The Saint Louis Cathedral is an iconic fixture of the New Orleans landscape. The present structure is at least the third building to serve as a Catholic church here since the French occupied the territory in 1718. In 2024, three hundred years after the first permanent structure was erected on the site, the building needed serious renovations. The Archdiocese contacted the University of New Orleans’s (UNO) Department of Anthropology during test excavations along the Cathedral’s foundation meant to inform those plans.

Dr. Ryan Gray from UNO led a team of students and volunteers to expose the centuries of history accumulated in layers across the site. The team found Indigenous, French, Spanish, and English pottery, beads and elements from religious medals, straight pins that fastened muslin cloth to the windows to allow light into the building before glass was available in the colony, stained glass fragments, and other artifacts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

At the time of this writing, UNO is still processing artifacts from the series of excavations. Please look for updates from our future website (www.gnoarch.com) expected to go live in Summer of 2024.

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St. Louis Cemetery #1 on Basin Street, once outside the city limits, is the oldest existing cemetery in New Orleans. Towering above-ground tombs remind visitors of New Orleans’ high water table and French heritage. It is in this cemetery that our Vodou Queen Marie Laveau rests in her eternal slumber.

On June 15, 1881, while in her bed at her St. Ann Street cottage, surrounded by family and community members, including her only surviving child Marie Philomene, Marie Laveau passed away. Her family members would have seen to the adherence of Creole mourning traditions, such as covering mirrors and placing a black wreath on the front door. Augustin Lamonthe, a border at Laveau’s St. Ann home, reported Laveau’s death to the Board of Health. According to the Daily Picayune, many people squeezed into the small home to get a last look at the much loved and revered woman. Father Hyacinth Mignot conducted Laveau’s funeral and according to the Picayune, “her remains were followed to the grave by a large concourse of people, the most prominent and the most humble joining in paying their last respects to the dead.” [1]

Despite some WPA interviewees and later researchers insisting Marie Laveau was buried in a wall vault in St. Louis Cemetery #2, archival records show that Marie is buried in her family vault in St. Louis Cemetery #1. Joining her husband Christophe Glapion, her children, grandchildren, and other family members, Marie is entombed in the middle vault of the Laveau-Glapion family tomb. [2] Later, in 1897, Marie Philomene would join her family in the tomb. [3]

Almost immediately after Marie Laveau’s death, devotees began to perform pilgrimages to her tomb to leave offerings and ask for petitions. Raymond Rivaros and Ayola Cruz, sextons of St. Louis Cemetery #1 in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mentioned how visitors came “almost daily to make offerings to Marie’s spirit. They make crosses with red brick, charcoal, and sharp rocks.” Visitors would leave cooked foods, cakes, flowers, pineapples, and would, “knock three times on the marble slab…” [4] These traditions continue today, although the tradition of making crosses and Xs on her tomb with brick have caused great damage to the tomb over the years and has come under criticism by preservationist and true Vodou adherents alike. On December 24, 2013, upon opening the cemetery gates, workers and visitors discovered Laveau’s tomb was painted pink, covering the traditional whitewash color. The paint was latex, preventing the centuries-old bricks from breathing. Preservationists conducted intense restoration to preserve the tomb, with efforts completed in 2014. After that time, the Archdiocese of New Orleans restricted visits into the cemetery to approved tour groups to deter vandalism. [5] In response to the cemetery’s increased restrictions, artist Ricardo Pustanio and Vodou priestess Sallie Ann Glassman created the International Shrine of Marie Laveau. The shrine is located in the lobby of The Healing Center at 2372 St. Claude Avenue and allows visitors to learn about and pay respects to the Vodou queen with less restricted access. [6]

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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.

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Marie Laveau’s home once stood on the site of present-day 1020 and 1022 St. Ann Street. Marguerite Darcantel, Laveau’s mother, and Catherine Henry, Laveau’s grandmother, raised Marie Laveau at the property. Marie Laveau went on to raise her own family in the same house and often opened the building up to those in need.

