Do you know when the Civic Theater was built and what its original name was?

Quentin Ehlinger

Photo by Kandace Power Graves

Once a venue for burlesque and movies, the old Civic Theater building has been converted into the Civic Lofts condominiums.

Dear Quentin,

The Civic Theater was built by Sam Stone of Stone Brothers Architects in 1906 and is the oldest remaining structure built for this purpose still standing in New Orleans.

It was first named the Shubert Theater, but place names -- like street names -- change here. This is true of the Shubert. For a time it was called the Star Theater and then the Poche Theater. The name was changed to the Civic Theater as the result of a contest held in 1951. While it was in business, we went to see burlesque and movies.

Businessman Joseph Canizaro bought the building in 1974 and it was virtually unused for many years. Today, the old building in the 500 block of Baronne Street has been converted into condominiums called the Civic Lofts.

Hey Blake,

We in New Orleans have always made it a habit to drink either Kentwood or Abita Springs bottled water when we're not comfortable drinking Mississippi River water. However, we recently noticed on the back of a Kentwood bottle that the source was from Blue Ridge, Ga. Is this a normal policy of Kentwood, and does Abita follow the same practice?

Michael Dingler and Angela Pate

Dear Michael and Angela,

In 1963, a deep artesian spring was found in the piney woods of Kentwood, and the Kentwood Springs Water Company began delivering pure water to offices, retail outlets and homes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

In 2003, the DS Waters of America company was created and took over the Kentwood Springs Water Company. DS Waters is headquartered in Atlanta, and the water is bottled at more than 25 manufacturing facilities and then delivered by a fleet of more than 2,000 delivery trucks to millions of homes and offices in 30 states.

The water is produced and distributed under many different brand names, including Kentwood Springs. And even though it may be bottled elsewhere, Kentwood Springs Water still comes from the protected spring source in Kentwood.

Last year, DS Waters began a new project costing $10 million at the Kentwood bottling plant. The intention was to double the bottling capacity for the small water bottles. There are also plans to produce gallon bottles of purified water just for babies.

Abita Water Company was purchased in 1996 by Reily Foods of New Orleans, and the name was changed to the Abita Springs Water Company. The Reily Company is an old family-owned company that produces, among other products, Blue Plate Mayonnaise, Luzianne Tea and CDM Coffee. Just recently, however, DS Waters acquired the Abita Springs Water Company as well, but it will continue to draw its supply from the 1,000-foot-deep artesian aquifer that flows under its namesake city.

Even though the water sources for Kentwood and Abita were not affected by Hurricane Katrina, there was some damage to both companies' plants and several other bottling facilities of DS Waters.

For the time being, the parent company plans to keep the brand names and facilities separate.

Hey Blake,

For quite sometime, members of my office staff and I have been attempting to locate as close as possible the boundaries of the areas of New Orleans: Treme, Gentilly, Uptown, downtown, Broadmoor, etc. Is there any such map providing this info and where might it be purchased?

Mahlon Oustalet

Dear Mahlon,

Yes, of course. And you can have it with almost no effort and for free. Go to your computer and type in the address of the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center: www.gnocdc.org/index.html. Then go to the bottom of the page and click on "Neighborhood boundaries." And voila!

This organization describes itself as "a product of Greater New Orleans Nonprofit Knowledge Works ... building sustainable sources of data and information to support nonprofit planning in a rapidly changing post-catastrophic environment."

Now I know that sounds fancy, but the information you will find at the Web site is both useful and interesting.