The history stored in Memorial Hall is controversial, but the building has a story of its own – NOLA.com

Only if you were living under a rock in 2015 could you have missed then-Mayor Mitch Landrieus proposal which generated no shortage of headlines, discussion and, in some quarters, outrage to remove three prominent Confederate monuments and the White supremacist Liberty Monument from the New Orleans landscape.

And not even under-rock dwellers could have avoided the extended public kerfuffle when those monuments came tumbling down in 2017.

Reader Karen Plauche, however, is curious about another conspicuous but architecturally significant Confederate landmark spared by Landrieus efforts.

That would be the 129-year-old Memorial Hall, the castle-like structure at 929 Camp St. housing Louisianas oldest museum and home to one of the largest collections of Confederate artifacts in the country.

Plauches question: Was the unique building that houses the Confederate museum built for that purpose, or did it have another use originally? Whats its story?

The answer to the first question is easy: Yes, it was indeed built as a Confederate museum.

A portrait of Frank T. Howard as published Jan. 8, 1891, in The Daily Picayune. Howard provided the funding for Memorial Hall, an annex of the Howard Memorial Library on Camp Street, for use as a Confederate museum.

As for the rest of its story, that will take a little more time.

It starts with New Orleans philanthropist Frank T. Howard, who in 1881 had completed work on the Howard Library, built in memory of his father, businessman Charles T. Howard, on a parcel adjacent to the future site of Memorial Hall.

(That site, incidentally, is but a stones throw from Lee Circle, giving the museum a front-row seat to the 2017 removal of the citys once-iconic Robert E. Lee statue.)

Given his fathers fascination with the Civil War, the younger Howard invited Confederate veterans to house their personal artifacts uniforms, flags, guns, books, maps and the like in the Howard Library. The collection quickly grew, and plans were put in motion to build an annex next door to house them all.

That annex would be Memorial Hall, completed in 1890 25 years after the end of the Civil War and smack in the middle of the Lost Cause era, during which the Confederate struggle was held up as heroic and righteous.

Designed by prominent New Orleans architect Thomas Sully, the one-story brick building, which includes a basement, was constructed in the same Richardson Romanesque style as the Howard Library and originally consisted chiefly of one long main room, measuring about 96 feet long, 24 feet wide and with a 24-foot high ceiling.

Its outer walls are of pressed brick, ornamented with richly carved semi-glazed terracotta trimmings, while the retaining wall and steps are of Long Meadow brown stone, reads the successful 1975 application to have the building listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Some buildings are eye-catching because theyre so grand. Others are eye-catching because theyre unique. Still others stand out simply becaus

Also located on the buildings front is a two-story octagonal tower and an ornate entrance portico lined by columns and topped with a variation of a cross patte, a version of which would later become the model for the Southern Cross of Honor Medal awarded by the Daughters of the Confederacy.

Inside, the buildings vaulted cathedral ceiling, highlighted by exposed trusses, was lined with various Confederate banners, according to a description published in The Times-Picayune upon the buildings opening. Its interior walls are still lined with panels of polished cypress.

Right away, the building became a magnet for meetings and reunions of Confederate veterans. Most notably, the remains of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis having been exhumed from Metairie Cemetery and headed for reburial in Richmond lay in state at Memorial Hall for a day in May 1893, drawing throngs of mourners and sightseers.

Meanwhile, the museums collection continued to grow. By 1887, it warranted construction of an upper gallery running the buildings length, according to the National Register application.

While it is recognized as architecturally significant, the building has been the subject of repeated ownership disputes over the years, most recently involving the University of New Orleans.

Upon its dedication on Jan. 8, 1891 not coincidentally the 75th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans it was donated by Howard to the Louisiana Historical Association, the group formed to operate the museum, for its perpetual use.

It was 1881, and cotton was king throughout the South and particularly in New Orleans.

But in the 1990s, UNO came into possession of the original Howard Library building after the library moved to Tulane Universitys campus. It claimed rights to the hall, because its an annex of the library building, and expressed its desire to evict the museum.

Complicating matters was the fact that Memorial Hall essentially bisected UNOs Ogden Museum of Southern Art, which occupies the former Howard Library building now the Patrick F. Taylor Library on Memorial Halls southernmost side and the Goldring building on Memorial Halls north side.

A bitter, back-and-forth legal battle has since thawed. Today, the bigger threat to Memorial Hall and its collection is probably perception, with many casting a jaundiced eye at what is often seen as a glorification of the Confederacy and its racist roots.

For now, however, the museum and the historic building housing it remains.

Know of a New Orleans building worth profiling in this column, or just curious about one? Contact Mike Scott at moviegoermike@gmail.com.

Sources: The Times-Picayune archives, National Register of Historic Places.

Its hard to imagine now with the cacophonous pageant that plays out there regularly pandemic or no pandemic, apparently but there was a t

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The history stored in Memorial Hall is controversial, but the building has a story of its own - NOLA.com