Howard-Tilton Memorial Library Build-back and Hazard Mitigation Project: January 2013

Friday, January 18, 2013

Construction Bid Issued

It's official. On Tuesday afternoon, January 15, the university posted a Request for Proposals (RFP) advertisement seeking qualified construction firms to submit bids to build the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library Build-back and Hazard Mitigation Project 5th and 6th floor addition. Proposals are due on February 19th. The date set for the switchover to the library's temporary main entrance is March 23 (the first weekend of Spring Break). Work on the temporary entrance has been completed. Under the current project timeline the construction contract is expected to be awarded in April. Perimeter fences will likely start to up around the library around the same time. Meanwhile, the two buildings slated for demolition behind the library on Zimpel Street were being torn down this week. Once these lots are cleared, they will become construction staging areas.

Project Purpose

Howard-Tilton Memorial Library is located on the uptown campus of Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, and in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 its lowest level filled with more than eight feet of water, which caused severe damage to the building while submerging its basement collections. The nearby Joseph M. Jones Memorial Building (Jones Hall), which houses the library’s Special Collections division, sustained major flood damage also, in the lowest level of its library stacks core.

Flooded in the Howard-Tilton building were its music library and very large collections of government documents, newspapers, and microforms. Other areas destroyed included a large area of overflow shelving for general collections and two areas for closed collections storage: one for books waiting for special cataloging and for art and photography titles requiring a secure location; the other for older science materials. Much of the shelving in the basement of the Howard-Tilton building was compact or high-density shelving that accommodated a maximum number of shelves within the spaces used for them. In Jones Hall the flooded stacks core area was packed with closely arranged shelves that housed rare collections.

In the Howard-Tilton building alone more than 700,000 books and recordings were submerged underwater, as were nearly 1.5 million individual pieces of microform. In Jones Hall another 700,000 or so manuscript folders and other archival items were also flooded. The remarkable collections salvage, recovery, and rebuilding effort that followed can be seen as part of an overall library recovery that this next stage of building remediation--a 5th and 6th floor addition atop the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library--will help to complete.

Howard-Tilton Memorial Library Build-back and Hazard Mitigation Project

Friday, January 18, 2013

Construction Bid Issued

Project Information

Layouts

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