06.14.05
11:14 AM
06.14.05
6:35 PM
10.05.05
3:35 PM
08.24.05
4:41 PM
10.08.05
1:30 PM
Club Indasia 3-D, Fourth near Dorgenois
Club Indasia was an after-hours bar in a lowlying section of a declining, working-class neighborhood in Mid City. It was a few blocks from one of the city’s most notorious public housing projects, and also near the infamous Pumping Station Number 1, one of many pumping stations that utterly failed during Katrina. The flames painted on the façade and the sign contrast starkly with the comparatively benign imagery of the barbershop next door. It was unusual in New Orleans for these two functions to share the same building. Post-Katrina, the adjacent shotgun houses were tagged with orange kiss-of-death “Condemned” stickers because they were judged to pose a public health threat.
08.24.05
2:17 PM
Hip Hop Clothing, North Broad near Esplanade
The Hip Hop gear store on North Broad Street was covered with a wraparound graffiti-like mural painted on a monolithic, modest wood-frame structure. Here, mural and building were one and the same—the quintessential decorated shed. A large 2 was emblazoned on the side, positioned at the end of a street scene depicting the ’hood at night. The rendering of a street lamp bathing a desolate streetscape was simultaneously poetic and menacing. On the front elevation, the perspective in the mural was from curb level; a storm drain was rendered larger than life at lower left. A sidewalk led to a set of stairs and the front porch of someone’s shotgun house.
10.07.05
4:33 PM
06.19.05
10:42 AM
10.06.05
10:15 AM
Keystone Motel, Airline Highway
Before Interstate I-10 was built in the 1970s, Airline Drive (renamed Airline Highway about a decade ago in an attempt by Jefferson Parish to spruce up its tawdry image) was the main commercial thoroughfare linking New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Among its vintage, pre–World War II roadside-strip attractions were a number of ingratiating yet decisively low-budget courtyard, or motor court, motels along the Jefferson Parish segment of the strip leading from Moissaint Airport (since renamed Louis Armstrong International in a similar rebranding effort in the 1990s) into downtown New Orleans. The Keystone Motel is high-style vintage roadside Americana, invoking a bygone era when families mainly took automobile vacations. Sadly, these places are vanishing daily.
08.26.05
10:12 AM
10.07.05
12:05 PM
Monte Carlo Motel, Chef Menteur Highway
The Motel Monte Carlo was built along “The Chef” strip—the other pre–World War II era roadside strip leading into the city. The Chef extended into the city from the east, and was lined with long-since-destroyed destinations: a Frostop drive-in, walk-up-only McDonald’s restaurants, assorted diners, and seedy by-the-hour motels. This motel was built in the mid-1950s. The Chef was the eastern counterpart to Airline Highway, linking the city to Pass Christian, Biloxi, Mobile, and points beyond along the Gulf Coast. Note the painted-over “Air Conditioned” on the handsome masonry wall that doubled as a sign armature preKatrina, and the “Color TV” appendage signage. The Monte Carlo had fallen on hard times before Katrina, as evidenced by its fractured sign. Regardless, the turquoise arrow with its flashing neon and the fractured letters “M-O-T-E-L” were no match for Katrina.
08.15.05
12:40 PM
Haydel’s Flowers, South Claiborne
Though diminutive in scale, this neon sign was a landmark on South Claiborne Avenue for more than sixty years. The delicate neon tracing of roses above “Flowers” was sublime, and “Haydel’s” was discreetly stated within the composition. At the same time, the ubiquitous lean-to utility poles and power lines are a reminder of the problems which hinder burying them in the spongy soil of a city that sits below sea level. This sign was a work of art although its fate remained unknown following its disappearance six months after Katrina. In the background, the immortal Louis Armstrong sadly presides over this loss of urban authenticity, post-Katrina.
