Albert Wicker Elementary School had been located on Bienville Street in Mid-City 1971. Due to the effects of Hurricane Katrina, the school was damaged to the extent that the Orleans Parish School Board elected to demolish a new school and build another in the same place. Because the demolition of the school risked damaging cultural remains underneath the surface, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sent archaeologists to excavate select areas in order to mitigate any damage that might occur.

The excavations and archives that the archaeologists uncovered related to first residents of the new neighborhood just prior to the Civil War. Most of these residents were European immigrants. The artifacts revealed the tastes and habits of these families new to New Orleans. These include artifacts such as the poëlon, or German ceramic pan belonging to the Haabs family, one of the first residents on the block. They included a stag copper luster pitcher with molded stags depicted on either side belonging to the Cunningham family, and Irish family who lost their home to creditors in 1860. They also include an organ pull that belonged to Ferdinand Kodlin, a German immigrant who retired in 1890 from running the largest piano store in New Orleans. 

These select artifacts are among the over 4000 artifacts that archaeologists identified on this city square that put together the daily lives of the shoemakers, pharmacists, grocers, and shopkeepers who first moved into this neighborhood. 

Adapted from an exhibit originally published on GNOARCH.com.

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In 2019, the New Orleans City Council launched a city-wide effort to change the names of streets honoring white supremacists. While the city implemented its renaming efforts, a clear need for an educational component to give context to the changes presented itself. Filling the gap, public history graduate students at the University of New Orleans created projects to illuminate the work of the Street Renaming Commission.

Produced by the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies, Streets on the Table is a podcast that reflects on the historical relevance of both the old and new street names. Hosted by two UNO graduate students, the podcast highlights the lives and histories unrecognized in the commemorative landscape.

In this episode, Eddie and Lauren talk about the struggles of studying the lives of people without a historical record and explore the Irish immigrant experience in New Orleans.

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By the early 1900s, the Melpomene neighborhood in Central City was a densely populated urban neighborhood, where many residents worked in occupations related to shipping, particularly in the nearby rail yards. Broadly speaking, the area was home predominantly to working class immigrants of European descent in the period between Reconstruction and the end of the nineteenth century, with the neighborhood gradually becoming a predominantly Black neighborhood in the first decades of the twentieth century. The demographic changes in the neighborhood can be tracked in documentary records like the census and city directories, which provide information at the address level about residents’ race and ethnicity, household composition, occupations, and property ownership.

Larger-scale political events always loomed in the background of neighborhoods with such racially integrated patterns of residence. The period after Reconstruction was a particularly turbulent one, as the city’s Black residents found opportunities for social advancement subverted and blocked. Black voter registration in Louisiana had reached a high of 128,150 by 1888, but white supremacists attacked their rights on all fronts. The 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision legalized segregation, and the new Louisiana Constitution of 1898 distinguished the right of citizenship from the “privilege” of the vote, using this language to disenfranchise Black voters. By the next year, Black voter registration plummeted to just over 12,000; by 1930, there were just over 2,000 Black voters left in the entire state. White supremacists segregated schools and public facilities, attacked biracial labor organizations, and used extralegal violence like lynching to reinforce state-sanctioned oppression.

Archaeological assemblages can only indirectly illustrate such widespread changes, but they do help explore the individual strategies that working class families employed to live and, in some cases, to prosper, even in the face of considerable adversity. They also help us to understand how people experienced such broad changes at an everyday level: in foodways and diet, in health, in childcare, in social interactions, and in recreation, as displayed through consumer behaviors.

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In 2013, archaeological firms conducted test excavations in City Square 383 in the Melpomene neighborhood, the city block once bounded by Erato, Freret, Thalia, and South Robertson (or Locust) Streets. Testing focused on lots along the former corner of South Robertson and Erato Streets, where archaeologists identified a number of brick building foundations and midden (domestic waste) deposits. In 1895, the construction of a double house at 1300-1302 South Robertson Street replaced an earlier frame dwelling. This structure would eventually function as a combination business and residence, variously identified as a corner grocery, saloon, barber shop, soft drink establishment (as it was called after Prohibition), retail liquor business, and barroom over some five decades. A man named Saverio (Americanized to Sam or Jim) Salvaggio served as the longest tenured proprietor of this shop, and at least some of the archaeological material recovered from the address is likely related to his family’s tenure at the location from around 1905 until 1925.

Both Sam and his wife Josephine (born Giuseppa) arrived in the United States from Bisacquino, Sicily in the latter part of the 1880s, just before the infamous 1891 lynching of eleven Italian men by a mob angered over the murder of a New Orleans police chief. This violent episode, which became an international scandal, must have affected the Salvaggio’s sense of security in their new country. In 1883, Sam and Josephine married and in 1902 Sam naturalized his status as a United States citizen. A man named Hillary M. Nugent served as the witness in Sam’s naturalization. This is presumably the same Hillary Nugent listed as the owner of the 1300-1302 South Robertson Street property in 1900, an Irish-born clerk living there with his wife and four children. Nugent sold the property to Sam Salvaggio in 1908, but apparently Sam already participated in the business there in 1903, when a short blurb in the Daily Picayune mentions the results of a pool tournament at “Salvaggio’s,” identified as being on that corner.

