In 1964, the Urban League of Greater New Orleans published the results of “A Survey of the Recreational, Social, and Economic Conditions of the Negro Population of the William S. Guste, Sr., Homes and the Adjacent Areas.” The Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) recently opened the Guste Homes and housed a population of 2,443 residents, not including the high-rise home for elderly residents that made up a part of the project. Many saw such housing projects as an important first step in addressing the needs of low-income residents of the City. However, the report recognized that housing covered only one aspect of neighborhood revitalization; of those 2,443 residents, 1,731 were young people, and the report emphasizes that for them “recreational and cultural opportunities in the area [were] woefully inadequate.”

Surveys like the one produced by the Urban League can give important glimpses into the demographics and social conditions in the neighborhoods that organizations identified as slums. In the seven tracts of the census considered part of the Guste area (roughly the blocks bounded by Dryades, Claiborne, First, and Calliope Streets, encompassing the Guste Homes and the adjacent areas) the overall population consisted of 28,293 people, 77% of whom the census classified as “Negro.” Streets other than major thoroughfares were unpaved, inadequately lit, and “cluttered with debris.” The survey deemed the tenement buildings adjacent to Guste Homes occupied by renters as “overcrowded and hazardous.” According to the survey, a woman with a family of seven children complained of rats almost as big as cats in the Melpomene neighborhood, saying that several of her children had been bitten and that the rodents occasionally invaded her broken ice box.

Of 103 households the Urban League surveyed in detail, only 29 had lived in New Orleans all their lives. Many of those living in the Melpomene neighborhood recently transplanted to the city from rural parts of Louisiana and Mississippi, and felt isolated from social life and economic opportunities in the city. Ironically, many cited the improved educational opportunities for their children as a reason to move to the city, but the two schools that served Black children in the neighborhood, McDonough No. 36 and No. 38, were so overcrowded that students attended in what was called the “platoon system,” splitting the student body into two groups, each attending only half a day, switching over at lunch time. For working parents, this was a hardship, and many residents complained about the adverse effects the lack of childcare facilities and community centers had on young people in the neighborhood.

Naturally, residents were not happy about these conditions. Tenants complained about the conditions of housing and their inability to get absentee landlords to make needed repairs, though the survey noted that the few owner-occupied properties showed “care and pride” in their upkeep. Many renters felt that landlords overcharged for rent, creating cycles of poverty from which it was almost impossible to escape.

Underlying all of this was segregation and structural inequality. A racist social, political, and economic structure -- meant to keep Black residents of the city in permanent second class citizenship -- limited their choices about where to live, where to work, where to go to school, and even where to shop and socialize. Soon enough, the Guste area would become one of many centers of organizing for the Civil Rights struggle in New Orleans. But the inequalities within it were not inevitable. The Melpomene neighborhood that became the Guste Homes was always a site of struggle for residents of the city, and we can trace those struggles over generations of change in the neighborhood.

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According to the U.S. National Historic Preservation Act, any time a federal agency does something that could affect historic resources, it must take into account the effects of those actions. In the case of archaeology, this typically means documenting sites and artifacts before they are disturbed or destroyed.

Many federal agencies took part in the redevelopment of the Guste Homes, a public housing project located in the New Orleans Central City neighborhood. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) administered the project through the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) because the federal government owns the land. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provided some of the funds for the redevelopment. Two local archaeological firms, R.C. Goodwin and Associates and Earth Search, Inc., conducted tests to see the history preserved in the blocks where Guste Homes once stood. These archaeological firms targeted specific areas for excavation that had the most potential to tell us things about the history of the Melpomene neighborhood that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to know.

Before HANO completed the construction of the Guste Homes development in 1964, the Melpomene neighborhood it replaced looked much like the rest of the Central City area, with densely packed houses, corner stores, and other small businesses. When HANO demolished those buildings to make way for the Guste project buildings, old building foundations and footings remained below ground. Most importantly for archaeologists, pits that had previously been dug into the ground, like wells and old outhouse pits, were covered over. Before regular trash pick-up, an abandoned hole in the ground provided a convenient place to get rid of household refuse, like broken dishes, bottles, food remains, and all sorts of small everyday items. These holes become like time capsules, which, once excavated by archaeologists, potentially tell about the everyday lives of the people who once lived in the area.

In archaeology, as you dig downwards, you go back in time: the things that are on top are the newest and the ones that are more deeply buried are older. Archaeologists (and geologists) call this “the law of stratigraphic superposition.” In this tour, we will go back in time starting in 1964, when the Guste Homes opened, and focus on a few families who lived in the area over the previous hundred years.

From a combination of documentary sources and maps, we can trace the development of the Melpomene neighborhood in some detail over this period. Some of those who lived in the area left more traces than others in documents, but all of those discussed left material remains, or artifacts, recovered through archaeology. These artifacts allow us to get glimpses of the daily lives of the city’s residents in a way that other historical documents can’t.

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In 1961, the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) announced plans to construct the William J. Guste, Sr. Homes, named for the Housing Authority’s long-time general counsel. The 1961 Report of the Housing Authority of New Orleans declared:

“The project will consist of 993 dwelling units replacing ten squares of rock bottom slums where 500 negro families have been living in substandard housing. The Housing Authority is dedicated to the eradication of slums in New Orleans. Slums are a breeding place for crime and disease. To remove this slum is a great step forward for our City… it will not only remove this cancer from the heart of our City, but will improve the entire area.”

The proposed new construction included housing for elderly people, a first in the city, comprising a 12-story high rise building in a cruciform pattern containing 528 apartments. HANO presented the design for the Guste Homes as innovative, addressing some of the issues experienced by residents at other housing projects in the city. HANO was particularly proud of the attention given to plans for the exterior areas of the Guste Homes:

“Ten once-shabby squares in the congested heart of this old Creole Metropolis –before 1962 is over—will prove, in a test-tube of better living, that in this New Orleans area Nature, with her trees and vines and shrubs and bulbs, makes by far the most beautiful, the most versatile and useful of structural materials at the command of imaginative architects.” [Wilson Callender, “Horticultural Aspects of the William J. Guste Sr. Homes,” 1961 HANO Report, pg. 44]

The language used to describe the placement of Guste Homes was typical of the era. Since the 1930s, “slum clearance” served as a central feature of efforts to alter housing in American cities, often as a part of what would soon be termed “urban renewal” projects. Local and federal governments often targeted Black working class neighborhoods for clearance.

