THE WEARING OF THE GREEN The brackish floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina write the latest chapter in the unfolding history of a Tulane landscape that began with a feisty Frenchman named Etienne and the invention of granulated sugar. BY SUZANNE JOHNSON
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PAULA BURCH?CELENTANO
A 70?year?old specimen of the stately and ancient metasequoia species stands on the uptown campus, not far from St. Charles Avenue.
Freret Street floods after Hurricane Katrina. Early Tulane students examine a de Bore sugarcanefield near the Engineering Complex (now Blessey Hall on the academic quad).
DATELINE: FRERET STREET, SEPT. 19, 2005 It was hot as hell and one royal Tom Armitage looked around, dumbstruck. The campus he and his groundskeeping staff had lovingly tended for the past quarter-century was a wreck. Worse than a wreck. Hurricane Katrina was three weeks gone, but in her wake was a broken, dying landscape. Between Freret Street and Claiborne Avenue were the skeletons of denuded trees and the brittle wisps of dead plants unable to withstand the battering winds or, worse, two weeks covered in oily, salty floodwater. Between Freret Street and St. Charles Avenue the unflooded grounds were brown and dry as dust, baking in sweltering 100-degree days without even a hint of rain, ironic sentinels of drought in a city that was in some places still underwater. And everywhere, ruts from military vehicles crisscrossed the grounds, sidewalks were cracked or upended, severed tree limbs were already piled to improbable heights. Many members of the grounds staff, loyal and hard-working, were back already, or would be soon. Grounds supervisor Mike Case was trying to recov-
er records from his flooded office and had papers scattered in the sun, drying. He was working with his son Andrew to get things up and running again. Mechanic Keith Alexander, equipment operators Chris Brashear, Tom Powell, Greg Steele and Bobby mess. Thompson, support services supervisor Galo Yepez—all those guys would soon be back, salvaging what they could from flooded-out buildings, and stacking brush and debris, higher and higher. How high will it go before this is all over, Armitage wondered. Armitage wiped the sweat away and began to walk the campus he’d covered so many times before, taking mental inventory. What survived, what died, what was imperiled but might be saved. He took a deep breath, and began to plan.
DATELINE: NEAR PRESENT?DAY ST. CHARLES AVENUE, OCT. 30, 1796 Jean Etienne de Bore peered anxiously at the clanking contraption before him. This had to work— everything was riding on the six kettles of boiling sugarcane juice in front of him, sending their great plumes of steam rising from the chimneys of his brick Sugar House. Next door, more boiled-down cane juice was in the slow process of evaporating. Slow as molasses, he thought grimly. I wish there was a way to make it go faster.
At age 54, de Bore was just one of many Louisiana indigo planters on the verge of bankruptcy. After several years of success growing indigo to produce the deep blue dyes so favored by the fashionable, Louisiana’s indigo planters had in the early 1790s faced years of drought, then an insect infestation that left de Bore’s fields upriver from New Orleans nothing but stands of bare stalks. No crops meant no income. His family and friends urged him to pull up stakes and return to France, but de Bore had an idea that would make him or break him, and he couldn’t be dissuaded. He was a stubborn man, and determined. He had been a musketeer in the service of the king; he was no quitter. Years later, the parcels of land surrounding the Sugar House would become treasured parts of the city of New Orleans, making up Audubon Park, Tulane University and some of the most prized residential real estate in the city. But on this late October day, de Bore had no vision of that. He only knew that this was his last chance to save his plantation—he’d thrown everything he owned into this first crop of sugarcane, and into his own belief that he’d found a method to do what had never been done before—turning the thick, green cane juice into a granulated form of sugar that could be shipped and stored. He and his workforce of slaves had put in a lot of
Debris from the trees felled by Katrina are moved into piles outside Hebert Hall.
