History

In 1960 the Louisiana Landmarks Society (LLS) underwrote the cost of a pilot study documenting the architectural and land-use history of a single block of the Vieux Carré: square 63, bounded by Royal, Conti, Bourbon and St. Louis Streets. The study followed the pattern established by the Historic American Buildings Survey done in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration. Pleased with the work done on square 63, the LLS, joined by the Vieux Carré Commission (VCC), sought grant funds to expand the study to cover the entire French Quarter.

A number of preservation-minded groups and individuals rallied behind the effort: The Edward G. Schlieder Educational Foundation financed the project through the Tulane University School of Architecture. John W. Lawrence, then dean of the school, headed an advisory board of scholars and civic leaders that included Leonard V. Huber, Richard Koch, L. Kemper Williams, Samuel Wilson Jr., Boyd Cruise, Bernard Lemann, and Edith Long, who oversaw the work on what would become known as the Vieux Carré Survey.

Work commenced on April 1, 1961. Staff hired for the project photographed or copied historic maps, major site plans, drawings, engravings, sketches, and paintings. They searched newspapers and early travel accounts for information on buildings and sites. Architect John Bohlke was hired to create a series of front-elevation drawings of each block, to show spatial and design relationships among buildings. Photographer Dan Leyrer was brought on to make a photographic record of every street facade or lot.

Tulane students assisted by compiling an ownership record of the land and buildings, starting with the then-current owner and tracing back until no further transactions could be located, or until the chains became too difficult to trace in the original Spanish and French records. The chains of title became the heart of the survey, supporting all the other documentation to form a history of the land as well as modifications to the buildings on it.

Only 88 of the 120 city squares that make up the Vieux Carré had been completed when this initial effort ceased on June 1, 1966. The completed work was microfilmed, and copies were placed with Tulane University’s Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, the Schlieder Educational Foundation, the Library of Congress, and the Vieux Carré Commission, which later turned its copy over to the Louisiana Division of New Orleans Public Library. The original paper copy of the Vieux Carré Survey would remain in the French Quarter with the collection of L. Kemper Williams in the Historic New Orleans Collection.

In 1977 HNOC received funding from architect Collins Diboll to complete the survey. A new supervisory committee was established under the direction of Humberto Rodriguez-Camilloni, professor of historic preservation at Tulane. Serving with him were Bernard Lemann, Boyd Cruise, Samuel Wilson Jr., Stanton Frazar, and Dode Platou. The committee hired staff to complete the chains of title and compile supplementary materials pertaining to the remaining lots and squares. Photographer Jerry Toler was commissioned to photograph each building and site in the Vieux Carré. By the end of 1980, all squares had been fully researched and updated. The survey, compiled into 130 binders, became the most-used resource at the Historic New Orleans Collection.

After years of steady usage, the survey’s paper pages became fragile and worn. With two goals in mind—preservation and increased access—HNOC undertook the painstaking work of digitizing the survey. Following an extensive data analysis conducted in 2000, HNOC staff began entering property transaction information into a Microsoft Access database. In digitizing the survey HNOC strove to stay true to the original but also made every effort to correct factual errors and inconsistencies in the data. The Collins C. Diboll Private Foundation assisted with financing the project, and their support made it possible to complete the transformation.

It took over 10 years to enter the 53,794 property transactions into the database. In addition to recreating the chains of title, staff had to scan and link supporting photographs, diagrams, and documents. HNOC also updated chain of titles, added citations and documents to property records, and supplemented the survey with historical maps and plans of the French Quarter. In 2010 photographer John Watson Riley updated the survey’s photographic record for the 21st century. Besides data updates HNOC maintains the database infrastructure to keep it viable.

The most important change has been greater searchability. The physical version was only searchable by street address, but now users can search not only by address but also by property owner, owner’s status as a free person of color, architectural rating, building material, and, in limited cases, sale price. Users can also perform keyword searches. Contextual information on the block and city square in which any given property is located, a hallmark of the original survey, remains a vital feature. Digitization of the Vieux Carré Survey has allowed HNOC to use the survey’s data in other initiatives. Maintaining the Collins C. Diboll Vieux Carré Digital Survey as a public resource for French Quarter preservation and history is a HNOC priority.