Quarter Caretaker: Robert Cangelosi, Jr.
Robert Cangelosi Jr. in the Cabildo. After the historic building burned in 1988, Cangelosi was the lead architect in the landmark's restoration. Photo by Ellis Anderson
September 2024This New Orleans architect, educator and author holds many titles, but helping preserve the French Quarter neighborhood where he grew up is the one he’s best—and rightfully—known for.
– by Doug Brantley
This column is underwritten in part by Jeannette Bolte
“You always will be learning, if you’re smart,” says Robert Cangelosi, Jr.
“I tell my students at Tulane, ‘Just keep learning. Never assume you know everything, because there’s stuff out there that you’re not aware of and you stumble across.’ I’m still learning today.”
A professor of historic preservation at Tulane’s School of Architecture for more than two decades, Cangelosi is also president of Koch and Wilson, one of the city’s oldest architectural firms, founded over a century ago by preservation pioneers Richard Koch and Sam Wilson.
During his free time, Cangelosi serves as president of the Louisiana State Museum-supporting Friends of the Cabildo, for which he conducts docent training for the nonprofit’s walking tours and home research seminars for property owners.
Add positions on numerous related boards and committees, authoring/editing various volumes of the Friends’ acclaimed New Orleans Architecture series, and a lifelong love for local history, and it’s easy to understand why Cangelosi was chosen by the Vieux Carré Property Owners, Residents, and Associates (VCPORA) as this year’s recipient of its Schwartz-Gage Award.
Robby Cangelosi receiving the Schwartz-Gage award for preservation by the Vieux Carré Property Owners, Residents and Associates (VCPORA) in September 2024. L to R: Robby Cangelosi, Nathan Chapman, VCPORA Board Chairman, Annie Irvin, VCPORA board member and executive director of the Historic BK House and Gardens. Photo by Ellis Anderson
“If historic preservation is foremost about saving our early-built environment for future generations, it would be hard to think of a more worthy person for a lifetime award for historic preservation than Robert Cangelosi,” lauds VCPORA president Nathan Chapman.
“There is hardly any important historic building in New Orleans today that he has not advised or worked on,” he adds. “Thank goodness there are still architects who choose to dedicate their careers to caring for our beloved old buildings.”
Outside the Historic BK House on Chartres Street, which is undergoing a complete restoration under the direction of Robert Cangialosi, Jr.
But, as he instructs his students, Cangelosi isn’t one to rest on his laurels.
Having devoted four decades to researching the still-in-the-works Vieux Carré edition of the Architecture series (“Every night, I plug at it just a little bit more”), Cangelosi is building a massive database detailing “all of the different styles, building types, dates of construction, the owners, and the architects or contractors – if it’s known – to try and figure out who or what was the most influential.”
We’re not just talking renowned New Orleans architects Benjamin Latrobe or James Gallier, Jr., who both helped shape the face of the city in the 1800s.
“In the late 19th century, there’s a French butcher by the name of Dabieze,” Cangelosi says of his findings. “He’s building stuff like crazy, mostly shotguns. Every time I turn around, either he’s bought a building in the Quarter and he’s gussying it on up with Eastlake detailing or he’s torn down a Creole cottage and put two shotguns there. People like that had a lot of impact.”
In the process of weeding through 300-plus years of architectural history, he has also debunked many long-held misconceptions.
“I’m working a lot with what I call the ‘moonlight and manure stories’ of the French Quarter,” Cangelosi chuckles. “My mother was a big fan of Harnett Kane and all those people who wrote these great stories of the Quarter, and she relayed them to us as children.
“But today, in doing all this research, we can’t put Jean Lafitte anywhere in that building [on Bourbon]. He did have a mistress that lived across the street. The Napoleon House? Actually, the Pharmacy Museum, up the street from the Napoleon House, was referred to as the Napoleon House in the 19th century.”
