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Perseverance Hall collapses, another New Orleans landmark lost

This was one of the venues where jazz was born.

NEW ORLEANS — Another New Orleans jazz landmark is gone.

Perseverance Hall in the Seventh Ward collapsed earlier this week.

Thursday, Floyd DeGrange snapped a few final pictures of what’s left of the historic building on North Villere.

He called the loss a tragedy.

“I wish I had the money to refurbish it and have it for historical significance, because this is a big part of what New Orleans is all about,” DeGrange said. “I hate to see it go down for the count like this.”

This is one of the venues where jazz was born.

“It’s an honor for me to stand here and sit here and talk about it,” DeGrange said. “I’m 70-years-old now and I grew up throughout this neighborhood. I used to come to this place when I was a kid.”

The hall was built in the 1880s for the Perseverance Benevolent and Mutual Aid Society.

Jazz pioneers such as Buddy Bolden, Sidney Bechet and King Oliver played here.

Last year, the rear portion of the building collapsed during Hurricane Ida.

This week’s heavy rainstorms finished the job.

“They bring tremendous wealth to our community in terms of our collective shared history,” Preservation Resource Center Executive Director Danielle Del Sol said. “Every time we lose one, we lose a little bit of that memory, that collective memory, that point of pride.”

The building has been a church since 1949.

In May, Pastor Harold Lewis said in a video produced for WWOZ, that he was hoping to restore the building as a neighborhood facility.

“I believe that as a neighborhood that we need places like this to survive,” Lewis said. “If we get this back, there’s plays and everything else that could be performed here.”

Del Sol says the PRC was helping the pastor raise money to stabilize the building.

“Yesterday we were working with the owner on a grant application that was aimed toward saving historic African American sites of significance," she said.

DeGrange says like the jazz era it nurtured, unfortunately Perseverance Hall is now gone.

“It’s sad, but you know life goes on.”

Gone, but not forgotten.

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