Howard-Tilton Memorial Library Build-back and Hazard Mitigation Project: February 2015

Monday, February 9, 2015

New Photos From the Upper Floors

Below are some photos taken this morning of the construction. They include interior views from the new 5th and 6th floors. On the 5th floor only a very small portion of the old roof remains to be jack-hammered out once the last remaining windows are installed nearby -- special heavier windows for the frames that will span the height of both floors at the northeast corner of the building. The new mechanical system on the 5th floor is being set in its permanent location along the back of the building. All mechanical units have now been moved from their temporary location on the side of the building that will be the 5th floor stacks. On the 6th floor, drywall is being hung on wall frames, most columns are enclosed, and work may begin soon on the ceilings.

Click here for larger photos with captions or to view from a mobile device.

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

Monday, February 9, 2015

New Photos From the Upper Floors

Project Information

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