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November 19, 2006
Squandered Heritage
You might have noticed that my flickr pages lately have been overflowing with pictures of houses from Central City and the Lower Ninth Ward. The past couple of weeks I've started getting involved with Karen Gadbois' latest project, Squandered Heritage, which is a website devoted to documenting the ongoing destruction of our historic architecture here in New Orleans.
We currently have two spreadsheets containing addresses of residences that the owner has sought to demolish, either by applying to the city for a demolition permit, or by requesting that FEMA demolish their house due to storm damage. There are over 100 homes on the first list, over 500 on the FEMA list, many of which are located in National Register historic districts.
We are photographing these houses as quickly as possible and putting the photos up on the site, hoping to accomplish a number of goals:
1. Build the case for blocking the demolition of individual homes.
2. Demonstrate the scale of the problem in order to motivate the public and the city to demand enforcement of existing historic ordinances.
3. Worst case, at least document what is being lost before it disappears.
Many of the houses on the list had been decaying for years before the storm, and we feel that property owners are using Katrina as a cover for finishing off their ongoing "demolition by neglect".
It's a great project, and I'm getting to see a lot of places in the city that I didn't even know existed.
Please check it out on a daily basis.
Posted by ray at November 19, 2006 9:47 AM | Permalink
Categories: [katrina | new orleans | politics ]
Comments
Thanks for the link to squanderedheritage.com. I'll have to mention it in my next post.
Posted by: Marco at November 20, 2006 3:22 PM
While I stare at the list and try to figure out where to go next, Ray is off on his bike.
Squandered Heritage is about housing, housing is about people. A natural fit for Ray, he is a born story teller.
Thanks Ray.
Posted by: Karen at November 21, 2006 3:52 PM
"Born story teller", meaning, I know how to sling da bullshit?
SH would be nothing without its uppity founder.
Posted by: Ray at November 21, 2006 5:08 PM
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