In 2014, the University of New Orleans was invited to conduct archaeological testing at 936 St. Peter Street while the property was undergoing renovations. Below the surface layer, archaeologists discovered the opening of a privy shaft. The privy was brick-lined with a wood-lined base.

The privy deposit appeared to represent a single, rapid deposition, probably within the time frame of the 1860s. This rapid deposition likely happened at the time of a clean-out and renovation of the rear building, when the use of this privy was abandoned due perhaps to shifting use of the outbuilding. The privy fill contained a significant quantity of typical domestic debris from the mid-nineteenth century: ceramic tablewares, including whiteware, ironstone, and porcelain; chamber pots; glass bottles; and smoking pipes.

What stood out most during the excavation of the privy was the abundance of animal remains, especially the number of elements from skulls. When a rough count was taken of the entire assemblage, the privy feature was found to contain a total of 147 Caprine (goat or sheep) skulls.

So, what could explain the heavy presence of goat and/or sheep skulls in the privy feature at 936 St. Peter Street? There are, of course, a number of cuisines in which brains are a delicacy, and dishes, particularly stews, in which goat heads play a prominent role, especially in African and Caribbean cultures. However, certain features of this assemblage taken together with other artifacts from the privy suggest that the faunal assemblage recovered from the privy at 936 St. Peter Street is representative of more than just urban diets.

An analysis of the butchery marks found on faunal material can indicate differences in patterns of faunal utilization. Analysts recorded the number of cuts, chops, fractures, shears, and saw marks present on each bone to determine if there were differences in butchery methods between different species. Most of the bones that were present were utilized as typical food sources and were from the postcranial skeleton. Some of these bones were either sawn or shorn (as with a sharp cleaver), marks that are typically made by a butcher or someone familiar with animal slaughter. However, an inordinate number of the butchery marks present on Caprine remains were indicative of cracking into the skulls to retrieve the brains inside, as evidenced by shearing and chop marks across the back of the skulls.

It is likely that the abundance of goat skulls and their associated butchery patterns represent the production waste from household-level tanning and hide processing, probably for use in fine leather work. Historical documents and ethnohistorical observations note the use of animal brains in the process of hide tanning, particularly when making buckskin.

The sheer quantity of goat skulls in relation to other skeletal elements point to the likelihood that the goat brains were being put to a use in manufacturing rather than being consumed. Some of the other artifacts from the privy also support the connection of the assemblage to leatherwork. An abundance of cuprous metal straight pins, some occurring in clumps corroded together, were found within the privy fill along with thimbles, buttons, and hook and eye fasteners. While these items are not atypical finds at urban sites, their abundance is suggestive. Likewise, household production is suggested by some other artifacts in the assemblage, including knives, folded strap-metal, and a lace bobbin, all of which may be associated with hide production and its associated activities.

The growth of industrialization and urbanization in the late-eighteenth century had far reaching impacts on developing cities. Urban centers, like New Orleans, rapidly became crowded and dirty. Modes of production were centered around the household with production typically taking place within household lots or near the residences of employers. But as the city continued to expand during the nineteenth century, concerns over sanitation and urban waste disposal resulted in the segregation of nuisance industries, such as slaughterhouses and tanneries, to the outskirts of town. Still, small-scale manufacturing persisted, with household-level production only loosely regulated, despite the potential health issues it could generate.

This historical shift from cottage to commercial industry resulting from urban growth provides a lens through which we may interpret the archaeological assemblage at 936 St. Peter Street. This property was a very small urban lot in what had come to be a distinctly residential area by this time, and it is not hard to imagine the foul mess that the work of splitting hundreds of animal skulls and extracting the brains would incur in a residential yard . The noisome byproduct, and likely the complaints from neighboring tenants, may explain the rapid deposition of the privy contents and the renovation of the outbuilding in the 1860s. Perhaps the landlord at 936 St. Peter and/or their neighbors were no longer willing to tolerate a back yard covered in blood and Caprine effluvia. Rather than cleaning out privy contents from this period, the landlord or new residents instead built a completely new outbuilding and privy altogether, burying the putrid cranial decay until archaeological excavations uncovered it a century and a half later.

For more (including 11 images) view the original article

“Many of the places and locations known to tourists and travelers worldwide, such as the Port of New Orleans, the French Market, and Congo Square, served as thoroughfares for trade and culture long before the arrival of whites.” -Bulbancha is Still a Place

The origins of the French Market date back to 1675, almost one hundred years before most histories tell of the Market. [1] Most historians have focussed primarily on the colonization of New Orleans rather than the Native histories rooted in Bulbancha, the Native name for the region, translating to “the place of many tongues.” [2]

The Native peoples of this area derived the name Bulbancha for its purpose as a thriving trading port for many different people, heritages, and linguistic groups. [3] Indigenous groups such as the Chitimacha, Choctaw, Ishak, Tunica, and Natchez nations traded with one another and with white explorers and colonizers. [3]

The Oumas Natives founded what is known as the French Market today. The Oumas sold goods to travelers exploring lands down the Mississippi River, including Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, the colonial governor of Louisiana and founder of New Orleans. [1] After the founding of New Orleans in 1718, the Oumas and the Tchouchoumas, who had another market along Bayou St. John, combined trading spaces in today’s French Market.

Between 1770 and 1790, General Alexander O’Reilly recorded the French Market as an official site in government documents, noting structures “built entirely of cypress lumber.” [1] Over the next two centuries, other Native people, such as the Choctaws, contributed to the life of the French Market. While indigenous identity became more and more difficult to maintain through the colonization of New Orleans and the forced displacement of indigenous groups, the French Market “still constituted a meaningful form of identity as well as a helpful source of income” to the New Orleans Natives. [3]

The most robust written information historians have on the origins of the French Market comes from the mid to late nineteenth century. As tourism increased throughout New Orleans, so did art and newspaper articles on the French Market. Most of these newspaper articles play into stereotypes and create negative depictions of the Native people. Some sources, however, do describe the wares and foods the Natives sold including Gumbo, fish, fruits and vegetables, and woven baskets. [3]

In more recent years, the “New Orleans French Market Board sought assistance from the Louisiana Office of Indian Affairs to involve American Indians in celebrating the two-hundred-year anniversary of the market’s official beginning.” [3] The New Orleans bi-centennial celebration committee recognized the Natives’ contributions to the French Market’s history.

