Among the Ruins, Something to Build On

Lurking beneath the putrid body of water that still covers more than half the city is a level of damage that won't be fully measurable for weeks or even months. But it seems clear that much, if not most, of the city north and east of its center will need to be razed.

Thursday, in and around the Lakeview area, block upon block of suburban-style ranch houses, built mostly in the 1940s and later, were sitting in 6 to 7 feet of water. The dry parts of town, meanwhile -- the entire French Quarter and Faubourg Marigny, along with the Garden District, Uptown and much of the central business district -- have suffered little more than downed trees and power lines.

In the French Quarter, Jackson Square and its fabled Pontalba apartment buildings are in good shape, guarded by drowsy soldiers sitting on the shaded steps of St. Louis Cathedral. Only an eerie emptiness keeps certain blocks of Bourbon Street from appearing entirely normal. Along St. Charles Avenue, on the west side, the rusticated buildings of Tulane and Loyola universities and grand private houses have barely a scratch on them.

The state of those largely unscathed areas, which contain nearly all of New Orleans' famous landmarks and tourist attractions, is enough to prompt measured optimism about the city's future. They are the building blocks of its possible revival, and they look surprisingly sturdy.

But this is a city whose appeal, as a place to visit and to live, has always had more to do with an extensive, tightly woven fabric of residential neighborhoods than with architectural icons. Tennessee Williams noted precisely that quality in the stage directions for "A Streetcar Named Desire": the section of town around Elysian Fields Avenue, he wrote, "is poor but, unlike corresponding sections of other American cities, it has a raffish charm."

Indeed, deep racial and class divisions aside, New Orleans is one of the few places in America that, in the best sense, looks its age.