09.17.05
3:40 PM
05.18.06
3:45 PM
08.26.05
10:48 AM
10.07.05
11:53 AM
Causey’s Country Kitchen, Chef Menteur Highway
This was a Frostop drive-in until it was purchased by the Causey family in the 1980s and converted to Causey’s Country Kitchen. The large sign along Chef Menteur Highway, topped by a mug, stood little chance against Katrina. The adjacent Causey’s restaurant was renovated to create a partially enclosed eating area after it was purchased from the previous owner. The thin diagonal structural support struts remain visible from the exterior. The huge rotating Frostop root beer mug, at one time mounted atop the flat roof at its center, had long since been removed. In a “circle the wagons” plan of defense, and with the family’s bus business suspended in Katrina’s aftermath, the buses were redeployed as a sort of protective shield of armor.
08.26.05
10:56 AM
10.07.05
12:05 PM
08.27.05
1:25 PM
08.27.05
1:35 PM
Frostop Drive-In, South Claiborne and Miro
At Ted’s Frostop, across the street from Tulane University, the iconic root beer mug sat for decades high above the sidewalk. This drive-in had been renovated and expanded over the years, nearly obliterating its 1950s minimalist, structurally expressive attributes. As at all Frostops, the root beer mug, in the beginning, rotated atop the roof and was brightly illuminated at night. Also remaining were not fully concealed vestiges of the Jim Crow era, i.e., a “for colored only” walk-up window to the rear. Regardless, this much-altered building retained its original charm. Six feet of floodwater from Katrina swamped the place. The mug had not rotated for over twenty years yet remained a neighborhood landmark. In the storm’s aftermath, the owner decided to leave the mug upside down on the ground and disaster memorialization T-shirts are now sold inside.
10.05.05
10:45 AM
10.05.05
10:55 AM
08.18.05
1:26 PM
Frostop Drive-In, Jefferson Highway near Cleary
The Frostop on Jefferson Highway in Jefferson Parish was also a local landmark. Unlike the Frostop on South Claiborne, it had retained its mug on the roof, although this mug also no longer rotated. The prominent diagonal struts of the original design remained. The open-air dining area had been enclosed at some point, and tacky, backyard, suburban-style masonry benches and tables, and a small wooden picket fence were added. However, the interior remained largely intact. Two days after Katrina, the gas station next door exploded due to a gas leak. Miraculously, the flames did not engulf its adjacent neighbor. Through the owner’s sheer will, lunch was being served only a matter of days after Katrina. In 2008, this Frostop was threatened with demolition for a high-rise condominium project designed by Daniel Liebskind.
10.05.05
2:20 PM
10.05.05
2:32 PM
08.20.05
1:28 PM
10.07.05
1:35 PM
Marshall Art Digital Imaging (Soulja Slim mural), North Claiborne and Pauger
The Soulja Slim mural was painted in memory of an on-the-rise local rapper who was gunned down in 2003 in front of his mother’s house one afternoon in the Gentilly section of New Orleans. The slogan “Stop the Killing” was often encountered around the city during the past few years—at bus stops, on large billboards atop buildings, and as small signs placed on utility poles; a murder epidemic had been ravaging inner-city neighborhoods before Katrina took her turn. In this example, commemoration commingled with commerce, since the message was presented as part of an advertisement for a local T-shirt
shop. Post-Katrina, Soulja appears disgusted at the sight of his devastated hometown as he gazes upon the ruined furnishings piled on the curb across the street.
08.16.05
1:22 PM
Stereo Lounge, Causeway Boulevard
The Stereo Lounge sign was pure 1940s-vintage neon. “Morris Motel, ½ Block, Turn Right” were the instructions given passing motorists. It stood out amid a nondescript stretch of Causeway Boulevard in Jefferson Parish near Jefferson Highway. This area did not flood. The sign’s deep blue color was intense, urbane, yet welcoming, and its white neon letters and half-tipped martini glass provided animation. The sign had been protected by a Plexiglas shield before Katrina. This sign deserved to be fully restored and granted landmark status, but unfortunately it disappeared six months later (as did the structure in 2008).
