Historic Preservation: A Case Study - Saving Phillis Wheatley, a Modernist New Orleans classic

Ramon Hernandez Arch 549 – Heritage Conservation Assignment #3 – Final Report – Preservation USA December 10, 2018

Professor: Jay Platt

A case study in Historic Preservation: Saving Phillis Wheatley, a mid-20th Century International Modern building in Treme, an Historic District in New Orleans.

Introduction Heritage Conservation battles are usually about preserving an old building threatened by modern urban growth. This case study in historic preservation is the opposite: A battle to preserve the Phillis Wheatley Elementary School building, an innovative mid-20th Century Modern International style building situated amidst the rich 19th-century urban fabric of Treme, a historic District of New Orleans in Louisiana.

Fig. 1 – Side view of 1956 Phillis Wheatley ES (Source: AhbeLab.com/tag/phillis-wheatley-elementary-school/; Photo Credit: Frank Lotz Miller)

The Community – Social, Political New Orleans was founded by French and Spanish trade settlers on the Delta of the Mississippi River on the Gulf coast. The two predominant historical architectural styles in New Orleans are French and Spanish Colonial. Phillis Wheatley Elementary School is in Treme, a New Orleans neighborhood. Treme’s historic color and flavor began taking root in the mid-1800s as the community developed a reputation for welcoming freed former black slaves and where they could thrive.

Fig. 2 –Elevation drawing of Phillis Wheatley ES (Source: Library of Congress)

Fig. 3 – Façade Elevations of Treme neighborhood (Source: Google Street View)

The historic quality of buildings in Treme is not as rich as in the nearby French Quarter but is nonetheless officially recognized as significant given that Treme is within the boundaries of the New Orleans Local Historic District, and is listed as well as a Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.

The building stock surrounding the modernist Wheatley building is an eclectic mix of historic styles, ranging from French Colonial, Victorian and Creole “shotgun”1 style housing (a building typology defined by two common factors: narrow width and long length). The building is twenty blocks away from the nation’s second oldest Historic District, the French Fig. 4 – Site Context of Phillis Wheatley Quarter.

(Source: Text overlaid on Google Earth image) 1

“Phillis Wheatley Elementary School”, World Monuments Fund, website, June 2011.

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Ramon Hernandez Arch 549 – Heritage Conservation Assignment #3 – Final Report – Preservation USA December 10, 2018

Professor: Jay Platt

Treme is a cash poor community, but has a rich social, political, musical and architectural heritage, along with a dark legacy of institutionalized racial segregation dating back to the late 1800s.

In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling in the Plessy vs.

Ferguson case that codified racial segregation, calling for “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites. This started the era of “Jim Crow” which all but Fig. 5 – Jim Crow era of institutionalized racism at the federal level. Then in 1924, the city of New Orleans segregation (Source: passed a zoning ordinance meant to segregate neighborhoods, which had the effect of AhbeLab.com/tag/philliswheatley-elementary-school/; concentrating contained pockets of black poverty. It was a racially motivated punitive Photo Credit: Frank Lotz Miller) local measure overlaid on the federal racially motivated court ruling. The rulings served to justify leaving Treme and its sibling black neighborhoods as starved of investment, resulting in the creation of slum conditions. The “equal” part of the Supreme Court’s ruling was never meant to be honored by ruling white political class. In 1927, the New Orleans ordinance was struck down by courts as unconstitutional, but the federal ruling remained in force.

In 1955, the Supreme Court overturned Plessy vs. Ferguson, and “Separate but equal” was struck down, calling for school integration. The intended effects were not immediate, with the impact of segregation policies lasting still some more decades in New Orleans continued, with overcrowded, decrepit and still separate and unequal. One year later, in 1956, the Phillis Wheatley Elementary school opened to students of Treme. It is in this socio-political milieu under which Phillis Wheatley Elementary School was conceived, designed and constructed in the mid-1950s.

