“Partial building collapse on the corner of Decatur and Madison Street,” chimed the Jan. 5, 2025 mass text message from NOLA Ready Alerts. “Take safety precautions and avoid the area.”
Within moments, a flurry of posts began appearing on social media.
Another building collapse?
What is going on?
The message unnerved many New Orleans residents, who had seen news of three other prominent building collapses in recent weeks. Though a follow-up text was sent moments later from the emergency text system clarifying that a building had not actually collapsed, but renovation debris had fallen from a balcony to the sidewalk and street below, the damage had been done. An already rattled populace was upset. In the weeks since, articles have popped up on virtually every local media outlet on the subject.
Why are so many New Orleans buildings collapsing?
Though New Orleans has a tremendous amount of “old,” structures, full building collapses are, in fact, rare — and largely occur only during major weather events. The music and history communities mourned when the Karnofsky Tailor Shop, the Rampart Street site where Louis Armstrong lived for a time as a boy, and the Holy Aid and Comfort Church, a site of jazz and African American significance once known as Perseverance Benevolent and Mutual Aid Society Hall, collapsed during Hurricane Ida in 2021. (The Preservation Resource Center is involved in the rebuilding of both sites.) One brick, one wood, both had been vacant and decaying for decades. Though the losses were lamented, the collapse of the buildings surprised few, given their neglect, coupled with the more than 100 mile-per-hour winds that accompanied that Category Four hurricane.
Common Causes of Building Collapses in New Orleans
Structural Decay and Maintenance Issues
Sometimes things fall off buildings. In August 2014, chunks of marble falling from Gallier Hall’s cornice to the sidewalk below initiated a stabilization and full renovation of the former City Hall. In the past year, the area around the languishing high-rise Plaza Tower has become such a hazard site from debris falling that a sort of hairnet protector, wrapped around the top of the building, had to be put in place to keep those driving and walking in the vicinity safe.
But to see a whole building collapse, on a random afternoon, is hardly normal in New Orleans.
Yet that is exactly what happened on O.C. Haley Boulevard around 5:35 p.m. on September 21, 2024. With seemingly no warning, the brick structure at 1410 O.C. Haley Blvd. tumbled into the street, crushing two cars parked in front of it. The building housed a thriving arts space called The Neighborhood Gallery in the decade before Hurricane Katrina, but shuttered after the storm, and sat vacant until its collapse. The City of New Orleans cited the building owner for structural violations in 2009, and issued more citations in the years that followed, but no evidence appears on the City’s One Stop App that the owner ever faced repercussions.
The Role of Property Owners and City Oversight
Lack of maintenance by property owners, coupled with often insufficient City oversight, are major issues leading to deteriorating buildings city-wide, according to Michelle Shoriak, Preservation Resource Center Director of Conservation and Education. “New Orleans has so many buildings older than 50 years, and they need regular inspection and maintenance to stay strong,” she said. “Unfortunately, that just doesn’t happen in so many instances. We have many negligent property owners who let their buildings deteriorate for decades. Often, even responsible property owners just don’t understand the issues their buildings are facing.”
Understanding the Materials Used in New Orleans’ Buildings
Though historic buildings were typically built with solid materials that have successfully weathered decades, if not centuries, of conditions, the materials will only perform as expected if they’re maintained properly. If not, they will fail. What are the most common materials used in the city, and how should they be maintained?
Wood
Though the cypress and pine planks used 100 or more years ago to build New Orleans’ properties are denser and stronger than most modern woods on the market, like any material, they’re still subject to wear and tear — and in New Orleans, there’s plenty of that. Water is wood’s biggest enemy, and in New Orleans’ humid climate, there’s a nearly constant presence of water in the air. Exterior wood siding must be as protected as possible from water penetration to keep the planks intact and strong. Gutters are essential in New Orleans to keep water away from wood buildings, yet many owners don’t have them, or don’t maintain the ones they do have. To keep water from penetrating the exterior, wood siding must be contiguous and cannot have gaps, or missing boards, and should be covered in a layer of paint for extra protection. They should also be free of greenery: Invasive vines and plants that can get through boards create puncture points where water can get in. “Once water is able to get behind exterior cladding, the entire property is compromised,” Shoriak said. “Creating the ability for the building to dry out, and keeping water out from the start, are imperative.”
“In all my years renovating buildings, I have only once seen floor joists in bad condition with solid framing on top,” said Michelle Duhon, co-owner of Southkick Rolf Preservation Works. “Structural instability usually comes from the top down. It’s almost always water intrusion — holes where the roof meets the walls, or on a window header. Once water gets inside the wall cavity, that invites termites and rot.”
Speaking of termites — they’re everywhere. According to the LSU Ag Center, Formosan termites cause an estimated $500 million in damage every year in Louisiana. They eat wood rapidly, and hollow out the elements they are digesting, instead of breaking through the top or bottom, which can conceal the damage until the wood element has been completely hollowed out. Termites’ relentless chewing can bring on significant damage rapidly. Formosan termites build tubes from the soil up to the foundation of buildings, entering from the floor. Their presence is often hidden, however, when their nests are underneath a building.