10.06.05
3:30 PM
05.18.06
1:45 PM
08.18.05
12:47 PM
Bayou Specialties, River Road, Jefferson
This boat looks as if it were ripping through the outer wall of the building in an attempt to catapult itself up over the top of the Mississippi River levee across the street and into the river. This establishment, which sold fishing and boating supplies, was located just across the parish line in Jefferson Parish on River Road. The area did not flood, since it was located on high ground, but elevation alone could not protect buildings from winds that peaked at 130 mph. The sign was iconic in the unself-conscious tradition of the greatest roadside signs of the 1930s and 1940s, e.g., a donut shop shaped like a donut, a camera shop with a camera on the front façade, or a music store shaped like a piano.
10.16.05
2:25 PM
06.19.05
11:40 AM
10.08.05
11:40 AM
Sugar Bowl Courts, Airline Highway
New Orleans has been the home of the Sugar Bowl holiday football classic since the first game was played on New Year’s Day in 1935. This vintage motor court, built in the 1940s, attained local infamy years ago because of its association with the world’s oldest profession. It was architecturally noteworthy for the singular, iconic Sugar Bowl Courts neon sign that adorned its roof before Katrina. This stretch of Airline Drive (formerly Airline Highway), having dissipated into a down-on-its-luck strip of bars and rent-by-the-hour motels, lost a key component of its remaining mid-twentieth-century authenticity when Katrina knocked out this exquisite sign.
08.24.05
4:42 PM
Broad Street Overpass, Broad Street and I-10
This is a scene representative of New Orleans’s version of the inner-urban postindustrial belt found in most large American cities. Along the Tulane Avenue corridor, the landscape of neglect consisted of derelict manufacturing plants, bars, and vacant graffiti-covered warehouses. This Budweiser sign had been a longtime landmark along the section of I-10 leading from the suburbs to downtown. The abandoned Falstaff brewery (now converted to apartments) is shown to the immediate right. This overpass, like other nonflooded, high-elevation roadways in the city, was transformed into an ad hoc refuge for thousands of homeless survivors after Katrina. Discarded pillows and blankets reveal the true misery.
10.15.05
4:55 PM
10.15.05
5:22 PM
08.20.05
3:36 PM
10.07.05
4:22 PM
Doerr Furniture Co., Elysian Fields near St. Claude
This sign simply disappeared post-Katrina. It was a local favorite because of its art deco composition and thin white neon lettering set against a chocolate brown background. It was located in the Faubourg Marigny section on the rear side of the venerable furniture company, which occupied a full city block. Doerr has been located in this neighborhood for more than eighty years, and its print and televised ads are well known to generations of New Orleanians.
08.24.05
1:48 PM
10.08.05
1:38 PM
Aeren Supermarket, Washington and South Dorgenois
This establishment has been in the Broadmoor neighborhood for more than fifty years. Its 1950sera streamlined modern sign and the adjacent supermarket, set in a sea of asphalt, contrasted with the zero-lot-line urban context: a walkable neighborhood filled with early-to-mid-twentieth-century raised bungalows. Many houses were demolished in the name of progress in the 1950s to make way for customers who opted to drive to this store, one of the new one-stop “super” markets where they could “make groceries.” Post-WWII white flight to the suburbs caused this neighborhood to decline.
08.18.05
7:50 PM
Piazza d’Italia, Poydras and Camp
This plaza, celebrated as the “poster child” building of the postmodern movement in architecture in the 1970s, graced the covers of both Charles Jencks’s landmark book The Language of Postmodern Architecture and a national architecture magazine. The team of Charles Moore with Perez Architects received much praise for their design. It was commissioned by leaders of the city’s Italian American community to recognize the long-neglected contribution of Sicilian immigrants to the city’s history. It received many awards, and then languished as the world’s first postmodern ruin before it was rescued and restored by the Loews hotel chain in 2003. Post-Katrina, this remarkable place was reduced to a staging area for out-of-town disaster mitigation specialists and their army of RVs.
