All of it was accompanied by the muffled sounds of drilling and hammering in a building housing the state university's dental school, which sustained severe flooding in the hurricane and is preparing to reopen this week. Many of the construction workers were Hispanic, the immigrants legal or otherwise who have played a critical role in this city's reconstruction.

Upstairs, officials in suits celebrated their perseverance and presented a mixed picture of progress. On one hand, grants in the state's vilified homeowner-aid program, the Road Home, have shot up, to over 43,000 today from barely 5,000 at the end of March. On the other hand, the New Orleans area is still down more than 100,000 jobs from its pre-hurricane days (though that figure has improved slightly since the beginning of the year).

In New Orleans, $3.39 billion in federal rebuilding money has been spent, and in Louisiana as a whole, $6.7 billion. But the state suffered some $100 billion in private property and infrastructure damage as a result of the hurricane, and remains $34 billion short in financing — the difference between the loss and the $66 billion federal and insurance company payout.

Residents here routinely quiz one another about how much progress appears to have been made, as if nobody were quite sure of the answer, but it would have to be unsatisfactory. Similarly, officials are on the defensive when they try a summing-up.

"People say, 'Why has it been so slow?'" Recovery Authority Chairman Norman C. Francis said at the briefing. "My answer is, 'Compared to what?' We do not give ourselves credit if we don't talk about why we have continued to work."

"Things are going to be different," Francis said. "They are still recovering in New York, which probably is a message for us that this is a long haul."