|
|
Adding poignancy to disaster:
a view of Katrina wreckage from within a waterfront
house in Biloxi, Miss.
( Mississippi
Heritage Trust) |
Mississippi's Morning After
Taking stock on the tempest-tossed coast
BY ALAN HUFFMAN
When Hurricane Katrina began its westward
drive into the Gulf of Mexico in late August, few
residents of Bay St. Louis, Miss., a historic beachfront
town about 50 miles east of New Orleans, made plans
to leave. At that point, Katrina was just another
red swirl on the Weather Channel map, the latest in
a long line of potential disasters. Many residents
viewed hurricanes the way streetwise city kids regard
drug dealers—with a nonchalance that belies fear.
Those who lived in old houses, in particular, were
encouraged by the fact that so many historic structures
had weathered 1969's infamous Hurricane Camille,
which raked the region with 200-mile-per-hour winds
and a 25-foot storm surge. "This building survived
Camille" was a common refrain, as if the galleried
houses and filigreed churches of Mississippi's
Gulf Coast were indestructible.
Although the Mississippi coast has its share of T-shirt
shops and garish casinos, its architectural and cultural
core was a 50-mile-long waterfront boulevard of antebellum
mansions, Victorian cottages, and shotgun houses,
many of them shaded by arching live oaks. These structures
were solid, built on high foundations and girded with
massive mortise-and-tenoned timbers. They had shutters
that worked. They had outlived countless major hurricanes
for more than a century. But after Katrina made landfall
on Aug. 29, 2005, most of them were gone.
In what may be the worst preservation disaster in
the nation's history, the storm unleashed its
most violent fury on Mississippi's coast, where
an estimated 350 buildings listed in the National
Register of Historic Places suffered total destruction.
Katrina ripped through 15 historic districts in Mississippi
and wreaked havoc on thousands of historic buildings,
listed and unlisted. The effects were felt more than
150 miles inland, in Jackson, where winds tore the
roof from the Old Capital Museum of Mississippi History,
causing approximately $1.5 million in damage.
For more of this story,
subscribe
to the magazine, look for the January/February
2006 issue on newsstands, or e-mail
us to purchase a copy.
Read more excerpts from our current
issue >>
|