Fig. 6 – Jim Crow era of segregation (Source: AhbeLab.com/tag/phillis-wheatley-elementaryschool/; Photo Credit: Frank Lotz Miller)

The Preservation Climate & Key Players The city of New Orleans has a deep culture of historic preservation given the city’s colonial history.2 According to a 2014 report by Daniel Del Sol of the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans “One of the earliest examples of preservation activism in the city arose in 1895 as New Orleans’ City Council proposed to demolish the Cabildo and Presytere and construct two new modern, capacious court buildings in the place”.3 Before the federal government created historic preservation tax credits, the city of New Orleans was already ahead of the curve in historic preservation activity. In 1936, city officials and civic boosters had created the nation’s second oldest Historic District, when it passed an ordinance creating the Vieux Carre Commission whose mission is to protect and preserve the French Quarter neighborhood of New Orleans. The city’s culture of heritage conservation movement has matured and continues unabated.

2

Daniel Del Sol, “The Preservationists who saved New Orleans – The Early Rise of Preservation Sentiment in New Orleans”, Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans, February 24, 2018 3 Ibid

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Ramon Hernandez Arch 549 – Heritage Conservation Assignment #3 – Final Report – Preservation USA December 10, 2018

Professor: Jay Platt

A 2011 report4 by the U.S. Department of the Interior ranks the state of Louisiana as third in the nation “with the most rehabilitation activity”5 to receive federal historic preservation tax credit dollars. The year 2011 is a critical benchmark relative to the preservation battle to save the Phillis Wheatley.

The deep roots of Louisiana’s culture of preservation are reflected in the number of active historic preservation organizations. These range from the oldest and more traditional such as the Louisiana Historical Society (LHS), which was “first chartered in 1836”,6 to the youngest, DO-CO-MO-MO which mission is the “Preservation of modern architecture”,7 and was started in the U.S. in 1995, with the New Orleans/Louisiana chapter created in 2008. Despite a plethora of heritage conservation groups in New Orleans, they all seem focused on a mission to save traditional colonial architecture, be it French, Spanish or Victorian.

Ironically, given the deep historic preservation culture long established in New Orleans, no organization is dedicated to preserving notable modern buildings in Louisiana. DOCOMOMO, in partnership with Tulane University’s School of Architecture, was the leading voice for the preservation of Phillis Wheatley because of the building’s Modern International pedigree. It was DOCOMOMO’s initiative and action which engaged with local and national media to bring attention to the plight of the Phillis Wheatley. It was DOCOMOMO which also orchestrated with the World Monuments Fund to list the building as “endangered”. And it was this group which organized the logistics of creating a human chain around the Phillis Wheatley as a symbolic gesture of solidarity in the plight to save the building from demolition.

Opponents of preserving the modernist Wheatley building are mostly elected officials representing powerful government bodies. These include the City of New Orleans, which owns the property, the Recovery School District, the Orleans Parish School District and the Louisiana Office of Education, which is controlled by the Governor’s office.

The Resource The 1896 Supreme Court ruling creating “separate but equal” impacted every facet of life for AfricanAmerican citizens such as housing, jobs, banking, and schooling. School facilities were particularly starved of resources. The intended yield of that action was to create decades of segregation, school overcrowding and a systematic lack of “equal” investment in facilities for black children.

4

“Federal Tax Incentives for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings, Statistical Report and Analysis for Fiscal Year 2011, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, National Park Service Cultural Resources, Pg. 13, December 2011.

5 Ibid, Pg. 13.

6 Louisiana Historical Society, web page: https://louisianahistoricalsociety.org 7 DoCoMo Mo, web page: https://docomomo-us.org/about/docomomo-us

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Ramon Hernandez Arch 549 – Heritage Conservation Assignment #3 – Final Report – Preservation USA December 10, 2018

