HISTORY OF FEDERAL FIBRE MILLS

“It’s one of the most beautiful crescents of the river.”  Legend tells us that these were the words spoken by Bienville in 1699 when he first laid eyes upon the future site of New Orleans.  The young nobleman accompanied his brother, Iberville, on a French expedition to reiterate fellow countryman La Salle’s claim to the Mississippi Valley.  The result was the establishment of the Colony of Louisiana. 

Although several forts and posts were established in the next twenty years, Bienville did remember the beautiful crescent when it came time to place a major settlement on the Mississippi.  On March 27, 1719, after reaching, via Lake Ponchartrain, the site which awed him as a young man, Bienville founded a settlement on “an island surrounded by swamp”.  He named it New Orleans in honor of Duke Philip d’Orleans, brother of King Louis XIV. 

Subsequently, Governor Bienville was granted extensive property holdings on both sides of the Mississippi River and behind the settlement.  A 1719 Royal Decree, however, prohibited high-ranking colonial officials from operating plantations or owning land for any other purpose other than as a vegetable garden.  Not wishing to lose his estates, or defy his King, Bienville avoided the issue by declaring his vast acreage “a private vegetable garden” since the Royal Decree specified purpose and not size.

In 1726, Bienville granted twenty riverfront acres, fifty deep, to the Holy Order of the Jesuits.  Under the leadership of Father Nicolas Ignace de Beaubois, the Jesuits increased their acreage and developed one of the finest plantations in the South.  Myrtle-wax trees lined their levee, which was roughly where Tchoupitoulas Street is today. 

After the suppression of the Jesuits by the French Crown — a move spearheaded by the infamous Madame Pompadour in 1763 — the magnificent Jesuit Grant was divided into seven long, thin plantations and sold at public auction.  Different planters tried their hands at working the fertile soil.  The area which holds Square 48, upon which the Historic Federal Fibre Mills was built, was below Tchoupitoulas Street from the Delord-Sarpy Suburb.

During much of the Riverfront District’s plantation period, Royal Road, now Tchoupitoulas Street, was the original road closest to the river.  Alluvial deposits from the Mississippi River created, between 1760 and the mid-1800’s, all of the land below Tchoupitoulas Street.  The river-born land, called battures (between the levee and the river) was considered public.  At first, with the exception of hunters, builders seeking river sand, and flatboatsmen mooring or beaching their crafts, the battures were of little concern to anyone.  They were covered by water half of the year and not very large.

As additional deposits raised and extended the battures, owners of adjoining properties, and previous owners of the same, recognized the growing land’s value.  Many claims of ownership were filed, pitting prominent citizens against one another and the local government.

Not long after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Edward Livingston, a lawyer from a prominent New York family who lost his fortune and came to New Orleans to build a new one, prompted President Thomas Jefferson to examine the Batture Battles.  The President, citing various legal sources, recommended that the lands remain in public domain.  Within a few years, however, new levees were built closer to the river and the public battures were turned into saleable property.  A whole new round of Batture Battles began, with suits filed as late as 1852 by the heirs of previous land owners.

New Levee, now South Peters Street, replaced Tchoupitoulas Street as the road closest to the river.  It did not run on the new levee, though, but a distance behind it.  Just north of the road, amid other batture land freed for sale, was Square 48, the site of the Fibre Mills building.

The first structure raised on Square 48 was the magnificent residence of William Carr Withers.  Withers built his mansion facing the Mississippi River in 1820.  He died nine years later.

Cornelius Paulding, a wealthy merchant from Savannah who also owned the Planters Hotel on Canal Street, bought the Withers house and grounds for $80,000 in 1829.  On May 7, 1852, after the death of Cornelius Paulding, Rezin Shepherd, acting on the instructions of Judah Touro, purchased the Paulding estate for $30,000.  The area had become industrialized, exemplified by a saw mill which sat on the square directly in front of Square 48.

When Touro died in 1854 he bequeathed the land and improvements of the front half of Square 48, along with the necessary funds, to an infirmary which bore his name.  The original Touro Infirmary operated on the site of Square 48 (except for a brief period during the Civil War when it was a Jewish Almshouse) until 1883, when the Hospital moved to its present location on Prytania Street.

Not long after the Touro Infirmary moved, the building on Square 48 was leveled.  The land served several different businesses, including a cotton press, until the National Manufacturing Company of New Jersey purchased and reassembled the splintered pieces of the square to construct its factory.

Construction of a new building on Square 48 was first planned for construction in 1903 by the National Manufacturing Company which purchased Square 48 from the Hibernia National Bank and Trust which had held the property.  It was not until 1904, however, that the plans drawn by Architects Favrot and Livaudais went from paper to reality.  A handsome brick and heavy timber structure, one of the largest on the riverfront, was erected at 1107 South Peters Street.

The National Manufacturing Company changed its name to suit its parent, the National Enamaling and Stamping Company of Louisiana.  The New Jersey parent company absorbed the New Orleans company in 1917.  Though the plant on South Peters Street continued to operate, little by little, it became more of a warehouse than a factory.

