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Soho South: New Identity for New Orleans' Warehouse District
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14475 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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3 / 1988 |
2,583 Words |
| Author
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Stephen Henkin
Stephen Henkin is an arts editor for The World & I. |
Long celebrated as the home of jazz, Creole cooking, and French-influenced architecture, New Orleans is finally developing a new image for itself. The Warehouse District, formally know as the Historic Riverfront District, is turning into an upscale residential and commercial community, radically changing the look of downtown New Orleans today. When the 1984 World's Fair opened on the city's downtown riverfront, there was eager expectation that the area, filled with dilapidated nineteenth-century warehouses, would emerge after the fair as the city's newest residential neighborhood. Although the World's Fair was a financial disaster, the seventy-six-acre Warehouse District has attracted new residents and investors.
Priority Project
As the only large area available for adding housing units fringing the central business district (CBD), the revitalization of the Warehouse District into a self-sufficient, 24-hour-a-day community has become a priority for New Orleans, which already was committed to upgrading the downtown area. Urban planners, architects, and developers with a wide range of interests are discovering that the preservation of downtown New Orleans is a proven deterrent to unrestrained urban sprawl. As many district transplants say, "Why spend hours commuting in the car each day from the suburbs when you can walk to work in minutes from the district?"
Originally established after the signing of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the Warehouse District of New Orleans comprises a portion of the area known in the nineteenth century as the Faubourg St. Mary. The district, which once boasted the "busiest street in the world," Tchoupitoulas Street, is a relic of the golden age of New Orleans' commercial history. There are almost three hundred extant industrial and warehouse structures in the district, most of which were built to house produce brought into the port by boat and later carried out by railroad. The buildings in the district are two- to four-story brick structures, most with granite columns at the ground level. Some have wide overhanging sheds at the sidewalk level meant to protect produce delivered to the curb by wagon. Because they were designed to support the weight of the stored goods, the floors of these buildings are very strong; the interiors of most buildings display exposed wooden beams and brick walls.
One of the few intact nineteenth-century environments remaining in New Orleans, the Warehouse District has kept its original granite street paving. Original accessories such as shutters, ironwork, and
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