As mentioned in a previous post, Central City Millworks was contracted by the New Orleans Preservation Resource Center to fabricate windows as part of a historic preservation project. The windows were to come from the remains of a neighborhood store at 5200 Dauphine Street in the 9th Ward of New Orleans.

Photos in this post show some of the window jambs and casings that have been fabricated in our mill shop from the structural members of historic heart pine wood salvaged from the building after it was deconstructed.

Each piece of wood salvaged from the building had been sorted, cataloged, and stacked. The photo to the right shows one such stack of wood that was transformed into windows to be installed in a new neighborhood center built, in part, out of the remains of the store.

The selected salvaged wood was resawn, planed, milled, machined, and assembled in the CCM shop prior to being sent to join the sashes that were being prepared in the NOPRC wood shop with the assistance of volunteers.

The photo below shows a completed window frame ready to ship to the NOPRC.

Renovation in New Orleans frequently means replacing patches of damaged wood flooring or a few windows or adding a new custom door or two. In those cases, Central City Millworks is often contracted to meet the challenge of matching the new with the old. The photo below represents just one example of our company’s ability to meet such challenges.

The historic renovation of the building at 612 Royal Street in the French Quarter, by Hal Collums Construction, required just such skill. The building, once the French Consulate with an elegantly finished interior, was being restored to its glory as a private residence. The addition of built-in closets in the bedrooms called for the fabrication of custom louvered closet doors that perfectly matched the existing cypress bedroom doors.

Mission accomplished. The new louvered closet doors in the center of the photo below are a perfect match for the existing cypress bedroom doors on either side.

Ursuline Convent awaiting its new storm shutters

A local contractor enlisted Central City Millworks to build custom shutters as part of the historic preservation of Ursuline Convent in New Orleans.

The original shutter rails and stiles (the frame in which the shutter louvers are inset) were made only 1″ thick as opposed to 1 3/8″ to 1 3/4″ thick on typical New Orleans shutters.

In duplicating this design, we inset the louvers into the frame with a molded inner frame that gives the louvers a wide face in which to be mounted. This inner frame is 2 1/2″ wide, and gives the frame a much thicker appearance.

The original craftsmen created a beautifully designed piece of utilitarian art, and the craftsmen at Central City Millworks were delighted to have the opportunity to replicate that craftsmanship.

The attention to detail that our artisan, Carlos, employed to accomplish this reproduction of a classic shutter is evident in the photo to the right. This high level of craftsmanship is appropriate for a historic renovation of the oldest building in the Mississippi Valley.

This Convent was originally built for the Sisters of Ursula, and was completed around 1752. It is the only building of the original colony still standing as a result of a 1788 fire that burned down hundreds of other structures and threatened the Convent. It was during this devastating event that the legend of the city’s patroness, Our Lady of Prompt Succor, was born.

As the flames approached the convent, Sister St. Anthony, one of the old nuns, climbed the convent stairs with a small statue of Our Lady in hand. She knelt and prayed with full confidence. At that very instant the wind veered and the flames were blown back, and so this great building is still with us today to have its legacy, and shutters, maintained.

Custom-made storm shutters await installation on New Orleans' Ursuline Convent

The preservation of the historic building at 5200 Dauphine St. continues its legacy. Once the location of a commercial store and popular gathering place for 9th Ward residents, a new building is being resurrected as a community center built in part with materials from the original structure. Hal Collums Construction completed the deconstruction phase (click link for story) to salvage the material, and Central City Millworks joined in the reconstruction phase by manufacturing the building’s custom windows.

As mandated by LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and in conjunction with the New Orleans Preservation Resource Center and Historic Green, all the windows are to be fabricated from the salvaged original heart pine. The photo to the right shows those timbers being re-sawn in our 30,000 sq ft mill shop.

Central City Millworks is contracted to fabricate the energy efficient windows as part of a joint venture with the Preservation Resource Center’s mill shop. The photo to the left shows a mock-up window manufactured by Vito Ingerto, the PRC Mill Manager.

While the windows had to use the old, salvaged materials, they had to perform on par with the most weather sealed modern windows.

We worked with architect Wayne Troyer and with PRC consultant Bill Robinson on the details, and then created our shop drawings. Mr. Robinson recommended modern weather striping materials that would work with a time-tested counter weighted sash design.

The material specified was a polyurethane wrapped foam. It had modern materials that perform great in compression and sliding operations.


Rough Mill Operator, Daniel Bell, got the heart pine ready for the custom window design that is producing a finished window that operates smoothly–almost effortlessly–while being extremely weather tight. The compression seal prevents air infiltration, and more importantly, conditioned air outfiltration.

Read another article about this New Orleans green building project as featured in the Design for Reuse Primer, a free publication funded by the US Green Building Council.

On August 24, 2010, Central City Millworks received a Gold Medal Building of America Award for our historic renovation of Andrew Wilson Elementary School at 3617 General Pershing in New Orleans:

We are pleased to announce that from hundreds of submissions in your region, Andrew Wilson School has been selected to win a Gold Medal Building of America Award and is scheduled to be a featured case study on the Building of America homepage. Your company has been referred by HMS Architects, Inc. as one of the most reliable team members behind the project’s success….


The Building of America Network showcases the most innovative, unique and challenging new projects — projects that are particularly noteworthy and/or give back to their respective communities.

This historic school was damaged during Hurricane Katrina, and the existing structure was completely renovated by the New Orleans division of Walton Construction, ranked among the top contractors in the United States by Engineering News Record.


Central City Millworks was selected to supply the millwork (interior historic school house doors with transoms, interior windows, molding, hardware, miscellaneous millwork, and all finish installations), and proved instrumental in the completion of projects on schedule and within budget.

The images below are part of a slideshow that highlights this and other historic preservation projects that we have completed:

Click on a thumbnail photo to launch our slideshow…