According to the 1910 Census, Sam Salvaggio lived at the address with Josephine, their three children, and Josephine’s mother. All of these people still resided there in 1920, although daughter Virginia, now an adult herself, had married Leo Conners. Virginia continued to live at 1300-1302 South Robertson Street, along with Leo and a four-month-old infant, while the Salvaggios had added another daughter themselves.

Sam Salvaggio ran afoul of the city’s increasing attempts to segregate social spaces in 1908, when the City cited him for violating the ‘Gay-Shattuck’ law, which mandated that saloons and bars be racially segregated. Italian immigrants found themselves in a difficult situation in regard to segregation, as racist ideologues and anti-immigrant activists sought to cast doubt on the ‘whiteness’ of people from southern and eastern Europe and stigmatize them as criminals.

As for many operators of saloons and barrooms, the federal prohibition of alcohol also created legal and financial problems for the Salvaggios. Many bar owners tried to circumvent the new legislation. The City fined “Savario Salvaggio” $50 for violations of the “Federal Dry Law,” and a 1924 account of an arrest describes Frank Salvaggio, Sam’s son, as a “two-timer” for liquor-related crimes. In 1929, the police arrested Frank Salvaggio and Vincent Puleo, husband of Salvaggio’s daughter Mary, in connection with the discovery of a 75 gallon still.

Perhaps these legal troubles (and the difficulty of operating a ‘soda’ vending establishment profitably) caused Sam to give up the business on South Robertson. Sam is last associated with the property in 1925. Sam Salvaggio died in 1929, survived by Josephine Salvaggio who died in 1957, while their family thrived in the city’s growing civically active Italian American community.

The images below illustrate a number of archaeological findings from this site that tell us more about the Salvaggio family’s time living in the Melpomene neighborhood.

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Between the 1930s and 1960s, racist policies at every level of government pushed Black residents of New Orleans into lower-paying jobs and racially segregated neighborhoods. Throughout the nation, local and federal government agencies used coded terms like urban renewal, racial covenants, and red-lining to describe their efforts to segregate housing and homeownership. These policies limited possibilities for Black residents to achieve independence, financial security, and other opportunities for their families.

Of course, Black New Orleanians worked to resist and counter the effects of structural racism in whatever ways they could. The written historical record gives glimpses of individual families who tried to use homeownership as a foothold on economic security in the Melpomene neighborhood. Segregation in an urban setting also provided avenues for prosperity with the formation of businesses catering to Black customers that white-owned businesses often excluded.

By engaging archaeological artifacts excavated from the Guste Homes site in 2004, alongside the written historical record that documents the lives of families who lived in the Melpomene neighborhood prior to its 1961 demolition, we can gain a deeper understanding of residents’ lives.

For instance, Edward Shannon, first a renter at 1219-1221 Howard/LaSalle Streets, owned the property by 1930 while working as a superintendent for a life insurance company. He later opened a furniture repair business at the same location. Another home at 1216 Freret was owned by a series of railroad porters in the period from 1920-1940, while, in 1926, a Black family of Puerto Rican descent headed by Jose Fuentes purchased a home at 2317 Erato and lived there through 1949.

It is often a mixture of luck and circumstance when a particular household is represented in the archaeological record of a neighborhood, and sometimes it can be very difficult to link material remains with specific families. However, the Puckett family at 1222-1224 Howard/LaSalle can be traced in both documents and in the objects they left behind in a privy shaft, apparently filled when they moved out in the 1930s.

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The residents of New Orleans have a history of creating unusual pronunciations of words. Local street names provide common examples of New Orleanians’ inventive pronunciations, such as Burgundy Street (pronounced bur-GUHN-dee, not BUR-guhn-dee) and a cluster of Uptown streets named for the nine Greek Muses, including Urania, Thalia, Euterpe, Calliope, Clio, Erato, Melpomene, Terpsichore, and Polymnia Streets. Another lesser-known example of the city’s linguistic creativity can be found with “misbeliefs,” the fruit of the Eriobotrya japonica tree, that New Orleanians also refer to as Japanese plums or loquats. [1]

Misbelief trees can be found throughout New Orleans.  Although the tree is native to China, it thrives in southern Louisiana’s climate. [2] One example of a misbelief can be found at 1226 Royal Street, a portion of the French Quarter highly populated by Italian immigrants in the late nineteenth century.

