The damage and displacement endured from Hurricane Katrina is having immediate impact on the future of New Orleans' locally significant places, bringing explicitly to light current efforts of architectural and cultural preservation in the city. Typically in New Orleans, as well as most American cities, places have been identified as "official" sites of cultural, historical, or architectural worth through architectural surveys and listing on the National Register of Historic Places or as a Local Historic District Landmark. These designations put emphasis on architectural form and history but overlook social and cultural histories. This doctoral dissertation research project seeks to expand ideas about the range of ways buildings are historically, socially, or culturally significant to communities as part of the preservation process. The concept of "place" is an important contribution of cultural geography scholarship to preservation practice, particularly ideas of place making or how material settings are endowed with meaning. Using a combination of traditional and critical approaches in cultural geography, doctoral candidate will explore how architecture and social and cultural practice fundamentally inform the place-making process. The research approach will take into account the material and intangible elements of buildings, including their everyday use, community associations, and cultural performances. The student will employ architectural survey methods to document the material form of buildings in conjunction with qualitative methods, namely participant observation, in-depth interviews, and archival research, to apprehend the lived experience of places. Four ethnohistoric case studies of significant New Orleans neighborhood places overlooked by traditional preservation practices will be conducted to illustrate the range of ways buildings and the people that use the buildings create and continue to sustain local cultural meaning over time.
The current rebuilding climate in New Orleans allows for a concentrated and critical look at the ways the preservation process fails to account for sites that are significant to different communities and cultural groups citywide, especially at the neighborhood level. The project also speaks to the process of preservation at a much broader level, because the evaluation criteria of the National Register of Historic Places dictates state preservation policy and typically guides local historic district policy as well. This study will develop and evaluate new methods for identifying socially and culturally sophisticated places as part of the practice of architectural and cultural preservation at the local, state, and federal levels. By considering the traditional emphasis of the preservation process on architectural significance, the project is expected to contribute to broader-ranging discussions regarding how elements like community associations, everyday use, and cultural performances can be accounted for in the preservation process. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.