For more (including 8 images) view the original article

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.

For more (including 7 images) view the original article

Bread-baking is a hard, physically demanding job. Before the Civil War, most bakery owners relied on apprenticeships and enslaved laborers to handle the workload. Postbellum bakery workers inherited a system of forced on-premises lodging, 16 to 23-hour shifts with no days off, low wages, hard manual labor, and dangerous, unsanitary conditions. The New Orleans bakers’ union took shape in the 1880s to address these concerns. Although largely a forgotten force, the New Orleans bakers’ union is an important piece of the city's baking and labor history. It is responsible for what are now considered standard labor practices (eight-hour workday, overtime, paid vacation, and safety measures).

On January 13, 1886, representatives from the local bakers’ union joined those from ten other cities in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to establish the Journeymen Bakers’ National Union. In New Orleans, the Journeymen Bakers’ Union presented a list of demands at their offices at No. 52 and 54 Exchange Place (now 220 Exchange Alley). [1] Although the union occupied several different downtown addresses throughout its existence, this first recorded location was on a busy commercial thoroughfare that housed several other labor organizations. A group of fifty-three mostly small bakery owners formed a separate Baker Bosses’ Union to “support and assist the Journeymen Bakers’ Union.” [2] It was later renamed the Master Bakers Association of New Orleans and was tasked with negotiating agreements with the labor union.

By 1892, the union expanded to include ice cream and candy makers, renaming itself Union of Journeymen Bakers and Confectioners. 1892 also marked the general strike in New Orleans when several other labor movements joined together to force business owners to negotiate. The bakers’ union demands included a closed union shop, a six-day workweek, a twelve-hour day (fifteen on Friday), the abolishment of forced lodging, union product labeling, and two holidays. [3] Most of the owners agreed to the union demands. [4]

One unexpected result of the union’s action to highlight working conditions was an increased public concern not for the well-being of bakers, but customers, due to perceived unhygienic bakeries and “unclean bread.” Advertisements in the early 1900s emphasized “sanitary bakeries” and bread “untouched by human hands.” [5] The New Orleans Health Department passed several related sanitary ordinances around this time, requiring bread to be placed behind a screen or wrapped. A 1909 newspaper article described the "crusade" of the pure food department of the city's Board of Health to enforce bakery ordinances. The inspectors frequently targeted immigrant bakers in the Sicilian section of the French Quarter. [6]

The bakers' union continued to strengthen in size and power, becoming one of the city's largest labor organizations. [7] The New Orleans branch of the union, Local No. 35, opened its doors to Black bakers in 1918, a rare example of an interracial bakers' association in the South, but common in a city where Black and white laborers often worked together in the same trade. [8] A 1939 bulletin by the United States Department of Labor titled "Wages, Hours, and Working Conditions in Union Bakeries" points to a changing industry and union. As bakery work shifted from small hands-on shops to factory-type bakeries, the list of job descriptions moved beyond ovenmen, mixers, and benchmen to include machine operators, maintenance men, elevator operators, clerks, and janitors. The union bakeries in New Orleans maintained more hands-on jobs than other cities. They also had slightly lower wages and a longer workweek than other cities. [9]

Collective bargaining negotiations preceding a threatened strike in 1947 revealed that 90% of bakeries in New Orleans employed union labor. These 1,100 union bakers produced 700,000 loaves of bread per day to feed a city. [10] While the bakers’ union no longer operates in New Orleans, many of the benefits and conditions it fought for still linger in the city’s remaining traditional bread bakeries. Local No. 35 laid the groundwork for bakery workers to earn their daily bread.

For more (including 4 images) view the original article

The intersection of St. Peter and Royal Streets is loud and busy with the passing hustle of to-go drinks, music, and tourists, making it hard to notice a faded patch of tile work outside the corner grocery store located at 701 Royal Street. However, this almost hidden marker is a powerful reminder of a long line of baking and confectionary businesses that once occupied the space and built on French and Spanish colonial baking traditions.

Mannessier’s Confectionary was the last of several bakeries to operate out of the location. An 1895 photograph shows the elegant and ornate interior of Mannessier’s, lined with the above-mentioned tilework. (Pictured below) According to owner Adolph LeClerc’s 1912 obituary, “he owned a confectionary at the time of his death, which is noted throughout the city as one of the landmarks of the old French section.” [1] The first recorded bakery to operate out of this location was Cadet’s Bakery (1789 to 1824). Frenchman Jacques Molon (or Moulon) established Cadet’s in a rear structure facing St. Peter Street and operated a mill "in which coarse flour, floated down the Mississippi River on flatboats, was reground to a finer grade – the grade that made the loaves Cadet sold over the counters of his corner store second to none. No other baker made a better brioche." [2]

Bakers and millers were among the first laborers sent by the French government to New Orleans in 1718, bringing the supplies and knowledge necessary to establish strong bread-making and bread-eating traditions. The first recorded commercial bakery in New Orleans was for a baker named Francois Lemelle (or Lemesle), who operated under the alias of “Bellegarde” at the corner of St. Ann and Chartres Streets. [3] These transplanted French bakers relied on standard methods and recipes. The types of bread baked resembled those popular in eighteenth-century France – large dense round loaves of mixed grains, smaller enriched loaves of white flour, and hard, long-lasting biscuits suitable for sea voyages. Bakeries often produced two qualities of bread, one of more refined quality and one of second quality, for those unable to afford the higher-priced loaves. This two-tiered bread system continued into the next century and reinforced bread as a marker of social class. [4] Eventually, the more elite white loaves of bread became the norm, replacing the large whole grain loaves. [5] Today, small artisan bakeries are again reversing the trend, returning to whole grain rustic loaves, but this time at an elevated status/price.