Unlike figs and other fruits mentioned in the early colonial period of New Orleans, misbeliefs are not recorded in letters, gardening articles, advertisements, or plant lists until the late 1800s. [3,4] The first mention of the misbeliefs in New Orleans coincides with a great influx of Sicilian immigrants to the city.

The first written evidence of misbeliefs grown in Louisiana appeared on May 29, 1883, in the Lagniappe column of the Times-Picayune, “Did you ever eat one of those Japanese plums grown in Louisiana? If you want something good wrap a piece of roller composition up in a piece of sheepskin and call it a Japanese plum.” Apparently, the writer was not a fan of the fruit.

How and why did these fruit trees and their fruit come to be called misbeliefs in New Orleans? Some New Orleanians, including blogger Dee Hollins, believe that Italian immigrants introduced the tree to the area and that the Italian name for the fruit probably evolved into the name misbeliefs. [5]

A 1989 analysis of plants referred to as “medlars” found that Eriobotrya japonica was incorrectly associated with the plant genus Mespilus, or specifically, Mespilus germanica which, unlike misbeliefs, are actual medlar plants. The study also revealed that the Italian word nespola was often used to describe medlars and other fruit. [6] In a 1905 travel book about Sicily, Eriobotrya japonica is listed as one of the fruits found on the island and states that this fruit was called nespoli by Italians. [7]

Similarly, in 1899, the Louisiana State Experiment Station was doing research on what they thought were three types of Mespilus germanica when in reality these were three different varieties of Eriobotrya japonica (misbeliefs) which they also called Japanese medlars. According to the same article in Economic Botany, there was no proof that true medlars were ever grown in Louisiana. [8] To make matters even more confusing, many New Orleanians also call misbeliefs Japanese plums even though they are not plums nor are they indigenous to Japan. In 1903, Amite City, a town heavily settled by Sicilian immigrants was described as the “great strawberry and Japanese plum parish of the State.” [9, 10]

According to Dan Gill, retired Consumer Horticulture Specialist at the Louisiana State University AgCenter, the name Mespilus japonica is an old Latin name for Eriobotrya japonica. Whether anyone ever used this name in New Orleans is unclear, but the transition from mespilus to misbeliefs could be possible.

Most Italian immigrants who came to New Orleans in the late 1800s were from southern Italy or Sicily and many spoke Sicilian rather than Italian. [11] The Italian word for the fruit nespoli does not sound phonetically similar to misbeliefs, but the Sicilian word niespuli sounds much closer to the word misbeliefs when sounded out. [12] (Listen to a recording of the Sicilian pronunciation below.)

Whichever word was misinterpreted as misbeliefs, it reminds us that New Orleans was a place where immigrants speaking foreign languages interacted with locals and made a lasting impact on the city’s culture. Sharing food is often a meeting point of different cultures. And while food habits typically remain after language has faded, the term misbeliefs, misunderstood as it was, survived to become a lasting part of the local language. [13]

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The French may claim New Orleans French bread, but later immigrant bakers' influence on the city's bread-making traditions is undeniable. At the turn of the nineteenth century, a wave of Sicilian immigration to New Orleans left a lasting impact on the city's culture and economy. Nowhere is this more evident than the French Quarter, where traces of a once-thriving community known as "Little Palermo" are still etched in tiles and memories. Many of the Sicilians who arrived in New Orleans lived and worked in the French Quarter and forged a path in the commercial food business, unloading produce on the wharves, truck farming, and establishing grocery stores, restaurants, macaroni factories, and bakeries.

The 1891 City Directory lists a baker on St. Philip Street named Agostino Lombardo, who arrived in New Orleans from Trabia, outside of Palermo. [1, 2] There were almost 200 bakers in New Orleans at that time, most with German or French names. Agostino Lombardo was one of only two bakers at that time with an Italian last name (the other was Lorenzo Federico, a pasta maker, also on St. Philip Street). With his father Francesco and brother Filippo, Agostino Lombardo soon moved to 1210 Decatur Street, where "F. Lombardo and Sons Bakery" operated until declaring bankruptcy in 1941. [3]

Lombardo Bakery was one of the earliest recorded Italian bread bakeries in New Orleans. [4] With entrances facing both Decatur Street and French Market Place (previously Gallatin Street), Lombardo Bakery served the port, and the growing Sicilian community clustered near the bustling French Market. The grandson of Francesco Lombardo, Frank Lombardo, wondered in a 2015 oral history, "why do they call this the French Market? It's all Italians. Sicilians!" [5] This tight-knit community added their language, traditions, and foods to an already vibrant mix of New Orleans cultures. Other small, multi-generational Sicilian bakers such as Lanasa, Ancona, Aiovolasiti/Ace Bakery, Lovoi, Ruffino, Evola, Gendusa, Brocato, and LoGiudice/United Bakery, continued the French and American bread-making traditions of New Orleans. But they also added their own styles of bread to the mix, including the famous "poor boy loaf," St. Joseph's bread, braided sesame twist loaves, sfincione pizza, and the other well-known loaf, the muffuletta. Lombardo's bakery laid the groundwork for this dynasty of Sicilian bread-makers to follow.

