HOME AGAIN! The Bennett Family Home
A grandmother reclaims her family home in the historic Holy Cross neighborhood of New Orleans
The little pink house is typical of the architecture in the National Register District of Holy Cross, located in the Lower Ninth Ward.
When rushing water fractured floodwalls along the Industrial Canal and surged through New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, Mildred Bennett’s home flooded for the first time in her family’s memory.
“As far as we know, since 1894 when my great-great-great-great grandfather built this house, the water has never been past the second step,” says Donna Duplantier, 46. “When I was a little girl in 1965, living with my mother and grandmother on the northern side of the Lower Ninth Ward, Hurricane Betsy forced us to be airlifted off the roof. We came to this house near the river on Dauphine Street to live with my great grandmother, and she told us, ‘You must stay here with me on the high ground, where it doesn’t flood.’”
Stay, they did. The grandchildren integrated the local elementary school, graduated from the local high school and went on to college. Mrs. Bennett’s son bought the house next door and one of her grandsons purchased a home up the block. The family still owns these three houses. When Katrina struck, Mrs. Bennett’s daughter and son-in-law were living with her in the narrow pink house where she was born and where she yearns to return from hurricane-imposed exile in Texas. She misses watching her 13 great-great grandchildren play in the home where she was born and which they will one day inherit.
Mold covered the walls of every room in the house, feeding on the many layers of wallpaper and soggy drywall.
“Everyone in the neighborhood knows my grandmother,” says Ms. Duplantier, who evacuated to Philadelphia where she continues to work for the Department of Justice as a victim-witness coordinator. “She’s an anchor who has stayed there through the worst of times. When she couldn’t take care of the house anymore, Preservation Resource Center volunteers repaired and painted it for her. The PRC was working on lots of houses near my grandmother, and the neighborhood was looking up.”
“Since 1995, Preservation Resource Center has repaired and painted 104 homes of elderly and disabled residents in Mrs. Bennett’s neighborhood,” says executive director, Patricia H. Gay. “In the past two years PRC has totally restored five houses and built two new homes. In January we are beginning four more projects in the neighborhood.”
Known as Holy Cross and listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the neighborhood wasn’t looking so good the day in October that Ms. Duplantier and her brother, Alton Remble, ventured into their grandmother’s house to see the damage. “We were standing outside the house. The street was silent, absolutely empty of life,” Ms. Duplantier remembers. “And these people appeared on our doorstep and offered to help us.”
Under exterior cement shingles is beautiful tongue and groove siding, one of the many exciting features hidden behind newer materials.
“These people” were volunteers from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans. The Trust has brought in volunteers from across North America to assess damage and advise homeowners of how to save historic features such as old growth floors and wallboards, plaster, and solid wood trim.
The volunteers are also getting the message into the neighborhoods about the services offered by the Trust and the PRC. The two organizations have partnered to turn PRC’s headquarters in central New Orleans into a staging area for free supplies, including buckets of cleaning materials, roof tarps, fans, generators, respirators, and easy-to-follow guides for cleaning and remediating flooded homes. They also hold weekly workshops to help owners understand all the stages of restoring their homes – from mold removal to dealing with city inspectors and insurance adjustors to refurbishing cypress floors.
Like 2,000 other owners of flooded homes, Ms. Duplantier stopped by the PRC for supplies to start cleaning her grandmother’s house. However, it was pretty certain that she and her brother could not even scratch the surface in their scattered weekend visits back to New Orleans. This is when the Trust stepped in. Vice President of Programs Peter Brink, former trustee Camille Strachan, and members of the Trust and PRC staffs visited Mrs. Bennett’s house on November 12, where they talked with her grandchildren about the future of their family home.
James Turner, a National Trust advisor from Detroit, volunteered for one of the Trust’s revolving teams of specialists who visit New Orleans for a week at a time.
PRC obtained legal consent to move ahead in Mrs. Bennett’s absence and worked with the United Methodist Church to send 54 volunteers from Virginia Tech to Mrs. Bennett’s home on Thanksgiving morning to clear the debris. The young volunteers, supervised by PRC staff, sorted through the soggy belongings and saved china, old LP’s, wooden chairs, paintings, and even sacks of photos and letters that were stashed on high shelves.
“What my grandmother would really like is a green suitcase in the back of the bedroom cupboard,” Ms. Duplantier requested. “It’s all her memories of my younger sister who died in 1978 of a brain tumor. Before that, no one in the family had passed before they were seventy five years old.”
The green suitcase, family photos and even Mrs. Bennett’s diary are now safe at the PRC, while her other salvaged belongings are waiting in the house for Ms. Duplantier to store.
After the home was cleared, the Trust sent a professional contractor to carefully remove the wallboard and save the drop siding underneath. He also removed three layers of flooring to get down to the original intact pine and uncovered the brick hearths hidden behind ruined drywall.
Lauren Pinney Burge from Ohio, a member of one of the Trust volunteer teams, is working on plans to restore the house where Mrs. Bennett was born
In the meantime, volunteer architects, mold specialists and contractors from across the country have continued to visit Mrs. Bennett’s home weekly. Architects from Michigan, Texas and Ohio have worked on plans to restore the home, and a volunteer carpenter from Massachusetts has offered to go to New Orleans and help get the project started. The Bennett house has provided much needed inspiration for neighbors who have been calling the PRC and asking for help on their own homes. In fact, watching the progress on Mrs. Bennett’s home inspired her next-door-neighbor of over three decades to hire the same crew to clean his house.
“As people return to their homes, our hope is that our work in New Orleans’ historic neighborhoods will show that all is not lost and the uniqueness of the people, neighborhoods and architecture that have defined the City for hundreds of years will continue to flourish,” said Brink. “Thanks to people like Mrs. Bennet and her grandchildren, who are dedicated to restoring the heritage and pride of their neighborhoods, New Orleans residents and the nation can witness the determination that so many have to reclaim their beloved city and their history.”
Author: Mary Fitzpatrick