Rooftop...removal?

Last week, crews took the many chimneys down on this house on S. Johnson Street.

Importantly, the roofs of the dozen or so houses are still on.  By this point in the VA Footprint house moving process, the roofs would all have been removed.

But I've been hearing rumblings that the roofs are indeed still set to come off.  That would be highly unwise.

If the houses are moved with their roofs off, it will show that the city and Builders of Hope failed to learn the lesson from the VA Footprint experience.  Removing roofs, as I've noted repeatedly, is the root cause of the problems with the moved VA houses nearly a year after they moved.

The roofs should not be removed from the houses set to be moved off the UMC Footprint.

Tracks

Getting Skeletal

This fine Edwardian home at 2209-11 Banks Street transformed today...serving as a sort of microcosm for the VA Hospital Footprint as a whole.  Still there...but fading.

Slower Than Usual

Things were relatively quiet earlier today in the VA Footprint.  Crews prepared this small cottage at 2212 Cleveland for a move.  Builders of Hope is moving even some of the "non-contributing" houses off the site because they can still be used for housing at other locations.  And some of them exhibit a number of historic characteristics even if they are not technically "contributing" historic structures.

An extra house that did not ultimately move on Friday, the former 2217-19 Banks, was parked backwards in the old 325 S. Galvez lot awaiting the next convoy:

Equipment also cleared up the remainder of the home (and tavern/restaurant?) at 129-133 S. Galvez that dominated one of the corners across from Deutsches Haus.  Here's a shot from late last week of the demolition in its earlier stages:

Four bays, four chimneys

Chimneys

It's interesting, when you stop, step back, and look at some shotgun houses...just how large they are.

Compared to the average ranch home in Metaire, the actual frame of this building at S. Johnson and Palmyra, for example, looms large.