Professor: Jay Platt

In 1948, architect Charles Colbert was an assistant professor at Tulane University School of Architecture, where he convened students of this 2nd-year studio8 to study ways to improve school facilities in the “slums”9 of New Orleans. Colbert migrated his concerns about substandard school buildings over to the school district, becoming a vocal critic of the school district’s plan to modernize segregated New Orleans schools, still under the “separate but equal” policy. Working under the Jim Crow framework, Colbert focused his students’ attention on the “equal” part. He pushed his architecture students to come up with meaningful proposals. The lesson he was instilling was that architects had a moral obligation to serve the Fig. 7 – Charles Colbert public benefit. Colbert was looking to apply the lessons of International Modernism (Source: Noparkinglot.wordpress.com/ espoused by Le Corbusier, the spiritual father of the modernist design movement photos/) in Europe. Colbert’s intention was not just to modernize existing school facilities; his vision was grand. He envisioned building brand new campuses in predominantly segregated black New Orleans neighborhoods which were the most in need. Colbert seemed to see colonial architecture as oppressive, and Modernism would serve as a vehicle to deliver on architecture’s promise of improving society.

In 1949, the head of facilities for the New Orleans School District quits as a result of open critiques from Charles Colbert who called the School District’s modernization plans as inadequate. The elected school district body quickly turns around and hires Charles Colbert and names him Director of School Planning and Construction. Colbert’s mandate is to formulate a study and program which addresses decades of neglect of segregated schools. Colbert’s study concludes with the recommendation to build 30 new schools all over New Orleans, mostly in black communities. The schools “project was sorely needed due to overcrowding and the deplorable physical condition of New Orleans schools”.10 The 30 new campuses would be in the Modern International vain. Colbert would modify tenets of Le Corbusier’s “Five Points of Architecture”11 in order adjust to local climate and soils conditions. For example, Colbert deviated from Le Corbusier’s piloti and grid rule, using instead, for two of the 30 schools, a raised cantilevered main

Fig. 8 Top – Phillis Wheatley with color overlay emphasizing inspiration from Le Corbu’s Villa Savoye; Fig. 9 Bottom – Villa Savoye, Le Corbu, 1921 (Source: Top - AhbeLab.com/tag/phillis-wheatleyelementary-school/; Photo Credit: Frank Lotz Miller; Bottom: Getty Images) Fig. 8 Bottom – Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier, 1921

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Stock, Francine, “Is There a Future for the Recent Past in New Orleans?”, MAS Context Magazine, Winter 2010 issue.

Colbert, Charles, “Idea: The Shaping Force”, Pendaya Publishing, 1987, Pg. 10 “Historic American Building Survey, Phillis Wheatley Elementary School”, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, February 28, 2011, Pg. 5 11 Le Corbusier, “Towards a New Architecture”, Dover Publications, 1931 9

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Ramon Hernandez Arch 549 – Heritage Conservation Assignment #3 – Final Report – Preservation USA December 10, 2018

Professor: Jay Platt

upper floor deck system which minimized pilings into the poor soils conditions typically found in the Mississippi Delta, and created shaded shelter for children in school sites which suffered a lack of playground area when compared to schools in white communities. Charles Colbert was morally compelled to act, and the sentiment was not academic.

In 1951, the NAACP sues the Orleans School Board to enforce the “equal” part of the 1896 Plessy vs.

Ferguson Supreme Court ruling, demanding a greater investment in segregated schools serving black students.

According to an official from the Recovery School District, these lawsuits forced school “officials to slap together cheap buildings for AfricanAmerican students, parading them as ‘separate but equal’.”12 Wheatley was not a cheap shot.

By 1954, Colbert’s school construction program was underway. Colbert personally designed the Phillis Wheatley Elementary School, with construction starting that same year.

Colbert’s design was technically innovative, a design achievement recognized and awarded by Progressive Architecture Magazine in 1955. There was a symbolic aspect of the design: the architect intended for the Wheatley children and Fig. 10 – 1956 - Phillis Wheatley interior classroom (Source: community to interpret the raised modernist building as a metaphor, that black students can rise from their surroundings and see greater horizons. Colbert’s intentions were not just noble, but were also technically cutting-edge. The main floor space was raised and cantilevered by deploying one-story high trusses which carried structural loads to a central spine of concrete piers. The Phillis Wheatley design contrasted dramatically with the local historic urban fabric of French Colonial, Victorian and Creole “shotgun” style housing stock. The contrast of a modernist building elevated off the ground with an exposed naked truss structural system against the backdrop of Treme’s historic neighborhood was quite radical. The French Quarter was only 20 blocks away, containing some of the nation’s oldest historic urban fabric. The landing of Colbert’s Wheatley in Treme as a modern international building inspired by Le Corbusier, a French master of the 20th century’s modern movement, stood sharply against its neighbors of historic 200 year-old buildings from the French and Spanish colonial eras. The dynamic pitted modern French against colonial French.

