Professor: Historic N.O. Buildings Better Built

[donsutherland1]

From CNN:

The French founded New Orleans in 1718 and many of the buildings are hundreds of years old. Some of these older buildings may actually fare better and likely can be saved, said Elizabeth English, an associate professor at the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center.

"The buildings that have historic value, it's worth much more to try to preserve those," she said. "And most likely they've been constructed from more durable materials and it may not be as difficult to save them."

English, who has a degree in architecture, said that old homes were built with a denser wood that is more resistant to mold and rot. And those homes were built with painstaking craftsmanship better than today's workmanship, she suggested.

[terstorm1012]

not surprising at all.

i suspect housing built during a downturn fared better than housing built during boom times....the contractor doesn't have to rush during a downturn.

[Frank2]

On a related topic, I was in downtown Homestead, Florida on Sunday morning, and couldn't help but notice that a number of the city's historic structures look as good as they ever did, some 13 years after Hurricane Andrew.

Meanwhile, nearby houses under construction still "feature" plywood roofs - unlike the old sturdy Florida pine buildings mentioned above.

Frank

[caribepr]

Florida pine...sigh. I lived in a house built from that in North Miami, so beautiful, so strong and so never to be seen again. You can barely get a nail in that wood! I thought when I was a kid, that pine was a hardwood