Exterior wall on side of building between Saint Ann and Dumaine collapses and spills into the street. Luckily, no pedestrians were underneath at the time. Deputy Sheriffs were a half block away and called fire and secured the street in minutes.
Lot with building completely gone. Someone stuck a public art installation that mocks the P3 ones around town soon after the collapse; this “R1 exhibit” is still up as of December 2014.
Writer Katy Reckdahl covers New Orleans with her usual tact and fair approach in this article from the Advocate. I wish there was more of the story covered here, but at least the idea of examining New Orleans’ “exceptionalism” has been raised along with comparing that assertion to its massive challenges. Certainly, the larger idea of American exceptionalism and its etymology should be examined as well. In other words, only reminding ones citizens about “positive” indicators-what for us is tied up entirely in our culture-seems to blind or restrict a more in-depth conversation about the systemic inequalities that also characterize life in New Orleans. Or as one astute online commenter said : let’s not keep falling for bread and circuses.
Allison Plyer, of the Data Center, who has crunched the city’s demographic numbers for nearly two decades, said the city is exceptional “only in terms of culture.” For the few indicators the Data Center keeps about culture, New Orleans is “well above the national average,” she said.
“We’re also well above the national average in incarceration,” Plyer said. “But we’re not different than other places in other measures of hardship, and those are glaring and need to be addressed.”
For all of New Orleans’ numerical similarities to places such as Cleveland, when Plyer looks up from her spreadsheets and PowerPoints, she sees a city that is special, she said. “And because it is special, I am interested in working to address issues of hardship and well-being here,” she said.
Tony Recasner, who heads Agenda for Children, said that because of the city’s small size and tight geography, the problems of the poor are often in plain view, just like the brass bands and parades. That proximity among people of all income levels contributes to high levels of volunteerism here, he thinks.
Great exhibit at the Historic New Orleans Collection’s Laura Simon Nelson Galleries of photographer Richard Sexton’s details of Caribbean life. It includes New Orleans, Colombia, Haiti, Ecuador and of course Cuba. The exhibit is designed well, with the New Orleans scenes hung next to their Caribbean counterpart, both photos sharing the exact same architectural or at least many composite details.
The exhibit reminds one that the Caribbean face of New Orleans is most likely another reason for its emotional distance from the rest of America. Those places have no great hold on the American imagination, as seen in the lack of the same architectural styles of Washington DC, or in Savannah or even San Antonio.
America turned its back after its imperialism was slowed by Bolivar, Castro and others and left little New Orleans (and Miami too) without any older sisters to sit with, remembering the past.
On viewing this exhibit, I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes from those dark days of 2005 post-levee break reconstruction, said by a well known Cuban architect in a piece in The Atlantic. Andrés Duany, a co-founder of the Congress for New Urbanism, and a persistent advocate for traditional small-town design, gets to the essence of New Orleans as a Caribbean city said then:
“When I originally thought of New Orleans, I was conditioned by the press to think of it as an extremely ill-governed city, full of ill-educated people, with a great deal of crime, a great deal of dirt, a great deal of poverty,” said Duany, who grew up in Cuba. “And when I arrived, I did indeed find it to be all those things. Then one day I was walking down the street and I had this kind of brain thing, and I thought I was in Cuba. Weird! And then I realized at that moment that New Orleans was not an American city, it was a Caribbean city. Once you recalibrate, it becomes the best-governed, cleanest, most efficient, and best-educated city in the Caribbean. New Orleans is actually the Geneva of the Caribbean.”
And for those that remember the old Tally Ho Restaurant that was here at the corner of Chartres and Conti, it is a treat to walk through the gallery and remember the ghosts of past grits and red beans had at that counter….
Wednesday: THNOC librarian & curator Pamela Arceneaux, sheds light on the history of prostitution with library presentation in Gentilly
Wednesday, May 21 • 6 p.m.
Norman Mayer Library
3001 Gentilly Boulevard
Admission is free.
Pamela Arceneaux, THNOC senior librarian/rare books curator, will present a lively history of prostitution in New Orleans, including references to the “correctional” girls and the casket girls, quadroon balls and the system of plaçage, red light areas prior to Storyville, prominent personalities, the Blue Books, jazz, and the demise of Storyville.
She will discuss the popular topic again on Wednesday, May 28, at 6 p.m. at the Algiers Regional Library, 3014 Holiday Drive.
(original post from 2013)
This is a nice little house in the 1000 block of Royal Street between Ursuline and St. Philip. The family that owned for the last 80 years sold it after using it as rental property for much of that time. The new owner is reportedly from New Orleans and is moving back to live in this house, once renovated.
Literally, the house has been taken down to its front and side outside walls and will be expanded over the next year or more. That back house has been empty forever and they will deal with it after the front house is done.
Stay tuned for more pictures over the next few months….
The front of the house as of 10-18-2013
looking into the house from the courtyard
The long abandoned house at the back of the property in the courtyard.
If this doesn’t beat all. FQ building owner showing his ignorance for his own family’s legacy and his building by saying he is selling one of the most historic restaurants in the city to a t-shirt shop owner in the Quarter who says it will soon be filled with fried chicken and more t-shirts. This building housed Madame Begue’s which was the most popular pre-Civil War era restaurant in New Orleans (and maybe North America) and was rejuvenated by This guy’s brother, the convivial Steven Latter as an “everybody knows your name” French Quarter place. Now that Steven Latter has passed away, they have barely waited for him to be in the ground before pulling this crap.
Not sure much can be done by regular citizens-this may be up to the money folks who can throw some dollars at this jerk to get him to sell and move the hell away.
Stay tuned.
UPDATE: SAVED by the citizens of our city with new menu and cookbook.
Save Tujague's – Please – The Editor's Room – March 2013 – New Orleans, LA.
French Quarter block by block 
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