In 1932, John U. Barr and partners organized the Federal Fibre Mills.  The new company, which manufactured manila and sisal rope or twine, leased the top floor of the building.  It employed thirty persons and produced 1,250,000 pounds of product.  When in 1941, the Federal Fibre Mills had completed its expansion into all five floors of the building, John U. Barr and partners purchased the entire structure and renamed it after Barr’s enterprise.

Box cars loaded and unloaded right inside of the Mills.  For years, the cars rumbled from South Peters Street to all parts of the country.  By 1947, the Federal Fibre Mills had achieved national distribution.  It employed one hundred people and had an annual production figure of over 7,000,000 pounds.

After years of success but also because of labor problems, John Barr sold his business to the Plymouth Cordage Company.  His heirs, and those of his partners, retained title to the building.  In 1951, Plymouth moved its factory out of the Federal Fibre Mills.  From that date, until its purchase and renovation by the pioneers, Warehouse District developers Edward Boettner and Pres Kabacoff for the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition, the Federal Fibre Mills has served as a warehousing and office space for various businesses.

It is estimated that two million people came through the doors of the Federal Fibre Mills during the World’s Fair in 1984.  As Edward Boettner said, “The Fair not only presented us with the opportunity to put the building’s name before the public, but created an awareness of the district and its possibilities, as well as gained acceptance for the concept of residential conversions of industrial buildings.”

It was no small task getting a shell of a structure prepared for the World’s Fair while keeping an eye on future construction.  The developers utilized the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition to showcase their building, making it home to a folk life exhibit, a night club, and two major restaurants (which included the German Beer Gardens located on the first floor.)

The eighty-year old building was in excellent shape structurally, but deterioration had taken its toll on various areas.  One million dollars was spent on initial clean-up, including a $50,000 investment in ejecting epoxy grout into the voids of mortar on the upper sections of the two elevator shafts.  The bricks and wood, darkened by years of factory production and ordinary aging, were water-blasted since sand-blasting would have changed the character of both the New Orleans tan bricks and the first growth heart of Southern yellow pine.

The lobby, a five-story atrium, was cut to expose the rugged construction of the building.  “Cutting the atrium was no problem,” said construction manager William Doyle, “and it gave us a good indication of what was in store for us when it came time to raise the floors in the back wing.  The atrium also gave us original materials we needed when we had to patch floor boards in other parts of the building.   The boards are 4” x 5" spline-jointed pine of such a quality that it’s irreplaceable.  It was great to be able to use original materials.”

Once the clean-up was completed and the atrium cut, construction of modifications for World’s Fair concession began.  A cobblestone courtyard — of unusual stability since the original builders laid a firm foundation of shell, brick and cement — was accented with trees and shrubs all indigenous to Louisiana.  The courtyard proved to be a very popular respite for Fair visitors.

Because the building is listed on the National Register for Historic Places, strict guidelines for modification of the structure were followed.  In one instance, a fireplace which was part of the old office had each of its 1,000 bricks numbered so that it could be re-assembled exactly as it was.

However, the real work on the Federal Fibre Mills began once the World’s Fair was gone.  It took four months to prepare the building for framing of apartment units, with ten contractors on site.  The work included re-building the second story windows that had been removed to allow the monorail cars to enter the building and the raising of the fourth and fifth floors.  This partial raising of floors created tri-level units on the fourth floor and two-story, tri-level units on the fifth.  It converted a building of 150,000 gross square feet into one of 150,000 net, which included the roof-top addition.  The raising procedure, described by William Doyle is the most fascinating construction story of the Federal Fibre Mills:

“First we shored and braced the floors above and below, then we attached 3/8” airplane cable to the beams supporting the section to be moved and to the beams supporting the floor above the section.  We cut 38' by 50' sections with chain saws and lifted the sections with 28, 2-ton come-alongs.  Because we cut it so close, so that we did as little alteration to the floor as possible, we could raise the floor at a rate of three-eights of an inch per five minutes.  We pulled two clicks on the come-along lever, then had four men walk the floor to make certain we were even.  When we got the section four inches above the designated level, we put in the steel saddles and chocks, then lowered to the desired elevation.”

As a result of these and other innovations, there are no two units exactly alike in the building — each has its own distinctive personality.  It would have been easy to find a floor plan that worked and “press the cookie cutter,” but this would have failed to utilize the volume of the building.  As one architect said, “There’s a forest in this building:  each beam and column represents a tree.  And the bay areas between the columns force you to divorce the conventional.  An enormous amount of time went into finding solutions to space design problems and creating a visually stimulating environment.  It’s not art for art’s sake, but creating spaces that work on several levels.  I see this building as a neighborhood, and neighborhoods are not composed of alike people.  It follows then, that their living spaces should not be alike.”

Perhaps developer Edward Boettner, Sr. best described the transformation of the Federal Fibre Mills:  “You know, you can just sense what is going to happen here.  We’ve installed new life into this grand old building, and we’re certain of a long and illustrious future.  There are 885 gracefully-arched windows in this building, some over six feet high, and providing views of the city sky-line, the bridge, and the Mississippi River.  The interior is meticulously designed, creating living spaces of the future out of the magnificent architecture of the past.  I’m proud to be a part of the Riverfront District development.  We’re giving back to the City a part of herself.”