I've been following this since first hearing about then through the ground breaking as it's a big project and the type of VA care facility needed and should already exist in many parts of the country but doesn't. That is if this Country really 'supported' those they send into their wars of choice, especially, they don't!
It has been abit slow going getting the whole complex started, mostly from what I've talked to a few connected to, as to the housing that exists in the foot print and the history of, this is about one of those houses.
Rusty Costanza, The Times-PicayuneThe S.W. Green house at 219 S. Miro St. is named for the African-American businessman and civic leader who had it built in the late 1920s.
October 12, 2010 - A 17-room, two-story mansion on South Miro Street in Mid-City has become a focal point of historic preservationists who are pushing to save as many structures as possible as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs builds an $800 million medical complex to replace its downtown facility.
Snip
Local historian Jari Honora celebrated Green's accomplishments as a pre-eminent social, business and political figure in early 20th century New Orleans. Finding his first financial success as a grocer, Green went on to become president of the Liberty Independent Life Insurance Co. He was a delegate to several Republican National Conventions and a longtime international officer of the Colored Knights of Pythias, an African-American social fraternity.
He began building the mansion in 1928, only to see it burned during construction, reportedly by members of the Ku Klux Klan who did not want to see a black man live in such an opulent home.
Honora said Green joined Walter Cohen and others who advocated for a better quality of life for black New Orleanians, both pushing for more schools for black children and fighting early segregation at Charity Hospital. Green died in 1946 in what Honora described as relative obscurity, and he has since largely been forgotten until a handful of historians and architects uncovered his story. {read rest}
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