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Today, the Cabildo is a facility of the Louisiana State Museum, but the courtyard of the Cabildo was the location of a city prison complex for nearly two hundred years, across French, Spanish, and American rule. Constructed in 1730, the prison and police station were some of the city’s earliest administrative structures. In 1769, following the transition from French to Spanish rule, Spanish officials demolished the existing structure and built a Cabildo, or town hall: a complex with a military prison, a civil prison, police station, jailer’s quarters, and government chambers. The Great Fire of 1788 damaged this Cabildo and another fire in 1794 destroyed other parts of the complex. In 1799, the second Cabildo was completed, and this is the structure you see today.

In the early 1830s, the City Council authorized plans for enlarging the prison to deal with its notorious overcrowding, but the city also built a new Orleans Parish Prison behind what is today the Municipal Auditorium near Louis Armstrong Park. After the construction of the new prison finished in 1839, the old prison was abandoned and subsequently torn down. Throughout the Spanish and American periods of its operation, government officials and visitors commented on the poor condition of the facility, from lack of food and clothing to rat infestations.

In May of 1988, the third story of the Cabildo, by then a part of the Louisiana State Museum, caught fire. Following the fire, the museum hired Earth Search, Inc., led by Dr. Jill-Karen Yakubik, to excavate the Cabildo courtyard prior to the construction of a new water line in the vicinity.

For more information about archeaology at The Cabildo, please visit the Archaeology of the Cabildo tour.

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On October 22, 2014, an over-200-year-old building at 810 Royal Street collapsed, presumably a victim of unrepaired termite and moisture damage. The collapse sparked conversations in New Orleans about the importance of historic preservation. The complex of buildings at the corner of Royal and St. Ann was constructed by Don Francisco Balthazar Languille sometime soon after his purchase of the lots in 1801.

The group of buildings, including the one that collapsed at 808-810 Royal, and the extant ones at 800-806 Royal and 635-637 St. Ann Street, are reputed to have been among the first 3-story residential structures in the Vieux Carré. The loss of such an important part of the built landscape in the heart of the Quarter through what many saw as ‘demolition by neglect’ highlighted the fragile nature of the city’s architectural heritage, even in its most tightly-regulated district.

The collapse also offered a rare opportunity to access the layers of soil beneath the building, ground that had been essentially undisturbed since 1801. The new owners offered University of New Orleans Anthropology professor Ryan Gray and his students access to the site while awaiting permits for new construction. The artifacts found during two seasons of excavations conducted by UNO’s summer field school in archaeology have given important insights into life in the Colonial era city.

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Madame John’s Legacy, located at 628-632 Dumaine Street, is often considered one of the best surviving examples of French Colonial architecture in the French Quarter, even though the existing structure was built in 1788 during Spanish colonial rule. Developed by the 1720s, a building at the location burned in the great ‘Good Friday Fire’ of 1788. In 1947, after falling into disrepair, the property owner donated the extant structure to the Louisiana State Museum and it remains a museum to this day.

Captain Jean Pascal, an early owner of the property, died during the Natchez Revolt of 1729. Pascal’s widow, Elizabeth Real, maintained the property for 50 years, using it as both a residence and an inn through her second marriage to Francois Marin until her death in 1777. In 1783, Spanish officer Manuel DeLanzos purchased the property. DeLanzos was responsible for rebuilding the 1788 structure, apparently in a style similar to the structure that was damaged or destroyed in the 1788 fire. The building’s name derives from George Washington Cable’s famous short story “Tite Poulette.” While the “Madame John” from Cable’s story was fictional, it is possible Cable drew inspiration from past owners of the property.

Over the years, the site has been the subject of four different formal archaeological excavations, in addition to monitoring of renovations by museum personnel who collected artifacts disturbed by construction crews. Although each set of excavations had different goals, all have contributed to our understanding of the lot and the people who lived there.

Modified 8/31/2026

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Sometimes called the “Cathedral of the Westbank” owing to its Gothic Revival architecture, the current Holy Name of Mary Catholic Church building was dedicated on November 25, 1929. The parish, originally named St. Bartholomew, was founded in 1847. The parish’s first church was a wooden structure built on land donated by the daughters of Barthelemy Duverje several blocks from the current site.

In 1872, authorities renamed the parish Holy Name of Mary. By 1873, a wooden building on the Verret Street site served as the parish church. Although spared during the 1895 Algiers Fire, the church later suffered damage from the 1915 hurricane. A termite infestation and foundation problems led to the decision to replace the 1873 structure with the current church building. The former church’s communion rail, statuary, and stained glass windows were incorporated into the architectural plan of the church standing today.

Designed by architect Alexander Norman, Holy Name of Mary Catholic Church is 178 feet in length and 100 feet wide. The tower previously held a large riverboat bell donated by a local steamship company. Among the church’s seventy-five stained glass windows are many created by the Franz Mayer firm of Munich, Germany, including the rose windows visible at each end of the transept as well as the five-panel window behind the altar. The four statues made of Indiana limestone that are placed in niches extending upward over the front door were sculpted by Enrique Alférez, whose work can be seen throughout New Orleans.

In August 2009, the St. Julian Eymard and Holy Name of Mary parish communities merged.

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In the 1870s, Lutheran residents of Algiers met with pastors from three existing Lutheran churches in New Orleans, including St. Paul (established 1840), Zion (established 1847), and St John (established 1852), and resolved to begin services for members of their denomination in Algiers. On June 28, 1875, Trinity Lutheran Church of New Orleans was established at 620 Eliza Street. Originally called the German Evangelical Lutheran Trinity Congregation in Algiers [Deiler, 100-101], the first service took place on September 19, 1875. The cornerstone for a church building was laid on October 24, 1875, following the purchase of two lots at Olivier and Eliza Streets. The church, built in just ten weeks, was dedicated on January 2, 1876.

