The ruins of Lindy Boggs Medical Center (formerly Old Mercy Hospital) at night, March 2025.
The hospital was in operation from the 1920s to 2005, when Hurricane Katrina flooded the lower floors and knocked out the generators, which were located in the basement. While details of the story are often conflated with oral history surrounding similar events which occurred uptown at Oschner Baptist Hospital, possibly as many as 45 patients at Lindy Boggs lost their lives due to heat, thirst, and a lack of critical medical services. The survivors were fortunately rescued by airlift, except for one man who stayed behind to look after the neighborhood pets who had taken refuge on the dry upper levels.
The hospital was abandoned soon after and is today a conspicuous ruin towering over Bayou St. John and the Mid-City neighborhood. A popular destination for urbex explorers and graffiti artists, the floors and walls of the basement and sub-basement are still damp with moisture from the storm twenty years ago.