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Often visible in the background of historic images of the French Market, the three-story Italianate building with the “Garic’s Bakery" sign anchored the neighborhood. [1] Garic’s Bakery was once part of a bustling riverfront commercial corridor, closely intertwined with the nearby port and public farmers market, at times even taking on the name “French Market Bakery.” An 1893 newspaper article reported Garic’s bakery among the merchants that offered hurricane relief to the lower coast's oystermen, who traded near the French Market. [2]

Newspaper advertisements throughout the bakery’s existence reflected the busy, diverse, and ever-changing French Quarter neighborhood. The bakery was “always open,” operated 24 hours a day, serviced ships, and supplied loaves of bread and pastries to some of the city’s finest restaurants as well as the people who lived, shopped, and worked in the area. The bakery was referred to as the “French Italian Bakery” (that sold rye bread!) and adapted its products to customer demand. Some of the types of bread baked at Garic's over its almost one-hundred-year existence included hardtack for ships (a long-lasting biscuit that looks like a flat, dimpled disk, a staple since the colonial era), cap bread, French bread, Sicilian St. Joseph's bread, German rye and pumpernickel bread, and French biscuits.

When Lawson Garic opened his namesake bakery in 1885, close to 150 bakeries were listed in the New Orleans City Directory. Garic had previously managed Stiegler Bakery near the Treme Market and was a flour merchant to some of the city’s older bakeries, such as Chretien’s. Just as bakeries reflected the surrounding community's needs, they also had to adapt to outside forces such as sanitary laws and flour shortages. In the early 1900s, health ordinances required bakeries to wrap loaves and adjust loaf size, resulting in the standardization of products. [3] Records show that a rise in ingredients' cost resulted in a 1916 request to renegotiate Garic’s contract to deliver 17,000 pounds of bread a month to Charity hospital. [4] After a few years, Garic left the bakery business to pursue real estate ventures, but family members continued to operate the bakery until 1952. [5]

In the 1930s and 1940s, new challenges, such as industrialization, changing bread styles, and World War II labor shortages appeared. An article from 1933 reveals the growing popularity of "poor boy" loaves and machine-made sliced pan bread versus old-fashioned French bread and the French cap bread. The same article highlights Sterling Garic, a third-generation owner of Garic’s, as the last baker to produce hardtack. [6]

In 1952, the Gaudet family purchased Garic’s bakery and renamed it “Gaudet's French Market Bakery.” A few years later, the family leased the business to German baker Andreas Reising who operated the bakery as “Sunrise French Market Bakery.” In a 1958 Times-Picayune advertisement, Reising described the charm of the old Garic's bakery and its appeal to tourists in the changing French Quarter. Location still mattered, but the clientele had shifted once again – this time away from locals to tourists. He implored locals to follow the example of “visitors from all over the country, with Sunrise French Bread to be carried to their homes” to serve “daily at our table, n’est ce pas?” [7]

Following Sunrise Bakery, another baker, Adam Falkenstein, operated "French Market Bakery” at the site briefly in the early 1970s. In 1981, records show that the Gaudet family estate sold the property. The famous bakery that once served and profited from the busy French Market, port, and surrounding neighborhood transitioned to a gallery and souvenir shop. Garic’s history stands as an enduring testament to a bakery’s power to anchor and serve a community.

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In 2013, the reality cooking television series Top Chef filmed its eleventh season in New Orleans at 1231-33 Bourbon Street to revitalize the struggling restaurant and tourism industry following the effects of the 2010 BP oil spill on Gulf seafood. [1] While Top Chef showcased the charm and ingredients of the city’s cultural and culinary fame, another culinary story was buried just beneath the surface of the Hollywood film set. The pair of 1830s townhouses at 1231-33 Bourbon Street was also once home to two famous and now forgotten French bread bakeries: Chretien's bakery (approximately 1860-1911) and B.C. Francingues bakery (1911-1940).

One hundred years before Top Chef celebrated the glories of New Orleans food, local journalist and tour guide Flo Field highlighted the stories of Chretien's bakery and B.C. Francingues bakery in a 1913 newspaper article on New Orleans bread-making titled “How New Orleans Won Fame as Baker of Finest Bread Outside of France.” Field was a member of a small, vibrant, and short-lived bohemian social circle of writers, artists, journalists, preservationists, and hangers-on who settled in the French Quarter at the end of World War I, immersing themselves in the local scene. In addition to her work as a journalist, Field was also a playwright and the first French Quarter tour guide. [2] Field’s article gives a golden-hued “history of bread-making in Louisiana before the days of modern machinery, when the baker’s craft was a handicraft, indeed – fine loaves made with slave help – a few of the old bakeries still left.” [3] This romanticized and nostalgic story of “old-time” French bread is an example of an enduring narrative of the exceptionality of New Orleans shaped by authors in the post-Civil War years such as George Washington Cable, Lafcadio Hearn, and Lyle Saxon, spotlighting the notion of a disappearing and unique Creole culture. In bread-making, the narrative reinforced the importance of traditions begun in French and Spanish colonial New Orleans over other influences, including African, indigenous, and American.