The current wooden structure was built in 1911 and renovated in 1946. During Hurricane Katrina, the steeple blew off the building, exposing the interior to additional damage. The congregation restored the church, complete with its historic altar, stained glass windows, and carved pews, although the steeple belfry is now enclosed.

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Madame Delphine MacCarthy Lalaurie was a wealthy New Orleans socialite and notorious enslaver. In 1832, Madame Lalaurie moved into a neoclassical mansion at the intersection of today’s Royal and Governor Nicholls Streets with her third husband Dr. Leonard Louis Nicolas Lalaurie. Madame Lalaurie hosted many lavish parties there. However, through the years, information surfaced about her gross mistreatment of enslaved people. According to historian Carolyn Marrow Long, Madame Lalaurie was first investigated in 1828 for cruelty towards enslaved people. Though court records related to this investigation have not been found, there is documentation that Madame Lalaurie paid for legal services and sold a number of enslaved people following the investigation. [1] On April 10, 1834, a fire broke out in the Lalaurie mansion. A group of onlookers gathered outside of the home as it burned. According to The New Orleans Bee, the city’s French-language newspaper, firefighters discovered “seven slaves, more or less horribly mutilated” locked inside the building as they attempted to control the flames. [1] The Bee went on to condemn the “barbarous and fiendish atrocities committed by the woman Lalaurie upon the persons of her slaves.” [1] The firefighters brought these enslaved people to the Cabildo. As word of Lalauries’ abusive actions surfaced, neighbors became enraged. According to The Bee, a crowd of 4,000 people gathered at the Cabildo. [2] Neighbors ransacked the mansion and destroyed what was left of the burned mansion. The Lalauries fled to Lake Pontchartrain and ultimately relocated to Paris. Madame Lalaurie died in Paris, but it is believed her body was brought back to New Orleans and buried at the St. Louis Cemetery. [2] Today, many tourists visit the Lalaurie Mansion because it is supposedly haunted. Historian Tiya Miles has criticized the manner in which tourism and pop culture have glorified the mistreatment of enslaved people through ghost stories used to entertain visitors. [2]

The structure that stands at 1140 Royal Street today was constructed in 1838 as a private residence and later used as a school and apartments.

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The Morales-Arlington’s tomb once held one of New Orleans most notorious madams, Josie Arlington, from the city’s equally notorious red light district, Storyville. Arlington's reputation and the tomb she created for herself have attracted visitors and locals alike, from the time of her burial until today, when some observers say they have caught a glimpse of lights dancing around her mausoleum -- Josie Arlington, trying to get back into her grave.

Sometime around 1910, Josie Arlington purchased a cemetery plot at Metairie Cemetery for $2,000. The idea that a retired proprietor of a house of ill repute would eventually be laid to rest amongst some of the city’s elite outraged many. However, Arlington wasted no time after her purchase of the plot to begin work on her memorial. On May 11, 1911, she signed a contract with sculptor Albert Weiblen to create her final resting place. Arlington wanted it to make a statement about herself, spending a whopping $5,500, and personally selecting every last detail. Once finished, the public immediately began to read meaning into the tomb’s design, seeing it as a symbol of her life in prostitution. The reddish-brown granite was said to represent the red light district of Storyville and the fire torches to represent her chosen profession. Some have seen the bronze female statue as symbolizing a virgin’s doomed attempt to enter Arlington’s brothel. Others have suggested the statue represents Josie as a young girl, sneaking back into her father's house. What Josie saw in the statue of the girl we will never know – we just know that she purchased it from Munich, Germany.

On February 14, 1914, Arlington took her last breath and was laid to rest in her tomb. She did not enjoy its amenities for long, however. Only a month after Josie's death, her family began fighting over her money and property, which amounted to over $50,000. Arlington's family was forced to sell not only her mansion on Esplanade Avenue, but her tomb as well. The tomb was sold to Jose A. Morales, a New Orleans attorney. Under cover of night, Metairie Cemetery officials removed Josie Arlington's remains to a remote, undisclosed location in the cemetery. The name at the top of the tomb was changed to J. A. Morales and was soon occupied by Morales’s wife and four children.

The fight over Arlington’s estate and the removal of her remains created heated local discussion and headlines in local newspapers. Crowds were drawn to the tomb, and once a flashing red traffic light was installed on the New Basin Shell Road that ran alongside the cemetery, the crowds grew even bigger, as the red light reflected off the reddish granite of Arlington's tomb, creating the illusion that the tomb was on fire. As Metairie Cemetery historian Henri Gandolfo wrote, “The red glare flashing on and off added a mysterious sense of drama never intended.” The red light was later removed and a cross was carved on the back of the tomb, calming the crowds. Today, Metairie Cemetery authorities still refuse to divulge the site of Josie Arlington's remains, but her abandoned tomb continues to attract her admirers.

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-Errol Laborde

In 1425, at the young age of thirteen, voices spoke to a French teenager named Joan telling her to provide aid to Charles VII of France in his plight against the English during the Hundred Years’ War. Mounted on her steed, this teenage girl led the French forces to drive the English troops out of Orleans.

The ‘Maid of Orleans' continued her fight against the English until her capture in 1430 when a group of Burgundians turned her over to the British. On May 30, 1431, the British charged Joan with heresy and burned her at the stake. On July 7, 1456, the church and government absolved Joan of her crimes, and centuries later in 1909, Pope Leo XIII beatified Joan. Shortly after, in 1920, he canonized the warrior for her outstanding virtues. The presence of St. Joan, the Maid of Orleans, drifted through many centuries, over the ocean to a special place in the sister city of her hometown, New Orleans.

