Collapsed Central City building to be demolished

An abandoned building that collapsed Saturday in Central City is being prepared for demolition, New Orleans officials said. More than a decade ago, it served as an arts center on the Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard cultural trail.

Law enforcement has deemed the building in the 1400 block of OC Haley a public safety hazard and deemed it an “imminent threat requiring immediate removal,” according to city spokeswoman Leatrice Dupre.

Debris could still be heard crumbling nearby Sunday, and New Orleans police were on hand to guard the area, where caution tape had been placed to keep out potential trespassers. The NOPD closed the intersection of Martin Luther King Boulevard and Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard for about two days after the collapse. It reopened Monday evening.

The collapse occurred on Saturday at approximately 5:35 p.m. Cars parked in front of the building were destroyed.

The New Orleans Fire Department and NOPD did not report any injuries or a cause for the collapse.

Code enforcement officials were still assessing the site Monday afternoon, Dupre said, and a demolition date had not yet been set.

The privately owned building was scheduled for a hearing this year amid its deteriorating condition, but after a “departmental purge” aimed at reducing the backlog of cases, a date was never set, Dupre said.

Its graffiti-strewn exterior, with its broken windows and chain-link fencing, stood out like an unsightly stain against the historic corridor that had recently regained its rich cultural heritage.

Named for civil rights icon Oretha Castle Haley, the boulevard has attracted a slew of new restaurants, black businesses and arts venues after a long period of disinvestment. The latest attractions include the Southern Food and Beverage Museum and, next door to a crumbling building, the New Orleans Jazz Market, home to the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra.

The 1990s saw the opening of Cafe Reconcile and the Ashé Cultural Arts Center, as well as the Neighborhood Gallery, the former home of this soon-to-be-demolished building.

According to The Times-Picayune archives, the late Sandra Berry and her husband Joshua Walker moved into the building’s upstairs apartment in the late 1990s. They moved in under an agreement with then-owner Albert Osborne that they would pay taxes and remove the property from the city’s neglected buildings list.

In return, they could turn the space into the Neighborhood Gallery — a community theater, thrift store and gallery showcasing black art, Walker recalled to a reporter in 2006.

The gallery closed permanently in the months following Hurricane Katrina. The couple was evicted from their home the following year, after Osborne died and left the property with his family.

Documents show the building has since deteriorated to its current state, with numerous structural breaches dating back to at least 2009.