In 1846, Eugene Chretien, owner of the earlier bakery, arrived in New Orleans from France at the age of twenty-two, coinciding with a population boom in the city. Records show that Chretien’s Bakery produced bread from before the Civil War until early in the 1900s. 1860 census records list Chretien as a baker located on Dumaine Street. [4] By 1865, Chretien appeared in the City Directory on Bourbon Street and was one of seventy bakers operating. [5] Field describes Chretien's bakery as one of the best bread bakeries of the time and tells the story of "Papa Jim," a formerly enslaved baker who worked for Chretien, lived nearby and trained multiple bakers. The 1860 census does not include Eugene Chretien's slave-holding records. But Field provides a glimpse at other antebellum bakeries that exploited enslaved labor, such as D’Aquin bakery, Bouny bakery, and Poincy bakery.

By 1867, the City Directory lists 170 bakeries in operation, more than double the number of bakeries just two years prior. [6] Chretien’s bakery was part of a vibrant neighborhood economy, operating “a flour warehouse, bread store, bakery and stable.” [7] In the early 1900s, bakeries often baked and delivered bread several times a day, both to homes and businesses. A former French Quarter resident recalled Chretien's bakery delivering long loaves of freshly baked bread daily to neighboring homes. [8] Gaston Alciatore, son of Antoine’s restaurant founder Antoine Alciatore, married into the Chretien family and is listed in census records as a baker at the same address as Chretien’s. It is possible that Chretien’s bakery also supplied the famous Antoine’s restaurant with its French bread.

In 1911, Bernard Francingues, another francophone, took over Chretien’s Bakery. The 1913 Field article described the manual labor of bread-making inside Francingues’ bakery: from mixing in long troughs to kneading, molding loaves, and baking in brick ovens -- methods similar to those presently revived as part of the artisan bread movement. Field provides rare photos from the Francingues bakery of the ovens and some of the lost loaves of bread from one hundred years ago. In the early twentieth century, before widespread industrialization, popular types of bread in New Orleans included pain chapeau (cap bread), pain tresse (French twist), flute (old-style French bread), loaf bread, and frog loaves (small rolls). While some people today may remember a few of these lost styles of bread, most only know today's New Orleans French bread style.

In 1942, the Francingues family transferred ownership of the Bourbon Street property to La Societe’ des Dames Hospitalieres, an organization founded after the Civil War that owned several properties and housed indigent war widows. The building later became a nursing home, active until Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2010, developers renovated the site as luxury residences. The French Quarter has long been the symbol and epicenter of New Orleans. The property at 1231-33 Bourbon Street is an example of the layers of history found within the Vieux Carre. The transformation of the property – from bakery to reality television film set also reveals an intriguing chapter in the story of New Orleans French bread and the development of the French Quarter as a tourist destination.

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The “Monument to the Immigrant” was erected in March 1995 and stands along the Mississippi River in Woldenberg Park. The monument depicts an immigrant family on one side and the other side a stylized figure shaped like the front of a ship, reminding people that New Orleans is historically a port city and a city of immigrants. “Monument to the Immigrant” is a link to the past sitting on the river’s edge representing how the old and the new are interconnected in New Orleans.

The Italian American Marching Club in New Orleans commissioned Franco Alessandrini to sculpt the monument. Alessandrini, an Italian immigrant, came to the United States in the 1970s, making Louisiana his home. When the monument was dedicated, Judge Anthony J. Russo gave a stirring dedication speech, ending with, “LET US NOT FORGET OUR IMMIGRANTS,” (Italian American Society).

The site of the monument, the riverfront of New Orleans, was one of the first places where generations of immigrants first touched solid ground when they arrived. Alessandrini, who traveled to Carrara, Italy, to select the marble for the monument, used actual photos of immigrants arriving in the city to ensure that he depicted them with accuracy.

The inscription on the monument reads:

“MONUMENT TO THE IMMIGRANT DEDICATED TO THE COURAGEOUS MEN AND WOMEN WHO LEFT THEIR HOMELAND SEEKING FREEDOM, OPPORTUNITY AND A BETTER LIFE IN A NEW COUNTRY MARCH 19, 1995 COMMISSIONED BY THE ITALIAN AMERICAN MARCHING CLUB SPONSORED BY PRIVATE CITIZENS, BUSINESSES AND ORGANIZATIONS.”