Originally cast by French sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet in the late 1800s, the statue of Joan that can be found in the French Quarter entered the world as one of nine similar statues. With no destination in mind, Joan patiently waited in a French warehouse until her day of liberation. Adventure finally found her in 1958 when a New York Company purchased the warehouse where Joan sat, longing for a change of scenery. While her warehouse mates traveled to places like Melbourne, Quebec, and Philadelphia, Joan traveled to one of the liveliest cities in the world, New Orleans. Though relocated to a lively city, Joan languished in storage once again, this time in a New Orleans warehouse for approximately fourteen years while the city struggled to pay her $36,500 price tag. Even though French President Charles de Gaulle paid her ransom in 1964, she remained in the dreary warehouse until 1972. Joan emerged under the Southern sun at the Rivergate Convention Center.

Dwarfed by the two giant buildings that surrounded her, Joan never gave up and stood proudly in her New Orleans Business District home. Temporarily disappearing in 1984, Joan reappeared in time for the World's Fair. Finally, in the fresh air, Joan enjoyed her freedom until her recapture by a lengthy legal battle in the 1990s when the Harrah’s Company sought to knock her off her pedestal in the Business District. Supported by her new troops - government officials, historians, and the community - Joan charged into battle once more. In October 1999, a triumphant Joan advanced to her current location in the Place de France in the French Market.

Rearing back on her steed, Joan represents the strength, power, and perseverance of New Orleans, a city that no foe may defeat.

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Built in 1896, this Moorish-influenced Richardsonian style building was built on the site of the former Duverje plantation, which was completely destroyed, along with approximately 200 other homes and businesses, on the night of October 20th, 1895.

Barthelemy Duverje purchased the land that we now know as Algiers Point from Martial Le Boeuf, on August 9th, 1805, for $18,000. The title is traced back to Louis Borepo, who acquired it February 3rd, 1770, by a grant from Don Alexander O’Reilly, Governor of the province of Louisiana, who then represented the crown of Castile under Charles III. The Duverje plantation home was built circa 1812-15 and was a splendid, strongly built, brick structure. Plantations and orange groves lined the river at this time, which was later to be replaced by sugar cane.

Barthelemy died in 1820, and his widow in 1839. The estate was divided among the heirs and Mrs. Evelina Duverje-Olivier, the widow’s daughter, received the fine old mansion, together with her share of the land adjoining. Over the years following, the plantation home went into a state of disrepair, at one point being used to house cattle.

The Police Jury Report of November 5th, 1866, mentions a proposition that the parish should buy the building, which was then being used as a school, known as St. George’s Academy. A week later, a committee suggested the building was “well fitted for Court House Offices and other requirements of the Parish.” The local jail was also situated there. Although the building was sound, it was in need of roof repairs.

The former Duverje mansion became the seat of justice of the right bank on March 13th, 1869. It was annexed to the City on March 14th, 1870, and designated as the Fifth District.

The present Courthouse is the third oldest continuously used courthouse in the State of Louisiana. Marriages, property assessments and small claims are now its everyday business. If open, go in and take a look at the old Courtroom upstairs and check out the view of the City across the river.

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The French Market is a notable location right at the edge of the French Quarter. The market was built in 1791 and has continued to be a historic and important location for the people of New Orleans. Throughout its years the market has changed with each new government, starting as a Native American trading post right on the banks of the Mississippi, and converted by the Spanish into a covered public market on the riverfront. In 1788, a great fire that consumed most of New Orleans destroyed the market. The new covered market was completed around the site of the present French Market in 1791. The market was destroyed again in the Hurricane of 1812 and would not be rebuilt until 1813. Since then the market has been greatly altered, but it still stands as part of the French Market complex. Through the centuries, immigrants from Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean opened their own tables in the market offering part of their local cuisine to the passerby.

From 1936 – 1937, a major renovation was undertaken by the WPA and the city of New Orleans. Rebuilding a new Bazaar Market, wholesale seafood, adding to the Butcher Market and a New Farmers Market. To help with sanitation, new refrigeration and sanitation systems were updated for the sale of meat and fish. Through the years there have been many changes, disasters, and renovations, but the French Market has stayed strong through it all and is still open to the public today. Though the market has been demolished, moved, expanded and redesigned, it still shows the intricate history of New Orleans. The market has become a location that is visited by millions of locals and visitors of New Orleans every year. The French Market is America’s oldest public market that is one of the main attractions to tourist every year.

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During 1998 and 1999, the Greater New Orleans Archaeology Program, under the direction of Christopher Mathews, undertook testing and data recovery at the St. Augustine Site (16OR148), in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans. The site, currently located in the churchyard of St. Augustine Church, was the location of a plantation and brickyard established by the Company of the Indies in 1720. Antoine de Morand purchased the plantation and operated it until 1731, and it continued in use as such until subdivided and sold by Claude Tremé in 1798. During the nineteenth century, the main plantation residence served a number of institutional functions, including use by the College d’Orleans and as a school for free girls of color operated by the Ursuline Nuns. The plantation house was demolished in 1926, and its location has been used by the St. Augustine Church (established at the corner of Bayou Road and St. Claude Street in 1842) as a recreational area and playground.

Archaeologists excavated 22 shovel test pits on the site in 1998, all of which were positive for historic cultural remains. Seven site areas were investigated with a total of 25 m2 of horizontal excavations. Identified remains from the eighteenth century included buried historic surfaces dating back to the early-eighteenth-century development of the site, trash pits (both from the Colonial era and from the later nineteenth-century convent’s use of the lot), drainage features, and brick sills, foundations, and other architectural features. Particularly remarkable was the large collection of hand-built pottery from the site in eighteenth-century contexts, presumably of Native American manufacture.The most common vessel forms among these wares were open bowls, which would not have been very well-suited to transporting or storing food or liquids. This pattern has been noted at many other sites in the city as well, and the occurrence of these vessels may be related to the formation of reciprocal relationships through gift exchange.

Unfortunately, almost the entirety of the collection of materials from the St. Augustine excavations is now lost, unintentionally discarded with debris from Hurricane Katrina.