Bakeries in eighteenth-century New Orleans also resembled bakeries of the same time in France -- equipped with one or more wood-burning brick ovens, wooden peels to move the loaves in and out, long wooden dough troughs to mix the dough, and a workbench to weigh and shape loaves. By 1820, approximately sixty French bakers and confectioners operated in New Orleans close to the Mississippi River – a source for the water needed to make bread. Rainwater collected in outdoor cisterns provided an additional source of water. While the bread baked at Cadet’s bakery maintained a French identity, the bakery opened when New Orleans was under Spanish colonial control. The Spanish colonial forces had a lasting impact on bread-making history in New Orleans not through recipes but by implementing ordinances on the price of flour and the size and price of bread due to flour shortages. The Municipal Council of New Orleans also taxed the number of barrels of flour bakers consumed to collect funds for the city's illumination system. This tax replaced a system of taxation based on the number of chimneys on each building, obsolete following a fire in 1784 that destroyed many buildings and chimneys. [6] These government regulations contributed to the standardization of a loaf of bread in the city.

After Cadet’s bakery closed, several other bakers and confectioners operated in that same location (Leblanc, Lefevre, Tambelli, Vincent, Desbonnes and Bonnecayes, Mannessier, and LeClerc). [7] While always evolving and adapting, the bread-making traditions of New Orleans remain firmly established in the familiar identity of the early French bakers.

For more (including 8 images) view the original article

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.

For more (including 8 images) view the original article

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.

For more (including 8 images) view the original article

Before the Civil War, enslaved labor was an integral part of the commercial baking industry and the overall economy in New Orleans. While food historians note the role that French, Spanish, and Anglo colonial bakers played in shaping the city’s early bread-making traditions, they often exclude the contributions of enslaved Africans, Free People of Color, and Afro-Creoles from the narrative.[1] By tracing some of New Orleans' antebellum bread bakers' history and piecing together fragments from the archives (legal documents, census records, fugitive slave advertisements) a parallel story of forgotten forced labor unfolds.

Records show several prominent antebellum bakeries in the French Quarter, including those belonging to Louis D’Aquin, Widow Bouny, and Paul Desdunes Poincy, who relied on enslaved labor. [2] The above-mentioned bakery owners worked within a two-block radius of each other, respectively located at 840-842 Royal Street, 921-25 Chartres Street, and 530-36 Dumaine Street. They were members of an exodus from the West Indies to Louisiana in the 1790s and early 1800s following the Saint-Domingue revolution (present-day Haiti). This wave of refugees, referred to as the Foreign French, fortified a dwindling French presence in New Orleans in the face of encroaching Americanization. Many of these white refugees from the West Indies were involved in the trades and crafts, including baking. [3]

Enslavers profited from the skills of enslaved bakers but often placed little value on keeping families intact. Advertisements list for sale or lease “machinery and fixtures for carrying on the baking business with or without 6 negroes, all superior bakers.” [4] An 1847 auction advertisement in the Times-Picayune lists the names of twenty enslaved persons, all fluent in French and English, with a wide range of skills, including the following experienced bakers:

“Washington – aged 32 years, excellent baker, capable of taking charge of any bakery. Jacob – aged 27 years, good baker, salesman, and oven man. Bazile – aged 27, excellent miche baker and salesman, also, oven hand. Zeno – aged 24, baker, somewhat of a pastry cook, tailor and a remarkably handy boy. Barm – aged 24 years, excellent hard bread baker and understands the making of dough. Reuben – aged 25 years, excellent hard bread baker, hostler, coachman and valuable boy for taking care of horses. Monday – aged about 45 years, an excellent pastry maker, good confectioner and strictly honest.” [5]

An 1856 auction advertisement for the indebted “F. D’Aquin and Co.” bakery (the predecessor to Margaret Haughery’s Steam Bakery) lists the property for sale, including building leases, machinery, utensils, wagons, bread carts, horses, and thirty-eight enslaved persons, from age sixty-one to eighteen months. The advertisement lists the enslaved workers' skills, including oven repairman, flour sifter, dough mixer, yeast maker, carpenter, drayman, bread seller, and the types of bread baked (hard bread, soft bread, loaf bread). [6]

Fugitive slave advertisements illustrate the cruelty of slavery, with mention of injuries and physical bondage including chains, and neck and leg irons. Fugitive slave advertisements also show how enslaved bakery workers moved through the city and shared expert knowledge– both as vendors traversing the streets and markets, and as human property transferred between enslavers. Multiple listings suggest that some enslaved people who worked in bakeries made several attempts to escape bondage and that some even succeeded in their quest for self-emancipation. [7]

Labor is an essential foundation of the bread-making history of New Orleans. Whether brought into the business by family ties, economic necessity, or (in the case of slavery), force, the people who mixed dough, shoveled embers or hawked wares on the street reflect the complex multi-faceted history of New Orleans and its bread. Reinscribing enslaved people and their baking skills in this history demonstrates the significance of forced labor to the growth and development of one of the city’s most beloved and iconic industries.

For more (including 12 images) view the original article

In the early to mid 20th century, Canal Street was home to the New Orleans' largest department stores. Prior to the creation of department stores, shops typically specialized in one commodity. But, with the introduction of department stores such as D. H. Holmes, Maison Blanche, Mayfair, and Godcheaux’s, shoppers could often find everything they wanted under one roof.

