The Preservationists
The champions of New Orleans' forgotten places
Both when at home and while abroad, people tend to visit two types of places. The first are the old-fashioned, historic sites, which exhibit charm, individuality, and character. In the second category are the modern attractions, which instead offer convenience, ubiquity, and familiarity. New Orleans is that rarest of American cities in which people tend to seek out both in equal measure. Still, at heart most folks fall into one group or the other: those drawn to the quaint storefronts installed in nineteenth century houses along Magazine Street, or those who eschew them for the outlet shopping mall by the river; those who delight in riding original streetcars, or those who merely use them to get to Harrah’s Casino; those who admire the ironwork on the galleries overlooking Bourbon Street, or those whose eyes keenly search out the neon “Daiquiri” signs.
Sandra Stokes, Chair of Advocacy for the Louisiana Landmarks Society (LLS), falls squarely into the former category. “I have always found beauty along with a bit of excitement in historic architecture—in the rhythm yet individuality displayed in a row of shotgun houses, a weathered barn, or a magnificent home built with unsurpassed craftsmanship,” she said. “It's a tangible connection to the past, like wearing your grandmother's ring, or working at your grandfather's desk. There is a continuity, a sense of those who were here before, still present and touching our lives.”
Taking heart from instances like the community’s successful effort to stop an overhead expressway from being built straight through the French Quarter in the 1960s, Stokes holds out hope of converting people to her way of seeing. “I'd like to believe that everyone, in some way, appreciates historic architecture,” she said. “Some may have a deeper awareness of the connection to the past, of the beauty of the craftsmanship, the history embodied within, the uniqueness, the quaintness, or that it is the conglomeration of buildings in scale and context that create a tout ensemble which may touch their soul.” She noted that progress often replaces the extraordinary with the ordinary, abandoning the past rather than enlivening it.
Preservation became Stokes’s focus in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when she joined a wide spectrum of people concerned with historic preservation, social justice, civil rights, land use, cultural heritage, healthcare, and fiscal responsibility, all working together to prevent the architectural and cultural heritage of New Orleans from being destroyed. Faced with considerable pressure from the state government and other interests, they were able to prevent the demolition of Charity Hospital, a classic Art Deco building abandoned after Katrina.
Despite that victory, Stokes laments that they were unable to convince the city to re-establish the hospital within the building or to prevent the demolition of the adjacent neighborhood to make way for the new Veterans Administration and university medical centers.
As Executive Vice Chair of the Foundation for Historic Louisiana (now Preserve Louisiana), Stokes led a study to determine that the Charity Hospital building was structurally sound and could be retrofitted with a new state-of-the-art twenty-first century hospital inside. “You have to remember,” she explained, “There was basically no [low income] healthcare left in New Orleans [following Katrina]. We testified at the legislature, bringing in historic tax credits specialists from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the structural engineers, etc.”
Jenny Dyer, Preservation Administrator of LLS, also considers the result unfortunate: ”It is rarely discussed, but we lost a vibrant neighborhood that was finally coming back to life after Hurricane Katrina. [The loss of Charity] cost us valuable real estate, loss of neighborhood cohesion, and above all morale. Abandoning a viable site and grossly over-developing a new site for approximately one billion dollars was irresponsible and unnecessary.”
According to Stokes, historic preservation is not at odds with the purported goals of most development projects. ”There seems to be a notion that preservation and affordable housing are at odds, when in fact they can and should work hand-in-hand. Historic multifamily homes have been central to affordability and workforce housing for generations,” Stokes said. “The truth is, we can easily have both.”
“I'd like to believe that everyone, in some way, appreciates historic architecture. Some may have a deeper awareness of the connection to the past, of the beauty of the craftsmanship, the history embodied within, the uniqueness, the quaintness, or that it is the conglomeration of buildings in scale and context that create a tout ensemble which may touch their soul.” —Sandra Stokes
Stokes points to the substantial loss of workforce homes and longtime businesses in the Lower Mid-City neighborhood and around the city as a result of the new hospitals being built and other big development projects. She believes pursuing such developments at the expense of preservation has contributed to decline of the city’s tax base. “We bulldozed part of Tremé for Armstrong Park, taking all of those homes off the tax roll,” she recalled. “We destroyed a neighborhood for the Claiborne Avenue Expressway, we bulldozed twenty-seven blocks of homes and businesses, many rebuilt after Katrina with state and federal money, to build two suburban-style medical complexes that do not pay taxes.”
Historic preservation is a line of work that sees plenty of losses, but Stokes’ attitude remains sanguine. “There is progress along the way,” she said. ”If not all-out wins–issues that can be brought to light, moments that can be savored.”
Fifteen years into her work with the Landmarks Society—having served as Vice President of LLS beginning in 2013 and as President in 2016 and 2017—Stokes is occupied these days with the annual naming of New Orleans' Nine Most Endangered Sites (a list of distressed historic properties and civic features published annually by the society since 2005) and the LLS's Annual Awards for Excellence in Historic Preservation. She has named a significant number of sites—the Saenger Theater and the St. Roch Market among them—that have since made their way from the first list to the second. “That's success!” she declared.