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In 1983, archaeologists of Coastal Environments, Inc. conducted extensive testing and excavations for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development in the areas of the proposed east-bound Greater New Orleans Bridge Number 2. The first Greater New Orleans Bridge opened in 1958 to connect the east and west banks of the city. The second bridge was completed in 1988, and the city of New Orleans renamed it the Crescent City Connection in 1989. A 1977 Federal Environmental Impact Study identified 24 historical structures in the proposed bridge project area eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, and the archaeology study followed up on the Environmental Impact Study to minimize construction damage on these archaeological resources.

The excavation was an expansive undertaking that lasted 4 months during the spring of 1983 with fieldwork totaling 9,200 hours. The project area was a one mile long and 300 foot wide strip that paralleled the existing Pontchartrain Expressway from the foot of the bridge at the Mississippi River all the way to its connection with Interstate 10, crossing portions of 56 city blocks and 36 acres of urban environment. This project offered an ideal opportunity for archaeologists to compare the material lives of ethnic and class groups in New Orleans as well as the commercial and industrial developments of the city.

The Lower Garden District area at the foot of the bridge was the most extensively researched and excavated given that this part of the city was once a dynamic neighborhood and later the active commercial center of 19th century New Orleans. The bridge follows along property once occupied by the Saulet, Foucher, and Delord-Sarpy plantations which has been partitioned and sold off by the the 1830s. During the mid 1800s this area’s batture land along the river was hotly contested in land ownership disputes that went up to the US Supreme Court, which you can read about in the 200 Years of Louisiana Supreme Court History tour. The area then transformed into a bustling residential neighborhood on the edges of urban New Orleans where immigrant Irish, German, Italians, and Americans settled. The project area’s proximity to the river, the railroad terminus, and the New Basin Canal, completed in 1835, accelerated economic growth. Five cotton presses were located within the Greater New Orleans Bridge corridor, and they were the source of most jobs for Irish and German immigrants who lived in the budding Irish Channel neighborhood. Other commercial enterprises in the area included the Orleans Sugar Refinery, a rum distillery, foundries, hundreds of warehouses, brickyards, and ice houses. By 1850 the neighborhood reached its population peak following the wave of Irish immigrants during the 1840s and 50s. The second half of the 18th century, however, displaced residents to accommodate growing industries. It wasn’t until after the Civil War that people moved to the far west area of the project site toward the intersection of the expressway and Interstate 10 near the Superdome.

Archaeologists dug 59 backhoe trenches and 110 hand excavation units that produced two tons of artifacts and exposed 291 cultural features. These features include 23 privy pits, two wells, nine cistern foundations, 74 wall foundations, 68 pavements, post molds, and trash deposits. The artifacts and features came from various residential and commercial sites such as a wagon yard, a tin shop, an icehouse, a brick kiln, general stores, and working class homes. The team experienced various setbacks including site vandalism resulting in artifact disturbance and inaccessibility of potentially fruitful sites due to private property ownership. They most thoroughly investigated artifacts from the 1100 blocks of Tchoupitoulas, St. Thomas, and Constance Streets, an 1835 Creole cottage at 615 Erato Street, and the corner of South Rampart and Calliope Streets.

The excavation and analysis of the 16OR78 site provides a snapshot of the scope of importance of the GNO No. 2 Project. The site is a city block bound by Gaiennie Street on the north, Erato Street to the south, St. Thomas Street to the west, and Tchoupitoulas Street to the east held 19th century structures of national historic significance including a Creole cottage, a brick shotgun house, and a double shotgun house. In the 1800s a carpenter’s shop, The Crescent City Ice Company Warehouse, Creole cottages, two-story row houses and tenement that housed working class Irish families. As the 20th century progressed, commercial properties outnumbered domestic ones. Excavations behind the double shotgun house revealed cobblestone pavements, a cement lined privy, pier footing, foundation walls, post molds, and a wooden trough. Recovered artifacts such as ceramics, buttons, liquor bottles, and tobacco pipes lead the team to conclude that lower and middle class Irish-German inhabitants replaced wealthier French occupants as the 19th century progressed.

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The Hermann-Grima house at 820 St. Louis Street is a Federal-style mansion built in 1831 for Samuel Hermann, a German-born immigrant who moved to New Orleans in 1810. The lot on which it stands has a developmental history going back to at least 1728. The Christian Woman’s Exchange has owned the house since 1924, and it has in the past shown great dedication to preserving the house and supporting extensive archaeological research at the site. In 1974, a team of students from the University of New Orleans excavated a part of the kitchen. Since then, the site has been investigated seven times, each one expanding on the previous work. Much of this work was done in conjunction with UNO field schools, often aimed at exploring specific issues of site and building chronology and function. Archaeological preservation is very good at the site, especially in the courtyard, the result of the brick flagstone paving installed by Mr. Hermann, which effectively sealed and preserved the subsurface stratigraphy dating from 1831 back to colonial times. The recovered remains have been used to inform the interpretation and furnishings of the historic house. The remains from the eighteenth-century levels, while broadly presented in a series of technical reports, still possess untapped research potential for the study of Colonial New Orleans.

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Musician, educator, author and storyteller Danny Barker was born in 1909 in the rear building at 1027 Chartres Street. At the time of Barker's birth, the lower French Quarter community was home to a large African American and Sicilian population.

Barker grew up in a creole family that embraced music education and formal brass band performance. Known as the "Banjo King of New Orleans" in the 1920s, Barker toured with local bands along the Gulf Coast. Seeking new opportunities, Barker moved to New York in the 1930s, where he worked with Cab Calloway, Charlie Parker, and other legends. According to Barker: “If you went on the road with [Sam] Morgan, you would play Bay St. Louis, Pensacola, and Mobile. You would stay in Mobile and play Friday, Saturday and Sunday. You would do to same thing when you came back, when you would go through Bogalusa.”

Moving back to New Orleans in the 1960s, Barker sparked a local brass band revival when he established the Fairview Baptist Brass Band to mentor a new generation of young men in New Orleans' distinct brass band traditions. Local musicians Leroy Jones, Greg Stafford, Michael White, and many others played in the Fairview, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band evolved from former members in the 1970s.

