The blighted house at 1826 Reynes St. in the Lower 9th Ward has a date with the bulldozer.
On Sept. 30, the city posted a “Notice of Emergency Demolition” on the sagging structure. The canary-yellow document declares that the vacant building is “in imminent danger of collapse and/or threat to life,” decreeing that the property will be torn down at the owner’s expense, at a cost of $7,085.
WATCH: Brad Pitt Make It Right house demolition gets underway in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward
The owner of the house is Make It Right, the non-profit development company founded by Hollywood leading man Brad Pitt in 2008.
The Lower 9th Ward neighborhood surrounding the soon-to-be demolished house was largely wiped out by the flood that accompanied Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Soon after, Pitt established Make It Right, which was meant to provide affordable homes to displaced residents.
The 109 houses that Make It Right produced were unlike any seen in New Orleans before. Using designs by architectural superstars such as Shigeru Ban, Thom Mayne and Frank Gehry, the neighborhood became a tourist destination for avant-garde architecture fans.
Ground was broken on the first homes in 2008, and by 2015 Make It Right had spent over $26 million on the development. Building stopped by early 2016, as complaints about the design and construction of some of the houses began to surface.
In 2018 an abandoned 7-year-old Make It Right house at 5012 N. Derbigny St. was demolished at the insistence of neighbors because of rain damage and rotting.
The house at 1826 N. Reynes St., which was designed by renowned Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye, was completed and sold by Make It Right in 2011 for $130,000. Two years later, the buyer sold it back to the non-profit for a similar amount. When new, it was an audacious-looking home. The upper story of the house was an open-air patio protected from rain by a roof supported by vertical wooden posts. Those posts are now so deteriorated that the roof has partially slumped into the floor below. The doors are boarded and portions of the exterior paneling have peeled away.
“I’m happy to see it go,” said Brenda Crowley, who lives part-time with her mother in a nearby Make It Right home.
“I think more needs to be done,” she said. “The houses need to be repaired, bad."
In recent years Make It Right has been a legal battleground.
In 2015, Pitt’s non-profit company sued lumber supplier TimberSIL for $500,000, alleging that the outdoor treated-wood products it produced had led to premature rotting in the Make It Right buildings. Make It Right has not revealed the outcome of the suit.
In September 2018, homeowners filed a class action lawsuit against Make It Right, alleging that the houses were “deficiently constructed and built” with “defective products.” The plaintiffs in the case have not asked for a specific amount of money.
In the same month, Make It Right sued its principal architect John C. Williams for $20 million, accusing him of defective design work that led to leaks and other problems in the homes.
Both cases are pending. The city did not state when the demolition would take place.
Attorneys for Make It Right declined to comment on the demolition.
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