back-breaking hours —planting and harvesting the cane, digging sluices to bring water from the Mississippi River into the fields, even firing the bricks and tiles they used to build the Sugar House with its mill and drying rooms. His was a small operation by most standards of plantation living, and it took every hand to bring in this first crop. All of their fates rode on the granulation method he had developed. And much to de Bore’s delight as he stood in the drying room of the Sugar House that October, his first crop of Creole Cane was drying to a beautifully granulated brown sugar, having been fed by the rich land and the powerful river. Louisiana’s economy—and that of Etienne de Bore, who would go on to be a major player in New Orleans politics—would never be the same. Within a decade, production of granulated sugar would transform the world.
nourishment in the “new” New Orleans. He summoned up all the experience he’d gained over the years—growing up at Dogwood Hill, his grandparents’ azalea and camellia nursery near Folsom, La., working as a landscaper as he earned his horticulture degree at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, studying for his license as a pest-control expert, running his own horticultural consulting business, and, of course, working 27 years as Tulane’s head groundskeeper in facilities services. He marshaled the forces of that experience and looked squarely at what needed to be done next. Some things couldn’t be saved, and he grew sad as he thought about the mature, old sweet olive trees on the Newcomb campus. Slow-growing and sweetsmelling, the trees didn’t survive the storm and would be hard to replace. Mature trees are unavailable and even small ones don’t transplant well. We’ve lost 60 or 70 years of history in those trees, Armitage thought.
And the Southern magnolias were dead—all of them in the flood zone. With root systems fed not by root hairs but by tiny organisms that draw nourishment to the tree through highly aerated soil, none of the magnolias had survived. I bet the organisms just Flood and drought. Salt and light. drowned, Armitage thought. With the ground covered by water, they just suffocated. Tom Armitage stood in the broiling sun of a still-hot October day and pondered the needs of the postBut there were living trees that needed Katrina Tulane uptown campus over a honey bun his attention. On the back part of campus, where and a bottle of water—about all there was by way of
DATELINE: GIBSON QUADRANGLE, OCT. 15, 2005
it had flooded, he and his team needed to begin drenching the roots of the trees with fresh water to wash away the salt that had been deposited by the floodwater. It was precautionary, to minimize the damage. On the front part of campus, the trees and other plants also needed water, but for a different reason. Drought. There hadn’t been a drop of rain since Katrina blew through, and the heat had been overbearing. Even the honey bun was melting. And the plants were scorching in the dry earth. For the past month, there had been no water to give them—a water main leading into campus had been damaged. But finally, water pressure had been restored, and Armitage began to send his troops to get whatever water they could, flushing salt away in the back campus and nourishing the parched trees and plants in the front. Maybe fire hoses, Armitage thought—just tap directly into the source and blast away. But the ground was so dry that the highly pressurized water just ran into the street. This was going to take some finesse, and Armitage thought about his small home sprinkler. It should work—turn on sprinklers and get the ground wet enough that the heavier doses of water to follow would sink in.
In 1895, Gibson Hall, then known as the Arts and Science Building, is fronted by a dirt road and a handful of saplings.
So as facilities services director Larry Smith led the recovery efforts across campus, Armitage and his troops tapped into every fire hydrant they could find, running every spigot and even rolling out a portable water tank. When an important old metasequoia tree on the St. Charles side of campus appeared in danger because they hadn’t been able to get water to it, university construction director Shawn Lege managed to find a working faucet in Dinwiddie Hall and watered it himself. The Tulane landscape rescue operation had begun in earnest.
DATELINE: ACROSS ST. CHARLES AVENUE FROM AUDUBON PARK, MARCH 1885 Ellsworth Woodward adjusted his small sketchpad, pencil flying furiously as he etched out the scene before him in the dusky hour before dark. The World’s Industrial and Cotton Centen-nial Exposition of 1884 was in full swing, and 25-year-old Ellsworth had come to New Orleans with his older brother, William, a new art instructor at the recently renamed Tulane University of Louisiana, located downtown.