From the 1960s until his death in 1994, Danny Barker and his wife Blue Lu Barker often worked as educators, recorded music, and performed together. An authentic New Orleans raconteur, Barker educated audiences with his entertaining stories and detailed memories. The annual Danny Barker Banjo and Guitar Festival celebrates his multifaceted and enduring legacy.

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Standing at the intersection of Basin and Conti Streets and facing just west of St. Louis Cemetery #1, is the former location of the Storyville district in the Tremé neighborhood.

From 1897 to 1917 New Orleans established a centralized prostitution district known as Storyville, named after the city alderman Sidney Story who sponsored the creation of the district. Storyville was bound by Iberville, Basin, St. Louis, and North Robertson Streets.

In this period, upscale brothels in mansions such as Lulu White’s Mahogany Hall lined Basin Street and employed parlor pianists such as Jelly Roll Morton. On the backstreets Fewclothes’ Cabaret, Pete Lala’s, the 101 Ranch, and the Tuxedo Dance Hall provided many of jazz’s most notable performers with stable income and an environment in which they could hone their various musical styles.

In 1917, the district closed in upon order from the U.S. Navy, and the neighborhood was razed in 1939 to make way for the Iberville public housing development for low-income white residents.

The closing of Storyville provided romanticized lore regarding the birth and spread of jazz. This legend emphasizes the closing of Storyville as a catalyst for musicians leaving New Orleans and spreading the style. In fact, jazz musicians performed throughout the city from before World War I well into the 1920s and 1930s.

1216 Bienville Street, now a local corner store, is the site of Frank Early’s My Place Saloon, one of only three remaining structures from the Storyville period. Tony Jackson, considered to be one of the great piano professors of the period, worked at Frank Early's before moving to Chicago in 1912.

"I also looked forward to every night in the Red Light District, when I was delivering Stone Coal to the girls working in those Cribs. I could hear these wonderful jazz musicians playing music the way it should be played." -  Louis Armstrong [6]

"It's not true that nothing happened after Storyville closed. [In New Orleans] before and after Storyville closed there were so many great jazz musicians, so many cats all the way down the line. Buddy Petit, Kid Rena, Sidney Desvignes, Sam Morgan, Punch Miller....there was plenty of work with vaudeville and minstrel shows, roadhouses, circuses, riverboats, and lake-boat excursions, as well as circuits and tours that traveled the South."

-Musical Artist/Educator Danny Barker

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Many visitors to New Orleans are familiar with the song “The House of the Rising Sun,” made popular by the English band The Animals in 1967. The song itself has roots far back in English folk balladry, long before any association with New Orleans. While many places in New Orleans have made claims to be the ‘Rising Sun’, archaeological investigations at 535 Conti Street, a place identified in documentary records as the location of the “Rising Sun Hotel” in the 1820s, have added just a bit more information to the debate over the origins of the New Orleans variation of the song.   In 2005, an archaeological investigation took place at 535-537 Conti Street as a joint project between the Historic New Orleans Collection, Earth Search, Inc., and the University of Chicago, led by Dr. Shannon Dawdy. According to census records and other archival data, multiple renditions of boarding houses and hotels existed on this site through the latter part of the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century. While the association of the lot with the ‘Rising Sun’ garnered the most attention, archaeologists identified material remains of a rich history spanning many eras of occupation at the site.   Prehistoric Native American Settlement Dawdy and her team found Native American pottery sherds in layers predating the French settlement of the city, thus providing direct evidence for indigenous occupation of the natural levee in the French Quarter area. While there is no record of a Native American encampment in this area, Iberville’s journal notes that members of a Quinipissa village would walk from the mouth of Bayou St. John to the Mississippi River, as a connection to Lake Pontchartrain, presumably passing by this site.    1730 – The Mandeville Family The first recorded French occupation of the site dates back to the early 1730s.  The Mandeville family owned the property, and it is believed they used the site as a garden based on the abundance of organic material found during excavation, including crushed shell and coral used as fertilizer. Census records from 1726 indicate the Mandevilles enslaved two African people and one Native American person while they owned the Conti Street property. Archaeology from this period has been used to inform researchers about sustenance patterns in the early French colony.   1760 - 1820 The Chabot Women & The First Rising Sun Hotel Between 1760 and 1790, the house switched ownership multiple times and the property was subdivided into lots, which were later rejoined.  In 1791, a man named Louis McCarty purchased the property and all extant structures, but a fire destroyed it in 1794.  Following this fire, a wooden structure was rebuilt and the property was sold to an Irish immigrant woman named Madame Margaret Clark Chabot shortly after her French husband died. The title transfer document from August 22, 1796, states that Ms. Chabot was illiterate when she purchased the property already owning the materials needed to run a boarding house, including multiple walnut tables, 5 dozen chairs, and 25 new mattresses.  Ms. Chabot owned the property for approximately 28 years, and under her management, the boarding house shows up in a number of historical accounts.   In 1821, L.S. Hotchkiss and Co. purchased an advertisement in the Louisiana Gazette for a “Rising Sun Hotel” on Conti Street. The ad claims that the new Rising Sun Hotel would maintain the best entertainment, “which this house has enjoyed for twenty years past,” referring to Chabot’s period of ownership. With the modern association of the ‘Rising Sun’ with prostitution, some of the language of the ad sounds suggestive, as it states things like “Gentlemen may here relay upon finding attentive servants.” However, Rising Sun was actually a common name for taverns in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The Rising Sun Hotel burned to the ground in a catastrophic fire in 1822. It was replaced with a new, more upscale brick hotel, referred to variously as the Richardson Hotel, the Conti Hotel, and the Veranda Hotel. Later, the building was reused for various commercial ventures, before falling into disrepair after another fire in the late nineteenth century.   The different fires that affected the lot made it possible to stratigraphically separate different periods of occupation at the property in some detail. Artifacts from the 1822 Rising Sun Hotel fire were of particular interest, as they included fancy glass tableware, wine bottles, items of jewelry and personal adornment, and numerous tin-enameled rouge pots or galley pots. Such items initially suggested that there might be a connection between the hotel and sex work, as high incidences of rouge pots have elsewhere been associated with brothel assemblages. However, other corroborating historical evidence is lacking, and Dawdy and Weyhing have noted that cosmetics like rouge was as associated with single men and ‘dandyism’ as with women in the 1820s.  

