What’s that floating in the water? Yes, it’s a portable toilet!
This picture was taken on the entrance ramp to the basement of the Lindy Boggs Medical Center on September 24, 2008. This is not Katrina flooding. Apparently all the Katrina water was pumped out. But the basment has filled back up with water since then. Basements without electricity to run pumps are kind of a bad idea in New Orleans.
I’ve started a new photo set called “The Facility Formerly Known as Lindy Boggs Medical Center.” Only five pictures there, but no doubt more to come.
Actually I should probably start a group, and invite others. Some other people have been taking interesting pictures at the site. Here’s one from Xy’s cameraphone.
Those are electrical trucks bedding down for the night, after a hard day of restoring power, after Gustav.
Creating a group on Flickr only takes a minute. Here it is: Lindy Boggs. I think this would be a good place for pictures of Lindy Boggs herself, as well as pictures of the hospital in its heyday, as well as its current state of dilapidation.
Now to invite some others. I remember Derek had a nice photo from last summer:
Which of course must be contrasted with how it looks now:
Any others?
Several big, big IFs in this story and not just the story of an abandoned hospital.
What if… Oschner and Tenet hadn’t conspired to keep this hospital from becoming a hospital again?
What if… when someone said they were going to redevelop it into retail we all would have stood up and cheered and carried them on our shoulders rather than having a small but vocal group dig in their heels and threaten to oppose them at every step?
The take away?
Deed restrictions are a bad idea and we should probably do away with them.
Opposing development that creates jobs and captures tax revenue is a bad idea and we should probably stop doing that too.
We need a future in New Orleans way more than we need a past. (and I say this as someone who was born at that hospital.)
Just keep in mind, Anthony, that MCNO never opposed the Victory development. We only sought to work with them.
http://mcno.org/2007/05/13/victory-faq/
Yet we were never given the chance, and now Victory’s plans dried up and blew away because of the downturn in the economy. They won’t even demolish the building after MCNO supported their demolition permit.
I know some people did mount a vocal opposition, but it was not MCNO, and I think it’s important to keep that clear.
I know Bart… that’s why I didn’t reference MCNO specifically.
That picture of the bucket trucks is very interesting. Most of those bucket systems are ran by a hydraulic system. They “should” leave the truck to rest with the bucket in a down position. When the pump has not been ran the pressure in the system drops, and so do the buckets.
I won’t comment about Lindy Boggs, since I’m a NOLA virgin.