Among the Ruins, Something to Build On

It is hard to imagine that any city has ever looked quite the way this one does right now. If you took a major metropolis famous for its canals -- Amsterdam, say, or Venice, Italy -- and jerked it violently to one side so that half its neighborhoods were flooded and the other half left to rot and stink in the late-summer sun, you might begin to approximate what Hurricane Katrina and subsequent flooding have done to New Orleans and its handsome, peeling polyglot buildings.

Lurking beneath the putrid body of water that still covers more than half the city is a level of damage that won’t be fully measurable for weeks or even months. But it seems clear that much, if not most, of the city north and east of its center will need to be razed.

Thursday, in and around the Lakeview area, block upon block of suburban-style ranch houses, built mostly in the 1940s and later, were sitting in 6 to 7 feet of water. The dry parts of town, meanwhile -- the entire French Quarter and Faubourg Marigny, along with the Garden District, Uptown and much of the central business district -- have suffered little more than downed trees and power lines.

In the French Quarter, Jackson Square and its fabled Pontalba apartment buildings are in good shape, guarded by drowsy soldiers sitting on the shaded steps of St. Louis Cathedral. Only an eerie emptiness keeps certain blocks of Bourbon Street from appearing entirely normal. Along St. Charles Avenue, on the west side, the rusticated buildings of Tulane and Loyola universities and grand private houses have barely a scratch on them.

The state of those largely unscathed areas, which contain nearly all of New Orleans’ famous landmarks and tourist attractions, is enough to prompt measured optimism about the city’s future. They are the building blocks of its possible revival, and they look surprisingly sturdy.

But this is a city whose appeal, as a place to visit and to live, has always had more to do with an extensive, tightly woven fabric of residential neighborhoods than with architectural icons. Tennessee Williams noted precisely that quality in the stage directions for “A Streetcar Named Desire”: the section of town around Elysian Fields Avenue, he wrote, “is poor but, unlike corresponding sections of other American cities, it has a raffish charm.”

Indeed, deep racial and class divisions aside, New Orleans is one of the few places in America that, in the best sense, looks its age.

Though it is unusually vulnerable to natural disaster, nearly all of its neighborhoods have managed to avoid the urban renewal and crass commercial projects that have taken their toll elsewhere. This is partly due to the intractable poverty here, which has made great sections of New Orleans unattractive to national developers, and partly to a long-standing preservation movement.

Katrina, in other words, has managed to do to this city what a wrecking ball never could.

And if there is one task that American planners, developers and architects have struggled with over the last few decades, it is the attempt to create, from scratch, buildings that connect directly with urban history without seeming trite or saccharine. Once the dead are buried and the city recovers -- and, let’s not forget, deals with what will probably rank as the biggest toxic cleanup in American history -- that is precisely the task New Orleans will face.

Usually, to wander around looking at buildings is an entirely visual experience. But to engage in even a brief architectural walking tour here this week was to have all of your senses engaged and, more often, assaulted.

The sounds of helicopters, boats and stray dogs were in the air. Car alarms and buildings’ security systems sounded endlessly. The vents on a modern office tower facing Lafayette Square roared like a 747. The standing water stunk of raw sewage and worse; approaching it, you had to be conscious of where you stepped or everything you touched. When buildings caught on fire -- as they often did early in the week -- you sometimes first noticed the blaze as an acrid taste on your tongue.

Only on the southwestern edge of the city, near Audubon Park, was there a sense of calm. The almost stunning lack of damage there was no coincidence, of course: The families who built that area’s most impressive estates were fully aware of what constitutes high and low ground in New Orleans.

On Chestnut Street in the Garden District, one of the second-floor bay windows on a particularly stately, gabled house was boarded up with a piece of plywood on which was written, “No Way, Ivan.” Apparently not just the house but also the plywood itself had come through last year’s Hurricane Ivan unscathed.

In Katrina’s slashing winds, as opposed to the flooding that followed, the newer buildings seem to have fared worst. The Superdome was reeling even before thousands of displaced residents took up residence there. Dozens of the Hyatt hotel’s upper-story windows were blown out. Along I-10 west of the city, at least one new mirrored-glass tower had whole sections of its facade peeled away by the storm.

Most of New Orleans’ best-known 20th-century buildings, though, remained without significant damage. These include two office buildings by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Charles Moore’s 1978 Piazza d’Italia, a postmodern plaza whose bright color and cheeky style made it right at home here.

The suggestion last week by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) that it “doesn’t make sense” to use federal funds to rebuild the city in its present location may have been ill-timed, but not entirely illogical. New Orleans continues to sink a bit more each year, which means that an effort to protect it from future hurricanes may require not just stronger levees but also propping up the city from below.