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“One of the handsomest structures in the city will be the new building of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association,” [1] said an article from the New Orleans States when the Athenaeum opened in 1896. With various Jewish families from the New Orleans area wanting to join together to form an association, the Athenaeum was born after a November 22, 1891 meeting at the Grunewald Hotel where the organization, Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA), was proposed. [2] This became a site for social gathering for New Orleans socialites, various musical acts from around the world, and, of course, the betterment of Jewish men until the building burnt down first on January 17, 1905, and then for a second time in 1937. [3]

The YMHA was originally instituted to advance the mental, moral, social, and physical improvement of young Jewish men. The first was established in New York on March 22, 1874 at the home of Dr. Simeon Leo with the board of directors including Isaac S. Isaacs, Adolph L. Sanger, Oscar S. Straus, Lewis May, and others. After, similar organizations sprouted throughout the United States in such cities as Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco, Louisville, Washington D.C., and New Orleans. [4]

With the Jewish population growing and expanding in New Orleans, many young Jewish families began wanting to form an organization, named a Young Men’s Hebrew Association. After several attempts, a meeting at the Grunewald Hotel proposed the organization to 300 gentlemen gathered there and thus started the New Orleans branch of the YMHA, the Athenaeum. [2]

The Athenaeum was built at 1205 St. Charles Avenue, on the corner of St. Charles and Clio St. The first floor included a parlor, a library, a chess and checkers room which adjoined to the library, a large billiard room with three billiards and three pool tables, a committee room, a smoking/lounging room, and a lodging room with a capacity for 150 people. The second floor opened up with a spacious foyer which adjoined to a ballroom. The plans for the building were by Mr. D. Einseidel, and the building company was T. Carey and Co. [5]

For many years the meeting of the courts of Rex and Pickwick Club at midnight on Mardi Gras day, the official end of Carnival, took place in the Athenaeum’s ballroom. [2] However, the krewe of Pickwick Club did not allow Jews in its membership, showing that even though the Athenaeum was socially prominent, there were still signs of segregation.

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The Leeds Iron Foundry was owned and operated by Charles Leeds. It was located at Delord and Constance Streets during the Antebellum period of the nineteenth century. The foundry was opened in 1824. Leeds became a partner in 1844 upon his father’s death. [1] Before the Civil War, this foundry was the most prolific producer of “steel cotton bale presses” in the world and was one of the most important foundries in the South. It maintained several hundred employees for the production of various iron plantation equipment. The Leeds Company was successful enough that it actually issued its own banknotes, a common practice at the time.

The foundry manufactured supplies for the Confederate army and navy, including two naval vessels and even an early submarine, the Pioneer I. In particular, the Leeds Foundry was reported to have built “‘3.3-inch Confederate bronze field rifles’ and ’6-pounder Confederate bronze field guns.’” [2]

During the period of Reconstruction, Leeds allowed his foundry to function as a base of operations for a subgroup of the White League, a militant white supremacy organization. It produced arms for the White League, including one cannon. An arms shipment sent from the Leeds Foundry prompted the New Orleans Police to clash with the White League members stationed in the city and ended with their violent takeover of the city for roughly three days. Leeds’ collusion with this group helped fuel his election to mayor in 1874. [3]

Today, the area which once housed the iron foundry is home to the Preservation Resource Center. This particular building in the foundry complex was built to serve as storage space and showrooms, so it was ideally suited for the new center. [4] This organization was founded in order to help preserve the architecture in the city of New Orleans. It is open to the public. [5] The site of the Leeds Iron Foundry can be found on the US Register of Historic Places.

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Tennessee Williams was no stranger to New Orleans. Some of his most famous works, including A Streetcar Named Desire, are set in the city. Although Williams spent decades living on and off in rental spaces, 1014 Dumaine Street is the first home he owned in New Orleans. Purchased in 1962, the building was not always what one would imagine as the home of a world-renowned writer. Articles in the Times-Picayune ranging from 1927 through 1959 painted the address as less than desirable. One 1952 Times-Picayune article even detailed the filing of a petition in Civic District Court by the city to get the Dumaine building either repaired or demolished, calling it “dangerously deteriorated.” Many of the newspaper’s other mentions of the site prior to the 1960s portrayed it as the home for various criminals. These residents’ reported crimes varied in severity. While some infractions were as minor as a truck driver not having a chauffeur’s license and a woman possessing “lottery paraphernalia,” others were as severe as gun theft, auto theft, and assault. A 1958 Times-Picayune article even mentioned the shooting of an 18-year-old man in front of the building. However, the immediate neighborhood’s condition appeared to change as the 1950s became the 1960s. In July 1960, a Times-Picayune apartment listing at 1014 Dumaine Street boasted “luxury apartments” in a “magnificent building just recently restored.” A 1961 Times-Picayune article also featured 1014 Dumaine Street among properties in the French Quarter that underwent notable restorations and renovations. The article’s mention of rising property values, related to restoration projects throughout the French Quarter, implied a decline in affordability for renters in the Vieux Carre. In 1962, just four years after the shooting on Dumaine Street, Tennessee Williams purchased the property at 1014 Dumaine, which likely retained little of its former dilapidation. However, Williams did not move into the building’s front, second floor apartment until 1972, when Don Lee Keith claims that some “bothersome” tenants moved out. Once moved in, Williams used the space as his base of operations in New Orleans for the remainder of his life. Friends, locals, and tourists can recall instances when they stumbled into Williams at numerous French Quarter bars and restaurants. Recalling Williams’ New Orleans visits during this time, one of Williams’ former Dumaine Street tenants, Dr. Lawrence Hill, recalled a moment of excitement he shared with the writer: “One morning he came down and knocked on my door, all excited … Esquire magazine had agreed to buy a short story from him. Here he was, the most famous playwright in the country, and he was acting like he’d made his first sale. It was the most down-to-earth I’d seen him.” "He left $10 million when he died," Cynthia Ratcliffe, co-owner of Heritage Tours, said. "But [shortly before] his death, he could still be seen washing and folding his own socks in there,” she added, referring to a laundromat at the corner of Burgundy and Dumaine.

