Welcome to the neighborhood!

After a short visit during the summer to look for an apartment, Ashlea, Lindsey and I found a place in the Lower Garden District. We knew we could not move in until September 1st and needed a place to stay during the first few days of class. I made arrangements to stay with my dad’s cousin Sara in the Broadmoor neighborhood until we could move in to our apartment. The Sunday before classes started, I left home from Houston with my car full of boxes, and headed for New Orleans.

Sara gave me directions to her house using alternative routes to help me avoid construction that had given her two flat tires in a week. Driving into Broadmoor down Napoleon, I was worried I’d miss my turn due to the many street signs still missing or hard to read. Fortunately the sign I needed was still up, and as I turned onto the street I was greeted by an enormous pothole. Welcome to the neighborhood!



Although it was Sunday, Sara welcomed me to the area with a traditional Monday night New Orleans dinner of red beans and rice. Over dinner we talked and she told me what life was like for her post-Katrina. Sara was lucky in that she was able to come home only a month after Katrina hit. Though her area of Broadmoor got seven feet of water, her second story living space was not badly damaged. At the time, Sara was only one of two residents able to move back to their homes on her block. One year later, there are now only four occupied houses on her block.




As I took my bags to the guest room, she pointed out the window to a few houses with lights on and told me when each of them had come home. While many of the houses in Broadmoor are currently under construction, the neighborhood is only a shell of what it once was. It is unbelievable how many houses have been abandoned by their owners and have not been touched since Katrina.



Every morning I would wake up to the sound of construction crews, saws being used to cut down damaged trees and large trucks moving down narrow residential streets lined with FEMA trailers and piles of moldy debris. The crews often blocked the streets with their heavy machinery which made it necessary to leave a few minutes early in case an unexpected detour was needed. My second morning there I could barely get out of the driveway because a crew was working on one of the houses across the street. By the time I came home from studio at seven, the house had been pulled off its piers and raised several feet in the air. Others feel that raising their house to the suggested level is not enough and have raised their homes up to a foot higher than where Katrina’s flood waters peaked.







Now, a few weeks later we’ve gotten settled in our new apartment and I no longer wake up to the sound of construction crews outside my window. Our apartment is located a block away from Magazine Street, and a few blocks away from downtown. While there is still some construction in the Lower Garden District, it’s a much different scene from the clean-up in Broadmoor and many other areas of New Orleans. The boutiques, restaurants and bars on Magazine Street have a constant buzz of activity which adds to the strange feeling that everything is fine. Sitting on our porch people pass by riding bikes, running, and walking their dogs to the park – casual scenes that don’t exist in many neighborhoods because at the end of the day people are tired from rebuilding their lives.






-Sarah Wilson