Rebuilding Historical New Orleans
Demonstration projects protect unique shotgun houses in the Holy Cross Neighbourhood.
The World Monuments Fund and Preservation Trades Network show that historic buildings in New Orleans were better at withstanding flood conditions than modern structures.
New Orleans has the largest collection of historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in all of the United States; after Hurricane Katrina, 80% of it was under water. Initiatives Manager for the World Monuments Fund, Morris Hylton III, told me that, "New Orleans is all about neighborhoods, so we felt we needed to adopt an entire neighborhood, not just singular monuments."
Holy Cross District
The Holy Cross Neighborhood Association had approached WMF and had already been very active in the community pre-Katrina. The Holy Cross District is in the Ninth Ward adjacent to the Lower Ninth Ward, the site of the industrial levee breach. When the levee broke, six blocks were instantly flattened and pushed through the area. The majority of the buildings in the Lower Ninth Ward have been tagged for demolition by FEMA and there is a lot of public debate and controversy whether residents should rebuild.
But lost in this debate is Holy Cross, which is the only other neighborhood East of the industrial canal. It is right along the Mississippi river and just two communities over from the French Quarter. Its future is threatened because it shared a lot of amenities with the Lower Ninth Ward, such as churches, pools and community centres. Even though it is a part of New Orleans, the separation from the rest of the city by the canal acts not only as a physical barrier, but a psychological one.
The Holy Cross Neighborhood is the oldest and most intact of the historic districts. It is a largely African-American community of approximately 5,500 low- and moderate-income residents. There is 42% ownership and 58% rental of mostly 19th- and early 20th-century shotgun houses and vernacular wood cottages, typical to what one envisions when they think about New Orleans.
Shotgun House
The shotgun house is long and narrow, adhering to the narrow lots characteristic of New Orleans. The benefit to this shape is it catches drafts easily in the heat, and dries easier after rainfall. It does not have a hallway and each room opens onto the other. All the doors, from the front door to the back door and all of the interior doors, align. There are two theories about how the shotgun house got its name: One being, if a shotgun were fired through the front door the pellets would fly cleanly through the house out the back - assuming there were no innocent bystanders that got in the way.
The second theory is that it is a West African cottage that was first used in the Caribbean in San Dominique, which is the modern-day Dominican Republic and Haiti once controlled by the French. The slaves brought the design with them, and called it a "shogun", which means house of god. There are different varieties, such as the double shotgun (two of them attached) or a camelback (two story shotgun). The area was originally a swamp and all of the structures were built raised from the ground to resist flooding.
Restoring the Holy Cross Neighborhood
The Greater Zion Baptist Church was selected to be the first in the neighborhood and was completed at the end of June. Not only did the workshop deal with conditions common to many structures in Holy Cross, the recovery of the church has become a focal point for bringing residents back to their homes and community. The church remained mostly intact, except for the original wood floor, which was removed during a gutting campaign.
The workshop therefore focused on repairs to the floor framing and the installation of a new floor. Five homes are in the process of being selected for demonstration restoration projects that will culminate during the 10th annual International Preservation Trades Workshop scheduled for October 2006.
President of partnering organization, Preservation Trades Network, Lisa Sasser, explained that from her experience in New Orleans,"If you speak to people in the neighborhood, they wouldn't think of their neighborhood as a historic district. It is simply their neighborhood and their homes and the architectural heritage of the houses is part of what makes it their neighborhood and their homes." With the need to make homes inhabitable as quickly as possible, the homes in the Holy Cross Neighborhood cannot be treated as artifacts. Instead, the demonstration restoration projects aim to give residents useful techniques so that they are able to preserve the character they want to preserve.
