For more than three years, the stone spires crowning First Presbyterian Church in New Orleans have not been held together by expert masonry or fresh steel, but by multicolored, threadbare ropes - a patchwork fix that city inspectors now bluntly label a safety hazard. The improvised rigging has drawn sharper scrutiny since one of the pinnacles collapsed in 2022, and municipal officials began ramping up enforcement late last year.
One of the concrete finials, each weighing roughly 300 pounds, fell during a July 2022 storm, scattering broken masonry at the base of the church. A contractor later installed white-and-blue ropes in October 2022 as a temporary measure. Billing records reviewed by reporters show the congregation hired a Houston firm for about $788,000 in roof repairs that did not include the spires, while another estimate put replacement of the remaining spires at roughly $152,000. The ropes have stayed put even as the city flagged the structure, according to WWL‑TV.
In December 2025, the city’s Safety & Permits office sent First Presbyterian an “unsafe condition” violation letter and warned that failure to address it could lead to the building’s electrical service being cut. Department director Susannah Kirby told investigators that “safety concerns remain unresolved,” and inspectors say the church has not yet provided the engineering documentation needed to close the case. Those enforcement steps came after months of reporting and document review, as reported by WWL‑TV.
Inspections And Oversight Under The Microscope
The Office of Inspector General released a review in October 2025 that embedded staff inside Safety & Permits and flagged weak protocols for third-party inspectors, warning that the system left the city open to safety risks and fraud, according to the OIG. Federal prosecutors have also stepped in: a longtime private inspector was indicted in 2024 on a 25-count federal indictment alleging a scheme to pass fraudulent permits and accept bribes, the U.S. Attorney’s Office says. Together, those audits and prosecutions have increased pressure on city leaders to tighten documentation and oversight so visible hazards like the church’s spires are not left to long-term “temporary” fixes.
Permits, PermiSTAT And A Path Forward
Mayor Helena Moreno tapped Kirby to lead Safety & Permits as part of a broader effort to modernize the department, and the city rolled out an internal tracking tool called PermiSTAT to spot bottlenecks and speed reviews. CityBusiness reports that the initiative coincided with measurable gains: the city says median approval times for selected permits dropped from 17 days to seven days in a year, and officials now plan a public dashboard to boost transparency. Reform advocates argue that faster, data-driven permitting and clearer inspection rules would make emergency crackdowns less common and reduce the odds that heavy architectural ornamentation ends up sitting on makeshift supports.
For worshippers and neighbors, the ropes are hard to miss and just as hard to forget, a daily reminder of a maintenance problem that stretched on for years. With an official “unsafe condition” designation on the books and the city signaling it is prepared to use its enforcement powers, the coming weeks will show whether the church finds the money for permanent repairs or whether inspectors move ahead with utility shutoffs to force the issue.