The school’s history straddles the pre and post Jim Crow era. In 1955, while Colbert’s Phillis Wheatley was still under construction, the Supreme Court rules to overturns Plessy vs. Ferguson, effectively ending the Jim Crow era. One year after Jim Crow laws end, in 1956, when the Phillis Wheatley Elementary School opens to students of Treme, the building is an instant icon of 50’s regional modernism in New Orleans. Wheatley was 12

Times-Picayune Staff, “Historic Phillis Wheatley Elementary School Torn down in Treme”, June 17, 2011.

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Ramon Hernandez Arch 549 – Heritage Conservation Assignment #3 – Final Report – Preservation USA December 10, 2018 conceived with an intention to elevate black students literally and metaphorically above their surroundings in symbolic defiance of Jim Crow laws. Then, when the building first opens to students during the post-Jim Crow era, the moment represented a sort of victory for Charles Colbert, validating his notion of the design as a social justice gesture under the vail of Jim Crow.

Professor: Jay Platt

Fig. 11 –Phillis Wheatley post-Katrina damage (Source:

However, in 2008, city and school officials appeared willfully blind to Colbert’s design intentions and notions of social justice embedded in the Phillips Wheatley. To this new school board, to city leaders and even the statehouse, the Phillis Wheatley represented a dark symbol of everything reprehensible about the Jim Crow era. According to a 2009 historic survey, the school district actively and willfully neglected the Fig. 12 –Phillis Wheatley post-Katrina damage (Source: physical needs of the Phillis Wheatley. It was not benign neglect; it was, in fact malignant, during which time many of the character-defining fenestration elements of the original 1956 building were destroyed, replaced or allowed to deteriorate. This trend can be traced to the early 1970s when the school board changed out Colbert’s transparent all-glass window panes, replacing them with opaque fiberglass panels to prevent break-ins.13 Compounding the Phillis Wheatley’s deterioration problem was a natural flood disaster carried in by Hurricane Katrina that struck the Gulf Coast in August of 2005. New Orleans flooded, resulting in a tragic death toll and damage to the urban and historic fabric of New Orleans. Fortunately, the Phillis Wheatley took little damage; it was sitting in 3 feet of water, according to a report by FEMA, and thus was saved by Colbert’s design which raised the main floor 10 feet above the ground.

To school and city officials, it didn’t matter that the building was not substantially damaged during Katrina. In 2008, the school board announced plans to demolish Colbert’s crown jewel of New Orleans’ mid-century regional International Modernism, the Phillis Wheatley. Come hell or high water (and high water did come), the Board was committed to wiping out what they seemed to perceive as Fig. 13 –Phillis Wheatley post-Katrina damage (Source: 13

Historic American Building Survey, Phillis Wheatley Elementary School, Pg. x.

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Ramon Hernandez Arch 549 – Heritage Conservation Assignment #3 – Final Report – Preservation USA December 10, 2018

Professor: Jay Platt

a stain of “racially discriminatory practices”14 that “dominated school planning”.15 To this end, it appears in public records and news reports that the school board would use the cover of Katrina to justify eradicating the painful racist reference represented by Colbert’s Phillis Wheatley,16 while ignoring Colbert’s own powerful symbolism of social justice embedded in the design. In a sense, in 2008, school district officials were invalidating the very fundamental philosophical notion of social justice they were actively seeking with the destruction of Colbert’s 1956 Wheatley building. By coincidental timing, also in 2008, the Wheatley had met the Secretary of the Interior’s 50-year criteria for qualifying to list in the National Register of Historic Places.

