The sun sets on Cabrini Church

They say you have to break some eggs if you want to make an omelet. The curved concrete shell that covered Saint Frances Cabrini Church proved somewhat more resistant than an eggshell, but it cracked and shattered nonetheless.

It marks the end of an era, that’s for sure.

I was still at work on Tuesday when my Darling Wife called me with the news. “They’re tearing down the church. A bunch of people are parked by the side of the road watching it.”

About an hour later I passed there on the way home. There certainly were a lot of people there. Many I recognized as neighbors from down the street from me. Some had simply come out from their houses across Paris Avenue. One lady leaned on the rail of her FEMA Travel Trailer and saw all she needed to see.



A lot of cameras. A lot of elderly ladies with long faces. A lot of men with their hands on their hips, shaking their heads as if to say, “What can you do? Nothing.”

By the time I arrived, the machines had stopped for the day. A few workers were still on site getting ready to wrap up the day. I saw one of them gather some bricks in her arms. Several feet away, two ladies waited outside the construction fence. The worker dropped the bricks by the fence and pulled it up from the bottom. “I got three for each of you,” she said. The two women scrambled to collect their souvenirs.



One of my neighbors, Kenny, was there. He and his wife were photographed by The Times-Picayune as they watched the church where they were married get smashed apart. “It’s sad, but it’s good,” she said. “It’s a new beginning.”

I also snapped a few photographs as the sun set on Cabrini Church. The broken cross still hung from her sleek spire. (Trivia: the cross was broken by Hurricane Cindy a few weeks before any of us had even heard of Katrina. All Hurricane Katrina did was turn the cross to point in another direction.)

There were no last-minute heroics as far as I could tell. The wrecking ball worked the landmark building into rubble without any of the theatrics that had occurred some weeks ago when the plan to demolish the church had been announced. But there were many sad faces on the street that day.



There were a few Holy Cross shirts in the crowd as well. Some had brought lawn chairs and set up on the neutral ground to watch the show. They were the happy ones this day, as the useless hulk of concrete and brick was finally being removed from the site. Holy Cross has announced plans to build its new school on the site, with no room for 40-some-year-old church. The school plans to erect all new buildings, albeit with architecture that echoes the traditions of their 130-year-old campus they are abandoning in the Lower Ninth Ward.

I wonder if I’m the only one who sees irony in that.

I love my neighborhood, Vista Park. But by a strange twist of logic, I think we’re tearing down the wrong building.

Throughout the neighborhood are slab-on-grade, ranch style, suburban American houses. They were constructed before there ever was a FEMA or a National Flood Insurance Program. Consequently, pretty much all of them are below the 100-year Base Flood Elevation. Somehow, the owners of many of them think it appropriate to fix ‘em up and move right back in. They made no effort whatsoever to elevate or flood proof their homes.

Cabrini Church, on the other hand, was a landmark, a genuine statement of architecture as it was practiced in the 1960’s. Its owners decided it was not worthy of renovation, and they labored tirelessly with government agencies to clear the way for demolition.

It seems to me the church should be spared and the houses demolished and replaced—not the other way around.

I wonder if I’m the only one who sees irony in that.

Ultimately, this is just one man’s opinion. I don’t own a share in Cabrini Church or Holy Cross. You didn’t see me picketing or writing impassioned letters to the newspaper over this. It’s not for me to say.

I will simply note in this blog that in the first days of June 2007, the skyline of Gentilly was permanently changed, and that many more changes are rapidly coming.

It marks the beginning of an era, that’s for sure.