10.08.05
12:45 PM
06.14.05
10:45 PM
Big Daddy’s Bottomless Topless Club, Bourbon Street
06.14.05
11:05 PM
Unisexxx Club, Bourbon Street
10.06.05
9:55 PM
Unisexxx Club
On Bourbon Street, sex has long been a major commodity, celebrated for generations. However, post-Katrina, something about the signs that hawked sex seemed quaint in retrospect: these signs and façades in the Vieux Carré had typically exhibited only facsimiles, not the real thing itself. On cleverly composed neon signs, the figures’ genitals were even blacked out in one case. Post-Katrina, a nearly all-male army of post-disaster workers overran New Orleans, transforming it into a schizoid twenty-first-century version of the American Wild West—part war zone, part stage set. Storefronts suddenly functioned as display cases for live models—Amsterdam on the Bayou.
08.18.05
3:30 PM
10.05.06
3:42 PM
Sandpiper Lounge, Louisiana near Barone
Vintage neon from the mid-twentieth century had, sadly, been disappearing from New Orleans in recent years. Lacking landmark protection, their fate was left to the whims of their owners. The decline of the surrounding neighborhoods where many of the best examples were located had also contributed to their demise over the years. Worse, these properties tended to change hands frequently. In spite of all this, the Sandpiper Lounge managed to endure. It was featured in the 2004 film Ray. Katrina nearly dislodged the neon letters “M-U-S-I-C,” but the delicately rendered cocktail glass held its own. This area flooded, and recreational boats used in ad hoc rescue missions were scattered everywhere.
06.19.05
11:38 AM
10.06.05
1:42 PM
10.07.05
1:54 PM
London Lodge Motel, Airline Highway
This motel on Airline Highway was the preeminent motor court of its era in New Orleans, even though it had fallen on hard times before Katrina. While its name, an apparent reference to England, never made much sense, passersby in their autos were taken with the neon sign’s eye-catching sunburst tracing at the pinnacle as well as the “Old World” lettering within the sunburst, set against a 1950sera brick veneer wall and poplar trees. It is the best remaining example of a Las Vegas–strip-style post–World War II motor court in New Orleans, and for this reason alone it is worthy of landmark status. It was renovated in 2007 after having endured seven feet of floo
dwater.
08.24.05
2:34 PM
10.15.05
4:40 PM
Crescent Schools, South Broad near Orleans
The long tradition of sign making in New Orleans was evident at the Crescent Gaming and Bartending Schools. Set midblock, this storefront operation was located on an aging commercial strip that runs through the heart of the city. A restaurant, Henry’s Soul Food & Pie Shop, was downstairs. The city’s nickname is referenced in the hand-painted crescent figure, shown confidently balancing a tray of beverages in one hand and a fist full of aces in the other. There, one could learn to become a big-time blackjack dealer at the Harrah’s casino palace down on Canal Street. In the ’40s or ’50s, this sign would probably have been grandly executed in neon.
08.20.05
4:40 PM
32 Inches Po-Boy, Barataria and Belle Terre
This establishment, in Marrero on the west bank of the Mississippi River, is known simply as “32 Inches Po-Boy.” A beautifully rendered sign above the roof eave depicted its namesake—an enormous shrimp and crawfish po-boy fully “dressed” on a loaf of French bread. In the background, a white halo of sorts surrounded the po-boy, setting it apart from a background field of mustard yellow. A single spotlight illuminated the sign, perhaps as a substitute for the high cost of a neon sign. This po-boy deli was the site of a former Super Saver food store.
10.06.05
2:10 PM
08.20.05
10:22 AM
10.08.05
10:40 AM
Frozen Pops Snowballs, Fourth and South Derbigny
This sno-ball stand is located in the area between Uptown and Central City, and it looked rundown and forlorn long before Katrina. Located across the street from a New Orleans Recreation Department (NORD) playground and basketball pavilion, it is a prime example of a nomadic sno-ball stand, since it could be transported anywhere. It could easily be shuttled, for instance, to an athletic event, picnic, and church event in the same weekend. The stand’s color, materials, siting, and roof pitch mimic those of the shotgun house in the background. The neighborhood took a beating from Katrina.
08.15.05
11:40 AM
David Crockett Fire Station, Lafayette Street, Gretna
Delirious New Orleans Page 3
