A panel discussion called “At Risk: 20th Century Urban Design and Architecture” drew at least 150 people to the Ogden Museum of Southern Art this past week. Panel moderator was New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussof. Also participating were Ferrell Guillory, director of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina and a former New Orleans States-Item reporter; Sally Hernandez-Pinero, former chairwoman of the New York City Housing Authority; New Orleans architects Arthur Q. Davis and Ray Manning; and Jack Davis of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The discussion ranged from the threats to Charity Hospital and city school buildings to the loss of St. Frances Cabrini Church, but finally settled primarily on a discussion of the public housing developments. One of the audience members, Rev. Marshall Truehill, put it so eloquently this way: “We need to keep in mind that the buildings have become symbols of what has been distasteful, and rather than deal with the source of the distaste, we’d rather tear down the building.” Jack Davis noted that the city’s penchant for demolition was rooted in the mayor’s need to show progress—of any kind—in an administration short of notable accomplishments. Meanwhile demolition is proceeding on the newer non-historic sections of the B.W. Cooper housing development, and at the C.J. Peete housing development. We’re not sure what’s going on with Lafitte and St. Bernard, so I wrote a letter to the president of the City Council this past Friday asking for information.
In the cult baseball movie Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner is called upon to be a preservationist of a different sort. To rekindle the love of baseball, he's inspired to build a baseball diamond in the middle of his corn field: "If you build it, they will come," a voice tells him. In the case of Detroit's Tiger Stadium, however, the baseball field already exists. This former major-league ballpark is 112 years old. The challenge, instead, involves sowing the seeds that will continually bring people to come see it. After all, the last major league ballgame was played here in 1999—and plans for its partial demolition have been slated for spring.
More New Orleans than New England, a 204-year-old house with a two-story veranda stands out in suburban Boston. The house at 25 Cottage Street in Brookline, Mass., is not one that a casual observer might link with the work of Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886), one of America's most important 19th-century architects. It was in this Federal-style house that Richardson spent the most productive years of his career, from 1874 to his death in 1886, designing masterpieces such as Boston's Trinity Church, which he could see from the house.
The people have spoken, and a brick courthouse in northern Georgia fell this week.
The Smithsonian Institution is working to find a new use for its shuttered Arts and Industries Building, built in 1881 and empty since 2004, when an engineering firm's report deemed it a safety hazard.
![[10 on Tuesday] Rest](http://media-cache-ec4.pinimg.com/192x/c8/b2/34/c8b2343eebdadef03b6eb19f12cfdefb.jpg "[10 on Tuesday] Rest")
![[10 on Tuesday] One](http://media-cache-ec3.pinimg.com/192x/ec/73/c3/ec73c3a63b3b7579697bf4862329e2ad.jpg "[10 on Tuesday] One")