The story of how Marie Laveau obtained her house is an example of how myth often supersedes fact. Many attribute Laveau’s homeownership to her Vodou abilities. According to one legend, a wealthy man petitioned Laveau for help. The man’s son was accused of murder and lawyers said the case was hopeless. The man asked Laveau for his son’s freedom and in payment, he would grant Laveau a house on St. Ann Street. In preparation for the trial, Laveau spent weeks praying to Vodou loa (spirits) and Catholic saints in St. Louis Cathedral. While in prayer, Laveau held guinea peppers, which are extremely spicy, in her mouth. When the spirits saw this willingness to suffer, they heard her intention. On the morning of the trial, Laveau placed the guinea peppers under the judge’s seat. The man’s son was proclaimed innocent and Marie gained the house on St. Ann. [1]

Laveau’s actual acquisition of the house is a less thrilling tale. The cottage on St. Ann Street (numbered 179 St. Ann from 1823-1861 and 152 St. Ann after 1861) was built for Catherine Henry, Marie Laveau’s grandmother, sometime after she purchased the lot in 1798. After Catherine Henry’s death, the legal heirs to the cottage, consisting of Marie Laveau and her cousins, decided to sell the cottage to pay their grandmother’s expenses. Jean Louis Christophe Duminy de Glapion, Leveau’s common-law husband, purchased the property. [2]

Jean Louis Christophe Duminy de Glapion came from a prominent New Orleans family. Glapion was white and American anti-miscegenation laws deemed interracial marriages illegal. [3] In order to circumnavigate these laws, Glapion deeded the cottage to the minor children he and Marie produced, giving everyone in the family the legal right to live there. At times, Glapion claimed he was a mulatre, or of mixed race. [4]

Glapion and Laveau had seven children together, Marie Heloise Euchariste (1827-1862), Marie Louise (1829-1829), Christophe (1831-1831), Jean Baptiste (1832-1832), Francois Maurice (1833-1834), Marie Philomene (1836-1897), and Archange Edouard (1839-1845). Only Marie Heloise and Marie Philomene lived to adulthood, both of whom produced children who were also raised in the St. Ann cottage. [5]

Not only did Marie Laveau raise her family in this cottage, but it was also her workspace and a safe haven for many in need. Journalists recorded the house to be simple, but elaborate altars decorated the interior. [6] People interviewed by the WPA Federal Writers Project mentioned altars with statues of saints, animal parts, and effigies in Laveau’s cottage. WPA Interviewees also mentioned how Laveau opened her home to orphans and allowed Choctaw vendors to shelter there. [7]

Like many Creole women in New Orleans, the home was the center of Laveau’s life. The cottage at St. Ann was an ancestral home where Laveau’s grandmother defied a patriarchal and racist society by buying her own home and raising her family. Laveau raised her own family here. Glapion, their children, and Laveau herself passed away in this home. The cottage was demolished in 1903, and the current structure at 1020 St. Ann marks the approximate location of her home. [8]

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Marie Laveau was born September 10, 1801, to Marguerite Darcantel and Charles Laveaux, both free people of color. New Orleans had a sizable population of free people of color, due in part to Spanish colonial law that allowed enslaved people to save money and purchase their own freedom. [1] Six days after her birth, Pere Antoine baptized Laveau at St. Louis Cathedral. The baptismal record labeled Laveau as a mulatresse, meaning she had African and European ancestry. Charles Laveaux is not listed as Marie Laveau’s father on the baptism certificate, likely because he and Marguerite were not married at the time of Marie Laveau's birth, but he later claimed Marie Laveau as a natural heir in his will. [2] Marie Laveau’s mother and her grandmother Catherine Henry, who was born enslaved but later purchased her own freedom, were her primary caregivers. [3]

