Architecture of American Chain Restaurants (New York: Knopf, 1986); and John Margolies, Fun Along the Road (Boston: Bullfinch, 1998).

  On diners, see Richard J. S. Gutman, American Diner: Then and Now (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2000). Also see Robert O. Williams, Hometown Diners (New York: Abrams, 1999); Michael K. Witzel, The American Diner (St. Paul, Minn.: Motorbooks International, 1999); and Randy Garbin, Diners of New England (New York: Stockpile Books, 2005).

  On drive-ins and movie palaces, see Michael Putnam, Silent Screens: The Decline and Transformation of the American Movie Theater (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2000). Also see Jenna Jones, The Southern Movie Palace (Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 2003); Michael D. Kinerk and Dennis Wilhelm, Popcorn Palaces: The Art Deco Movie Theatre Paintings of Davis Cone (New York: Abrams, 2001); Ross Melnick and Andrea Fuchs, Cinema Treasures: A New Look at Classic Movie Theaters (St. Paul, Minn.: Motorbooks International, 2004); Maggie Valentine, The Show Starts on the Sidewalk: An Architectural History of the Movie Theatre, Starring S. Charles Lee (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1996); and Don Sanders and Susan Sanders, The American Drive-in Movie Theatre (St. Paul, Minn.: Motorbooks International, 1997).

  10. Debra Jane, Roadside Architecture, http://www.agilitynut.com (accessed December 14, 2005).

  11. John A. Jakle and David Wilson, Derelict Landscapes: The Wasting of America’s Built Environment (Savage, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992). Also see Jakle, The Visual Elements of Landscape (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1987).

  12. Jim Heimann, California Crazy and Beyond: Roadside Vernacular Architecture (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001). Also see Sally Wright Cobb and Mark Willems, The Brown Derby Restaurant (New
York: Rizzoli, 1996); David Gebhard, Robert Stacy-Judd (Santa Barbara: Capra, 1993); David Gebhard and Harriette Von Bretton, L.A. in the Thirties (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1975); Robert Oberhand, The Chili Bowls of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, 1977); Charles Jencks, Bizarre Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1979); Steve Harvey, “Eating Away at Oddball Architecture,” Los Angeles Times, July 20, 1985; Stacy Enders and Robert Cushman, Hollywood at Your Feet: The Story of the World Famous Chinese Theatre (Los Angeles: Pomegranate, 1992); and Beth Dunlop, Building a Dream: The Art of Disney Architecture (New York: Abrams, 1996).

  13. Paul Hirshhorn and Steven Izenour, White Towers (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1979).

  14. “About the SCA,” http://www.sca-roadside.org (accessed December 7, 2005). Established in 1977, the SCA is the oldest national organization devoted to the buildings, artifacts, structures, signs, and symbols of the twentieth-century commercial landscape. The SCA offers publications, conferences, and tours to help preserve, document, and celebrate the structures and architecture of the twentieth century: diners, highways, gas stations, drive-in theatres, bus stations, tourist centers, neon signs, and related places and artifacts. Membership includes four annual newsletters, two issues of the journal published by the SCA, and tour information. Also see “Great American Roadside,” Fortune, September 1934, 35–43; J. D. Reed, “Tacky Nostalgia? No, These Are Landmarks,” Time, December 11, 1989, 41–43; Philip S. Gutis, “Roadside Relics of Early Auto Days Are Being Saved,” New York Times, September 3, 1987; Daniel P. Gregory, “Billboard Buildings,” Sunset, November 1992, 21–24; and David Blanke, “Signs in America’s Auto Age: Signatures of Landscape and Place,” Journal of Popular Culture 38, no. 5 (2005): 957–958. In Japan, roadside commercial vernacular architecture has also been examined. See Yoshinobu Ashihara’s excellent bilingual book, The Aesthetics of Tokyo: Chaos and Order (Tokyo: Ichigaya, 1998).

  15. “About the National Trust,” http://www.nationaltrust.org (accessed December 7, 2005). Founded in 1949, the National Trust for Historic Preservation is a private nonprofit membership organization dedicated to saving historic places and revitalizing America’s communities. Staff at the Washington, D.C., headquarters, six regional offices, and twenty-six historic sites work with the trust’s 270,000 members and thousands of preservation organizations in all fifty states. The organization’s mission is to provide leadership, education, advocacy, and financial resources.

  16. In 2003 this structure was adapted to a Whole Foods grocery store, with a considerable amount of architectural panache, despite major opposition from neighbors.

  17. Wilson, Brady, and Adams, Queen of the South, 114.

  18. Joan E. Fisher, Automobile and Culture (New York: Abrams, 1984).

  19. George Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1988).

  20. Richard Longstreth, City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920–1950 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997). Also see Longstreth, The Drive-in, the Supermarket, and the Transformation of Commercial Space in Los Angeles, 1914–1941 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999); and Karal Ann Marling, The Colossus of Roads: Myth and Symbol along the American Highway (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1984).

  21. Recently, the medical and public health communities have publicly adopted antisprawl positions on the grounds that long commutes and sedentary suburban lifestyles contribute to excessive rates of heart disease and obesity among Americans in nearly every age group. See special issues of the American Journal of Public Health (September 2003) and the American Journal of Health Promotion (September 2003).

  22. Philip Collier, with J. Richard Gruber, Jim Rapier, and Mary Beth Romig, Missing New Orleans (New Orleans: Ogden Museum of Southern Art / University of New Orleans, 2006).

