Greater Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church Workshop and Demonstration Project
June 19-25, 2006, the Preservation Trades Network and World Monuments Fund held the first of a series of Demonstration Restoration Projects in the Holy Cross community in New Orleans. The Greater Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church was founded in 1900. Located in the historic neighborhood of Holy Cross in New Orleans’s Ninth Ward, the small wooden church, constructed in 1916, was damaged by the flooding that inundated the Lower Ninth Ward and Holy Cross communities following Hurricane Katrina and the breach of the Industrial Canal levee. Among the flood damage, the historic wood floor and pews were lost and the electrical system destroyed, rendering the church uninhabitable. In June 2006, PTN and WMF began the first of a series of community based demonstration projects and workshops in the Holy Cross neighborhood of New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward. The objective of the program, which was developed in collaboration with the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, is to restore the flood-damaged buildings and make them inhabitable, while using the projects to provide residents with practical, hands-on knowledge for repairing their own properties. The first project and workshop focused on the repair of sills and joists and replacement of the floor at the Greater Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church, a 100-year old shotgun-type building that retains much of its historic fabric beneath contemporary alterations. Since the project, the congregation, who had been worshipping in a tent, has been holding services inside the church.
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