[Read more about the Louisiana Landmarks 2020 Awards for Excellence in Historic Preservation, here.]
Making its second appearance on the list in 2020 (the first in 2014 as part of the district named for it), is the 1895 Holy Cross School building designed by architect James Freret. Once part of a development project that faced community opposition in part because it conflicted with zoning regulations, the building has fallen into further disrepair. The owner, Angela O'Byrne of Perez, said she has run out of money to maintain it.
“Often there are private owners and developers who manage important properties and our hands are tied in trying to enforce preservation and responsible use of sites,” explained Dyer, who organizes and markets the New Orleans Nine. “We started a second campaign to at least have the building stabilized. It was discovered that the roof was falling in and compromising the site. We sent out several calls to action and asked members and residents to write letters to both the owner and their councilmen and women. The response was overwhelming.”
Also manager of the Pitot House Museum, a Creole country home built in 1799, Dyer has had to contend with the additional challenges of the last few months, developing self-guided tours in response to COVID-19 and a “respectful interpretation in response to the need for diverse and inclusive historic representations.” She solicited guidance from other historic sites such as the Beauregard-Keyes House in the French Quarter, and the assistance of interns from Tulane University in interpreting tours with new and differing perspectives.
Dyer says she first became interested in history growing up in New Orleans, which has an abundance of it. “We were surrounded by historic cemeteries and we had one practically in our backyard,” she said, referring to what she calls the cemetery "crossroads” of New Orleans, where four different cemeteries—Cypress Grove, Greenwood, Odd Fellows Rest, and St. Patrick—sit on each corner of the intersection of Canal Street and City Park Avenue. “There is a longstanding joke in New Orleans about how only someone from New Orleans would get on a bus that says it’s going to the cemeteries.”
Dyer spent a lot of time in the graveyards, fascinated with the tombs, the inscriptions, and the possibilities of all of the history that resided there. “My parents cultivated that interest and brought me to all of the homes, cemeteries, sites, and museums throughout Louisiana and beyond.” After assisting in a research project to locate the burial sites of Louisiana Governors beginning with Claiborne, Dyer was inspired to earn a Master's in Public History and accepted the position of Director of Education at the Hermann-Grima+Gallier Historic Houses upon graduation. “While history has a place in academia, I wanted to develop knowledge and experience in how to share it with the greater public,” she said. ”And the rest is history, as they say!”
For Juliette Hotard, Restoration and Volunteer Coordinator with Save Our Cemeteries, the path to historic preservation also began in the cities of the dead. “I have always appreciated how historic buildings can make one feel connected to the past,” she said. “It wasn’t until college that I realized I could make preserving the historic architecture I treasured a career.” Hotard interned with Save Our Cemeteries while majoring in Historic Preservation in college, surveying more than three hundred tombs in Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 over a summer. “That was when I realized cemeteries were their own type of historic district, with different architectural styles and interesting inhabitants.”
They also present their own share of challenges to preservationists. “There have been occasions where I or another group have tried to restore a tomb, but were unable to because of property laws” recalled Hotard. “About two years ago there was a beautiful tomb in Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 that was on the brink of collapse due to a tree growing straight through the façade. I proposed building supports around the tomb to stabilize it until the city, or Save Our Cemeteries, was ready to take on the responsibility of a full restoration. We were denied because neither entity owned the tomb. Less than six months later, the tomb collapsed.”
[Read this: Preservation with Imagination—Historic architecture meets modern sustainability]
If anything, structures housing only the deceased are met with even less urgency from the general public than most historic sites when it comes to preserving them. “Because a tomb is not something you use every day, or even every year,” said Hotard. “It can be hard to convince tomb owners of the importance of restoring their historic tomb, especially when it is not the tomb they plan on being interred in.” Because restoring tombs historically requires more resources in time and expensive materials, it can be even more difficult to convince owners to invest in faithful preservation. The solution to this, it seems, is to tell the stories of the individuals buried in these cemeteries. “By giving tours, Save Our Cemeteries is able to highlight the people who helped make New Orleans the city it is today,” said Hotard.
Such an investment in the past, in beginnings, in roots, is a very necessary characteristic for preservationists. “Unfortunately, there are far more failures than successes as our region＊s built environment ages,” acknowledged Dyer. “As a student, my public history advisor and professor once said, ‘You can't save everything.’ That was a hard lesson to learn and to accept, but it helped me hone my skills in being able to decipher what sites have the most far-reaching impact and require the most effort in being preserved.”
Equally necessary is an understanding of what’s at stake. “A quick grab for money or a quick fix without a long-term view can forever change the character of a neighborhood,” said Stokes. “And little losses that seem insignificant—just a Creole cottage here, a corner store there—add up to irreplaceable change. Visitors come to experience the authentic, and we tend to destroy the authentic to give them a revisionist caricature, a Disneyland version.”