Robby Cangelosi: The only Napoleon House? photo by Ellis Anderson
“And the ‘first skyscraper’ [on the corner of St. Peter and Royal streets was not the tallest building in the city. You just go down the list. It makes for good stories, but there’s generally no basis in fact in a lot of them.
“There have been a lot of surprises I found,” he notes. “Sometimes a building is assumed to be a certain date and built by a certain person, but there’s no way that could have happened. But that’s the oral tradition. I found a lot of my family history, too.”
Born and raised in the French Quarter during the 1950s – baptized at St. Mary’s Italian and confirmed at St. Louis Cathedral – Cangelosi’s Quarter connection dates back generations.
Both his mother and father were of Sicilian descent and his father was able to trace his roots to the Borgia popes. Their families congregated in “little Palermo” at the lower end of the neighborhood.
“I grew up on Royal Street, one house off of Barracks,” he recalls. “My great grandfather, my father’s mother’s father, owned that property. It was a variant of the shotgun form. You came into the house, it was three bays wide; the hall went for a short distance, then you went out onto a side porch.
1236 Royal Street in 1962. It was built for the Cangelosi family in 1907 at a cost of $1500. Photo: Diboll Vieux Carre Survey, courtesy The Historic New Orleans Collection
The Cangelosi House today, thanks to work by French Quarter preservationists like Robby Cangelosi and property owners who believe in stewardship. Photo by Ellis Anderson
“The end of the hall was my bedroom with a screen. My mother and father lived in the front room of the house. There was a living room, one bath, then a bedroom that my grandfather and two uncles lived in. Then you went to the dining room, then there was the kitchen. So, you had no real privacy.”
It was a gentler, more family-focused time, before the tidal wave of tourists and timeshares, e-bikes and double-decker buses, vampire and ghost tours, when everyone knew their neighbors and walked rather than Uber-ed.
Dressed for Mardi Gras, Robert, Andy & Robby Cangelosi, at the corner of Royal and Barracks, 1954, courtesy Robert Cangelosi, Jr.
Cangelosi's great-grandparents, Joseph and Rosa Cangelosi, in 1949. They lived at 934 Royal Street, courtesy Robert Cangelosi, Jr.
St Mary’s Italian courtyard. The young girl in the center is Mamie Greco, Cangelosi's grandmother, courtesy Robert Cangelosi, Jr.
“I would go for walks with my grandfather,” Cangelosi recalls. “You went to Central Grocery to get this, you went to Progress Grocery to get that, you went to Brocato’s to get this. You would stop in and say hello to this person or that person. And, of course, you always had to step into St. Mary’s Italian and say a prayer on the way back.”
Growing up, Cangelosi was immersed in French Quarter history. His relatives regaled him with stories about the neighborhood, while his grandfather enthralled the youth with stories of watching the French Opera House burn and the hurricane of 1915 destroying the steeple on St. Mary’s.
Those early lessons in French Quarter history would go on to inform his architecture career. With his grandfather operating Desporte Pharmacy at the corner of Chartres and Dumaine (the business sign is at the Louisiana State Museum while other items are part of the Pharmacy Museum) and his father a physician, it was assumed Cangelosi would follow in their footsteps.
Desporte Pharmacy at the corner of Chartres and Dumaine Street, date unknown. Photo: Diboll Vieux Carre Survey, courtesy The Historic New Orleans Collection
However, since the young man passed out at the sight of blood, his career path veered into architecture.
Nonetheless, he did become a doctor—of sorts—studying architecture at Louisiana State University and later the University of Florida, where he earned his Master of Architecture, specializing in historic preservation. While in college, Frank Lloyd Wright was still making an impact, yet, Cangelosi preferred working with historic buildings rather than contemporary design.
“Even today, at my practice, when we do something that’s new, it looks very traditional. People are not going to come to me to do a post-modern, Charles Moore-type of design; they are going to come here to get a very traditional design. If you want something avant-garde, [whispers] don’t come here.”