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"Ten thousand Micks/They Swung their picks/To dig th’ New Canawl, But the choleray was stronger’n they/And twice it killed them awl"

And with that ditty, published in the Times-Picayune of July 18, 1937, the lore was born that thousands upon thousands of Irish died in New Orleans digging the New Basin Canal (NBC) in the 1830s.

As with many stories in New Orleans, this one, too, is a mix of truth and fiction. The facts are that in 1831, the New Orleans Canal and Banking company raised funds to build a new canal connecting the “American Sector” (CBD) with Lake Pontchartrain. Compared to other canals, the NBC was modest, only 6 miles long and completed in fewer than four years. As with most building projects, the number of laborers varied throughout its construction.

So how did this grim myth come about? Notably, none of the contemporary newspaper contained reports of such a catastrophe. Moreover, the city’s population in the 1830s and the short building period, defy these numbers: there were simply not enough Irish in, or coming to, the city for such numbers to die in only 4 years. Most likely, the myth was nourished by the devastating cholera epidemic of 1832-33 which killed several thousand New Orleanians, including Irish canal workers.

Rather than mass Irish deaths, the press, instead, reported Irish actions on wage disputes and breaches of contractual promises. For instance, Irish workers published their grievances in an open letter in the Louisiana Advertiser, demonstrating their solidarity and proto-union organization when confronting unacceptable work conditions. Among other complaints, the letter accused their contractors, of “having sold them as redemptioners” and protested the excessive prices at the company store. Moreover, the striking Irish laborers objected to the contractor describing them as “a turbulent and disobedient set of men, because we do not tamely submit to the numberless acts of injustice.” Their own characterization as ‘not tamely submit[ting]’ makes it virtually impossible that the Irish would have remained silent about tens of thousands of deaths during the canal’s construction.

Instead of a story of tragedy, the NBC is testimony to Irish strength and defiance. Many of the canal workers soon became their own construction bosses in New Orleans, directing many of the city’s projects during this heyday of building. Furthermore, employment conditions in the antebellum were training grounds for the Irish men and women who later dominated the leadership ranks of the local and national unions in the latter 19th and 20th century.

The story of the New Basin Street Canal is story of defiance and triumph, not victimhood. It should be commemorated as such.

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St. Frances Xavier Cabrini arrived in New Orleans in 1892, with a charge to help poor Italian immigrants at a time of intense xenophobia in the city. A year earlier, a local lynch mob had murdered 11 Sicilian immigrants. Yellow fever had also decimated the local immigrant community. Mother Cabrini got to work quickly, establishing an orphanage at 817 St. Philip Street in the French Quarter.

Born as Maria Francesca Cabrini on July 15, 1850, in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, Italy, she dealt with poor health as a child but was an excellent student. As a young adult she taught at an orphanage for several years before taking her religious vows in 1877. She co-founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus congregation, which focused on caring for poor children, and as the institute grew she was encouraged by Pope Leo XIII to continue her mission in the United States, which had an increasing number of poor Italian immigrants.

In 1889 Mother Cabrini and six other sisters came to the U.S., eventually setting up 67 missions across the country, including in New Orleans. As her school and orphanage in the French Quarter continued to take on more poor children, she acquired land on Esplanade Avenue and had another orphanage built in 1905. The building served as an orphanage until 1959, when it became Cabrini High School New Orleans.

Mother Cabrini became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1909 but died just eight years later in Chicago due to complications from dysentery. Pope Pius XII made her the first naturalized U.S. citizen to be canonized in 1946. The patron saint of immigrants, Mother Cabrini is venerated for her lifelong commitment to the care and education of poor, sick, and orphaned children, particularly those of Italian heritage who struggled after arriving in America.

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Domestic servants were a permanent feature of middle class families in 19th century America. We tend to think of them as lacking agency over their daily lives and without power to shape their future. Yet, Irish immigrant women belie that image, as a closer examination of this group demonstrates.

Starting in the 1840s up to the Civil War Irish immigration to New Orleans was at a fever pitch. Nearly two million people left Ireland in this period due to the Great Famine. The wave of Irish immigrants, many of whom were women, coincided with an increase in demand for servants in middle class households and resulted in plentiful and steady employment opportunities.

No skill requirements and promises to train on the job attracted single Irish women to these jobs. They quickly realized that the market was expanding and that specialization within this field, such as training as a parlor maid versus a general servant, would empower them to sell their skilled labor and thereby increase their earning potential.

High demand for their labor also gave Irish domestics a certain independence. When his Irish cook failed to appear for work one morning, local architect Thomas K. Wharton complained that they “do just as they please, go or stay, work or play.” That neither Wharton nor his wife considered firing the servant attests to the level of accommodation these Irish women received to act as it suited them. In fact, in an editorial refuting an article extolling Irish servants’ virtues one reporter stated that Irish females often forgot themselves “so far as to hire the employer, in place of the employer hiring them.”

