Buddy Bolden House In Danger Of “Demolition By Neglect”

The year was 1887. Buddy Bolden moved into a shotgun double, that signature New Orleans residence, he was ten years old.  Located at 2309 First Street it was two blocks from a parade route. Within hearing distance of the city's best marching bands. His church was down the street offering a different kind of music. Bolden would take in both while practicing his cornet out on the stoop of the house. His playing was too powerful to be cramped up indoors. Music was everywhere in his neighborhood. The same Central City neighborhood that produced King Oliver and Kid Ory. He absorbed it all and what came out of his horn changed the way the instrument was played forever. Many say that Bolden, and his popular band, were the progenitors of Jazz. He continued to live in the house until he was institutionalized by his mother in 1906. The House The small unassuming house was lived in as recently as the years following Hurricane Katrina as can be seen in this picture. Then in 2008 it was purchased by a church wishing to expand their parking lot and a long saga began. The Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church was unaware of the significance of the property at the time of purchase. When preservationists alerted them of its historic nature they started to make plans