Melpomene Street Housing Development | |
---|---|
General information | |
Location | 1301 Simon Bolivar, New Orleans, LA 70113 United States |
Coordinates | 29°56′41″N90°04′57″W / 29.94472°N 90.08250°W |
Status | Rebuilt |
Construction | |
Constructed | 1963-64 |
Demolished | 2004-2011 |
Other information | |
Governing body | Housing Authority of New Orleans |
The Melpomene Projects, officially called the Gustavo Apartments or TheGuste Homes, and colloquially The Melph, are a housing complex located in the Central City neighborhood of New Orleans.
The complex occupies ten city blocks, bounded roughly by South Robertson Street, Clio Street, Simon Bolivar Avenue and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard (formerly Melpomene Avenue). There were four three-story buildings and two four-story buildings for families and a high-rise for the elderly. At a peak height of 12 stories, the Guste high-rise is the tallest public housing complex in the city.
The Melpomene Project was constructed in 1964. The site was once made up of single and multi-family houses; by the late 1950s the city declared them slums which paved the way for the project. It is the youngest surviving housing project in New Orleans. In the 1980s and 1990s the project was well known for drug area as it was once over-ran by dope dealers. Many of whom where as young as twelve sold drugs in the project pathways.
The high-rise underwent major renovations in 2002.
In 2004, three of the six low-rise buildings were demolished after failing to meet the Housing Authority of New Orleans' economic viability guidelines.
In 2006 it was one of few housing projects in the city that survived Hurricane Katrina with minimal wind damage and no flood damage.
In 2012 officials approved a $30 million bond for the final phase of redevelopment. The last building was demolished in 2013. [1] Construction of phase III began in 2013 at a cost of $61 million, through the use of $26 million from HANO, $21.9 million from FEMA, and $13.1 million in Low Income Housing Tax Credits. Gibbs Construction and Colmex Construction completed the development of the new one, two, three and four bedroom units, which include Energy Star appliances, and are also pre-wired for cable and internet services. Community supportive services provided by the Guste Resident Management Corporation are available for residents living in the community. The new Guste Homes opened in 2018 with 638 homes located on the entire Guste site; 577 of which are public housing units. [2]
A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdiction. It is used as a residential, office building, or other functions including hotel, retail, or with multiple purposes combined. Residential high-rise buildings are also known in some varieties of English, such as British English, as tower blocks and may be referred to as MDUs, standing for multi-dwelling units. A very tall high-rise building is referred to as a skyscraper.
The Wendell O. Pruitt Homes and William Igoe Apartments, known together as Pruitt–Igoe, were joint urban housing projects first occupied in 1954 in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. The complex of 33 eleven-story high rises was designed in the modernist architectural style by Minoru Yamasaki. At the time of opening, it was one of the largest public housing developments in the country. It was constructed with federal funds on the site of a former slum as part of the city's urban renewal program. Despite being legally integrated, it almost exclusively accommodated African Americans.
Ballymun is an outer suburb of Dublin, Ireland, at the northern edge of the Northside, the green-field development of which began in the 1960s to accommodate a housing crisis in inner city areas of Dublin. While the newly built housing was state-of-the-art at the time, comprising high-rise tower blocks and flat complexes, residents were moved in years before shops, schools and other infrastructure were fully ready, and the area became well known for both a strong community spirit and considerable social challenges. Ballymun has several sub-districts such as Sillogue, Coultry, Shangan and Poppintree, and is close to both the Republic of Ireland's only IKEA store and to Dublin Airport. The area is the source of one Dublin river, and parts lie in the floodplain of another, and there are a number of parks.
Cabrini–Green Homes are a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) public housing project on the Near North Side of Chicago, Illinois. The Frances Cabrini Rowhouses and Extensions were south of Division Street, bordered by Larrabee Street to the west, Orleans Street to the east and Chicago Avenue to the south, with the William Green Homes to the northwest.
Sursum Corda is a small neighborhood located in Washington, D.C., Located in Northeast and Northwest. Bounded by New Jersey Avenue NW, New York Avenue NW & NE, Massachusetts Avenue NW & NE, First Street NW, N Street NW, Florida Avenue NE, Delaware Avenue NE, 2nd Street NE, NoMa-Gallaudet-New York Avenue Metro Train Tracks,
ABLA Homes was a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) public housing development that comprised four separate public housing projects on the Near-West Side of Chicago, Illinois. The name "ABLA" was an acronym for the names of the four different housing developments that together constituted one large site: Addams, Brooks, Loomis, and Abbott, totaling 3,596 units. It spanned from Cabrini Street on the north end to 15th Street on the south end, and from Blue Island Avenue on the east end to Ashland Avenue on the west end. Most of the ABLA Homes have been demolished for the development of Roosevelt Square, a new mixed-income community by The Related Companies, with the renovated Brooks Homes being the only part left. For most of its existence, the ABLAs held more than 17,000 residents, giving it the second largest population in the CHA. It was second only to the Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini–Green in land area and had a higher occupancy than Cabrini–Green.
The Jeffries Homes, also called the Jeffries Housing Projects, was a public housing project located in Detroit, Michigan, near the Lodge Freeway. It included 13 high-rises and hundreds of row house units, and was named for Detroit Recorder's Court Judge Edward J. Jeffries, Sr., who was also father of Detroit Mayor Edward J. Jeffries, Jr.