Servants’ favorable bargaining position also was used to enable the women to practice their faith. Attending Mass and participating in important rituals was of paramount importance to most Irish immigrants. As Wharton loudly complains again: “Went to market at 6 ½ and for the first time in my life carried the basket myself as it is Easter Sunday and my Cook, being an Irish Catholic must of course be permitted to attend the early services of ‘ill mumbled mass,’ muttered by stupid Priests in equally stupid monkish Latin”.

Additionally, since room and board were provided, domestics could save a large part of their earnings. They used this surplus in a variety of ways, including sending money home to Ireland. Indeed, Irish daughters reliably sent more remittances than sons and thus provided a lifeline that enabled other family members to leave. Beyond remittances, Irish immigrant women’s earnings also provided money for their families, their church, and their own financial security with remarkable success.

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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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Between 1796 and 1893, no fewer than 35 yellow fever epidemics struck New Orleans. The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878 caused over 800 deaths in just one month. After 1878, In an attempt to quell the spread of disease, of which the cause was unknown, foreign ships entering the port of New Orleans became subject to more uniform and strict forms of medical quarantine. While these methods were somewhat effective at reducing disease fatalities, the procedures increasingly focused less on preventing the spread of disease and more preventing the entry of “undesirable peoples” believed to have spread the disease. By 1945, quarantine procedure was awash with racist sentiments as immigrants were increasingly detained based on origin rather than illness.

At the 1905 Quarantine and Immigration Conference, officials from all over the South met to discuss measures regarding quarantine and immigration processes. As officials saw it, the two were synonymous. Their fear was that persons entering the United States, specifically from Eastern Europe, carried with them diseases that would infect Americans. This baseless fear increased as more and more immigrants made their way to the United States.

In 1913, The Algiers Immigration Station opened for operation. Government officials placed sanctions on many immigrant groups to prevent their entry into the country and control their movements. Officials barred Italian immigrants, from moving outside of designated districts within the state. Quarantine enforcement measures in New Orleans included shotgun-wielding guards on public roads.

When officials detained immigrants, the staff of the Algiers Immigration Station was responsible for communicating necessary information and procedures to immigrants. This communication was not always clear and officials often could not speak with new arrivals due to language barriers. Quarantined immigrants, deemed “intolerable,” were subjected to uncomfortable and dangerous protocol. New Orleans fumigation units exposed newly arrived immigrants to hydrocyanic gas as part of the disinfection process. At the time, farmers used this chemical as a crop pesticide.

The site of the Algiers Immigration Station served as a camp to house enemies during World War II. The New Orleans Parish School Board owned the property. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Algiers was home to another immigration/migration detention center, though it was located further downriver.

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Founded in 1896 by George Leidenheimer, Leidenheimer Bakery’s original bread baking style was far different from today's classic French Bread, po-boy making loaves. Leidenheimer established his Dryades Street bakery after moving to New Orleans from Deidesheim, Germany and became a part of the neighborhood’s growing German immigrant population. Leidenheimer began by making dense, dark brown German bread loaves, but changed his style to cater to the French customer base in Old New Orleans, who preferred a light, airy texture to their bread.

Leidenheimer is was one of thousands of Germans who flocked to New Orleans in the mid-1800s. Other German bakeries that still exist include Alois Binder Bakery, Haydel’s Bakery, and until Katrina, Hubig’s Pies. The Leidenheimer bakery has since moved from its original Dryades Street location to nearby 1501 Simon Bolivar Avenue to accommodate its growing production and popularity.

Leidenheimer is now in its third generation, now managed by Sandy Whann and sister Katherine Whann. Leidenheimer Bakery is the city’s largest producer of French Bread, and continues to economically support its Central City neighborhood, a section of town the Whann’s affectionately label, “the bakery neighborhood.”

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On November 5, 1860, seven Dominican sisters from Ireland came to New Orleans to teach the children of Irish immigrants. From 1860-1963, St. Mary’s Dominican High School had many different names and locations. In 1860, the St. John the Baptist School for Girls opened at St. John the Baptist Church on Dryades Street in New Orleans. In 1861, St. John the Baptist School for Girls changed its name to the New Orleans Female Dominican Academy.

In 1864, the Dominican Sisters bought at auction the Mace Academy in Greenville, which was a village bordering Carrollton. In 1865, the Academy on Dryades Street functioned as a day school while the Academy in Greenville functioned as a boarding school. The Dominican Sisters mainly focused on a humanities and fine arts curriculum.

In 1881, the Archbishop granted permission to construct a new academy on the property at Greenville; the cornerstone was laid in 1882. Later, the suburban village of Greenville was incorporated into the City of New Orleans, which had done the same with Carrollton eight years earlier.

These two Dominican female academies continued to exist until 1914, when the Dryades program combined with the St. Charles Avenue campus program and changed its name to St. Mary’s Dominican High School. In September 1927, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools accredited St. Mary’s Dominican High School.

