The plunder of New Orleans

A year after Katrina did her worst, the ravaging of New Orleans continues. Nowadays, the destructive force is not nature's fury or even small-time looters. It is a kind of upscale plunder that is robbing the city of its historical heritage, piece by piece. Organized criminals are invading deserted homes and tearing out their architectural features: Victorian shutters, wrought iron fences, cornices, brackets, old doors and other antique features.

I bring this up because the people who buy these valuable old building parts tend to be educated and law-abiding. In other words, us. We can help New Orleans — and the cause of historic preservation — by asking questions, such as: Where did those fabulous cypress baseboards come from?

While the situation in New Orleans is especially grievous, the theft of architectural detailing is a nationwide problem. The creeps are ripping the soul out of old buildings, cemeteries and wherever humankind has bestowed the love of crafted plaster, woodwork or decorative metalwork.

And while the problem plagues all of New Orleans, the Holy Cross neighborhood is suffering the most direct attack. Taking up a third of the Lower 9th Ward, Holy Cross remains uninhabited and, therefore, largely unprotected. This working-class area, two-thirds African American, is home to a rich collection of shotgun houses, bungalows and Creole cottages — many dating back to the mid-19th century. Some of their owners may not even know what they have. In any case, they are not there to guard their properties.

The vultures descend at dusk and strip their houses with relative abandon. This is not a case of kids walking off with a TV set and selling it on a street corner. The intruders know what they're looking for and have the technical skill to remove it properly. Many of the items are being hawked over the Internet, where they are hard to trace.

"Very specific items are being taken," says Kevin Mercadel, program officer in New Orleans for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "Doors, shutters, iron vents on walls and overhangs on porches — it takes a lot of effort to get this stuff. You need equipment." Mercadel thinks that most of the stolen stuff has left town.

Protecting New Orleans' architectural heritage these days requires super-human powers. In the pre-Katrina days, the battles centered on keeping bulldozers away from significant buildings and urging homeowners to maintain their properties. (Ever since word got out of the mass pillaging, Mercadel has noticed a greater interest in historic preservation. "You grab whatever silver lining you can," he said.)

The threat is now the professional gangs. Law-enforcement officials believe that the teams employ "lookouts" to follow police cars and signal to their partners when the coast is clear.

For consumers of vintage detailing, awareness of the crisis is the first step in combating it. I, too, have walked around architectural salvage stores and thought, "Ooooh, look at all this neat stuff," without wondering where the stuff came from.

This is not to malign an industry. Honest salvage companies check sellers' identification and report suspicious goods coming in. And they do provide a valuable service by recycling old architectural ornaments that might otherwise end up in a landfill.

And, of course, any business that sells "used" goods risks trafficking in hot merchandise. The challenge here is that while a valuable stolen painting may be easy to trace, who knows where a mahogany banister came from?

Before Katrina, historic buildings in New Orleans were fairly well-protected by state laws regulating the sale of architectural salvage. The laws are still there, but the agencies that enforced them have been stripped of their employees.

That's where the rest of America comes in. We should be alert to the widespread thievery and report dubious merchandise, especially that sold on the Internet.

After all, the blight is everywhere: The next ceramic doorknob you see on the Internet could be your own.

Providence Journal columnist Froma Harrop's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is fharrop@projo.com