Drywood termites, though slower moving, can survive in even drier conditions than their Formosan cousins; they also pose a serious threat to a property’s wood framing and stability. “Even historic masonry buildings will have wood framing, floor joists, and wood windows, so there is plenty for a termite to eat,” Shoriak said. Because historic mortar is often loose, termites can crawl even through thick courses of brickwork to get to the wood underneath. “Annual termite inspections are essential for all building owners in New Orleans,” she said, “and regular treatment is necessary if any termites are found.”
Though water and termites are wood’s top enemies, a third assailant — man — can be just as destructive. “One of the most common things I see is structural integrity compromised from modern equipment in historic buildings,” Duhon said. “Plumbers, mechanical contractors and electricians will often cut through a building’s structural members in order to add lines and equipment into a building that was never designed for such equipment. A plumber uses four-inch hole saws to cut through studs, and if this is done repeatedly at different locations over a century, you lose a lot of material. When buildings get retrofitted with modern HVAC, we often see mechanical equipment cutting through joists, and this weakens the structure.”
In commercial structures, or high-end residences, installation of elevators can also create structural problems. “You have to dig a new foundation and add framing to put in the elevator shaft, and you often have to remove a lot of the original structural fabric to make way for the new,” Duhon said. “It’s a huge structural interruption. You really need a good engineer to do that right.”
Engineers are always a good idea for more substantial renovations. City staff reported at least two shotgun house collapses in recent years as contractors removed interior walls to create more modern, open floor plans. Interior walls act as bracing, as do fireplaces, and their removal are not alterations to take lightly.
Masonry
Because wood is so susceptible to water rot and termite damage — and because it is the material most used in residential construction in New Orleans — people often assume that brick structures are more stable. Yet all of the building collapses in late 2024 — at 1410 O.C. Haley Blvd., 938 Lafayette St., and 1800 Hastings Pl. — were collapses of masonry structures. Though pre-World War I bricks in New Orleans are soft, they can last centuries with regular inspection and care, including tuckpointing — replacing the mortar — when needed. The key is to keep elements off the brick that will trap moisture inside, Duhon said. This includes Portland cement, which is often slapped onto aging brick to stabilize it. The cement isn’t permeable, however, which means that moisture is trapped, and causes rapid deterioration of the bricks.
“It was very common practice in the 1980s and ‘90s, for people who were looking to maintain brick structures, to apply waterproof or non-permeable sealants and paints that have ultimately led to intensify deterioration of the masonry over the years,” said Leah Tubbs, Easement Director at the Preservation Resource Center. “Once these coatings are applied, the masonry cannot breathe during climate changes, therefore moisture becomes trapped and can cause severe damage from the inside out. This damage is coming of age in many brick buildings across the city and could potentially compromise their structural integrity.”
Regardless of their exterior material, many New Orleans buildings have masonry inside, in the form of a fireplace. “Fireplaces tend to sink, and they pull framing down with them,” Duhon said. “This can be avoided with basic maintenance — repoint your fireplace properly.” Though some spalling of fireplace brick — the dust that falls to the floor from the brick — is normal, a building inspector can advise as to when repointing is necessary. “Fireplaces are heavy — massive — and they tend to sink over time,” Duhon said. “On large scale renovations, when the fireplace is causing structural issues, we might cut framing away from the fireplace or shore up the brick. People tend to get concerned about rising damp — moisture coming from the ground, up through the brick, into the house. Rising damp is unsightly, and it makes the interior musty. But it’s not an indication of a structural problem. A lot of times it bothers people, and then they put paint, or Portland cement, on their fireplace to trap the moisture, or make it invisible. But then the fireplace rots from the inside. Don’t do that,” Duhon said.
A final note on masonry: Though brick is solid, a masonry building needs its interior framing to be intact to be structurally sound. “Without interior walls and floor framing to support the four exterior brick walls of a building, you’re asking for brick to collapse in high winds,” Duhon said. “If you remove all the interior framing in order to, let’s say, make an open floor plan, you are essentially removing the bracing. The brick walls then need to remain perfectly plumb in order to stay structurally sound. When high winds or subsidence occurs, the brick walls often get out-of-plumb, and then they can fall.”
The Impact of New Orleans’ Climate on Building Stability
New Orleans’ extreme weather has already been cited, but it bears repeating that the high moisture levels present in the air much of the year, extreme heat in the summer months, and occasional but increasingly frequent heavy rain events and high-wind hurricanes, damage buildings at a rapid rate. “It is very important for property owners to hire building inspectors, who are knowledgeable about historic properties, to do an assessment of their property with regularity, at least every few years,” Shoriak said. While many people only have inspections performed when selling a property, inspectors have deep knowledge that can clue owners into potential problems before they become serious, she said.
The Preservation Resource Center also has a large collection of free instructional videos on its website, PRCNO.org, called “Maintain Right,” to educate property owners on common problems and remedies in historic buildings.
