Blake Pontchartrain: The story behind the downtown Richards building

Hey Blake,

The Gravier Place Apartments building downtown at Gravier and Baronne has another name above one of the entrances: Richards Building. What's the story?

Dear reader,

The story of the Richards Building, now known as Gravier Place, actually begins as the Union Building, or the Union Indemnity Building.

The 14-story office building opened in 1925. It was named for the Union Indemnity Company, an insurer with offices in the original building. Some of the other tenants were General Electric, Hartwig Moss insurance company, Standard Fruit and Steamship Co. and the Italian Homestead Association.

In 1933, amid the Great Depression, the Union Indemnity Co. was placed into receivership and the building went into foreclosure.

In 1943, E.V. Richards Jr. purchased the building for $1.6 million. The building was renamed the Richards Building. Richards co-founded and served as president of the Saenger movie theater chain and supervised the construction of the Saenger Theater on Canal Street, which opened in 1927. It was one of 200 theaters across the U.S. and Latin America bearing the Saenger name.

Richards died in 1960. His family went on to develop Clearview Shopping Center, which opened in Metairie in 1969.

In 1986, the Richards Building was renamed the Fidelity Homestead Building. According to a Jan. 18, 1986, article in The Times-Picayune, Fidelity Homestead Association (now known as Fidelity Bank) had been a tenant in the building since 1939.

The bank leased the name of the Richards building from the building's new owners, a group of investors led by local lawyer and developer William F. Ryan. In 1985, the group purchased the building and the nearby First National Bank of Commerce building on Baronne Street from the Richards family.

Both buildings were sold again in 1996, purchased for $1.7 million at auction by Baronne Development LLC, a partnership of Historic Restoration Inc., Kailas Development and local attorney Blake Jones. The partners redeveloped the upper floors of the building into Gravier Place apartments and condominiums.