The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, January 13, 2006

N.Y. benefit supports restoration
'Heart & Soul' event nets $150,000 for PRC
By Coleman Warner, Staff writer

NEW YORK -- New Orleans actor Bryan Batt has been a player on the New York theater scene since the mid-1980s, appearing in nine Broadway shows. But the off-Broadway part he played Thursday night at a fund-raiser for post-Katrina building-preservation efforts in New Orleans is sure to count among his most memorable.

Singing the mournful favorite "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans," the 42-year-old Batt served as an honorary chairman for the New Orleans Preservation Resource Center's "Heart & Soul" event at the Museum of the City of New York.

More than 400 people from the New York area, along the East Coast and from Louisiana crowded into the history museum and raised $150,000 for myriad efforts by the PRC to assist homeowners in neighborhoods battered by Hurricane Katrina floodwaters. Batt, who owns a Magazine Street home-furnishings business and divides his time between New Orleans and New York, said he has participated in roughly two dozen Katrina relief events.

A silent auction of books, art and jewelry was expected to raise even more for the PRC efforts.

"I've kind of made it my mission," he said in an interview from New Orleans, before flying to New York City. "This country has never seen anything like this (devastation) before. You just have to do whatever it is you can do."

"There's a lot of rebuilding that needs to be done, and it needs to be done correctly," Batt told the crowd Thursday.

Batt suffered modest damage to his Uptown home during the hurricane, but his brother, City Councilman Jay Batt, was hit hard by six feet of floodwater at his Lakewood South home.

New Yorkers understand

The fund-raiser followed a Wednesday evening talk by PRC Executive Director Patty Gay at the same museum about Katrina's toll on historic New Orleans neighborhoods. The event made a play for media exposure in the New York market, and tapped natural sympathy after the World Trade Center attacks of 2001 for a city struggling with disaster, PRC representatives said.

Cultural and social ties between the Big Apple and Big Easy were strengthened when New York received strong support from New Orleans after the 2001 attacks, Bryan Batt said.

"Even though it's a different kind of devastation, they are quite aware, quite sympathetic," he said.

Among those attending were Ken Follett, a history conservation specialist in New York, and Glenn James, a construction company owner from Maryland. Both are members of the nonprofit Preservation Trades Network and plan to assist with a PRC home-restoration project in the Holy Cross neighborhood.

"The men who work with me are coming, as well as tradesmen from over 15 different countries," James said, adding that he is drawn by New Orleans' built environment as well as the culture of its residents. "I stood in New Orleans in the 9th Ward (after Katrina) and I wept aloud before people I never knew."

The terrorist attack at the World Trade Center is fresh in the minds of New Yorkers donating to the PRC, Follett said. "When a city goes down, New Yorkers have empathy," he said, adding, "Then you get into the whole issue of neighborhoods. New York is nothing but neighborhoods."

Coming together

PRC Vice President Janie Blackmon, who was raised in Holy Cross and is among the displaced residents of eastern New Orleans, was moved by the event. "We need all the help we can get," she said over the din of music and conversation. "We've just got to come together, and I think this is beautiful, what's happening here tonight."

Tulane University historian Douglas Brinkley, author Nancy Lemann and magazine editor Grace Kaynor were among other New Orleans preservation advocates staging the museum event, which featured entertainment by the New Orleans Hot Jazz Band.

The festive atmosphere was dampened somewhat by alarm among preservationists about new recommendations from Mayor Ray Nagin's storm recovery advisory panel that could lead to the demolition of many historic neighborhoods where residents are struggling to summon resources for rebuilding. The PRC has argued strongly that city leaders should do everything they can to protect historic areas where floodwaters didn't undermine the structural integrity of most buildings.

"We in New Orleans need your help in spreading the word about how much we have left in the city and how bad it actually is," Gay said.

Restoration projects

Money raised in New York will be used to provide free cleanup materials to New Orleans residents, to furnish electric generators to homeowner associations in hard-hit areas, to provide mold remediation and redevelopment seminars and to help repair a few houses in historic neighborhoods that are meant to inspire similar efforts by other owners, PRC leaders said. The home-renovation project has been developed in conjunction with the National Trust for Historic Renovation, which was represented at Thursday's event.

The PRC fund-raiser in New York wasn't the group's first pitch for help in other cities. In one appeal published not long after Katrina hit by the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance, Gay reported that many historic enclaves were intact and could be salvaged.

"Cities and towns throughout history have survived severe flooding, ravishing fires, earthquakes and tornadoes and have been rebuilt," Gay said. "We will, too."