William Woodward’s first assignment was to give drawing lessons at the exposition. His brother, fresh from the Rhode Island School of Design, took in the sights—but it was muddy going, thanks to the copious winter rains, and he stepped gingerly, careful of his new boots. On the grounds of Upper City Park, a flat, undeveloped stretch of land the city had purchased from the former plantation lands of sugar king Etienne de Bore, the fair featured grand pavilions and grander exhibits extolling the wonders of the new mechanical age. More than 30 nations were represented in displays that featured everything from soap to cereals to textiles. The Liberty Bell had been sent down from Philadelphia by train. After the fair ended, the structures would be torn down and auctioned for scrap. Within a few years the river side of St. Charles would be crafted into a park named for ornithologist J.J. Audubon, and the rapidly expanding Tulane University would buy up the desolate de Bore lands across the streetcar tracks from the fairgrounds and erect a grand new administration building. The Woodward brothers would become key figures in art education at Newcomb College. Further, crowds visiting the
exposition would be attracted to this unsettled land upriver from the city and begin to build outlying residential areas that would eventually become known as Uptown. For now, though, Woodward’s focus was on the exposition, and as he walked he continued to sketch as he took in the sights and sounds. And smells, he thought, wrinkling his nose at the livestock pens. The huge oak trees from the land’s old plantation days dripped Spanish moss over mammoth pavilions built to showcase exhibits in industry, music and art. Lively music and the sounds of crowds spilled from the Mexican exhibit, while groups strolled between food vendors and dining rooms in an area lit by 5,000 of those newfangled electric lights. Jumpin’ Jehosaphat, he thought. What will they come up with next? Walking into the Horticulture Pavilion, Woodward paused, stroking his goatee as he pondered the wonders of the local flora and flauna. Swamplands, graceful egrets, magnificent magnolias, and avenues of huge live oaks. They all created a tableau that fired his artist’s imagination and would inspire his work and teaching for years to come, filled with images springing from the rich
The g
inkgo and the metasequoia trees stand between Gibson Hall and Richardson Memorial Building.
land and fed by the mighty river.
DATELINE: WILLOW STREET RESIDENCES, NOVEMBER 2005 His normally cheerful face in an uncharacteristic scowl, Tom Armitage looked at his watch and noted not only the time, but the date. Less than two months from now, the students would be returning to campus for the first time since the hurricane. Things just aren’t ready, he thought. Landscape consultant Bill Mizell had the grounds crew focused on getting in new plantings and making things look as good as they could around the residence halls, realizing both the kids and their parents needed to see things looking green and healthy. Even at this early stage, Armitage knew having the uptown campus looking good was important not only to Tulane but to New Orleans—as people trickled slowly back into the city, the campus needed to look normal. Only things weren’t normal. His grounds crew had been working the whole campus using two push mowers, two Weed Eaters and two leaf blowers purchased after the storm, although mechanics Keith
Alexander, Juan Perez and Jose Perez had done an amazing job of salvaging and repairing flooded equipment. Chris Brashear, Galo Yepez, grounds worker Lucius Taylor and safety inspector Renard Dabney had cleaned debris till they ached—Brasher had dug up 70 tree stumps. Equipment operators Tom Powell, Chris Dunn and Mike Duceung trimmed trees. And still they needed more people. Access to the grounds was limited while recovery work continued in flooded buildings. A lot of it’s just hurry up and wait, Armitage thought. Still, they had a plan, and had been able to do some of the extensive sidewalk repairs. Some of the seasonal plantings had gone on to replace those lost in the flooding and drought. They had been able to save the lovely old ginkgo tree in front of Richardson Memorial after the storm—it was one of his favorites. And the old Newcomb oaks had come through with flying colors, leafing out enough to lend lateafternoons of dappled sunlight that took him back a few years, to when his uncle Jinx—one of the youngest cadets to graduate from Tulane during the war years—had enjoyed his 50th reunion ceremony under the oaks, with “Taps” playing softly and flags flying.
We’re going to survive this, Armitage thought. We have to.
