Progress and Preservation

Progress and Preservation...



Live Oaks in New Orleans City Park

In a city as old and historic as New Orleans, it is only natural that we value the timeworn traditions and elements over the new.  Many of us live in homes older than our great grandparents, and we cherish every wavy pane of glass and dip in the floor.  I once overheard a homeowner brag about the fact that their floor was an astonishing 18 inches out of level in their dining room alone!  From our oak trees to our locksmiths, the older the better and being the oldest has bragging rights all its own.

H. Rault locksmith, oldest locksmith in the South

We have organizations with incredible determination and vigilance, dedicated entirely to preservation in New Orleans.  The Vieux Carre Commission, probably the best known of these organizations, is charged with preserving the distinct character and architecture of the city's oldest neighborhood, the French Quarter. 

The Vieux Carre, New Orleans, LA ca.1985

The Preservation Resource Center, or PRC, is often referred to as the most efficient and best run

non- profit organization in the city, and with good reason.  The time and resources the PRC spends on education and saving homes and materials from the wrecking ball are beyond impressive.  From offering tax incentives in exchange for those willing to dedicate the facade of their home to the PRC to opening a salvage store, filled with materials from deconstructed dwellings, the PRC has managed to bring intelligent problem solving to otherwise deteriorating homes and neighborhoods.







Pairs of Corbels for sale at the PRC salvage store

located at 2801 Marais Street

Naturally, as a New Orleanian, I too have long been indoctrinated into this school of thought where age is prized and the new is suspect.  One of my favorite books New Orleans- Elegance and Decadence  by Richard Sexton and Randolph Delehanty captures this sentiment beautifully.  He describes the allure of the city's patina, its texture of peeling paint and carpet of moss covered brick courtyards.

In his introduction he quotes artist and New Orleanian Joel Lockhart Dyer.  "New Orleans is North America's Venice; both cities are on borrowed time.  Here we are fighting the mud, the heat, the rain, and the insects, trying- if you squint your eyes a bit- to create Paris in the swamps.  Our architecture, and the way we live are here because of a particular attitude, an attitude about time that is different from the rest of the United States.  New Orleans won't change- this is the source of its decline.... New Orleans doesn't want to be practical..."

But could all this nostalgia and tradition be creating its own undertow of sorts?  To say that we are creatures of habit is a huge understatement.  Julia Reed, resident author and authority on all things New Orleans probably expresses this notion best in her book The House on First Street.

She says, "In a city where much of the activity is based largely on what has been done before, an inertia you're not even aware of can settle into your bones.  People inherit houses, waiters, positions of royalty at Mardi Gras balls from the generations before them.  They eat fish (or shrimp po-boys) on Fridays and red beans and rice on Mondays and the men don seersucker and poplin the week after Easter (but never, ever before) for the duration of the Spring and Summer.  When a great many of life's decisions, big and small, are dictated by ritual or blood, free will, gumption, even the tiniest bit of initiative can go right out the window."

In this past Sunday's New York Times Style Magazine, part time resident and assistant professor of English at Tulane, Thomas Beller, wrote an article "In between days" about his experience spending time between New Orleans and New York.  In it, he said, "As soon as we settled into New Orleans, I came up with a theory that New Orleans was like the New York of the 1970s.  Ungentrified, shambolic, chaotic in ways bad and good, cheap, terrifying, a place hospitable to whimsy." 

Well, I don't know if his theory is correct.  Is New Orleans on the verge of booming, or has

Mr. Beller not been in town long enough to get it?  In either case, he is most certainly correct when he says, "In New Orleans, you are living in gorgeous ruins."

As someone who is just beginning to make a life and raise a family in New Orleans, my hope is that our city remains what it has always been, a living, breathing entity with unshakable roots but ever changing branches. 

"Dear New Orleans, home of my youth, cradle of many ancestors, tomb of many I have loved, I ask of God to protect, to preserve, and to bless thee.  From a Creole." 

 -Helene D'Aquin Allain

Souvenirs d'Amerique et de France par une Creole,1868