  23. Baumbach, Second Battle of New Orleans, 87–104.

  24. Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972). Six years later, Charles Jencks published his seminal The Language of Post Modern Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1978). These author-architects were the first to feature examples of American roadside commercial vernacular in their books. Jencks included a photograph of the Tail o’ the Pup hotdog stand in Los Angeles.

  25. Ellen’s Kitchen, “King Cake 2001,” http://www.ellenskitchen.com (accessed June 21, 2006).

  26. Eric Ulken, “World’s Longest King Cake Takes a Lot of Baking,” http://www.nola.com/mardigras/food/?longestkingcake.html (accessed January 6, 2008).

  27. Collier et al., Missing New Orleans, 168.

  28. Blake Pontchartrain, Gambit Weekly, “New Orleans Know-it-All,” http://www.nola.com (accessed June 20, 2006). Gambit Weekly has now moved to bestofneworleans.com, and Pontchartrain’s column can be found at http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/current/blake.php.

  29. Andrew Hurley, Diners, Bowling Alleys, and Trailer Parks: Chasing the American Dream in the Postwar Consumer Culture (New York: Basic Books, 2001).

  30. Michael Tisserand, “Mid City Lanes,” Bowler’s Journal, November 1992, 100–102.

  31. “A History of Frostop,” http://www.frostop.com (accessed December 10, 2005).

  32. Alan Hess, Googie Redux: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004). Hess’s earlier book, Viva Las Vegas (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993), paid homage to the vintage architecture and signage of the casino strip.

  33. Rally’s, “Company History,” http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company/histories (accessed June 20, 2006).

  34. AFC Enterprises, Inc., “Popeye’s: Our History,” http://www.popeyesgulfcoast.com (accessed June 20, 2006).

  35. Ground Pat’i Corp., “History of Ground Pat’i International, Inc.,” http://www.ground-pati.com (accessed June 20, 2006).

  36. Smoothie King, “The Smoothie King History,” http://www.smoothieking.com (accessed June 18, 2006).

  37. Webster’s Universal College Dictionary, 494.

  Part 3

  1. Henry Glassie, Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1969). Also see Glassie, The Spirit of Folk Art, 2nd ed. (New York: Abrams, 1995); and Glassie, Vernacular Architecture (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2000).

  2. Terry G. Jordan and Matti Kaups, “Folk Architecture in Cultural and Economic Context.” Geographical Review 77 (1987): 52–75.

  3. Stacy C. Hollander, “A Place for US: Vernacular Architecture in American Folk Art,” Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/5aa/5aa74.htm (accessed January 7, 2008).

  4. William Ferris, ed., Afro-American Folk Arts and Crafts (Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1983). The discussion centers on quilt making, instrument making, and folk architecture.

  5. By this time, being situated along a rail line became as vital to a community’s cultural development, including its folk-architecture traditions, as being situated along a major waterway had been only a few years before.

  6. Dell Upton and John Vlach, eds., Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1986).

  7. Dr. Bob, “About Bob,” http://www.drbobart.net (accessed January 7, 2008).

  8. UCM Museum, http://www.ucm@ucmmuseum.com (accessed January 7, 2008). The online tour of the museum is an excellent introduction to founder Preble’s offbeat vision of a folk-architecture dystopia.

  9. Terrance Osborne, http://www.galleryosborne.com/catalog/statements.php?menu=3 (accessed January 7, 2008).

  10. Common Ground, “Mission and History of the Common Ground Collective,” http://www.commongroundrelief.org/mission_and_vision (assessed January 7, 2008).

  11. Hansen’s, on Tchoupitoulas Street near the riverfront, is among the most famous in the city, because in 1939, according to local folklore, Ernest and Mary Hansen invented an ice-shaving machine that replaced the
old method. There is some dispute, however, whether the Hansens or George J. Ortolano was the actual inventor. This is where myth and fact become blurred, as often happens in New Orleans folklore.

  12. Ortolano continued to modify his early wooden machines. Incorporating knowledge gained through his shipyard experience, he developed new models built of galvanized metal and, later, stainless steel, and marketed them to enterprising entrepreneurs throughout New Orleans and beyond.

  13. SnoWizard, “History,” http://www.snowizard.com/history (accessed January 7, 2008).

  14. No Limit began its ascent to fame with Master P’s The Ghetto Is Trying to Kill Me! (1994) and subsequent hits by Rappin-4-Tay (Don’t Fight the Feeling, 1994), Silkk the Shocker (Charge It 2 Da Game, 1998), and C-Murder (Life or Death, 1998). Corey Miller, aka C-Murder, was arrested and charged with killing sixteen-year-old Steve Thomas with a single gunshot to the chest during a dispute at a club in Harvey, Louisiana. In 2003 he was found guilty of second-degree murder, which carried a mandatory life sentence. Despite incarceration, he managed to release an entire album (The Truest Shit I Ever Said, 2004) and a music video, without the knowledge of prison authorities.

  15. This label was cofounded by brothers Ronald “Suga Slim” Williams and Brian “Baby” Williams in 1991. By the end of the 1990s, it was the preeminent label in southern rap. Its biggest stars were the members of the Hot Boys: Terius Gray (aka Juvenile), Lil’ Wayne, The B.G., and Turk. Juvenile and many other fellow rappers were born and raised in the Magnolia housing project in Uptown.

  16. “B.G. Explodes Back on the Hip Hop Scene,” http://www.rapnews.net/0-202-260722-00.html (accessed January 7, 2008).

  17. “Gangsta Rap,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangsta_rap (accessed January 7, 2008).