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Charity Hospital Once one of the oldest hospitals in the United States, Charity Hospital was situated in a Lower Mid-City art deco building and served all New Orleanians, no matter their financial situation or state of insurance. During Hurricane Katrina, the hospital's basement flooded. Despite the great efforts of military and hospital personnel to prepare the hospital to resume care services, Charity never reopened. | Because Charity Hospital's owner, Louisiana State University, had wanted to build a new hospital but lacked funding, together with the city and state of Louisiana, Charity was declared to be more than 50% percent damaged so that federal funds could be secured to construct a new facility. Although a study showed Charity's solid architectural structure to be perfectly usable for renovation into a state-of-the-art medical facility, the university insisted on building a new structure. | In the course of its construction, approximately 265 houses were destroyed, and more than 50 functioning businesses had to relocate to clear 27 blocks of Lower Mid-City. As a result, the community was scattered, even though many residents had returned after the storm and renovated their houses, many of which had historic value. Due to protests of preservationists, some houses were moved to empty lots in the vicinity, whose lawns the city regularly mows. Occupying a superblock, the new University Medical Center opened ten years after the storm. |
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