On August 4, 1819, Marie Laveau married Jacques Paris, an émigré from St. Domingue-Haiti, at St. Louis Cathedral. Once again, Pere Antoine performed the sacrament. [4] For years, many believed this marriage produced no children, but the recent discovery of baptism certificates reveal Paris and Laveau had two daughters, Felicite (born 1817, baptized 1824) and Marie Angelie (born 1822, baptized 1823). No other historical documents mention Felicite or Marie Angelie, and it is presumed that they died in childhood. [5] Around 1824, Jacques Paris disappeared from the historical record. Researchers have not found a death certificate or any immigration records, although Felicite’s baptismal records note he was deceased. Marie Laveau became known as the Widow Paris. [6]

Despite her practice of Vodou, Marie Laveau was a devout Catholic. All of her children were baptized at St. Louis Cathedral, and she was a frequent visitor for Mass. In the words of her daughter Marie Philomene, “besides being charitable, Marie was also very pious and took delight in strengthening the allegiance of souls to the church.” [7] (Long, 23) Marie worked closely with Pere Antoine, encouraging her followers to fill the pews of the cathedral on Sundays, working to heal the sick from yellow fever and other ailments, and also visiting prisoners, especially those condemned to death. [8]

Despite being the Vodou Queen of New Orleans, it is no doubt that Marie Laveau was a devout Catholic. While this may seem contradictory to many, this speaks directly to the syncretic nature of Vodou, blending African beliefs and Catholic practices. Vodou is an Afro-syncretic religion, blending elements of West and Central African religion, Native American spirituality, and European Catholicism. In the 18th and 19th centuries, when enslavers trafficked West African peoples to the Americas, they banned enslaved people from practicing their traditional religions. In Louisiana and some parts of the Caribbean, enslavers forced enslaved people to undergo Catholic baptism. In order to continue to practice their traditional religion, while avoiding punishment or death from French and Spanish enslavers, Africans used elements of Catholicism to “mask” their religious practices. The Father of Catholicism’s Holy Trinity came to represent the African deity Vodu. The intermediate spirits, called loa in Vodou, correlated to the various saints of the Catholic Church. The precious rituals and miracle-working relics of the Catholic Church would have been somewhat familiar to Africans, who had specific religious ceremonies and spirit-embodying charms on their ancestral continent. This blending of religions occurred across the New World, with different Afro-syncretic religions appearing across the Americas, including Santeria in Cuba, Vodou in Haiti, and Candomble in Brazil. While each of these religions differs from one another, they all share the similar origin of enslaved Africans pursuit of religious survival. [9]

While New Orleans Vodou differs in ways from Haitian Vodou, such as not having structured initiation and containing heavier Catholic influences, the African roots are essential in understanding both religions. Laveau’s influence on New Orleans Vodou is also essential to understanding the differences between these two religions. Laveau was not the first or last leader of Vodou in New Orleans, but her influence on New Orleans Vodou can still be seen today through the practice of public rituals at Congo Square and home, the annual ritual on St. John’s Eve on Bayou St. John, and the incorporation of Catholicism into theology. [10]

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In 1924, journalist and political activist Dorothy Day lived in an apartment at 520 St. Peter Street while writing for the New Orleans Item. During her short time working at the newspaper, Day wrote articles generally concerned with the culture of dance halls, alcohol, and gambling in the city. Day also conducted interviews with personalities like Italian actress Eleonora Duse, Governor Henry L. Fuqua, and boxing legend Jack Dempsey. [1]  Before her arrival in New Orleans, Dorothy Day was a political activist. Day was a suffragette, arrested for picketing the Wilson White House, and went on a hunger strike while imprisoned. In 1927, Day converted to Catholicism and later founded the Catholic Worker Movement in New York with Frenchman Pierre Maurin. [2] The Catholic Worker Movement is an organization dedicated to aiding the poor by engaging in labor organizing, nonviolent protests against war and violence, establishing cooperatives, and advocating for human rights. [3] In 1933, Day co-founded Catholic Worker, a radical Christian newspaper covering workers’ rights and social issues, and served as its editor until her death in 1980. 

