Southern Baptist Hospital Intern Apartment Building in New Orleans

Bristow Tower, New Orleans Louisiana

Date added: March 02, 2025

Categories:
Louisiana
Multi Family

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The Southern Baptist Hospital (SBH) of New Orleans opened its doors in 1926, with Dr. Louis J. Bristow as superintendent. Bristow was a leader in the development of hospitals by the Southern Baptist Convention and a member of the Southern Baptist Hospital Commission. He remained superintendent at SBH New Orleans until 1947. He died in the city on November 15^th, 1957.

The construction of the apartment building named in Dr. Bristow's honor was part of an overall expansion program for the hospital campus. A master plan by architects Mathes, Bergman and Associates and consultants Ellerbe and Company is dated July 1^st, 1961. Preliminary sketches showing the proposed construction were issued early in the summer of 1962. In July 1962, a contract was let for the first phase of construction - a parking garage, laundry building and power plant. (The circular down ramp of the parking garage is located immediately adjacent to the Bristow Tower.) The contract was let for Bristow Tower on January 10^th, 1963, with the dedication of the building occurring on March 6^th, 1964.

At present (summer 2015) developers are in negotiation with Ochsner Baptist Hospital (the owner) to secure a long-term lease on Bristow Tower. The intent is to convert it into a hotel.

Building Description

The Bristow Tower is a free-standing, ten-story, International Style apartment building designed by Mathes, Bergman and Associates, a local firm. Construction began in 1963, and the building was dedicated on March 6^th, 1964. The structure is a reinforced concrete frame with a veneer mainly of flat white stucco panels. Brick shafts on the side elevations serve to accentuate and set off the whiteness of the building. Architecturally, the design is exemplary of the classic International Style as it emerged in Europe in the 1920s and 30s. Though vacant for many years and significantly deteriorated on the interior, the building has been little altered since its construction.

Bristow Tower is located on the campus of Ochsner Baptist Hospital, historically known as Southern Baptist Hospital. The campus occupies a city block in an early twentieth-century neighborhood of Uptown New Orleans. The gleaming white apartment tower is located at the corner of Magnolia and Cadiz streets, which increases its visual profile. Immediately adjacent is a white spiral parking ramp for a campus garage built a year earlier. Two additions can be found at the front right corner and at the rear of the building. There is also a utilities corridor that is not functionally related to the Bristow Tower, but that is attached to the building.

The Bristow Tower housed apartments for interns and graduate physicians fulfilling their professional residency requirement at the hospital. Larger apartment units provided for physicians with families. The first story included an entrance lobby with elevator access, a mechanical equipment room and a large space for a day nursery. The apartments are located on floors two through ten.

On each of the upper stories, the twin elevators open to a small central lobby, which gives access to a transverse corridor running from side to side of the building, bisecting it. These corridors give entry to individual apartments. The apartment units themselves are disposed as follows. On each floor, in the front half of the building, forward of the transverse corridor, are two, two-bedroom apartments, set symmetrically on either side of the central elevator core and elevator lobby. In the rear half, behind the corridor, is a pair of small studio apartments set together in the center of the building. On either side is a one-bedroom unit. This symmetrical arrangement provides for six apartments on each floor, with a total of 54 units in the entire building. At each side of the building, the transverse corridor terminates with a fire door giving access to an exterior egress stair.

The Bristow Tower embodies a profound lack of ornamentation so basic to the European Modernist ethos. It also features a very pronounced rectilinear articulation. Importantly, Bristow makes extensive use of white neutral smooth stucco surfaces to define and envelop space. This is seen in: 1) the low front walls that take the place of apartment balcony balustrades; 2) the similar low walls that take the place of balustrades at the many landings in the egress stairs; 3) the white wall strips that surmount the range of windows and sliding doors in each apartment's front wall; 4) the flat vertical thrusting shaft that defines the central elevator core and elevator lobbies; and 5) similar walls that mark, define and set off the side egress stairs. Taken together, these produce a collective effect that profoundly dominates the building's exterior.

The balconies are of particular interest. Along their bottoms, each features a series of weep holes (short pipes) whose purpose is to drain rainwater from the balcony floor. This somewhat unusual feature emphasizes the extent to which the designers were striving for the white wall effect so typical of the International Style. An ordinary pierced metal balcony balustrade would have disposed of rainwater easily, without the need for the special provision of weep holes. The weep holes also mark a slight recess in each balcony wall's front plane, enough to cast a good shadow and add to the building's geometrical complexity and interest. As an additional refinement, the balcony front walls and the egress stair front walls are recessed slightly from the side wall members with which they would, in a typical structure, connect. This is a feat of engineering made possible by the use of reinforced concrete. It also adds geometrical complexity and visual interest.

