When Hurricane Katrina wrecked the city, the old prelate went to the diocesan office to help. He found his successor wracked with concern about the fate of a parish priest who was lost in the storm. Seeing that anxiety had left the poor man paralysed, my 92-year-old kinsman called the military authorities.

“This is Phil Hannan. I jumped with the 82nd Airborne at Normandy. I need a helicopter”.

A helicopter duly arrived, and carried the former army padre to the home of the missing cleric, which had been turned to matchwood. Returning to the archiepiscopal residence, Hannan announced without ceremony, “He’s dead, may he rest in peace. Let’s move on to the next problem”.

From a Louisiana newspaper:

Behind the Cathedral of St. Louis, New Orleans.

SINCE BOBBY JINDAL, a traditional Catholic and sometime New Oxford Review contributor, today became the eighty-fourth Governor of Louisiana (sixty-first of the republican era), we decided to share with you the interesting development regarding the Louisiana state flag. Louisiana’s flag consists of a pelican displayed with a scroll bearing the state motto of “Union, Justice, and Confidence”. Heraldically, the pelican is known as a “pelican-in-her-piety” depicting the mother pelican piercing her breast to offer her own blood as sustenance to her children. The “pelican-in-her-piety” is a traditionally Christian symbol meant to parallel Christ’s sacrifice, and so this is why you sometimes see representations of pelicans in churches.

It seems that from about the 1900s onwards, the droplets of blood on the pelican’s breast gradually ceased to be displayed, somewhat diminishing the Christological nature of the state emblem. However, one astute eighth-grader at Vandebilt Catholic High School in Houma, the parish seat of Terrebonne Parish (remember that in la Louisiane counties are called parishes), noticed this problem and informed his representative in the state’s lower house. In April 2006, the Louisiana State Legislature passed an act requiring three drops of blood to be depicted on the pelican, both in the flag and the state seal, and so the significance of the the pelican-in-her-piety is now restored.

BUILT IN 1745, the Old Archbishop’s Palace in New Orleans is believed to be the oldest building in the entire Mississippi Valley. The building has gone through a number of ecclesiastical uses through the centuries, originally constructed to French plans for the Ursuline sisters who came to foster the Christian faith in la Louisiane. On the corner of Chartres Street and Ursulines Avenue in western corner of the Vieux Carré, the Convent survived the Great Fire of 1788, along with the neighboring barracks and Royal Hospital. The Ursuline nuns took orphans into their care here, and educated the daughters of the city’s elite and of the local plantation owners (among them Baroness Pontalba), as well as organizing special handiworks classes for Indian and Negro girls. And it was in the Chapel of the Convent that the Ursuline nuns kept vigil during the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, praying ceaselessly for the salvation of New Orleans from destruction. This great event was attributed to the Blessed Virgin, and Notre Dame de Bon Secours (Our Lady of Prompt Succour) was adopted as the patron of the city and diocese of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana.

The original plan of the building, designed in France.

The Ursulines left Chartres Street in 1824, and the building reverted to the diocese (later, from 1850, the archdiocese). When the Presbytere next to the Cathedral on the Place d’Armes (Jackson Square) was sold in 1853, this building became the episcopal palace of New Orleans. The Church of Saint Mary was built, jutting into the original structure, and the parish school used the courtyards as well as another building on the premises, since demolished. The conciergerie and servant quarters, however, remain.

A 1930s view.

The conciergerie, or entrance building, through which one enters the front courtyard.

The original cornerstone: “During the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, King of France and Navarre…”

The old palace and the Church of St. Mary come together to form an ‘L’. The conciergerie can be seen at the left on the streetfront, and the servants quarters at the bottom left. After the barracks and Royal Hospital had been torn down, the Ursulines built a line of row houses, which can be seen at the right of the aerial view, and below in a photo from the 1930s.

In 1997, the Archdiocese commissioned Professor Sergio Papucci of Florence to complete this mosaic (below) commemorating Notre Dame de Bon Secours. As a final note, the current Ursuline convent runs the oldest continuously-operated school for girls in the United States, as well as being home to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Prompt Succor. The old palace is now home to the archdiocesan archives, which date back to the foundation of the city by the French in the eighteenth century.

