Tulane School of Architecture Historic Preservation

Did you know that Tulane has the largest collection of post larval fish in the world? More than 8 million specimens are held within a landscape of WWII era ammunition storage bunkers in Belle Chasse, Louisiana. This semester’s Graduate Preservation Research Studio, led by Professor Aarthi Janakiraman, traveled there yesterday for the architecture but left with a new-found love of pocket sharks and preservation that reaches beyond the built environment.

The studio’s focus is on WWII era bunkers, specifically in the Caribbean, and they will be traveling to St. Thomas this March to document and explore Water Island and its aging military architecture. Tulane Biodiversity Research Institute’s site contains approximately 22 bunkers, constructed in the early 1940s with heavily-reinforced concrete and built into earthen berms, they mainly stored munitions for U.S. ships during WWII and the Korean War. The students measured sections of the site and documented exteriors through photogrammetry.��

Many thanks to Collections Manager Justin Mann for this enthusiasm and time! To learn more about their work visit: https://www.tubri.org/index.html and for an amazing open-access database containing information from fish collections in natural history museums, universities and other institutions around the world visit: https://www.fishnet2.net/

Tulane University Biodiversity Research Institute

📣 Project Update from the Town of Grand Isle 📣
We’re excited to share that a professional historic preservation team is on Grand Isle this week as part of a newly awarded grant from the Louisiana State Preservation Office.
Through this grant, approximately 2,400 Louisiana Historic Resource Inventory (LHRI) architectural survey forms will be completed throughout the Town of Grand Isle. This important work will help create a strong baseline of documentation that can support future grant opportunities, make it easier to access historic preservation funding, and assist with long-term planning efforts.
The project team includes staff from CICADA, a New Orleans–based architecture and planning firm, and Gambrel & Peak – Historic Preservation Consulting, along with graduate students from Tulane University’s School of Architecture and Built Environment Historic Preservation Program. The project will continue into the summer, with much of the on-the-ground documentation taking place during the next few months.
We appreciate the community’s cooperation as the team works throughout the island, and we look forward to the benefits this project will bring to Grand Isle’s historic and cultural resources. We will keep you updated on this project as it continues.
Tulane School of Architecture Historic Preservation, Louisiana History

Program alumna, Mia Kaplan featured in the latest edition of Preservation in Print!

Mia Kaplan has made a name for herself as an architect and architectural historian.

⁠In the latest I’m a Preservationist feature in Preservation in Print magazine, Mia shares what drew her to historic preservation, her work to recognize West End Park on the New Orleans lakefront and the latest on the efforts to bring back Lincoln Beach in New Orleans east.⁠

🔗 Read the full interview at https://prcno.org/im-a-preservationist-mia-kaplan/

📸 Photo by Bryan Tarnowski

Preservation in practice: Tulane students restore historic tombs Tulane University News and Press Releases