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Now an empty lot and the site of two pop-up restaurants, this corner was once the location of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart church. It was here, on Sunday, October 17, that the cartoonist George Joseph Herriman was baptized by Father Antoine Borias. George Herriman Sr. served as his grandson’s godfather, while young Herriman’s godmother was Eliza Ebel, his mother’s mother.

It’s not known why Herriman’s parents chose to bring their son to Sacred Heart instead of the customary St. Augustine, but Borias soon departed the parish for Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, where he continued to try to find ways to serve and educate Black Catholics until his death in 1900.

George and Clara Herriman remained practicing Catholics following the family’s move to California in 1890. They educated their children in Catholic schools and observed the sacraments; crosses adorn their tombstones at Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles. The cartoonist George Herriman’s own spiritual beliefs were clearly affected by his time among Native Americans in the Arizona and Utah desert, and in his will he would stipulate that his ashes should be scattered over Monument Valley. Yet themes of good and evil, and sin and redemption, would frequently enter into his comics, reflecting his years attending Catholic services in New Orleans, as well as his Catholic education at St. Vincent’s College in Los Angeles.

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

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

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

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

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Devout Catholics and energetic members of a radical integrated Masonic lodge, the Herrimans also were regular participants in a remarkable series of seances that were led by their friend, neighbor, and fellow lodge-member, Henry Louis Rey. Born into a prominent Free People of Color family, Rey was a bookbinder, a Civil War captain, and during Reconstruction served both in the Louisiana House of Representatives and the newly integrated Orleans Parish School Board. As the hopes of Reconstruction gave way to the bitter realities of Jim Crow, Rey conducted seances at a number of locations in which members were encouraged by the spirit world to “en avant,” or “keep going.” Spirits might be historic or spiritual figures such as Ben Franklin or Jesus Christ, or they might be deceased family members, including George Herriman Sr.’s brother, Frederic Herriman. Seances were conducted in the evening, in a darkened, quiet room, according to historian Melissa Dagget. A medium would receive and record the spirit’s words to the gathered.

Cartoonist George Herriman’s grandfather and father both participated in “le circle harmonique,” which lasted from the 1850s through the 1870s. Locations included Henry Louis Rey’s house on Villere street, just a few houses down from the Herrimans’ home. Most of the seances, however, took place in Joseph Lavigne’s cigar shop at 162 Esplanade Avenue (today 1140 Esplanade Avenue). According to Dagget’s research, Lavigne and Rey were childhood friends and served together during the Civil War, and both were active in public education.

Lavigne died in 1877. Due to increased political and work pressures, the seances came to an end. By then, the mood had changed. Writes Dagget: “During the last two years of the registers, the zealous calls for political action and the euphoria over an anticipated change in the racial structure in Louisiana were replaced with melancholy communications that urged Rey to be patient and to be content with the present.” Rey’s final message from beyond came on November 24, 1877. In a time of diminishing fortunes, the spirit reminded Rey that “we are with you for an eternity.”

The cartoonist George Herriman was born three years later. It’s not known if he was aware of his father and grandfather’s participation in the seances. Years later, however, he would include seances and spirits in his comics, especially during an increased wave of spiritualism in the United States following World War One.

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The first historical record of George Herriman Sr. — the cartoonist George Herriman’s grandfather — is the New Orleans Archdiocese’s confirmation records for St. Louis Cathedral on March 1, 1836. Among those confirmed that day was a young “George Herimand,” who was brought to the Cathedral with his half-sister, Louise Chessé, for the sacrament. Performing the sacrament was Antoine Blanc, who in 1850 would become the first archbishop of New Orleans Archdiocese.

Among the most recognizable buildings in New Orleans, the current St. Louis Cathedral sits on a site that was designated for a place of worship shortly after the founding of New Orleans. An early church was destroyed (along with much of the French Quarter) in a 1788 fire. Herriman was confirmed in the third church on this site, which in 1850 was rebuilt into the current cathedral.