A rather good article I was reading in the Oxford American (via V&V) reminded me of a building I stumbled upon in the Historic American Buildings Survey, digitized at the Library of Congress. No. 403 Royal Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans was designed by one of the first master architects in America, Benjamin Latrobe, who also designed the Baltimore Basilica, the Mother Church of the United States. Resting at the corner of Royal and Conti streets, the building was constructed by the Louisiana State Bank (later subsumed into la Banque de la Louisiane) and features a domed banking hall in the center. After having outlived its usefulness under its original purpose, it became a private residence, with the central banking hall turned into a living room, before being turned into an events venue as it remains today.

The photographs at the top and above were taken in 1934 and the building exudes a rather charming dilapidation. It’s an honest building, and looks and feels its age. Fast forward to the present day (below) and the building has certainbly been over-restored. Not a lick of peeling paint, the whole building looks fresh and new and, in my mind, a tad artificial; all this despite being a fairly old structure.

What’s worse is that the old courtyard to the rear has been covered over with an exceptionally awkward roof so that it can be used for events in all weather. The interloping roof is a completely insensitive addition to an otherwise comely and graceful building. Indeed, without it, one imagines the building might make a fine private residence.

Historic preservation is hugely important in America, which has lost the majority of its built heritage. Yet proprietors of historic buildings need to learn that maintaining the structural integrity of a building need not mean that it must maintain the newly-built look. Indeed, much of the French Quarter suffers from this zeal in restoration, excepting most prominently Preservation Hall jazz hall.

Building plans after the jump.

Royal Street façade, 1934.

Conti Street façade, 1934.

Rear elevation, 1934.

Ground floor plan, 1934.

Upper floor plan, 1934.

Black and white photos and plans from the Library of Congress. Color photographs from INETours.com and from 403 Royal website.

In 1727, French Ursuline nuns founded a monastery in New Orleans, Louisiana, and organized their area schools from it. In 1763 Louisiana became a Spanish possession, and Spanish sisters came to assist. In 1800 the territory reverted back to France, and the Spanish sisters fled in the face of France anti-Catholicsm. In 1803, short on teachers, Mother Saint Andre Madier requested reinforcements in the form of more sisters from France. The relative to whom she wrote, Mother Saint Michel, was running a Catholic boarding school for girls. Bishop Fournier, short-handed due to the repressions of the French Revolution, declined to send any sisters. Mother Saint Michel was given permission to appeal to the pope. The pope was a prisoner of Napoleon, and it seemed unlikely he would even receive her letter of petition. Mother Saint Michel prayed,

O most Holy Virgin Mary, if you obtain for me a prompt and favorable answer to this letter, I promise to have you honored at New Orleans under the title of Our Lady of Prompt Succor.

and sent her letter on 19 March 1809. Against all odds, she received a response on 29 April 1809. The pope granted her request, and Mother Saint Michel, commissioned a statue of Our Lady of Prompt Succor holding the Infant Jesus. Bishop Fournier blessed the statue and Mother’s work.

Mother Saint Michel and several postulants came to New Orleans on 31 December 1810. They brought the statue with them, and placed it in the monastery chapel. Since then, Our Lady of Prompt Succor has interceded for those who have sought her help.

A great fire threatened the Ursuline monastery in 1812. A lay sister brought the statue to the window and Mother Saint Michel prayed

Our Lady of Prompt Succor, we are lost if you do not come to our aid.

The wind changed direction, turned the fire away, and saved the monastery.

Our Lady interceded again at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Many faithful, including wives and daughters of American soldiers, gathered in the Ursuline chapel before the statue of Our Lady of Prompt Succor, and spent the night before the battle in prayer. They asked Our Lady for the victory of the American forces over the British, which would save the city from being sacked. General Andrew Jackson and two hundred men from around the South won a remarkable victory over a superior British force in a battle that lasted twenty-five minutes, and saw few American casualties.

It is still customary for the devout of New Orleans to pray before the statue of Our Lady of Prompt Succor whenever a hurricane threatens New Orleans.

Hat tip: Irish Elk. The image used below is of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Prompt Succor in New Orleans.