W. Kenneth Holditch’s recollection of a January 1979 encounter with Williams described the author’s frustrations with the changing nature of the French Quarter: “He commented on what he saw as the unpleasant changes to the Quarter that had been occurring over the past decade or more, including the increasing sleaziness of Bourbon Street, the loss of permanent residences to businesses, and the influx of tourists that made walking through the streets of some areas increasingly difficult. However, changing conditions in the neighborhood did not deter Williams from staying in his French Quarter home. In fact, a newspaper article published a few years after he died claimed Williams was seen on the Dumaine Street’s second floor balcony just a few weeks prior to his death in New York City in 1983."

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Le Petit Salon was once the most exclusive and prestigious private women’s organization in New Orleans. Founded in 1924 and described as a “circle of distinguished ladies,” the Salon quickly became an influential player in the cultural revival of the French Quarter during the 1920s. The mission of the Salon was “to revive, promote and continue the pleasant intercourse of the Salon, which gave grace and brilliance to the old society of this city,” with an emphasis on the historic preservation of the French Quarter. When Le Petit Salon was first organized, the French Quarter had experienced decades of neglect and decay. By 1920, preservationists, including members of Le Petit Salon, were making strides to protect and revive the historic neighborhood. 

Le Petit Salon’s members were often women of high social status and prominence from Uptown New Orleans. The Salon membership was a combination of old Quartier Club members and active members of Le Petit Theatre. Their gatherings on Thursday afternoons and receptions after Le Petit Theatre’s performances featured notable literary figures like Sherwood Anderson, Hamilton Basso, Roark Bradford, Oliver La Farge, Lyle Saxon and Tennessee Williams. These weekly meetings included literary and poetry recitals, historic and philosophical lectures, and musical performances by both club members and nationally renowned artists. New Orleans native and writer Grace King served as the first president of Le Petit Salon and organized the purchase of the Salon’s 620 St. Peter Street residence. King was born to a wealthy New Orleans family in 1852, and had deep loyalties to her Creole heritage, writing from “a sort of patriotism--a feeling of loyalty to the South.” Her work as a journalist and historian helped push Southern literature into the national spotlight. After her death in 1932, author and friend Lyle Saxon eulogized Grace King as New Orleans’s “greatest woman and our greatest writer.” Advice columnist Dorothy Dix followed King as president. On August 10, 1925, Le Petit Salon bought and restored the townhouse at 620 St. Peter Street for $13,500 to accommodate its growing membership. Constructed in 1838, the Greek Revival home was built for successful hardware merchant Victor David, an immigrant from France to New Orleans after the fall of Napoleon. Tulane architecture professor and preservationist Samuel Wilson credited Le Petit Salon with initiating the restoration of the French Quarter in the 1920s. One of the club’s greatest preservation successes was the formation of a committee appointed to the French Quarter Commission to prevent the demolition of the Beauregard-Keyes House in 1925.

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In his over 40 years living in New Orleans, famed playwright Tennessee Williams resided in several French Quarter locations. Arriving in New Orleans in 1938, a 28-year-old Williams rented a room at 431 Royal Street and later at 722 Toulouse Street. The Toulouse Street location represents a transitional phase for the young playwright, who was figuring out his identity as a writer. While at 722 Toulouse, Thomas Lanier Williams experimented with different names, including Valentine Xavier, which upon reflection Williams said “seemed a bit pompous.” The young playwright finally settled on Tennessee Williams, the name that would stick with him for the rest of his life. In correspondence to his family, Williams repeatedly suggested that he had relocated to New Orleans to work for Lyle Saxon at the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP). However, in a letter to his mother dated Tuesday, February 21, 1939 (coincidentally Mardi Gras Day), Williams reported that New Orleans had nothing to offer him and that he and a new friend named Jim Parrott were on their way to California. Despite Williams’ claims of seeking employment with the FWP, there is no known evidence of any correspondence between Saxon and Williams. Reflecting on this period of reinvention for the struggling playwright, Williams recalled that “In New Orleans … I found the kind of freedom I had always needed, and the shock of it – against the Puritanism of my nature – has given me a subject, a theme, which I have never ceased exploiting.” During this time, Williams turned to his wit to make a living. Williams recalled that the woman who owned his building operated a restaurant in the building that served lunches. Williams came up with the slogan for her business: “Meals for a Quarter in the Quarter.” As Williams explained, “I’d pass out handbills about it, and then I’d rush back and get on my white coat and be the waiter. That’s how I paid my rent.” W. Kenneth Holditch, an English professor at the University of New Orleans and friend of Williams, described him in those early years: “New Orleans was like a revelation to him … There’s a line in Vieux Carré where the playwright tells the landlady, ‘I should pay you tuition.’” Years after first moving in, Williams’ apartment at 722 Toulouse Street served as the setting for his play from the late 1970s, Vieux Carré. Many writers have commented on the importance of the space to the play. For instance, Rodney Simard wrote, “The construction of the play suggests that the house itself, more than any particular character, is the protagonist.” Williams also drew from stories and events during his time at 722 Toulouse Street for inspiration. For instance, one event in Vieux Carré that supposedly mirrors an incident in Williams’ real life is a dramatic moment when his landlord became frustrated about a loud party occurring downstairs. In response to the noise, she allegedly poured boiling water between the floorboards.  The landlady’s actions prompted someone to call the police and everyone, including Williams, went to night court. In 1945, years after Tennessee Williams moved from 722 Toulouse Street, Lewis Kemper Williams and Leila Williams, of no relation to the playwright, purchased the building. This couple founded the New Orleans-focused archive, The Historic New Orleans Collection, in 1966. Many of their French Quarter properties, including 722 Toulouse Street, are now part of this compound. Currently, The Historic New Orleans Collection houses a variety of Tennessee Williams materials, including a 1973 script of Williams’ Vieux Carré.  

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