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“This is a stone masonry building,” Mr. LeClerc said. “It’s marble and brick all the way through.”
The diagnostic work is largely done. Over the last several months, the engineers scaled the building from scaffolding or cherry pickers or rappelled down on ropes to examine every one of the 20,000 blocks of stone.
With hand-held devices, they mapped the building, numbering every piece of marble. They tapped the building with mallets, allowing loose pieces to fall (hence the netting that now wraps part of the exterior), and drilled core samples to study the material.
“They took off about 1,000 pounds of stone that was ready to come off,” Mr. LeClerc said.
Now, the library has to determine the best cleaning method: whether to use a laser method that zaps off the black sooty pieces or to apply poultices and then peel off the pollutants.
The main library — also known as the Humanities and Social Sciences Library — has been gradually renovating its interior over the last 30 years, most recently restoring the Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division space, with its richly carved wood, marble and metalwork, completed in December 2005.
A team of architects led by Chan Krieger Sieniewicz, Hargreaves Associates, TEN Arquitectos, and Eskew+Dumez+Ripple, will unveil the final design in February for revitalizing a stretch of the Mississippi River in New Orleans. The broad goal of the redesign is to reduce barriers that discourage people from enjoying the river and replace decaying sections with parks and public venues that will trigger private investment.
A team of architects led by Chan Krieger Sieniewicz, Hargreaves Associates, TEN Arquitectos, and Eskew+Dumez+Ripple, will unveil the final design in February for revitalizing a stretch of the Mississippi River in New Orleans. The broad goal of the redesign is to reduce barriers that discourage people from enjoying the river and replace decaying sections with parks and public venues that will trigger private investment.
The centerpiece of the project, known as Reinventing the Crescent, is a linear park that devotes nearly 85 percent of the development zone’s 174 acres to parks and plazas, bike and walking paths and venues for river-gazing. Signatures of the design include examples of dramatic, forward-thinking architecture as well as inventive ideas for accommodating the various industrial wharfs and terminals that must be retained for cargo and transportation uses.
“Improving public access to the river is the point,” said Allen Eskew whose New Orleans-based firm is in charge of managing the project. “But the plan gives the city a riverfront design that is authentic for our time and does not just reflect the past.”
Palm Springs has become a hotspot for fans of mid-century modern architecture, inspiring restorations of the city's rare collection of Rat Pack-era buildings.
This fall, the new owners of the 1947 Del Marcos Hotel completed a renovation of the 16-room inn, designed by desert architect William F. Cody.
The hotel reopened in September after workers updated the lobby, installed new restrooms, and created a saltwater pool complete with piped-in music. "It's back to A-plus condition," says Jack Davis, the manager and partner in the company that bought the hotel last year.
The Del Marcos Hotel won a design preservation award from the Palm Springs Modern Committee in 2005. It also rehabbed the city's 1960 Wexler House, designed by Bob Alexander, whose 2,200 houses were the city's first subdivisions.
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Ignoring local protests, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development last week started demolishing historically valuable public housing in New Orleans.
In a city pummeled by government incompetence, the department's intransigence has become surreal. HUD was stopped days later because it had failed to seek required approval from the City Council, and Judge Herbert Cade of Orleans Parish Civil District Court halted most of the demolition until the council agrees to let them proceed.
HUD has threatened to withdraw hundreds of millions of housing reconstruction dollars and thousands of rent vouchers if the council doesn't approve its plan in a meeting on Dec. 20.
Losing the vouchers would mean that poor people entitled to live in public housing -- and no party to the controversy -- would be thrown into the street. Does the council have a choice?
More housing is needed in a city with a serious rental- housing crunch since Hurricane Katrina. Adapting the historic structures on four huge sites -- three adjacent to historic- landmark neighborhoods -- is worth doing because of their sturdy construction, sensitivity of design and quality of materials. That's why these 4,500 units were deemed worthy of listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
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