[Dixielandjazz] New Orleans Colored Waif's Home & site in limbo. (Pops was there as a kid)

[Steve barbone]

Sorry to be posting so much today but there is a lot of news out there.
Check out this one. SPECIFICALLY, ANOTHER JAZZ LANDMARK IN NEW ORLEANS IS IN
DANGER. Below is a quote from the New Orleans Government Philistines.

"But when asked about the cultural importance of the Milne site, the city
official overseeing arts and entertainment said he did not know much about
it. Mayor C. Ray Nagin's office did not return calls for comment."

Unbelievable!!!!!!!!

Cheers,
Steve

Music Landmark Caught in Tug of Priorities After Storm

NY TIMES _ By SUSAN SAULNY - March 19, 2006

NEW ORLEANS, March 16 ‹ The doors of the deserted Milne Boys Home flap open
in the wind, and anyone who cares to brave the dank interior here in the
heart of the drowned Gentilly neighborhood can find crumbling logbooks
noting who visited in the early 1900's and yellowing sheet music in the
attic. 

A bronze plaque on the weather-beaten facade announces that Milne is "A
Landmark of American Music," but it hardly looks the part, taking its place
among the city's once-grand buildings ruined by floodwater after Hurricane
Katrina. 

Nonetheless, what happens to this 11-acre campus of wide lawns and oak trees
is of more than casual interest to many people here because of its ties to
Louis Armstrong, arguably this city's most famous native son.

Before Milne was built in the 1930's, part of it was called the Colored
Waif's Home for Boys, the institution where Armstrong was incarcerated at
age 11 after firing a pistol to celebrate New Year's Day 1913. It was there
that he learned to play the cornet.

Armstrong is but one of a host of noted jazz musicians to train at the
Colored Waif's Home, and later at Milne, to which he was a friend throughout
his life.

In a city that long ago demolished Armstrong's birthplace, along with
Storyville, the neighborhood where early jazz developed, and the original
waif's home, Milne stands as one of the last physical connections to the
city's musical past, and many wonder if it will have a place in the new
city. Other than the landmark plaque placed by a national music group, it
was hardly noted in the old one.

"You might say this is the second, if not the third, opportunity to do
something with a Louis Armstrong site where the opportunity has been
missed," said Bruce Boyd Raeburn, curator of the Hogan Jazz Archive at
Tulane University here. "A lot of the old jazz sites have been torn down to
make new parking lots."

Mr. Raeburn added, "The track record on preserving jazz-related sites is
pretty dismal for New Orleans."

Yet this is a city that is probably more dependent on the marketing of jazz
than any other, as tourism is one of the few engines of the local economy.
In an acknowledgment of that, the city renamed its airport after Armstrong
in 2001. But when asked about the cultural importance of the Milne site, the
city official overseeing arts and entertainment said he did not know much
about it. Mayor C. Ray Nagin's office did not return calls for comment.

In the chaos of dealing with an acute housing shortage, a coming mayoral
election and tens of thousands of displaced residents, city officials have
had little energy or resources to deal with issues like the arts or historic
preservation. 

But it is precisely at times like these, local activists say, that pieces of
the culture slip away ‹ especially in areas like Gentilly, where mostly
modest homes line quiet streets that in feeling and geography are miles away
from better known destinations like the French Quarter and the Garden
District.

"It certainly is a chance once again for a rebuilt New Orleans to seize an
opportunity that in the past it did not seize, and to actually help its own
cause," said Lee Hampton, executive director of the Amistad Research Center,
an archive for the history of African-Americans and other ethnic groups, at
Tulane. "Certainly I think it would be worth preserving and worth the effort
put into upkeep. I think it could actually repay the city in its interest to
outsiders, to tourists."

Long neglected, Milne was not in pristine shape before the storm and had not
housed children since the 1980's, becoming instead the setting for
after-school social service programs and athletics. The home, not far from
the London Avenue Canal, which breached the levees in two spots, flooding
Gentilly and surrounding neighborhoods, had capacity for 80 boys before it
closed as a residence.

The home was named for a Scottish philanthropist, Alexander Milne, who
arrived here in the late 1700's and provided money for the care of troubled
children in his will after making a fortune in bricks and hardware.

"The problem with the city now is, where do we place our priorities?" said
Tad Jones, a local historian and co-producer of the annual Satchmo Summer
Fest, a celebration of Armstrong's music. "Since we're not getting much
direction from the city or the feds, all the local homeowner associations in
Gentilly and around the lake are coalescing and talking about how to
revitalize the neighborhoods. That's a good thing and a bad thing because
we're not all on the same page."

Over the decades, not everyone in solidly middle-class Gentilly has been
thrilled about having a haven for troubled youth in the area. Some wanted
Milne done away with years ago. Others want to see it come back just as it
was, as a scaled-down social service and recreation center. Still others
want at least part of it to be a memorial to Armstrong and a reminder of
what can happen when a poor child gets a chance at a better life.

"Louis Armstrong is the poster child for that," Mr. Raeburn said.

Officials said the city was negotiating with the Federal Emergency
Management Agency to determine how much federal money might be available for
the site. The city holds a 99-year lease on the property from the Milne
Trust, a private foundation. Part of the complex has been gutted, and the
roofs are protected by blue tarp.

Armstrong was born to a teenage mother in a neighborhood so notoriously
dangerous, even by New Orleans' rough port-town standards, that it was
called "the battlefield." He was largely abandoned by his father and dropped
out of grade school, and entertained people by singing and dancing for
change around the brothels of Storyville.

He occasionally got into trouble with the police, but around Storyville, he
also got to hear the likes of Buddy Bolden and Jelly Roll Morton, pioneers
of early jazz. 

Peter Davis, the music teacher who invited Armstrong to play in the waif's
home band, retired from Milne in 1949 and died in 1971.

Armstrong wrote about Mr. Davis in his memoir, "Satchmo: My Life in New
Orleans." 

"Every day I practiced faithfully on the lesson Mr. Davis gave me,"
Armstrong wrote. And later: "All in all, I am proud of the days I spent at
the Colored Waif's Home for Boys."

Richard Winder, director of the city's Department of Human Services, which
controls the site, said that these days, "We're in limbo."

"We don't know where we are, post-Katrina," Mr. Winder said.

Still, as a former superintendent of the home, he could not imagine losing
Milne. "Those worries should be removed down the line," he said, "once we
get some normalcy in this city."