Central City is a neighborhood of the city of New Orleans. It is located in the 11th Ward of New Orleans in Uptown, just above the Garden District, on the "lakeside" of St. Charles Avenue. A subdistrict of the Central City/Garden District Area, its boundaries as defined by the City Planning Commission are: MLK Boulevard, South Claiborne Avenue and the Pontchartrain Expressway to the north, Magazine, Thalia, Prytania and Felicity Streets and St. Charles Avenue to the south and Toledano Street, Louisiana Avenue and Washington Avenue to the west. This old predominantly African-American neighborhood has been important in the city's brass band and Mardi Gras Indian traditions.
The Magnolia Projects, later the C. J. Peete Public Housing Development, was one of the Housing Projects of New Orleans. The area has been more recently renamed Harmony Oaks as part of a complete HOPE VI redevelopment of the property. As a housing project, it was among the largest, housing approximately 2,100 people. It is also home to numerous hip-hop artists and is located in the part of uptown New Orleans known as Central City within the 11th Ward of New Orleans. It was bounded by Louisiana Avenue, South Claiborne Avenue, La Salle Street and Washington Avenue. The Magnolia Projects was made famous by rappers such as Juvenile, Soulja Slim, and Magnolia Shorty. At its height, the Magnolia projects had 1403 units.
The Housing Authority of New Orleans is a housing authority in New Orleans, Louisiana, tasked with providing housing to low-income residents.
Desire Projects was a housing project located in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana. These projects were the largest in the nation and consisted of about 262 two-story brick buildings, containing about 1,860 units across 98.5 acres of land. The overall conditions of the projects were deplorable from the moment they were put into place in the later part of the 1950s. The projects were meant to serve the large number of underprivileged African-American residents in the New Orleans area. Soon it became a place of despair, and Desire eventually evolved into a dark no-man's land, leaving many residents infested with problems and little or no help from the government. Located in a cypress swamp and dumping ground, Desire was known as the poorest housing development in New Orleans—it was bordered by railroad tracks, the Mississippi River, the Industrial Canal and a corridor of industrial plants.
Florida Avenue Projects or Florida Projects is a public housing project in the city of New Orleans. The development was built in 1946 on an 18.5-acre tract of land bounded by Florida Avenue and North Dorgenois, Mazant and Gallier streets in the Upper 9th Ward. It contained 47 two- and three-story brick buildings, arranged around courtyards and largely isolated from the rest of the community, for a total of 734 units housing 1,297 residents. Originally built for whites, it was later desegregated and by the 1970s was becoming predominantly a black project. In the mid-1990s, Florida and nearby Desire Projects were dubbed the most violent housing projects in the nation. In 1994, Florida recorded the highest homicide rate of all HANO developments, with 26 slayings, surpassing the 13 killings in Desire which previous held the highest record a year before. The majority of the Florida killings in 1994 were fueled by drug wars, specifically between the notorious Hardy Boys and the Poonie Crew. The homicide spike in Florida and Desire contributed to New Orleans being dubbed "the nation's murder capital". That year the city's homicide rate reached 424, 47 of those killings occurring in HANO developments.
Iberville Projects was a neighborhood in the city of New Orleans and one of the low-income Housing Projects of New Orleans. The Iberville was the last of the New Deal-era public housing remaining in the city. Its boundaries were St. Louis Street, Basin Street, Iberville Street, and North Claiborne Avenue. It is located in the 6th ward of downtown New Orleans, on the former site of the Storyville district. The area has recently been redeveloped into a modernized apartment complex called the Bienville Basin Apartments.
The William J. Fischer Housing Development, better known as the Fischer Projects, was a housing project in Algiers, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. It was known notoriously for a series of high-profile murders in the 1970s and 1980s. It was the last conventional public housing development constructed in New Orleans, and one of the first to begin demolition. It originally consisted of a 13-floor high-rise and fourteen 3-floor units. The area has been undergoing redevelopment since about 2004 and currently none of the original low-rise buildings remain. The development is located along Whitney Avenue in the Algiers area of the city's west bank, which is part of the 15th Ward and is named for William J. Fischer who served as chairman of HANO in the 1950s. The property is now converted to a small low-income housing development.
Lafayette Park is a neighborhood located east of Downtown Detroit. It contains a residential area of some 4,900 people and covers 0.37 sq mi.
Capitol View is a neighborhood located in southeast Washington, D.C., in the United States. It is bounded by East Capitol Street to the north, Central Avenue SE to the southwest and south, and Southern Avenue SE to the southeast.
The 1950s and 1960s saw the construction of numerous brutalist apartment blocks in Sheffield, England. The Sheffield City Council had been clearing inner-city residential slums since the early 1900s. Prior to the 1950s these slums were replaced with low-rise council housing, mostly constructed in new estates on the edge of the city. By the mid-1950s the establishment of a green belt had led to a shortage of available land on the edges of the city, whilst the government increased subsidies for the construction of high-rise apartment towers on former slum land, so the council began to construct high-rise inner city estates, adopting modernist designs and industrialised construction techniques, culminating in the construction of the award-winning Gleadless Valley and Park Hill estates.
In 1994 the Atlanta Housing Authority, encouraged by the federal HOPE VI program, embarked on a policy created for the purpose of comprehensive revitalization of severely distressed public housing developments. These distressed public housing properties were replaced by mixed-income communities.
New Faubourg Lafitte is a residential development in New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. It largely occupies the area formerly filled by the since demolished Lafitte Projects public housing.
The B. W. Cooper Public Housing Development, also known as The Calliope Projects, was a neighborhood of the city of New Orleans and one of the housing projects of New Orleans. This project of New Orleans gained notoriety for its extremely high violent crime rate. It was demolished in 2014 and replaced with newer, mixed-income apartment buildings.