Thursday, October 06, 2005
 Another day, another outrage. From the New Orleans Times-Picayune October 5 2005: "... recent demolition of the former Naval Brigade Hall, at 823 Camp St. in the Warehouse District, has preservationists alarmed. The building, which dates to 1903 and for a time housed the Grunewald Music School, was one of the city's more significant jazz landmarks, and preservationists fear that the manner in which it was torn down - without any review process - could be a sign of growing peril to New Orleans' architectural heritage as the city rebuilds.
City officials say it was a mistake . . .
At the turn of the century, it was an incubator of early ragtime music. In its later incarnation as a school, it was a place of learning and teaching for several well-known jazz musicians. [...]
Demolition of the hall occurred Monday, a few hours after city inspectors placed a sign on the building declaring it unsafe for habitation. The work was done by a group of out-of-town firefighters - led, witnesses say, by a contingent from Chicago - who used a device known as "the strong arm" that is capable of spraying water and knocking over walls simultaneously.
Though the hall was not on fire, "they began to spray water on the building, and then after a while they began to bang on the roof, pushing through the roof from the top," said neighbor Lee Madere, who watched and protested as the building went down. "They were showing how it could break through roofs.
"My wife said, 'Look, we save historic structures here, we don't destroy them for demonstration purposes. After a while they began to knock the brick walls down and pull the façade off and demolish the structure. At that time, I said, 'Guys, that's a historic structure, you can't do this.' They said, 'We have to do it for safety.'"
City officials said they did not authorize the action.
"It has come to our attention that some of our mutual aid firefighters, in their enthusiasm to assist the New Orleans Fire Department, used a piece of equipment called the strong arm to demolish a storm-damaged building," Mayor Ray Nagin's press office said in a statement. "They were unaware of the proper procedures and the 'chain of command.'" . . .
The first floor was basically intact, [neighbors] said, and its unusually thick walls were still plumb.
Larry Freeman of Ferrara Fire Apparatus Inc., which provided the equipment, described the "controlled demolition" as a training exercise for the Chicago Fire Department.
[...]
City officials say they only marked the building as uninhabitable. The notice posted last week, similar to those on hundreds of thousands of other buildings damaged by the storm, reads: "This structure is unsafe and its use or occupancy has been prohibited by the building official."
[...]
Said Meg Lousteau of the Louisiana Landmarks Society, "I'm very saddened that we've lost such an important piece of jazz history, seemingly without a permit or the owner's approval." Lousteau added, "Just because we're in the midst of a disaster, I don't think people should be taking it upon themselves to decide which buildings need to be destroyed."
[...]
-----  (UPDATED/CORRECTED:) The carpetbagger stormtroopers responsible for this outrage can be located at:
CHICAGO FIRE DEPARTMENT
(312) 745-4213
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.....| Posted at 02:28 | PERMA-LINK |
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