Project History – The Battle to Preserve the Phillis Wheatley August 29, 2005, was an inauspicious milestone. It marks the date Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and is the catalyst that set up the preservation battle to save Phillis Wheatley. After Katrina, the school board abandoned the school site, claiming that three feet of standing water had irreparably damaged the building, ignoring the most fundamental feature of Charles Colbert’s modernist design: The Wheatley’s main classroom floor was elevated ten feet above ground, where water level never reached. According to a FEMA report, deterioration from lack of maintenance caused more damage than Katrina. Three years elapsed since the hurricane, and the building continued to deteriorate, while the Recovery School District went seeking federal funding from FEMA to aid in their school facilities recovery effort.

In 2008 school district officials announced plans to demolish the Phillis Whitley, incentivized by over one billion dollars that FEMA offered for school repair and reconstruction efforts after Hurricane Katrina. This was the moment that started galvanizing a preservation movement to save Whitley, and set the framework for the creation of a formidable opponent to the city and state government agencies who were aligned and in cahoots to demolish the Wheatley.

The Preservation Center of New Orleans notes on its website that “through waves of modernization spanning centuries, New Orleanians have fought to save the sites that matter to them. From public fights to individual activists”.17 This battle to preserve the Phillis Wheatley was shaping up as one of those public fights.

But this was no ordinary preservation battle. Despite the deep-rooted preservation culture of New Orleans, no native preservation group had ever advocated for saving a mid-50’s Modernist International building prior.

These groups were usually fighting a modernist encroachment to save older colonial-era structures, not the other way around.

At this point in 2008, DOCOMOMO enters the fight as the lead advocate to save Phillis Wheatley, joined

by Tulane University’s School of Architecture. Tulane University had a vested interest in preserving Wheatley

14

Ken Ducote, Recovery School District, June 2017, 2011, NOLA, ibid 16 Staff, Times-Picayune, “Historic Phillis Wheatley Elementary School torn down in Treme”, New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 17, 2011 17 Daniel Del Sol, “The Preservationists who saved New Orleans”, February 24, 2018.

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Ramon Hernandez Arch 549 – Heritage Conservation Assignment #3 – Final Report – Preservation USA December 10, 2018

Professor: Jay Platt

since Charles Colbert’s efforts to modernize New Orleans’ schools and introduce a regional version of the Modern International style was born in the studios of its School of Architecture back in 1948.

DOCOMOMO was started in 199018 in Europe with chapters in the united states. The organization’s name is “an acronym standing for DOcumentation and COnseration of buildings, sites and neighborhoods of the MOdern MOvement”.19 The fight to save the Wheatley was part of a larger trend to preserve the modern architecture of the 20th Century.20 And DOCOMOMO was a principal body dedicated to this effort. The New Orleans/Louisiana chapter of DOCOMOMO was started in 2008 by Francine Stock21 as a direct response to the threat of demolition of the Phillis Wheatley. DOCOMOMO was fresh off other modernist preservation battles in New York,22 and considered the Phillis Wheatley a worthy fight because it was unique example of post-war American modern architecture. DOCOMOMO was well practiced in advocacy for modernist preservation and deployed a multi-headed advocacy strategy which included boycotting, raising public awareness with savvy media campaigns, and organizing protests of human chains around the site. Curiously, other than the State Historic Preservation Office and Tulane University, with moral support from the Society of Architectural Historians, DOCOMOMO had no other partners from the traditional New Orleans preservationist community.

While DOCOMOMO’s preservation advocacy for Phillis Wheatley was gearing up, on a parallel timeline, FEMA was setting up to validate claims by the school district to justify demolition. It was DOCOMOMO, FEMA, LA-SHPO and Tulane versus the Orleans Parish School Board, the State of Louisiana’s Recovery School District, Louisiana’s Dept. of Education and the city of New Orleans. The School District’s request for federal recovery funds coupled with its intention to demolish the school site triggered FEMA to start a Section 106 review of the Phillis Wheatley building.

In June 2008, when Phillis Wheatley was 52 years old, FEMA “determined that demolition would constitute an adverse effect to the school”,23 and “determined the Wheatley School to be eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A for the schools association with mid-twentieth century building campaign of the Orleans Parish School Board.”24 FEMA “also Fig. 14 – Protest to preserve Phillis Wheatley organized by DOCOMOMO determined the school to be (Source: Docomomo-nola.blogspot.com/2011/04/docomomomo-nola-week-in-life.html) 18

Rappaport, Nina, “Preserving modern architecture in the US”, Pg. 11 Ibid, Pg. 52.

