2021-2022 New Orleans’ nine most endangered sites

Location: Citywide

Threat: Loss of an Iconic Design

The renowned New Orleans single-story, single and double shotgun home may seem ubiquitous as an architectural style. However, true “shotguns” are becoming increasingly rare as they are purchased, gutted of their iconic plan, camel-backed and flipped. Besides drastically modifying the quintessential shotgun plan, McMansion-style additions alter the scale of our historic neighborhoods, while the conversion of double shotguns to single homes contributes to the depletion of much needed affordable housing stock. Similar to the disappearing dogtrot style, the shotgun plan is becoming lost as both interiors and exteriors are modified – no longer qualifying the home to be considered a true “shotgun”.

Location: Citywide

Threat: Diminished Predictability & Quality of Life

Blighted buildings. Overgrown vacant lots. Noise. Short-term-rentals. Restaurants that are actually bars. And more! Nothing frustrates New Orleanians more than lack of enforcement of our laws, rules and the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance. The city’s Safety and Permits office often issues approvals for permits based on nothing more than the assurances of applicants. The Department of Code Enforcement has been inconsistent in verifying the applicant’s actual use. The Administration fails to hold departments accountable. Inadequate city agency budgets lead to a shortages of inspectors. Citizens suffer when regulations, quality-of-life laws, city code and land-use zoning fail to create predictability. Without enforcement, none of the rules and laws can make any difference.

Location: Citywide

Threat: Theft, Vandalism, Non-Replacement

It is said that “God is in the details” – and in New Orleans we are losing those details at a rapid pace. Whether it is the iconic New Orleans’ ceramic tile street markers, the Sewerage and Water Board’s much loved and replicated water meter covers, the Spanish street wall plaques in the Vieux Carré, or the granite curbs that used to line our streets – these historic details are quickly vanishing. Through breakage, theft, vandalism and/or the city’s desire to save money, these seemingly inconsequential, individual losses actually erode the historic character of the city piece by piece.

River Road

Threat: Disagreement of Heirs & Developmental Pressures

One of the last remaining large French Colonial raised cottages now sits in desolation only 30 minutes outside of New Orleans. Built in the 1790’s, this home reveals exposed West Indian style bousillage construction, with original features such as cypress floors, mantles, marble tile on the first floor, and more. Declared a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, the home is threatened by encroaching industrial companies continually appropriating prime river-fronting land, housing developments capitalizing on acreage, complications and differing objectives of the heirs, and recent damage from Hurricane Ida. This once lively family home is in desperate need of stabilization and repair.

Location: Bayou St. John Neighborhood

Threat: Inappropriate Development

The quaint, historic Moss Street corridor and Bayou St. John neighborhood are being rapidly transformed. Inappropriate construction has led to historic homes being demolished; cottages being hoisted into the air and modified beyond recognition; inappropriate, bayou fronting double garages; and massive alterations and construction that are out-of-scale and character for the neighborhood and scenic bayou waterfront. Elements that made the area so attractive are being lost. Creating a full control historic district would help allay these inappropriate, intensive developments and aid in retaining the desirous Moss Street corridor and Bayou St. John neighborhood.

Location: 1001 Howard Avenue

Threat: Abandonment and Neglect

Described at its completion in 1965 as a “brilliant and magnificent edifice”, the Plaza Tower at the prime location of Loyola and Howard Avenues in downtown New Orleans has long suffered from a fall from economic importance and architectural grace. The Leonard Spangenberg, Jr. designed tower, once the tallest in Louisiana, is now empty and deteriorating, with building elements occasionally falling dangerously to the street. The “alphabet soup” of ownership, “revolving door” of management and the loss in 1996 of a state lease due to building problems, has left the tower without tenants for more than twenty years, standing as a blight on downtown and as an embarrassing eyesore for the city.

Location: 1644 N. Villere Street

Threat: Hurricane Damage and Neglect

This important jazz landmark in the Seventh Ward neighborhood suffered near catastrophic damage from the winds of Hurricane Ida. Structural failure included the complete collapse of the rear wall and near collapse of the two side walls and roof, with only the front façade remaining intact and upright.

Long before becoming a church, the hall was home to the Perseverance Benevolent Mutual Aid Association and hosted performances by many early jazz musicians whose music had a profound impact on American society and culture. With the loss locally of so many early jazz venues, it is critically important that all remaining sites be protected and preserved out of respect for that history and in honor thereof.

Location: 1406 Elysian Fields Avenue

Demolition by Neglect

Decades of residents of this formerly distinguished home and dependency on Elysian Fields Avenue were witnesses to history. The Creole center hall cottage on Elysian Fields Avenue in Faubourg St. Roch had a front row seat on the route of Smoky Mary and its one hundred year run carrying passengers and freight out to Milneburg on Lake Pontchartrain, as well as to the emergence of New Orleans Jazz as practiced and perfected by the neighborhood’s early musical legends including Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet and Paul Barbarin. Now the home sits vacant, threatened, deteriorating and neglected. With care and attention this home could once again reclaim its proper role as a witness to yet more history.

Location: 4636 Magazine Street

Threat: Demolition by Neglect

Designed by prominent architect Thomas Sully in 1885, this Landmark church building is believed to be the first and one of only two church commissions by Sully during his 22 years of work in New Orleans. Built in the “Stick Style”, a design that represented a stylistic antecedent to the Queen Anne style championed by Sully, the church building is dominated by a distinctive square tower and has been credited as the most architecturally significant frame church in the city. Long a fixture along Magazine Street and for years described as “the country church uptown”, the church building is now forlorn and neglected, a former neighborhood anchor now in decline on a busy, thriving commercial part of Magazine Street.