The presence of treacherous streets in New Orleans, with plentiful cracks and potholes, is often blamed on the shifting moisture levels in the ground, or subsidence. Much of New Orleans was once swamp, and was only made habitable when water draining technology was invented in the early 20th century. Though the shifting ground can commonly cause small cracks in the walls of New Orleans’ buildings, subsidence rarely is a sole cause for structural failure, Duhon said. Building construction on piers, which is common, helps buildings be more resilient to the shifting ground; Duhon said she most frequently sees subsidence issues in raised basement-type homes.
An official with the City of New Orleans said that large trucks and heavy traffic hitting potholes on O’Keefe Street next to the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities’ Turners’ Hall caused the building to shake violently, which was damaging to its historic masonry, and helped lead to its destabilization. The building partially collapsed on Dec. 14, 2024, in part due to repair work that was being completed that uncovered structural instability caused by improper maintenance decades prior. According to the official, inappropriate stucco covering the bricks of the 1868 structure, put on years before, led the brick to crumble over time. The building has now been stabilized, but will require extensive structural repair before it’s once again deemed habitable.
Large trucks shaking and nicking historic buildings led to their ban in the French Quarter in 2015. As City officials rapidly work to prepare for the 2025 Super Bowl, some have pondered the cumulative effect of infrastructure work on the stability of the city’s historic buildings. Has the frequent road work, and all the construction and machinery that accompanies it, made the historic building stock less stable? There must be impact. However, many contractors on such projects are required to adhere to maximum vibration standards, and must monitor site vibration while the project is under construction. Vibration monitoring that is sensitive to the streetscape — buildings in the dense Vieux Carré will be differently impacted by construction than those in the more suburban Lakefront neighborhoods, for example — is important to ensure that historic buildings don’t suffer negative impacts from infrastructure improvements.
Solutions to Prevent Future Collapses
A building’s health and good maintenance is the responsibility of its owner; unfortunately for New Orleans’ residents, negligent property owners abound.
The collapse of 1410 O.C. Haley Blvd. on Sept. 21, 2024, was a classic example of building neglect that went on too long, with disastrous results. Its owner acquired the building in 2008 and was cited by the New Orleans Code Enforcement Department multiple times, with violations spanning from 2009 to 2024, for blight. The most recent violation, from June 2024, cited “numerous structural violations.”
The city threatened the owner with adjudication in 2016 and 2017, saying that the property would be offered at tax sale. There is no record that it ever happened. Additional citations came from the Department of Safety and Permits starting in 2018. More threats were sent in 2024, stating that the property would be auctioned on Sept. 17, 2024, due to unpaid property taxes. No record of a sale can be found.
Why this negligent property owner was permitted to do nothing to improve their structure, after decades of the City’s knowledge, without recourse, is unclear.
But it’s a common complaint in New Orleans’ neighborhoods. Some property owners are cited repeatedly, while others’ neglect goes unnoticed for years.
Inherited properties are a big problem, Shoriak said. If a property owner dies without a will, their property gets passed to their heirs, which can sometimes be multiple people. To make improvements or sell a property to an interested owner, heirs must get clean title to the structure and work together. Often, this doesn’t happen, so disputed properties sit and deteriorate.
“If the City isn’t willing to follow through with enforcement, then what’s the point?” asked a City official who wished to go unnamed. “I get that taking away someone’s property looks bad and comes with risk. But there must be consequences for people who make their neighbors live next to their blight for years and years.”
Maintenance and repair of historic structures can be very costly. For owners who want to do right by their buildings but cannot afford it, the Preservation Resource Center stood up its Revival Grants program in 2019, and partnered with the City to establish the Historic Home Repair Grant Program in 2024, to provide up to $20,000 in free repairs to low-to-moderate income homeowners. Other organizations, such as Rebuilding Together New Orleans, provide similar repair services. But the need is tremendous, and funds are limited.
Funds are limited within City departments, as well. To stem more building collapses, City officials must improve their ability to identify, intervene and enforce property maintenance and hold negligent owners accountable in a transparent and fair manner. But City staff members cite employee shortages and backlogs as a perennial challenge.
In August 2023, a task force of citizens, who had been assigned by Councilmember Freddie King to interview top City officials and analyze City processes to make recommendations for how to improve permitting and overall building safety in New Orleans, gave a report to the City Council. The report recommended a financial commitment from the City of a minimum additional $3 million in funding to City departments that oversee permitting and building issues to hire enough staff needed to improve processes. Unfortunately, these recommendations did not affect the City’s 2024 budget significantly. The Department of Safety and Permits saw only a two percent budget increase; the Historic District Landmarks Commission and Vieux Carré Commission offices saw no increase to fund requested new positions.
Ultimately, proper and timely maintenance of historic structures can prevent their collapse. Caring building owners must seek out information on property repair, perform regular inspections, and do the work needed to keep their buildings strong. And negligent owners must be held to account. The City must invest in getting more inspectors on the ground, and staff available to enforce violations, to ensure improvements happen long before buildings crumble.