20 Ibid Nina Rappaport, “Preserving modern architecture in the US”, Modern 21 Stock, Francine, “Is There a Future for the Recent Past in New Orleans?”, MAS Context Magazine, Winter 2010 issue.

22 Rappaport, Nina.

23 Historic American Building Survey, Phillis Wheatley Elementary School, Pg. 2.

24 Ibid, Pg. 35.

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Ramon Hernandez Arch 549 – Heritage Conservation Assignment #3 – Final Report – Preservation USA December 10, 2018

Professor: Jay Platt

eligible for listing under Criterion C as a preeminent example of International style architecture in New Orleans.”25 One month later, in July 2008, the Louisiana State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) “concurred” with FEMA’s assessment.

Then in 2009, SHPO and several federal agencies “developed an agreement to avoid, Fig. 15 –Feasibility Study of Adaptive Reuse of Phillis Wheatley ES (Source: www.Docomomo-nola.blogspot.com/2010/08/holly-smithminimize, and mitigate adverse effects caused feasibility-study-historic.html) 26 by the demolition of the Wheatley School”. In 2010, to comply with FEMA’s request to undergo the Section 106 review process and meet the intent of SHPO’s memorandum, the State’s Recovery School District proceeded to order an American Building Survey Level 1 documentation”, and to explore options for renovating the Wheatley instead of demolition.27 That same year, the school District’s study concluded that it would cost one million dollars more to rehabilitate the existing building compared to demolishing and build a new building. That cost difference was sufficient reason to justify the district’s resolve for demolition, dubiously claiming that “the adaptive reuse concept draws resources away from the pool of funds available to support other projects.”28 The District had met all requirements of the memorandum with SHPO and federal agencies but concluded that saving Wheatley was not financially feasible.

Doing the historic survey was the school district’s only concession left to give.

Project Outcome DOCOMOMO and team held out slim hope that they could still prevail. Preservation forces had one final Hail Mary pass for saving the Wheatley. After all, the Wheatley was in a Historic District, and no demolition could happen without going through the New Orleans Historic District Landmarks Commission. On March 18, 2011, one item on the HDLC’s agenda was a request for permission to demolish Phillis Wheatley; the listed agent was the Recovery School District, which represented the interests of the state government as well of the Orleans Parish School District, and of the city of New Orleans, which owned the land. Arguments presented in favor of demolition must not have been sufficiently compelling and did not move HDLC board members. That evening, the HDLC voted against demolition. The HDLC’s recommendation was then sent to the New Orleans City Council to ratify the decision to reject demolition.

Phillis Wheatley’s pro-preservation forces became urgently aware of the dire situation represented by actions of the school board when, in April 2011, school officials started the historic building survey of Phillis Wheatley after discarding all other options for adaptive re-use, and after defiantly waving off FEMA’s and

25

Ibid Ibid 27 Ibid 28 Ibid, Pg. 36 26

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Ramon Hernandez Arch 549 – Heritage Conservation Assignment #3 – Final Report – Preservation USA December 10, 2018

Professor: Jay Platt

SHPO’s recommendations. To DOCOMOMO and other preservation partners, the building survey must have felt more like a post-mortem.

Given that the HDLC was only an advisory body with no real power, in early June 2011, the New Orleans City Council voted against the HDLC’s recommendation, thus green-lighting demolition. On June 17, 2011 “The Recovery School District demolished the Wheatley School”.29 A new Phillis Wheatley building now sits where Colbert’s old Wheatley stood. All but one of Colbert’s 30 modernist campuses have been demolished.