Shopping on Canal Street was the place to see and be seen in New Orleans. [1] Judy Rabouin Tarantino, who grew up in Gentilly and shopped on Canal Street every Saturday afternoon, recalled: “My mother always made sure my sister and I were dressed with hats and gloves and stockings when we went downtown to have lunch with my grandmother at D.H. Holmes’ lunch counter." [2] Dr. Ernest Tarantino, a retired New Orleans dentist born and raised in Lakeview, recalled shopping on Canal Street as a child with his mother and aunt. “We would have lunch at Kraus’ because my uncle worked there as an accountant. Then we shopped on Canal Street while waiting for him to leave work.” [3]

Erected in 1915 after a fire destroyed the previous structure, the four-story building at 1015 Canal Street played host to numerous shops. Some of the shops that occupied that first floor include Noah’s Ark, Burt’s Shoe Store, Mayfair Department Store, Foot & Fashion, and, most recently, Rainbow clothing and accessories. Residences, offices, and salons often occupied the buildings' upper levels.

Mayfair Department Store, which occupied 1015 Canal Street from 1951 to 1981, was the building’s longest-standing tenant. In an interview featured in Peggy Scott Laborde and John Magill’s Canal Street, Yvonne LaFleur, a milliner and dress shop owner who worked in numerous Canal Street department stores, described Mayfair as a go-to shopping destination "if you couldn't afford a fancy dress.” According to LaFleur, Mayfair, like some other Canal Street shops, “would allow you to put things on layaway, in which you'd pay a certain amount weekly or monthly or when you budget allowed.” [4]

For more (including 6 images) view the original article

While Marie Laveau worshipped at Catholic Mass in St. Louis Cathedral, she likely practiced Vodou at Congo Square. While no official documents place Laveau at Congo Square, many eyewitness accounts reported seeing her there. Congo Square is an important site of spirituality in New Orleans and has become associated with Marie Laveau throughout the years.

Congo Square is located in Louis Armstrong Park at the corner of North Rampart and St. Peter streets. For much of its history, Congo Square was not much but a field. Its earliest use was as a public market space where people could sell wares or services. Enslaved Africans during the French colonial era were exempt from work on Sundays as codified in the Code Noir. On Sundays, enslaved people would participate in the market to gain personal money. It was in this meeting place that Africans and Afro-Creoles began to dance and perform their African culture, drawing the ever-curious eyes of Europeans and Americans. [1]

While no official records place Marie Laveau at Congo Square, it is very likely she had been there numerous times throughout her life. Catherine Henry, Laveau’s grandmother, earned money as a marchande, or street vendor, and probably frequented the markets at Congo Square with her young granddaughter in tow. Numerous WPA interviewees discussed Marie Laveau’s role in leading Congo Square dances on Sunday afternoon. One interview stated, “She come walkin’ into Congo Square wit’ her head up in the air like a queen. Her skirts swished when she walked and everybody step back to let her pass. All the people-white and colored- start sayin’ that’s the most powerful woman they is. They say, ‘There goes Marie Laveau!” [2] Another interviewee stated, “Sometimes them policemans tried to keep Marie Laveau out, but she jest hypnotized ‘em and walked in. She could do that to anybody what got in her way. I seen her make polices get down and bark like dogs.” [3]

Whether or not Marie Laveau led dances at Congo Square, this specific square would have held great importance from her. One block away in her home, she would have heard the drums and dancing at Congo Square if she was not already there. As the leader of the Vodou community in New Orleans, Congo Square would have held immense importance to Laveau, as this area was where enslaved people and free people of color could unapologetically celebrate their African heritage, even if just for a few hours. In a society where enslavers purposely repressed the ethnic and religious heritage of enslaved people, Congo Square was where many people learned about their African roots.

For more (including 2 images) view the original article

Katz & Besthoff, Ltd., later known as K&B, was a drug store chain headquartered in New Orleans throughout much of the 20th century. 1011 Canal Street was home to one of the chain's 186 storefronts.

In 1905, Gustave Katz and Sydney Besthoff opened the original Katz & Besthoff drugstore at 732 Canal Street. Gustave Katz was an established New Orleans pharmacist, and Sydney Besthoff was a successful drugstore owner from Memphis, Tennessee.

K&B was known for its signature “K&B Purple” branding. There are several stories that explain how the color branding came to be, all of which date from 1908 to 1911. According to one such story, early 19th century retailers wrapped customer purchases in paper and tie it into a bundle for them to carry home. In 1911, Sydney Besthoff’s wife was shopping to buy wrapping paper for the K&B stores. Money was tight in those early years and ways to save money on operating costs were important. She came across some purple wrapping paper that was on sale because no one wanted such an outlandish color. But, seeing the savings in costs, she secured as much of the paper as she could and returned to the store. The purple paper soon became a K&B slogan: “If it’s purple on the outside, it’s only the BEST from Katz and BESThoff on the inside.”

Katz and Besthoff develop a business that grew into a popular part of New Orleans culture with multiple drugstores throughout the city. In 1926, Sydney Besthoff died of a heart attack, and his son, Sydney Besthoff III, became more involved in the business. In 1940, after Gustave Katz passed away, the Besthoffs bought out the Katz Family’s stake in the business.

By 1955, after 50 years of business, K&B operated eighteen stores. In the 1960s, after K&B’s expansive growth, the company’s corporate headquarters, then located at 900 Camp Street, relocated to larger offices at 1055 St. Charles Avenue. The new office space was initially leased from the John Hancock Insurance Company. In the early 1970s, K&B purchased the building from John Hancock and renamed the site “K&B Plaza.”

In 1997, Rite Aid purchased the entire K&B drug store chain, including 186 stores located in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, and Texas. The Besthoff family still occupies offices at 1055 St. Charles Avenue where they manage real estate, art collections, and other family interests.

Since selling K&B, the Besthoff families have engaged in philanthropic endeavors in New Orleans. In the 1980s, the Bestoffs donated the vacant K&B headquarters and warehouse at 900 Camp Street to form the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center. The Besthoff family has also donated substantial artworks to many venues in the City of New Orleans including The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, which adjoins the New Orleans Museum of Art.

