HDLC to review request to demolish school listed on World Mounment Fund Watch 2010

On Friday March 18, 2011 the New Orleans Historic District Landmarks Commission will review the Recovery School District's request to demolish the Phillis Wheatley Elementary School.

Charles R. Colbert considered the Wheatley School his highest accomplishment as an architect and planner. He served the Orleans Parish School Board as Supervising Architect for Planning and Construction from 1951-1953. In 1952 he produced A Continuous Planning and Building Program, a comprehensive study of existing facilities and plans for growth and development.  He resigned from this position to dedicate his energies to the practice of architecture.

In 1954 Colbert designed his third school, Phillis Wheatley Elementary a rather spectacular  elevated and cantilevered steel truss structure. The school was designed to meet contemporary programmatic needs on a modest urban site in a hot and humid climate.  Elevating the school above grade created a wealth of shaded playground space. This also saved the main structure from flooding after Hurricane Katrina. The cantilever and welded steel trusses kept the playground free of obstructing columns which would have been required in a conventional post and beam construction system. The classrooms and restroom facilities are connected by a continuous gallery.

The school was honored nationally with the Top Award by The School Executive, Better School Design Competition. In 1955 Progressive Architecture awarded the design by citation. In 1958  Omer Blodgett, a world renowned structural design engineer, praised the design of this "most unusual and spectacular arc-welded structure" in an article for Progressive Architecture. Wheatley was exhibited internationally by the U.S. State Department in Berlin in 1957 and in Moscow in 1958.  In 2008 The Louisiana Landmarks Society recognized the school in its list of New Orleans' Nine Most Endangered. Currently the Phillis Wheatley Elementary School is recognized by the World Monuments Fund 2010 Watch. 

Times Picayune :: World Monuments Fund 2010 Watch

Phillis Wheatley School, 2300 Dumaine Street, New Orleans, LA. Charles R. Colbert, architect, 1954.

Frank Lotz Miller, photographer, source: "Idea: The Shaping Force" Uploaded by regional.modernism

The glass-and-steel Wheatley School, designed in 1954 by architect Charles Colbert, had classrooms on the second floor and a play area underneath, shielded from sun and rain. It was "progressive for a school facility at the time," the fund says. "The building was critically acclaimed and its design was exhibited internationally. It is a valuable example of regional modernism in a city most noted for its 18th and 19th century architecture."

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World Monuments Fund Watch List includes two New Orleans Sites, Bruce Eggler, Times-Picayune, Friday October, 9, 2009

Proposal to rehabilitate Phillis Wheatley Elementary School

DOCOMOMO. US. Louisiana

NPR :: New Orleans School Among World Endangered Sites

Wheatley listed on World Monuments Fund Watch 2010

Wheatley listed on World Monuments Fund Watch 2010, originally uploaded by regional.modernism.

That's right. Take it in slowly.

WORLD :: MONUMENTS :: FUND :: WATCH.

Floating above Creole cottages and Victorian shotgun houses of the Tremé/Lafitte neighborhood of New Orleans is the glass-and-steel Phillis Wheatley Elementary School. In 1954, the architect Charles Colbert constructed an elevated cantilevered steel truss structure to provide an expansive shaded playground area, protecting the schoolchildren from the tropical climate. Progressive for a school facility at the time, the building was critically acclaimed and its design was exhibited internationally. The building is a valuable example of regional modernism in a city most noted for its 18th- and 19th-century architecture.

More than 50 years later, the elevated form proved highly effective in protecting the Phillis Wheatley Elementary School from the floods of Hurricane Katrina. Since the hurricane, the Orleans Parish School Board has shuttered the building, and decay and vandalism have taken their toll on this striking statement of modern design. Demolition of the edifice to construct a new school has been proposed, and Docomomo-Louisiana has countered this proposal by suggesting an adaptive reuse of the building as a community center. This alternative to demolition would raise public awareness of an architectural gem unique to New Orleans and encourage community building in an area still recovering from disaster.