Fig. 16 – Actress Phillis Le-Blanc protesting the demolition of Phillis Wheatley ES with American flag and tears (Source: Times-Picayune; Photo credit: Mathew Hinton, NOLA.com)

Lessons Learned Charles Colbert’s design was innovative, was wellintentioned and had a noble goal of providing an uplifting symbol for the students of the cash-poor but culturally rich Treme neighborhood of New Orleans. The original mid-50’s building was the right building for the wrong time. It seemed to preservationist forces that officials with the school district, the city and state had acted in bad faith all along during the Section 106 reviews, and acted in subterfuge when considering the adaptive reuse option.

On the other hand, it was clear that city and school officials saw the original Wheatley building, not as an award-winning30 architecturally innovative and symbolically uplifting modernist building of the future, but as a symbol of racial segregation, social injustice and suppression of equal rights from the past: “Wheatley was an unfortunate reflection of a time when racially discriminatory practices dominated school planning.”31 The Phillis Wheatley was just 55 years old when it was demolished, perhaps considered too young for preservation compared to New Orleans’ historic 18th and 19th century French and Spanish colonial era buildings. “Perhaps if a building is not from the 19th century in New Orleans, then it isn’t worth preserving.”32

Fig. 17 – Phillis Wheatley – 55-year span Top – 1956 Opens to students Middle – 2008 Post-Katrina Bottom: 2011 Demolition; Actress Phillis Le-Blanc protesting the demolition.

(Source: Top – AhbeLab.com/tag/phillis-wheatleyelementary-school/; Photo Credit: Frank Lotz Miller; Middle – Docomomo.com; Bottom – Photo credit: Mathew Hinton, TimesPicayune, NOLA.com)

29

Historic American Building Survey, Phillis Wheatley Elementary School, Pg. 36.

“Phillis Wheatley Elementary School”, Progressive Architecture Fourth Annual Design Awards Program, Progressive Architecture Magazine, #28, January 1957, Pg. 87-135.

31 “Historic Phillis Wheatley Elementary School torn down in Treme”, New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 17, 2011 32 Director of the World Monuments Fund, in video discussing saving Phillis Wheatley, April 2011.

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Ramon Hernandez Arch 549 – Heritage Conservation Assignment #3 – Final Report – Preservation USA December 10, 2018

Professor: Jay Platt

Works Cited 1. Colbert, Charles, “Idea: The Shaping Force”, Pendaya Publishing, 1987.

2. Del Sol, Daniel, “The Preservationists who saved New Orleans – The Early Rise of Preservation Sentiment in New Orleans”, Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans, February 24, 2018.

3. Le Corbusier, “Towards a New Architecture”, Dover Publications, 1931 4. Stock, Francine, “Is There a Future for the Recent Past in New Orleans?” MAS Context Magazine, Winter 2010 issue.

5. Rappaport, Nina, “Preserving modern architecture in the US”.

6. Director of the World Monuments Fund, in video discussing saving Phillis Wheatley, April 2011.

7. “Historic Phillis Wheatley Elementary School torn down in Treme”, New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 17, 2011.

8. Progressive Architecture Magazine, “Phillis Wheatley Elementary School”, Progressive Architecture Fourth Annual Design Awards Program, #28, January 1957, Pg. 87-135.

9. National Park Service, “Historic American Building Survey, Phillis Wheatley Elementary School”, U.S. Department of the Interior, February 28, 2011.

10. Secretary of the Interior, “Federal Tax Incentives for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings, Statistical Report and Analysis for Fiscal Year 2011, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, National Park Service Cultural Resources, Pg. 13, December 2011.

11. Library of Congress 12. Louisiana Historical Society web page: https://louisianahistoricalsociety.org.

13. DoCoMoMo, web page: https://docomomo-us.org/about/docomomo-us.

14. Ahbe Lab web page: www.AhbeLab.com/tag/phillis-wheatley-elementary-school/ 15. DoCoMoMo web page: www.Docomomo-nola.blogspot.com/2010/08/holly-smith-feasibility-studyhistoric.html.

16. DoCoMoMo web page: www.docomomo-nola.blogspot.com/2011/04/docomomomo-nola-week-inlife.html 17. No Parking Lot web page: www.Noparkinglot.wordpress.com/photos/ 18. World Monuments Fund web page: https://www.wmf.org/project/phillis-wheatley-elementaryschool 19. Google Earth and Google Street View.

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