Built St. Louis > > On the Road in New Orleans

B.W. Cooper
Photographs from December 28th, 2006


The B.W. Cooper housing project -- also known as the Calliope Project -- is an enormous complex of four-story buildings stretching along Martin Luther King Boulevard as it runs northwest out of the Central Business District.

The view above is at MLK and S. Galvez Street.


The complex dates from 1941 (though the buildings here appear to be from a decade or so later), and housed 3,500 people. Notorious centers of crime while occupied, they are currently slated for demolition following damage from Hurricane Katrina. Only half the complex, north of Galvez, suffered flooding and the related damage.


It is hard to grasp the sheer size of the complex. These photographs were taken in a single sequence, driving past at thirty or forty miles per hour. I missed the first block or so. I still had plenty of time to shoot.





More on the state of the B.W. Cooper Projects after the storm, from www.dissidentvoice.com. The story includes some startling revelations about insider-job thefts from the complex, many weeks after the storms.

- From www.AliveInTruth.org, the story of Calliope resident Rickey B.

- From www.BuzzFlash.com, more of the controversies surrounding the fate of B.W. Cooper in the wake of Katrina.


View north at S. Broad Avenue, nearby.

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