New Orleans Architecture Vol V: The Esplanade Ridge | Mary Louise Christovich, Sally Kittredge...

book: New Orleans Architecture Vol V: The Esplanade Ridge | Mary Louise Christovich, Sally Kittredge Evans, ...

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New Orleans Archit...

	New Orleans Architecture Vol V: The Esplanade Ridge Mary Louise Christovich, Sally Kittredge Evans, ... Pelican Publishing Company, 1995 - 172 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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Most focused (and pointed) in this excellent series

This is a tremendous series. It is generated not only from the incredible history and architectural richness of New Orleans, but also an especially deep commitment to celebrating and preserving these treasures. This series has methodically chronicalled neighborhood after neighborhood and topic after topic.

I have read 4 or 5 of these volumes so far and they have ranged from well-executed to magnificent. This volume V on Esplande Ridge falls into the latter category.

It has a very narrow and easily defined focus: a single road. Esplande stretched from water to water -- Bayou St John to the river. About 31 blocks (under 3 miles) in all. Its history dates to the earliest days of the city, with development beginning by the 1720s.

The book is roughly the same size and format of the others in the series -- 190 pages, 9 x 12, packed with hundreds of photos. What sets it apart from the others (University section of Uptown; Lower Garden District; Cemeteries; etc.):
1. It covers almost EVERY structure in its jurisdiction (rather than just most noteworthy and possibly a few typical ones).
2. It offers frank, constructive recommendations for how to restore and improve current (as of 1977!) structures.

Its format is:
Dedication
Foreword
Intro
Map
Military history
US Mint
119 pp. of block by block photos and descriptions, from the 400-block at the river to the 3400-block at the bayou.
City Park (at the terminus of Esplande, after 3400 block)
Archival drawings
Photo index (which briefly describes each property with a thumb nail sized photo, referring the reader back to the place in that 119pp. body of the book). NOTE: the index is NOT by page number but by address and so if easy to use once you figure that out.
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

Very nicely bound, on excellent glossy paper, and printed locally in Gretna by Pelican.

The black and white photos range from historic to 1970s. They are often as much as a full page, and are excellent.

Most interesting are the authors' frank comments about the present structures. They can be hysterical and a tad harsh, but most readers will agree. The flow of an entire block is often interrupted by a cheaply built and poorly designed 20th century monstrosity.

For example, 1341 Esplande (p. 159) is depicted in the index and described in the following way; "Perhaps the side galleries with iron supports and railings and brackets as well as the narrow vertical stripes of bricks alternating with the fenestration panels were an attempt by a planner to adapt modern brick, metal windows, and post-1950 architectural design to the Esplande vocabulary. If so, it failed." !!!

Or the introduction to the photo index (p. 151): "....Photographs illustrate structures that range from the fine to the terrible. Elegant nineteenth-century homes presently in bad condition are recommended for restoration, and ill-designed, unsuitable modern buildings are condemned. Original, attractive features of mutilated buildings are highlighted as are acceptable features of mediocre architecture. Similarly, unacceptable alterations spoiling the integrity of houses are decried. Recommendations for the entire street are presented, and attention given to the despoiling of all important intersections as well as most corner locations....."

The reader will pardon the sometimes elitist tone and condemning attitude because the insights are so rich and the recommendations often seem so wise.

One interesting exercise is to read the 1976 descriptions of these homes, with the recommendations for restoration and then to drive by and see what has happened to them since then.

Famous structures, BTW, include the US Mint, Cabrini High School, Beauregard's statue at City Park, St. Louis No. 3 Cemetery, and a number of major churches and mansions. The human stories of their construction is amazing: enormous and gorgeous mansions built by French, "Americaines," Free Men of Color, Jews, and others. And the more modest homes also have their stories as well, which often appear in this book. Quite a gumbo.

This volume is a must-have.

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