DATELINE: WANXIAN COUNTY, CHINA, JULY 1944 Zhan Wang wiped the sweat from his brow even as he shivered in the July heat. Malaria, he thought—this was not his plan. Zhan would never visit New Orleans, but he suffered from the same malady that the American city had fought so many years to contain. At only 33, Zhan’s career as a botanist was in full bloom, and he had just been named administrator of the new Forestry Survey Department in China. This was his first field trip. Zhan was supposed to be on a grand adventure, and he sighed impatiently at the thought that this minor bout with malaria had temporarily diverted him from his goal—reaching the forest resources of Shannongjia, Hubei Province. It was a remote and supposedly dangerous area, home of the infamous “Wild Man” humanoid primate. Zhan didn’t believe
Head groundskeeper Tom Armitage surveys the Newcomb campus.
the “Wild Man” existed; he was more interested in the rich plant species thought to be in the remote area. Instead, here he was in Wanxian County, recuperating impatiently and thinking he was almost well enough to leave. A knock on the door broke his reverie, and Zhan was surprised to see Longxing Yang, one of his old college classmates from Peking. Longxing was now principal of the local agricultural school, and he wanted to see if Zhan could help identify a stand of large, unusual trees in nearby Madaoxi. Happy for the diversion, Zhan took his team to look at the Madaoxi trees. What an interesting tree, he thought with a forester’s zeal. It’s similar to a Chinese swamp cypress but with larger cones and long stipules. He took samples and set them aside to study after his trip, growing excited at the thought that he might have discovered a new species.
It would be two more years before Zhan learned that he had discovered not a new species, but what turned out to be one of the greatest natural discoveries of the 20th century—a living stand of metasequoia, an ancient species identified by fossils from the Pliocene era and believed to be long extinct. Seeds harvested from the stand of trees in Madaoxi would be sent to Harvard University’s botany department after World War II. Harvard, in turn, would disburse the seeds to several other universities in different climates, including Tulane in New Orleans, to see if the metasequoia could once again live and thrive.
DATELINE: GIBSON QUADRANGLE, DECEMBER 2005 Tom Armitage was deep in thought as he studied one of the jewels of the Tulane landscape, looking for any signs of distress. The large, old metasequoia, or dawn redwood, had stood between Dinwiddie Hall and Richardson Memorial Building since seeds
were sent down from Harvard in the 1940s. The tree had made it through Katrina just fine once it had been watered, and he was thankful. He was jarred from his reverie by the shrill ringing of his cellphone. It was Tulane chief operating officer Yvette Jones, summoning him immediately to a spot on Zimple Street behind the theater and dance buildings. I wonder what’s up? he thought, heading out. He didn’t know it, but Armitage was going to a meeting with someone he now calls his angel—a Tulane alum with a gift of a half-million dollars to help the university bring its landscaping back, a person who didn’t want to be identified but whom he credits with helping students return in January 2006 to a reopened campus full of beautifully manicured lawns, new sidewalks to replace those damaged by the storm cleanup, new seasonal plantings of colorful annuals and sturdy perennials, azaleas, ferns and camellias—not to mention expertly
Artis Lewis Elijah Foucher 1979 2006
Chris Brashear 1991
Mike Case 1981
Brian Ochoa 2007 Wayne White Jr. 2007
Tyrone Bunch Christopher 1987 Dunn 2006
Michael Duceung 1988 Stanley Cosper 2006 Norman Joya 2006
Monte Cormick 2005
Thomas Powell 1986
Gregory Steele 2001
Reginal Lewis 2007
Keith Alexander 1985
Armando Gamez 2006
Lucius Taylor 1998
Domingo Lopez 2006
The facilities services crew keeps the campus green. (The year each started at Tulane is shown.)
trimmed trees. A regular cycle of replanting supervised by assistant grounds supervisors Artis Lewis and Tyrone Bunch was ready to go forward, keeping the uptown campus looking the way its community had come to expect.
DATELINE: TULANE UNIVERSITY CAMPUS, MARCH 2007 With hard work and the help of an angel, the parcel of land that had once grown sugarcane, hosted a world’s fair, inspired an artist and helped preserve a historic species of tree would now inspire a city struggling to rebuild. Shadowed by oaks, and filled with hundreds of species of plants and trees, this land is again providing an oasis of green in the long and ongoing saga of a city and the university that calls it home. Suzanne Johnson is editorial manager in the Office of
University Publications and executive editor of Tulanian.