For more (including 8 images) view the original article

In 1930, Signer Sewing Company hired local architects Charles Favrot and Louis A. Livaudais to erect a Neoclassical style storefront at 934 Canal Street to house a flagship Singer Sewing Center. [1, 2]

In 1850, Isaac M. Singer invented the first practical sewing machine for general domestic use. This sewing machine was the “first to embody features allowing continuous and curved stitching, his machine employed an overhanging arm holding the needle bar over a horizontal table, thus making it possible to sew on any part of the work.” [3]  In 1855, Singer’s invention won first prize at the Paris World’s Fair. In 1885, Singer demonstrated the first workable electric sewing machine at the Philadelphia electric exhibition. In 1910, Singer began mass-producing domestic electric sewing machines. [4]

During the early twentieth century, the sewing machine increased the speed at which women could fabricate goods and clothing in the home. By 1951, according to SVP, the company that now owns the Signer brand, it is estimated that Signer Sewing Centers trained over 400,000 housewives to sew in one of the 600 Singer Sewing Centers located nationwide. [5] When visiting the Signer Sewing Center at 934 Canal Street, women could purchase sewing machines and notions, in addition to attending classes to educate themselves on how to use the machinery and additional sewing skills such as embroidering and quilting.

The Singer Sewing Center provided a space for women to gather and socialize. Here women could meet together to learn new skills and discuss personal matters and popular culture, in turn creating a culture all their own. Singer Sewing Centers advertised their store as a place women could go to learn hemstitching, picoting, and covering buttons, and come out “walking on air.” [6] According to a 1947 Life Magazine advertisement, Signer only sold their machines in their sewing centers, “never through department stores or other outlets,” further solidifying the sewing centers as a meeting place for women while ensuring Signer secured the greatest profit possible. [6] The Singer Center created a new culture all its own centered around homemakers and women who wanted to create things.

For more (including 7 images) view the original article

In 1952, Lawrence Sintes Sr. opened Sintes Boat Works on the edge of Orleans Marina in Lake Pontchartrain with his oldest son, Lawrence Sintes Jr. The Sintes family’s move to the area, known as the West End neighborhood, coincided with a re-emergence of resorts, restaurants, and amusement rides on the lakefront that drew more tourists and locals to Lake Pontchartrain’s coastal neighborhoods.

The completion of the 1926 Lakefront Land Reclamation Project expanded the amount of habitable West End property and led to an increase in the neighborhood’s population. It was on this reclaimed land that the Sintes family laid the foundations for their home and business. When Sintes Boat Works first opened, Lawrence Sintes Jr. and his father constructed wooden boats, but they soon transitioned to repairing boats harbored in Lake Pontchartrain.

Living and working in the West End for four generations, the Sintes family has experienced significant changes to their neighborhood, from natural disasters displacing community members, to the slow loss of uninhabited land to condominiums. In order to ensure the business’s ongoing success, Lawrence Sintes Jr. and his younger brother, David “Dave” Sintes, embraced modern boat construction technologies. Dave Sintes Jr. introduced modern computer technology to enable the business to construct better boats at a faster pace, while Lawrence Sintes Jr. continued to do what the Sinteses are known for- providing reliable and expert repairs. In 1981, Lawrence Sintes Jr.’s son, Steve Sintes Sr., was the third generation to join the family boatyard, ensuring that Sintes Boat Works would continue well into the future.

Boatbuilding is a Sintes family tradition that has gone on longer than anyone in the family can remember. They are masters of their craft. The Sintes family has left their mark on every boat they have built and repaired. Through their business, the Sintes family has helped the West End’s maritime lake community thrive.

For more (including 2 images & 2 videos) view the original article

On December 31, 2019, the Algiers Tricentennial Committee and the Algiers community of New Orleans dedicated this historic Middle Passage marker at what is now the Algiers Courthouse honoring those who perished and those who survived the trans-Atlantic trade of Africans in bondage.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, as Africans were shipped to New Orleans, this region of the city was a French colonial encampment originally managed by Le Page du Pratz on which cabins housed the enslaved. According to geographer Richard Campanella, Ph.D., this area was used as a “warehouse, workshop, lumber mill and a farm in service of the principal colony across the river. Its primary use, however, was as a depository for captive Africans recently arrived from Senegambia as well as the Bight of Benin and Congo regions. Known as the Company Plantation, the site in the 1720s had more than 30 cabins used for the temporary sheltering of slaves until they were sold to colonists, or for their permanent housing if they were owned by the Company itself — as were 154 people at one point, making present-day Algiers Point, according to historian Erin M. Greenwald, the location of 'the largest single group of enslaved men, women, and children living in Louisiana.’ ”

Historians Freddi Evans and Erin Greenwald explain that “the first ship to arrive at this site was the Expédition, which landed 91 enslaved people, most from the Senegambian region, in 1723 . . . By 1725, the vast majority of enslaved people brought from West and West Central Africa to be sold in Louisiana were put on shore near this site, some receiving treatment at the plantation hospital before being sold to owners in New Orleans and the surrounding area.” As the trade continued, “under French, Spanish, and American rule, approximately 12,000 documented—along with an untold number of undocumented—men, women, and children were forced aboard ships bound for Louisiana . . . where the enslaved labored, 'clearing land, growing and processing rice to feed the colony, and tending cattle'." They also worked on the "colony's waterways" and "across the river as skilled craftsmen -- blacksmiths, carpenters, coopers, masons, roofers, and more" (Evans and Greenwald).

In Algiers, the business of the human trade, both international and domestic, was a principal factor in this city’s fiscal, social, and cultural development. This site, as a port of entry, has been designated a “Site of Memory” associated with the UNESCO Slave Route Project.

