Grand Palace Hotel, New Orleans
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The Grand Palace Hotel was a 17-story building located in the Mid City area of New Orleans, Louisiana. The building became known worldwide for its implosion on 22 July 2012.[1]
Designed by William Nowland Van Powell and Henry Ehrensing[2] as the Claiborne Towers apartment building, construction started in April 1950 at a cost of $10 million.[3] The building was the largest apartment complex in the city upon opening in 1951,[4] containing 1,036 air-conditioned apartments,[3] and was built on land leased from Tulane University[3] by the developer Paul Kapelow.[4]
The lobby was particularly well finished, including terrazzo flooring, wooden panels of black walnut, and a bank of Otis elevators.[3]
History
By 1952, the building featured a wide range of facilities and occupants, including a team of cleaners,[3] a ground floor lounge,[3] a beauty shop,[3] a lingerie boutique,[3] offices of Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company, and a Walgreens store.[5]
Perhaps the most famous story from this period of the building's history is when the Jewish-American mobster, Phillip "Dandy Phil" Kastel, was found dead in his apartment by a private nurse on 16 August 1962. He had reportedly taken his own life with a .38 caliber revolver.[4][6]
Construction of the Interstate 10 overpass adjacent to the building in the 1960s proved detrimental to Claiborne Towers' fortunes as an apartment block[2] and it was partially converted in the early 1960s into the Sheraton Delta Motor Hotel,[5] then in 1972 converted to a senior citizens' residence called Delta Towers.[4]
During the 1980s, the elderly residents were evicted in preparation for the building's full conversion into a hotel.[4] The new hotel, the Ramada on Canal,[7] first opened, although at the time incomplete, for the 1984 Sugar Bowl.[5] The hotel was subsequently known as the Crescent on Canal[5] and the Pallas Hotel,[8] before taking on its final name, the Grand Palace Hotel.