But it would be beyond macabre to simply leave the damaged neighborhoods empty, or even to return them permanently to the lake. One possibility being discussed is building a huge park -- perhaps extending City Park along the lakefront to the east and west so that it covers much of the area now underwater -- while subsidizing the relocation of displaced residents elsewhere in the city or region. (There will certainly need to be a memorial as well.)

The promise of substantial federal and private aid already has architects and planners dreaming of what such a park might look like -- and about other civic and transit improvements previously contemplated.

Those fantasies have a connection to the history of New Orleans: It was federal money -- from the New Deal-era Works Progress Administration, to be exact -- that helped fund the planning and construction of much of City Park. The same is true of early restoration efforts in the French Quarter. And when Washington’s interest in the city waned, infrastructural projects, such as the levee system, went disastrously unaddressed.

But the stark demographic differences between the two residential areas with the worst damage mean that rebuilding is almost guaranteed to proceed along separate tracks. Lakeview and surrounding sections make up a relatively wealthy neighborhood where the vast majority of residents own their homes. The damaged neighborhoods to the south and east are poorer, and almost everybody living there was renting.

This would seem to suggest that Lakeview is poised for a better outcome. But architecturally, at least, the reverse could be true. Most residents there have flood insurance and other financial safety nets. Flush with settlement money, they may be able to build houses that are much bigger and more architecturally aggressive than the ones they would replace.

In the poorer neighborhoods, meanwhile, it seems at least possible that the reconstruction could be more centrally and thoughtfully planned.

In the best possible architectural outcome, that section will be awash two or three years from now not in water but in funding for housing that is affordable, humane, smartly designed and sustainable, perhaps with connections to transit and shopping built in from the start. It could even help spur an affordable-housing revival, giving new energy to a field that desperately needs it.

That is a rosy scenario, to be sure -- perhaps far too rosy when you consider the graft for which Louisiana is infamous. Many locals are already worrying aloud that the reconstruction will be about as smoothly handled as the evacuations were. New Orleanians may be optimistic and devil-may-care by nature, but they’re not naive.

And if the decade’s other giant rebuilding effort -- the bungled plan for ground zero in New York, where private interests have been allowed to overwhelm public ones -- is any guide, we should probably move directly into cynical mode, warily looking out for crass, profit-minded or expedient solutions.

The whole world is watching New Orleans this week. The question is what happens when we begin to turn our attention elsewhere.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Homes endangered

Some of the districts with New Orleans’ unusual homes and most-famous landmarks were spared excessive flooding, but neighborhoods bordering Lake Pontchartrain were mostly destroyed by floodwaters.

Homes of New Orleans

The city has houses built in many styles, some of which are more durable than others.

1) Riverbank

Shotgun or double shotgun houses are narrow, one-story homes lacking hallways. Cypress is often used, which contains a resin that makes the wood durable, although flooding would require most interior surfaces to be replaced.

Called a shotgun because if a gun were fired through the front door, the bullet would pass through the lined-up doors of each room.

2) Lakeshore

This neighborhood’s brick homes are of recent construction and are some of the more expensive in the city. Some may be saved because of their higher elevations.

3) Lakeview

The post-1920s bungalows here are made of brick and pine, which is susceptible to deterioration.

4) 7th Ward

Primarily post-1960s ranch houses with brick veneers on concrete slabs; in a previous flooding, the materials in these homes crumbled from water damage.

5) French Quarter

This area of Spanish-style brick houses was not severely flooded, but brick that sits in water too long can erode.

6) Metairie

While the bungalows here are older than most in the city, the area is on a ridge, so it was less prone to flooding.

7) Mid-City

A mix of homes that includes many shotguns; much of the area was flooded.

8) Downtown

The brick, steel and glass modern office buildings and warehouses will likely be salvaged.

9) 8th and 9th Wards

Many homes in this heavily flooded area are made of wood. Most were built before the 1960s.

Devastating damage for homes

Houses that have been sitting in floodwater for days face severe structural damage. In many cases, it may be cheaper and more realistic to build new homes than to try to salvage existing homes.

Flooding problems:

- Moisture weakens wood and can trigger growth of fungus and mold.

- Sediment and water collect in walls, short-circuiting electrical systems.

- A tilting wall or an askew roof threatens a collapse.

- Appliances suffer extensive damage.

- Contaminants migrate into household items.

Additional problems:

- Interior surfaces, including flooring and drywall, are destroyed.

- Brick and cinder block expand and crack; mortar can dissolve.

- Pressure from water and soaked earth can crack or lift the foundation.

- Insects and other organisms breed in standing water.

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Sources: Syracuse University; slate.msn.com; Chicago Tribune; Scott Croft; C&C; Technologies Survey Services; Louisiana State University; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Digital Globe; Google Maps.

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Graphics reporting by John L. Jackson, Joel Greenberg and Brady MacDonald

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Christopher Hawthorne is The Times’ architecture critic.