As a counterpoint to the white neutral surfaces, the side elevation walls of the main block are sheathed in variegated brick, with an overall reddish-orange appearance. These walls are virtually devoid of openings, thus creating a simple, strong stark vertical element, well in line with Modernist conceptions of geometrical design. Another counterpoint, albeit less emphatic, is the first story base with its panels of textured white aggregate stone.

The design also features International Style signature ribbon windows or the effect thereof. The former is seen in the windows that surmount the high walls of the day nursery on the first story. The latter is achieved via the balcony walls covering most of what is almost continuous glass at each apartment's front wall. This produces a very strong ribbon window effect on each story when seen from the ground. This striking visual effect could not have been unintentional.

The International Style flat roof is also much in evidence. The building's roof itself is flat. In addition, the outward protruding balcony on each of the upper stories produces a flat roof effect for the story below. And because the balcony walls protrude forward of the first story's footprint, they appear to hover over the building's base in a manner much in line with European Modernism.

A particularly compelling Modernist characteristic is the way the exterior design conveys a strong expression of the building's interior function and spatial organization. This can be seen in examining the individual elevations, as follows.

A central, continuous, upward-thrusting, broad white shaft, conveying vertical circulation, anchors the main elevation. Running from the second to the tenth stories, it also protrudes below the second-story floor and above the tenth-story roof, thus enhancing its vertical presence. This shaft marks the location of the elevator runs and the accompanying elevator lobbies on each of the upper floors. It is surmounted by a rooftop penthouse that houses the elevator mechanical equipment. Flanking the vertical shaft are pronounced horizontal apartment balconies and windows. Each apartment's individual presence is clearly conveyed. Moreover, the apartments on this elevation are all two-bedroom units, per above. So there is only one apartment unit on each side of the vertical shaft. Thus the side-ward extension of apartment balcony and window is shown as a single unit without interruption. The side-ward terminus of the apartment building mass is clearly stated via the vertical brick side elevation walls, previously noted. Beyond this the side egress exterior staircases are clearly read, even to the casual observer. Their verticality is marked and emphasized by the above noted side expanses of white stucco walls, or vertical shafts, that terminate the building mass.

The rear is very much an articulated elevation with architectural importance of its own. Only apartments occupy this elevation; so the horizontal elements (balcony walls and windows) are dominant. Here the side-ward extension of apartment balcony and window is interrupted. Two fairly narrow vertical white shafts separate the pair of smaller studio apartments, in the center, from the larger one-bedroom units on either side. The two studio apartments are separated by clearly discernible fin-like walls. The terminating brick side walls and side egress stairs also read strongly from this elevation.

The identical side elevations contrast the sheer brick side walls with the outward-jutting white shafts marking the egress stairs. The brick walls run from the second to the tenth stories, resting upon the first story concrete columnar base. But the stair shafts ascend all the way from the ground to above the tenth story, thus producing a vertical contrast that conveys the idea of vertical circulation. Also the stairs, and their accompanying white shafts, are set closer to the front elevation than the rear. These are the building's only asymmetrical features. This, too, adds both complexity and interest.

The stairwells feature deteriorated steel stair handrails and original light fixtures of brushed aluminum and tubular milk glass.

The elevator lobbies are sparingly detailed with modest, brushed aluminum cove moldings flanking the elevator doors. Each door also has a brushed aluminum lintel top. The apartment units feature modest rooms with eight-foot ceilings. Each includes a galley-type kitchen, a single small dormitory-style bathroom and minimal closet space. The units are provided with generous balconies which form a major feature of the front and rear elevations. They also feature generous systems of windows and sliding glass doors, to access the balconies, so much so, that the exterior wall of each apartment is almost continuous glass (at least when viewed from the interior).

The interior finishes and details are uniformly plain, with white plaster walls and textured dry-wall ceilings, flat unadorned natural finish wood doors (with plain surrounds), and brushed aluminum detailing on the windows and sliding glass doors. Floors are linoleum tile.

Within the past 20 or 30 years, a portion of the lower egress stair (front elevation - right-hand side) has been enclosed in brickwork matching the side walls and a one-story flat-roofed gym was added at the inside rear corer. Finally, there has been significant water penetration, and significant deterioration and mold, in the upper four stories. The foregoing have had minimal visual impact given the scope of this 10-story building's noteworthy International Style design.

There is a narrow one-story utilities corridor extending from the rear of Bristow Tower. There is also a one-story c. 1985 gym added to the rear.