New Orleans’ Forgotten History: Grunewald Hall (with some Photoshop art)

I call architecture frozen music.

Goethe

This is the quote I feel best represents my ancestry... at least the German side of it.

My third great-grandfather, Louis Grunewald, came from the tiny village of Hanhofen in Germany's Rhineland Palatinate to the city of New Orleans in 1852. In New Orleans, he is known to this day as a pioneer music merchant and original proprietor of what is now the Roosevelt Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

To have descended from, essentially, an historical figure in a city like New Orleans has always felt rather surreal. When I go back home, I am always very conscious of the fact that I am walking in Louis' footsteps. And the intersection of Baronne and Canal Streets has a particular "imprinted energy," for lack of a better term. That whole vicinity was the hub of Grunewald family businesses through the 19th and turn of the 20th century.

The hotel, originally named the Grunewald and now in its second epoch as the Roosevelt, is what most today would consider my family's living, standing monument to the city.

Its erection, however, was literally forged in music -- church organ serenades, piano showrooms, sheet music publishing, and a palatial concert hall that was a staple of New Orleans concert life.

It was, in fact, the latter of those -- the concert hall -- that preceded the hotel on its Baronne Street lot by about eighteen years. Grunewald Hall (sometimes referred to as Grunewald Opera House) was its name, and it was built by Louis Grunewald after he's spent roughly 20 years in the city selling pianos and sheet music as well as playing the organ at St. Patrick, St. Alphonsus, and St. Mary's Catholic churches.

Grunewald Hall was designed by architect Charles Hilger, a fellow German mainly known for designing religious structures such as Rayne Memorial Church and Temple Sinai. Hilger utilized the Bavarian Baroque aesthetic for Grunewald's new flagship establishment, which was completed in 1873.

The hall's main theater was, by all accounts, a site to behold. But you'll have to use your imagination in order to step inside, with the aid of the following description from the Times Picayune the year of its opening.

On the second floor is the splendid concert hall, which is equaled by few and surpassed by none in the city.

A broad stairway leads up to it from the front of the building on Baronne street.

The room measures one hundred feet in length, by fifty-four feet wide. The walls are frescoed handsomely and decorated with the portraits of all the great composers of music, and in niches around the wall are statues of the nine Muses, and at regular intervals all around them are magnificent bronze brackets of three or more burners, the light of which, blended with the large “sunburst” in the ceiling, gives the room an almost dazzling brilliancy.

Times Picayune, New Orleans, November 2, 1873

Among Grunewald Hall's other amenities were Louis' famous music store (which boasted the world's largest piano showroom), a supper room, and a variety of meeting and rehearsing rooms for the city's various dramatic and singing clubs and benevolent societies.

There were no signs at this point that Louis Grunewald had any aspirations to own a hotel. But that was before the untimely loss of his beloved concert hall, in 1892, in what turned out to be New Orleans' most devastating fires.

A disastrous conflagration has visited New Orleans. The hour of 2:30 this morning had barely been reached when an alarm of fire rang out. It indicated the vicinity of Canal and Baronne Streets. Soon there was no doubt of the exact locality of the flames, for from Baronne, between Canal and Common Streets, came a great glare that lit up the throughfares about and made easy the way to the scene. Then it was discovered that Grunewald Hall was ablaze.

From the base of the building shot up huge flames that seemed bent on devouring anything and everything in their path. Upward they continued, and soon it was seen that the large and massive structure was doomed.

Times Democrat, New Orleans, October 31, 1892

Louis Grunewald estimated his losses to be around $75,000 (which today would equal around 2.6 million). There was a silver lining, however: he still had a large consignment of newly delivered pianos that had not yet been unloaded from the steamers. And the safe containing the hall’s books was also found intact. The fire, Grunewald said, would cause no interruption in his affairs in the music trade.

As he continued to operate his other music store across the way on Canal Street, Louis Grunewald contemplated what to do with Grunewald Hall’s empty lot. He considered re-building the hall, or even constructing a complex of offices, but New Orleans’ growing tourism caught his attention.

And that is the back story of how the Hotel Grunewald (currently the Roosevelt-Waldorf Astoria) was born… of frozen music, both literally and figuratively.

Recreating the Fire in Photoshop

Let me first say this Photoshop piece is not new. I made it back in 2007.

I don’t know what led me to want to recreate such a tragic event in Photoshop. But I do have a “dark” streak to me and had been wanting to dabble in giving life to historical events through my artistic endeavors. And digital art has always come more naturally to me than drawing or painting.

The final product — the recreation of the “Great Grunewald Fire,” as it was called in headlines — is down below.

There was really nothing strategic about how I achieved this. I simply found pictures of fire and layered them on top of one another, while adding to and erasing here and there. I also played with layer opacity and filters as well as fill percentages throughout the entire process. Then rinse and repeat until I was (semi) satisfied with the result…

Despite its small size (I didn’t have bigger pictures of the hall at that time), it remains one of my favorite Photoshop works I have done to this day.