With honors ranging from such national organizations as the American Institute of Architects to the Historic District Landmarks Commission, Koch and Wilson has aided in preserving many of the Quarter’s most significant structures – including the Cabildo, the Pontalba Buildings, Gallier House, and the Napoleon House (where the VCPORA award ceremony fittingly takes place Sept. 13).
“I don’t think I could pick out a favorite,” says Cangelosi, now 73. “I’ve worked on a lot of National Landmarks, but I guess I’m most proud of the Cabildo. I was the architect after it burned [in 1988]. When I’m training the new docents for Friends of the Cabildo, they introduce me as the architect when the Cabildo burned…in 1794.”
The Cabildo in flames, 1988. Read our story about the fire and the Cabildo restoration. Photo courtesy of the Collections of the Louisiana State Museum
The Cabildo, September 2024, photo by Ellis Anderson
On the new third floor of the Cabildo, Robert Cangelosi, Jr. explains that during the rebuilding, extraordinary measures were undertaken to recreate the Cabildo exactly as it was before it burned. For example, the beams were made in an antique mill in Florida to make sure the correct cut marks were on them and all the joints are mortise and tenon and pegged together. "It's the largest project like this that's ever been undertaken in the United States." Click here to read our FQJ story about the burning and its reconstruction. Photo by Ellis Anderson
Beyond the numerous accolades bestowed on his firm over the years, Cangelosi is quick to credit early preservationists who preceded him.
“During the 1920s, this bohemian group goes in to help save the Quarter, and a lot of them were gay,” he notes. “But once the Quarter was saved, the Morrison administration set out to rid it of ‘sexual deviants,’ artists colonies, and things like that—the very people who saved it.
“Our office was instrumental in that period of time, too,” Cangelosi adds. “Richard Koch was down there with this ‘Dixie Bohemia,’ saving a lot of the buildings. He basically invented the courtyards of the Quarter we know today,” – including the famous ones at Le Petit Theatre and what is now Pat O’Briens (which then was a private residence).
Cangelosi nods to Elizabeth Werlein, Boyd Cruise, Sam Wilson, and Clay Shaw, as well as contemporaries, including Frank and Ann Masson, and watchdog organizations such as VCPORA and the VCC for helping maintain the neighborhood’s character.
“They fought a lot of battles for us,” he says. “When they first created the VCC, Colonial Williamsburg had just been done.”
Another architect later pointed out that while Colonial Williamsburg is a nice place, the Vieux Carré was so much better because it was a real neighborhood. Cangelosi quotes him for the reason: “‘People really live there. It’s not like Disneyland where you come in, pay your admission, then go home after you’ve had your Hurricane drink.’
“Well…it wasn’t like Disneyland when he said that,” Cangelosi adds wryly, noting the ongoing struggle to retain the neighborhood’s authenticity.
Greco's Grocery on the corner of Barracks and Decatur streets, circa 1964. Courtesy he Collins C. Diboll Vieux Carré Digital Survey, a project of The Historic New Orleans Collection.
“The threats are always on the Quarter. It’s not like it used to be. There are a lot of people who have weekend places now, but not many actually live there. That’s the real threat I see to the Quarter; that it may be losing its soul.”
But not on his watch. While he may reside in Mid-City, Cangelosi has dedicated not only his career, but his life—heart and soul—to the French Quarter and to protecting its past for the future.
Friend and fellow preservationist Ann Masson, who was likewise honored by VCPORA in 2015, said, “His contribution to the preservation of New Orleans’ historic architecture and neighborhoods is well known among those who value the city.
“His combination of architectural expertise, technical knowledge, and love of history make him uniquely qualified to correct the many situations found in our old buildings,” she continues.
“As a teacher and writer, he fosters appreciation, and as a community leader, he supports numerous organizations and fights for the integrity of our architectural legacy.”
Talk about a life well lived. Somebody give this man an award.
The crowd at the Swartz=Gage Award gives Robby Cangelosi (front left) a rousing standing ovation for his work preserving the French Quarter, photo by Ellis Anderson
Robert Cangelosi, Jr. on the Cabildo cupola, photo by Ellis Anderson
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