The combined program shared a campus with St. Mary's Dominican College, a Liberal Arts college for women established four years earlier. Increased enrollment in both the high school and the college required physical expansion. Plans were made to build a new Dominican High School on Walmsley Avenue. On March 22, 1963, Dominican High School moved from 7214 St. Charles Avenue to 7701 Walmsley Avenue, its present site.

The college closed in 1984, and its campus and buildings were sold to Loyola University of New Orleans. Saint Mary's Dominican High School continues to provide a quality education for girls in eighth through twelfth grade. It was recognized as a School of Excellence by the United States Department of Education in 1989 and as a National Blue Ribbon School by the United States Department of Education in 1996. In 2010, Dominican High School celebrated its 150th year of Catholic education in New Orleans.

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The muffaletta is one of New Orleans’ most iconic and identifiable dishes. Made on large rounds of sesame bread and layered with olive salad, genoa salami, ham, mortadella, provolone and Swiss cheese, the muffaletta is clearly Italian in spirit and yet no such sandwich exists in Italy. Instead, it is the creation of Sicilian immigrants who arrived en masse to the Port of New Orleans from the Port of Palermo in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. These new inhabitants brought with them strong customs and recipes that were joined with already vibrant local food traditions and ingredients.

Most of these immigrants settled in and quickly set up shop close to the busy French Market. This densely populated and thriving section of the lower French Quarter was referred to as “Little Palermo” and the “Italian Sector,” and was home to a multitude of small shops and businesses. These included several Sicilian bread bakers, who baked a traditional Sicilian loaf called the “muffuletto.” These early bread bakers often sold their wares on the street, yelling “muffuletto, caldo, caldo.” Bakers also sold their loaves wholesale to grocers.

One such grocer was Mr. Salvatore Lupo, of Central Grocery store, who is widely credited with making the first muffaletta sandwich in 1906. According to his daughter, Marie Lupo Tusa, farmers would stop in at her father’s shop at lunchtime, buy a loaf of muffuletto bread, sliced cold cuts, olives and cheese, and eat them standing up or balanced on their laps. In order to make it easier for customers to hold everything, Mr. Lupo decided to put all the ingredients together on a sandwich. The sandwich was not called by the name “muffaletta” at first, but eventually, the name of the bread carried over to the name of the sandwich.

Today, the traditional Sicilian bread bakeries have virtually disappeared; the sandwich that took its name from the round loaf remains as a testimony to an amazing one hundred year survival of a New Orleans born and "bread" tradition.

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Nineteenth-century New Orleanians knew Margaret (nee Gaffney) Haughery by several endearing names including the "Bread Woman," "Friend of the Orphans," "Mother of the Orphans," "Our Margaret," and "Angel of the Delta." Personal tragedies experienced both as a child and later as a parent shaped Haughery's life-long devotion to serving New Orleans' poor.

Haughery's life began in Tully, Carrigallen County Leitrim, Ireland in 1813. (Efforts are underway to establish a museum in her hometown.) When five years old, Haughery emigrated to America with her parents and two of her siblings. Haughery's family ended up in Baltimore, Maryland, but an 1822 yellow fever epidemic killed both of her parents. Once orphaned, a woman took in Haughery and required that she earn her keep, leading Haughery on a path familiar to many Irish women: domestic service.

In 1835, she married Charles Haughery, and a month later they moved to New Orleans. They had one daughter named Frances. Charles soon fell ill and went back to Ireland to regain strength. He died a short while later. A few months later, Frances became sick and died. The life of an Irish widow in antebellum New Orleans was not easy. Single women threatened patriarchal notions of sexual morality and social control. During this period, anti-Irish jokes were commonly published in the newspapers.

To support herself, Haughery worked as a laundress for the St. Charles Hotel. She acquainted herself with the Sisters of Charity and volunteered her time to the orphans in their care. She also contributed as much as two-thirds of her earnings to the orphans. In order to better care for the orphans, Haughery purchased two cows to provide milk. These two cows developed into a dairy herd of forty and a prosperous dairy business. She was often seen making milk deliveries with her mule-drawn cart. Her success allowed her to contribute funds to construct a new, larger orphanage for the Sisters of Charity. She also helped open St. Teresa's Orphan Asylum.

Haughery's philanthropic business endeavors did not end with her dairy business, she also distributed bread to orphans and other needy city residents. "Margaret's Steam and Mechanical Bakery" was one of the early "steam bakeries" in the South and survived through and beyond the Civil War.

Haughery was the second woman in the United States to have a statue erected in her honor. Citizens of New Orleans commissioned a statue in her likeness soon after her death in 1882. Sculpted by Andrew Doyle using Italian marble, the statue has stood since 1884 in the Lower Garden District at the intersection of Prytania and Clio Streets.

For more information on Margaret Haughery, please see Margaret's Steam and Mechanical Bakery.

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