For more (including 9 images) view the original article

Claiborne Avenue, from Treme to the 7th Ward, is a corridor packed to the rafters with memory, resistance and a refusal to be assimilated, dominated and denigrated. It is rockin’ – from one side to the other - with a resounding sense of life and history but also with evidence of development that has disenfranchised black residents and black-property and business owners. Claiborne tells multiple stories – stories of displacement and condemnation, absence and presence, erasure and memory, the past and the present.

Claiborne folds time so that the past cannot be forgotten and so that folks who created life out of what was once a plantation still press upon the present saying there is another way forward, there is another possible future that does not exclude, does not degrade, does not devalue.

Claiborne reminds us of possibilities, it witnesses the past in order to call forward new trajectories – new life, new ways of loving the place of a stoop, the shade of an oak tree, the echo of a brass band.

The murals that line the concrete underpass trace this corridor’s history of black-owned businesses into the present. They bring back the oak trees that once lined the neutral ground. They challenge conceptions of progress that have repeatedly asked black communities to suffer and sacrifice.

The La Branche Pharmacy and the Standard Life Insurance Company are here – just as they were in the past - speaking not just to the power of holding onto history and the life and vibrancy that were in these spaces but to holding these forces into the present moments.

They witness – they shape – they create space for the present practices of second lines, Mardi Gras Indians, brass band music. These murals are the structural roots of a new space – a new moment – they inform the present to create a new future. Perhaps what most embodies Claiborne is its duality – as a corridor, it represents life and a fight for a future where racism doesn’t construct highway overpasses and clear oak trees, where love reconstructs buildings, streets, and space.

For more (including 2 images) view the original article

In the 1920s, the William H. Todd Corporation built Todd Shipyards on the shore of the Mississippi River in an area once known as McClellanville. The shipyard was located near the Algiers Naval Station at the present-day intersection of Merrill and Patterson streets. Since the early days of shipping in New Orleans, the West Bank of the Mississippi River housed industries that supported the area’s shipping traffic. While loading docks and ports were mostly on the East Bank of the river, dry docks and ship repair facilities were on the opposite bank of the river in Algiers and nearby communities.

In 1936, Todd Shipyards merged with nearby Johnson Iron Works. The resulting combined industry brought economic growth to the area with jobs at the docks in addition to other local supporting businesses including food, housing, utilities, and supplies.

During World War II, Todd-Johnson Dry Docks, as it was known for a time, covered 73 acres that included 50 buildings covering 228,000 square feet. There were 6,400 linear feet of wharves along the river and two dry docks that could lift ships weighing up to 20,000 displacement tons. Over 4,000 people worked around the clock to build and repair military craft including submarines.

In 1944, Mel Ott, Gretna born right fielder for the New York Giants, joined Todd-Johnson’s personnel department during baseball’s off season for a “winter war job.”

After the war, Todd Shipyards continued shipbuilding and repair operations in this location for several decades. In 1979, Todd Shipyards lengthened the wharf by 450 feet and constructed new dry dock facilities. In the early 1980s, military defense buildup of the Reagan administration provided more work for the shipyards.

In the 1980s, Todd Shipyards, like many shipyards throughout the nation, fell on economic hard times as demand for domestic commercial shipbuilding waned. On June 3, 1985, 136 Todd Shipyard employees went on strike to combat proposed cuts to pay and benefits. Just six months after the strike began, Todd Shipyard closed. Todd Shipyards (which operated additional shipyards in Houston, Los Angeles, and Seattle) filed for bankruptcy protection. In 1987, the Port of New Orleans acquired the shipyard's 21 acres and remaining equipment for $6.9 million in settlement of the company’s debt.

Todd Shipyards’ docks, wharves, and buildings no longer stand. The site of the shipyard is currently green space. In 2018, the Port of New Orleans asked the city to alter the site’s zoning from green space to maritime use to permit shipping, docking, and industrial activity. As of September 2019, the Port withdrew its application and no changes were planned due to serious community opposition.

For more (including 3 images) view the original article

This peach-colored commercial building is a landmark of both journalism and the struggle for civil rights in 19th Century New Orleans. Here were the original offices of the New Orleans Tribune, first Black-owned daily newspaper in the United States and a fierce champion for Black rights during and after the Civil War.

Running the Tribune were its founder Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, his brother Jean Baptiste Roudanez, and the newspaper’s editor Paul Trèvigne, all free people of color; they would be joined by the Belgian Jean-Charles Houzeau, who would publish a memoir of his time at the Tribune. Emerging from the French-language L’Union, which launched in 1862 as the first Black-owned newspaper of the South, the bi-lingual Tribune debuted as a daily in 1864. It enjoyed a run of more than a thousand issues before it closed in 1869.

The leaders of the Tribune were close to the Herriman family. Among the political actions promoted by L’Union was a petition to Abraham Lincoln demanding voting rights, which was signed by one thousand free men of color, including George Herriman’s father and grandfather. Jean Baptiste Roudanez along with Arnold Bertonneau — a friend of the Herrimans’ — directly presented the petition to Lincoln.

The Herriman & Chessé tailor shop on Royal Street stood just blocks from the Tribune office, and the two institutions were even closer to each other when the Tribune moved to 122-124 Exchange Alley. Not surprisingly, the Herrimans show up frequently in the Tribune’s pages. An advertisement for an 1865 lecture by Madam Louise De Mortie — a free Black from Boston who had moved to New Orleans to assist the Colored Orphans Home — included the Herriman & Chessé shop among the establishments that were selling tickets. George Herriman Sr.’s participation from everything to the Fraternité 20 lodge to Republican party meetings was noted in the pages of the Tribune. And when the cartoonist’s great-grandmother Justine Olivier perished in a steamboat accident in 1866, the Tribune printed the sad news on its front page, noting that Olivier was a “well-known and universally respected lady.”

