NEW ORLEANS – In Holy Cross, the corner of the Lower 9th Ward given the best shot for rebirth, a silent rage rises up from the still-empty houses at the latest indignity of post-Katrina life.

“Keep Out Grave Robbers,” blares one in a collection of hand-painted signs scrawled on houses in the neighborhood, reflecting both its defiance and despair.

With looters having stolen what they can from in and around the houses, residents say thieves are now picking apart the houses themselves, making off with architectural detail work.

On some blocks, the human buzzards have hit nearly every house, picking them clean of the authentic details that make New Orleans homes known the world over: doors, cornices, brackets, shutters, wrought iron fencing, decorative gingerbread work on porches – anything that will fetch a few bucks on a black market that police and even preservationists don’t fully understand.

In many cases the thieves, sometimes posing as contractors, have invaded the homes to lift the interior fixtures as well, including the giant pocket doors that bisect shotgun parlors.

“They’re like termites, just eating and destroying everything,” said John Koeferl, a Holy Cross homeowner whose French doors recently disappeared in one of countless thefts on his street.

From the moment the storm hit, looting of all stripes has infected the city, but the continuing and widespread theft of architectural details strikes many homeowners as the final insult. One stolen shutter might not be such a big deal, but collectively the pillaging amounts to theft of the soul and character of the city’s most heavily damaged historic neighborhoods, such as the 9th Ward and Mid-City.

Stephanie Bruno of the Preservation Resource Center fears that much of that character will be lost forever, particularly in low-income neighborhoods such as Holy Cross, where homeowners and landlords might not have the money or the will to replace what has been looted. Though architectural theft has cropped up citywide, the combination of Holy Cross’ architectural richness and the inability of its residents to return have made it uniquely vulnerable.

“It changes the character of the houses,” Bruno said on a recent tour. “Each piece individually is not that valuable. But when you go to replace them, it’s not like there’s a “cornice store’ or “bracket store.’ You have to have them custom-made.”

Donald Coello, owner of six rental homes in Holy Cross, had the pocket doors pilfered in one of a series of thefts he has endured. He won’t be replacing them.

“I don’t even think I can replace those,” he said. “I’ll end up just filling the holes and making a wall out of it and be done with it. I use these places as rental property, and I can’t be investing all that money when you don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

If Coello reacts with resignation, others boil with rage. Koeferl, one of many residents who have vented about theft at recent meetings of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, sees a conspiracy of neglect by police and profiteering by architectural dealers: After all, someone has to be buying this stuff.

If, as Koeferl has said, police consider his working-class neighborhood as a low priority for looting enforcement, he says that wouldn’t be so different than their general tolerance for cocaine dealing and related crimes in the neighborhood for years before Katrina.

“We’ve never gotten the city services or the police protection we need. This community, which has been so abused by the levee breaks, with people not being able to come back, with the police presence uncertain and irresolute, what do you think is going to happen?” he asked. “You think it will come to a point where people can’t take it anymore and start killing looters? It’s at a critical juncture down there. We can’t put up with this anymore. If the authorities can’t handle it, there’ll be a new authority.”

Police concede that architectural theft and looting in general have plagued flooded neighborhoods and remain a challenge. But every officer is charged with looting enforcement, and they’ve taken aggressive steps and made some progress, said New Orleans police spokesman Capt. John Bryson.

“I’m doing it on-duty and off-duty,” Bryson said. “It’s a crime of opportunity in areas that are sparsely populated, and they (looters) know there’s a market. We’re checking the pawnshops and antiques dealers.”

Exactly where the pieces and parts of New Orleans homes are ending up, and what prices they’re bringing, remains largely a mystery, although there is no shortage of suspicion among residents.

Some of that suspicion has been directed at local dealers such as The Bank, a Felicity Street shop that essentially recycles the sorts of items that are being stolen. Co-owner Kelly Wilkerson, who runs the business her father started with her brother Sean, doesn’t take kindly to the raised eyebrows.

Some in the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association accused The Bank of inviting the thefts when it put up signs advertising its desire to buy architectural pieces after the flood. But Wilkerson said The Bank does not deal in stolen goods.

“We’ve been made the scapegoat,” Wilkerson said, taking a cigarette break in the middle of a typically harried day last week. “The Holy Cross neighborhood is basically blaming us, saying our signs advertised to crackheads. But we’re not buying from crackheads.”

On the wall above her in her cluttered office hangs a clipboard full of photocopies of driver’s licenses, which she requires from the people who sell to her, along with the address where they got their merchandise and a description of what she bought.

During the interview, the phone rang. A woman from Holy Cross was looking for a set of pocket doors stolen from her home. Wilkerson agreed to visit the woman’s house.

At 426 Delery St., Deborah Ortego wearily cleaned the former home of her recently deceased mother.

Ortego’s pocket doors had disappeared sometime in the past week. Earlier, somebody broke in and stole the claw feet off the tub.

“You’d have to be here 24 hours a day to stop it,” Ortego said. “And there’s all these people trying to buy houses on the cheap down here, trying to muscle you out, so you don’t know if they’re involved, since they’ll be renovating.”

After Wilkerson measured the door opening and recorded the paint color of the surrounding walls for a possible match later, she promised to alert Ortego if similar doors came her way.

“So what happens now if you find them? How do I get them back?” Ortego asked.

“If we’re satisfied the doors are yours and the paint matches, you just get a truck and come down and pick them up,” Wilkerson told her.

If architectural salvage operations back at full steam after the storm isn’t fencing the loot, who is?

The Wilkersons scratch their heads on that one. Sean Wilkerson said he thinks most of the stuff is being trucked out of town. New Orleans’ architecture might be unique, but as with the rest of its culture, there’s a substantial demand for its artifacts nationwide.

“We get people all the time buying doors in bulk and taking them to Texas or wherever,” he said. “There’s got be some out-of-towners setting them up a little warehouse somewhere.”

He paused for a moment, then growled, “Carpetbaggers.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

Whomever it is, they’re determined.

Pete McHugh of Holy Cross has been hit three times. They first came back in October and cut into his cedar wardrobe with an ax. A week and a half ago, someone broke into his garage and stole a bunch of doors and shutters he had stacked there. Then a couple of days later, they stole the shutters off the front of his house.

McHugh cursed in disgust at the sight of it. He decided to remove the rest of the shutters and stick them inside the house. At least that way they’d have to take some time and trouble to steal them.

To make matters worst, one of his kittens lay dead in the yard of unknown causes, near where the thieves had trampled his sunflowers while dragging out his doors and shutters.

“It was just the whole scene,” he said. “The dead kitten, the sunflowers. Then I had to bury the cat and deal with the shutters and call the police.”

JL END THEVENOT

(Brian Thevenot is a staff writer for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. He can be contacted at bthevenot(at)timespicayune.com)

AP-NY-06-07-06 1432EDT

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