For more (including 6 images) view the original article

George Joseph Herriman’s grandfather had been working as a tailor since at least 1847, when he was twenty-seven years old, and he had been in business with his half-brother Alexander Laurent Chessé since at least 1850. In 1854, shortly following the death of each of their fathers, Herriman and Chessé opened a tailor shop at this location on busy Royal Street, and it remained a productive business for the next thirty years.

The Herriman & Chessé tailor shop occupied the ground floor of the three-story building at 318 Royal Street. Here, they sold clothing made from fabrics that they would purchase themselves on trips to France. There were two counters for serving customers, along with two glass display cases, and a large cedar chest. In addition to purchasing fine clothing, customers might also pick up tickets to political rallies as well as news of the latest political and cultural activities.

In the top floor of the building was an upscale apartment that brought some unwelcome notoriety to the building in 1879, when a man named William Beasley was seen throwing a woman named Missouri Jane Hebert from the gallery; he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to twenty years of hard labor.

Despite this interruption, work at the tailor shop proceeded until 1887, when George Herriman Sr. brought his son into the business, renaming it Herriman & Son. The shop moved to 118 Customhouse Street, where father and son worked together for three years, until George Herriman Jr. moved his family to California, never to return. In Los Angeles, George Herriman Jr. continued to work as a tailor in a series of shops and small factories, and became active in the Tailors’ Union No. 81.

There are only a few references to the tailor profession in George Herriman’s comics. When asked about his childhood, Herriman would usually say he was the son of a baker. He never explained why.

For more (including 5 images) view the original article

The year was 1865; the Confederacy had just been defeated, and many emancipated African Americans departed the cane and cotton fields for New Orleans. Louisiana planters scrambled to assemble a new labor force, as did railroad investors, and learned that their peers in the Caribbean, in the wake of emancipation there, had imported thousands of East Asian and South Asian laborers.

Intrigued, Louisiana planters in 1867 dispatched agents to recruit a few hundred Chinese workers out of Cuba. That effort was interrupted by war, so the agents instead hired 1600 Chinese out of California, and later China proper, and brought them to lower Louisiana to work on plantations and railroads.

Recruitment faced various obstacles, and those Chinese who did land in Louisiana resisted exploitative work conditions and low pay. By the early 1870s, planters began to look elsewhere for contract labor, and the Chinese workers headed for the hope of the city.

The 1880 Census recorded 95 Chinese living in New Orleans and 489 in Louisiana; most were young men residing in boarding houses and apartments, employed in laundering, cooking and cigar-making, a skill learned in Cuba.

In 1882, the Canal Street Presbyterian Church opened a Chinese Mission at 215 South Liberty Street. Serving over 200 people, the service made this Third Ward neighborhood a hub for the city’s Chinese population. By the 1900s, seven Chinese markets, groceries, and merchandise shops filled the 1100 block of Tulane Avenue, and an equal number operated nearby. Surrounding Chinatown was one of the city’s most fascinating neighborhoods. On adjacent South Rampart were jazz venues and integrated shops owned by Orthodox Jews, Italians and African Americans; a block away stood the Knights of Pythias Temple, the largest black-owned building in the nation; and across the street was the ominous Parish Prison and Criminal Courthouse, with its medieval-looking turrets and tower.

In terms of size, Chinatown remained stable because exclusionary immigration laws had restricted the flow of Asian immigrants to the United States. By the 1920s, the local Chinese American population had become increasingly middle-class, more mobile, and less dependent on its old enclave. In 1926, the Presbytery moved its Chinese Mission to Mid City, and in 1937, merchants lost their lease on 1100 Tulane Avenue. This brought an end to the original Chinatown — but not to the enclave itself. “Chinatown is moving lock, stock, and herb barrel,” reported The Times-Picayune, to the French Quarter.

By the 1940s, about ten Chinese businesses operated around 500 Bourbon, and the new Chinatown became a part of midcentury Quarter culture. Bourbon Street’s transformation to the entertainment strip of today paralleled the Chinese merchants’ gradual departure for Jefferson Parish, where most descendants live today. Many still worship at the Chinese Presbyterian Church, now located on West Esplanade Avenue in Kenner.

All that remains of the original Chinatown is one old brick wall, and the only visible trace of the second enclave is the fading hand-painted sign of the On Leong Merchants Association at 530½ Bourbon Street.

For more view the original article

In 1948, facing increased public health concerns, the Louisiana State Legislature passed a law prohibiting open-air landfills in highly populated areas. [1] However, New Orleans city officials sidestepped this law to continue operating Agriculture Street Landfill (ASL) by transforming the dump into a so-called "sanitary landfill." At ASL, the implementation of sanitary landfill procedures included spraying the dump with Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT). [2] DDT, a powerful insecticide, is now infamous for its detrimental environmental impact and carcinogenic capacity.

Before 1956, ASL operators regularly sprayed the chemical Malathion to kill flies. After a particularly intense fly infestation in 1956, the city oversaw “experimental spraying” with Diazinon. [3] In 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designated Malathion a probable carcinogen. [4] Diazinon is toxic to humans, negatively impacting cardiovascular, respiratory, and nervous systems. In 2004, the EPA outlawed the residential use of Diazinon.

In the 2018 interview featured below, longtime Gordon Plaza resident Shannon Rainey describes discovering toxic chemicals in her backyard.

For more (including 1 video) view the original article

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.”

For more (including 5 images) view the original article

Centrally located in the Seventh Ward, the St. Bernard Market began as a public market, part of an expansive network of public markets across New Orleans, in 1854. It carried everything from produce to livestock, including — as lore has it — enslaved people who were auctioned on the second floor of the building. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Market experienced a sharp decline and eventually shuttered in 1915. The building was subsequently transferred three times before coming to Ninth Ward native Herbert Gabriel and his brother Mike in 1954.

The son of dairyman Miguel Gabriel who immigrated to New Orleans from Mississippi, Herbert Gabriel milked cows and unloaded fruit box cars with his father and, coincidentally, sold fruit at the St. Bernard Market. Mr. Gabriel would have grown up with self-service neighborhood stores like Puglia’s and Matassa’s Groceries, but he “changed the game” by pioneering one-stop shopping.

Named for the streetcar turnaround at St. Bernard Circle, Circle Food Realty and Circle Drug Store merged in 1969 creating the Circle Food Store. From its earliest days, Circle had offered everything! Dirt-still-on produce. Fully qualified butchers. Live chickens to be wrung and plucked for Sunday dinner.

Through the years, offerings evolved into shelf stable, packaged items, but there was always fresh produce — plus bicycles, uniforms, schoolsupplies, Easter baskets and dresses. And if that weren’t enough, a physician, pharmacy, chiropractor, dentist, and full-service bank operated on site.

Known city-wide for its bell peppers, in 1991 Circle became known nationwide for becoming one of only 46 black-owned-and- operated groceries in the US when long-time manager Dwayne Boudreaux took over ownership. It was business as usual for a time, until the storm came. A photograph taken from the overpass above Circle Foods, showed its arched entryways filled with floodwaters, and became one of the iconic images of New Orleans’ near destruction.

The new management struggled to reopen post-Katrina, but with assistance from government funding and university design and planning, opening day in January of 2014 was a celebration of years of effort and hope for a revitalized Seventh Ward. For four years, Circle Foods struggled with the financial burdens of repeated flooding, mounting debt, and changing neighborhood demographics, before finally succumbing. In December 2018, it shut its doors for the last time.

For more view the original article

By 1985, just four years after the first residents moved into Gordon Plaza, state environmentalists recommended testing soil and air in the Gordon Plaza subdivision to determine the extent of hazardous wastes underneath the houses that were built over an old landfill. Testing performed at the site of the new Moton Elementary School in 1983-1984 revealed high levels of toxic chemicals in the soil. Due to their proximity to the contaminated school site, Gordon Plaza residents demanded the testing of their own soil. It was at this point that residents discovered their homes were built on the former Agricultural Street Landfill, where many of the growing industries of New Orleans dumped their toxic chemicals and garbage for over fifty years. [1] A Times-Picayune article from October 3, 1986, states that “residents and local environmentalists were still concerned with the toxic chemicals after Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials told them that lead was the only one in over 130 toxic chemicals discovered in levels high enough to generate health concerns.”

Following a sewage leak in 1993, concerns over the toxicity of Gordon Plaza land surfaced once again. Despite earlier assertions that the pollutant levels were not dangerous, the EPA designated the Gordon Plaza subdivision as a Superfund site in 1994. The initial reaction of the community was positive because they believed they would be able to get access to funding for relocation, however, this would not prove to be the result. The EPA encouraged people not to dig in their yards or gardens. Relocation of Gordon Plaza residents was not considered as a solution by the EPA. In 1994, the first class-action lawsuit was filed by Press Park and Gordon Plaza residents against the city of New Orleans, the New Orleans school board, and two unnamed construction companies, for knowingly putting their houses in a contaminated area. In 2001 the EPA oversaw the installation of a layer of topsoil on Gordon Plaza properties to form a barrier from the toxic land. This soil was washed away by flooding during Hurricane Katrina.

In the videos below, longtime Gordon Plaza resident Shannon Rainey discusses the impact that toxic chemicals buried underneath Gordon Plaza have had on her, her family, and her neighbors.

For more (including 3 images & 2 videos) view the original article

In the 1970s, under the administrations of Mayors “Moon” Landrieu and his successor “Dutch” Morial, the city planned and built housing for elderly and low-income families on the former site of Agriculture Street Landfill (ASL).

The city of New Orleans was able to fund this development with federal money available through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) via Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG/CD Grant) under the auspices of improving Desire Community Housing, a public housing complex build near ASL in the 1950s. Throughout the nation, low-income public housing complexes like Desire were created by the federal government beginning in the 1930s. Although they alleviated the housing shortage created by the depression economy, these complexes were segregated by design, ushering in a new era of systematic racial segregation in the United States. [1]

Federal policies of developing segregated housing while simultaneously refusing to ensure home mortgages in racially mixed areas, a policy known as redlining, made rentals in public housing like Desire Projects one of few options for African-American households until the Fair Housing Act of 1968. [2] By 1975, Press Park and Gordon Plaza Apartments for the Elderly expanded these public housing options. Gordon Plaza was designed as a residential development for low-income homebuyers in areas directly adjacent to Desire Housing Project, which, because of the segregated history of public housing, was primarily African-American.

Construction of single-family homes, apartments in Press Park, and the Senior Center in Gordon Plaza began in 1978. On August 26, 1979, an advertisement listed in the Times Picayune alerted the public that “applications are now being accepted for 128 units of Gordon Plaza Elderly and Handicapped Complex… All apartments will be under the Section 8 Subsidy Programs.” Advertisements for Gordon Plaza properties clearly targeted low-income families and senior citizens. By 1981, residents begin to move into the Gordon Plaza neighborhood.

Soon after the development opened, city officials began to receive complaints concerning deficiencies at Gordon Plaza and Press Park. In a letter to the mayor's office and Community Improvement Agency dated June 26, 1980, Philip C. Ciaccio, Councilman of District E, stated:

"I attended a ceremony at the Gordon Plaza Apartments for the Elderly at the end of May and observed that the meeting room was extremely warm because several of the air-conditioning units were inoperative...I took the time to discuss the existence of various deficiencies in the building...I am particularly disturbed by the apparent run-around they are getting, particular the brand new air-conditioning units that are inoperable." [3] Enclosed with this letter was a list of complaints about the development, five pages long.

In the videos below, longtime Gordon Plaza resident Shannon Rainey shares her experiences purchasing a home in Gordon Plaza.

For more (including 6 images & 2 videos) view the original article