More than the outer structure of St. Louis Cathedral would change over the years. At the time of Herriman’s confirmation, the congregation was racially integrated, to the surprise of many visitors. “Never had I seen such a mixture of conditions and colors … white children and black, with every shade between, knelt side by side,” reported one visitor, as quoted in James B. Bennett’s book Religion and the Rise of Jim Crow in New Orleans. Just as the structure of the church changed, so too did the fortunes of African Americans within its walls. By the end of the century, black Catholics were required to sit on newly installed boards against the cathedral’s back and side walls.

George Herriman Sr. remained a practicing Catholic throughout his life, and following his death in 1907 was entombed in St. Louis Cemetery No. 3 on Esplanade Avenue.

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The Herrimans were devoutly Catholic. They attended Masses and celebrated sacraments at numerous churches surrounding their neighborhood. Yet the historic St. Augustine Church was their “home” church.

Celebrated as the first African-American parish in the United States, St. Augustine was founded in 1841 on land that originally was part of Claude Tremé’s plantation. It is estimated that between half to two-thirds of its early parish was composed of people of color, including both enslaved and free people. (Slaves would sit in side pews that remain part of the church interior today.)

The Herrimans were among the earliest members of St. Augustine. In 1844 — just three years after the church’s founding — Frederic and Adelaide Herriman brought their one-month-old son Frederic Herriman here to be baptized by Guillaume Arthur Le Mercier du Quesnay, the Jamaican-born pastor of St. Augustine who would later move to St. Louis Cathedral. Frederic Sr. was brother to George Herriman’s grandfather (who also was named George Herriman). Their mother — cartoonist George Herriman’s great-grandmother — was a socially prominent Free Woman of Color named Justine Olivier. Their father — the cartoonist’s great-grandfather — was Stephen Herriman, a white steamboat captain from New York.

In the decades following St. Augustine’s founding, the Herriman family would return again and again to celebrate baptisms and weddings. Although the church was integrated, its records were not — the details of the Herrimans’ involvement with St. Augustine are recorded in archdiocese books that were reserved for people of color.

When cartoonist George Herriman was born in 1880, his parents opted for unknown reasons to bring their first-born child to Our Lady of Sacred Heart Church, located about the same distance from their house in the opposite direction. Yet the Herrimans remained involved with St. Augustine, returning here to celebrate the baptism of their second son, Henry Walter, in 1882 — presumably with two-year-old George Herriman in tow.

Other notable members of St. Augustine have included pioneers in the Civil Rights struggle such as Homer Plessy, whose challenge to segregated trains resulted in the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson decision that enshrined “separate but equal” into law, and Alexander Pierre “A. P.” Tureaud Sr., whose work as the NAACP’s New Orleans attorney helped dismantle the tragic results of that ruling. Following a struggle over its future after Hurricane Katrina, St. Augustine Catholic Church remains an active parish to this day.

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

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

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Mother Catherine Seals is a mysterious figure. There’s not much written about her, and only a few photographs of her exist. So a lot of what we do know about this spiritual mother is hearsay. And some say that once she created her Bethlehem in the Lower Ninth Ward, she never left.

This Bethlehem was the church and manger where Mother Catherine ministered to thousands of people, black and white, during the height of Jim Crow in the 1920s. She started her own temple, The Temple of The Innocent Blood, after a white spiritual healer turned her away for being black. After that, she was visited by a spirit that told her to create her own organization.

This experience led her to Mother Leafy Anderson, the founder of the spiritual church movement in New Orleans. Anderson trained her to be a spiritual mother, so she could follow her calling and start her own independent church. There were a lot of small spiritual churches in the 9th Ward at the time, usually run out of people’s homes. Most of these rituals were kept behind closed doors. Since spiritual practices trace back to African traditions, many white people associated these religions with Voodoo. To them, voodoo meant black. It meant backward. It meant dangerous. That’s why Mother Catherine Seals looked to the outskirts of town to build her compound, across the industrial canal, where there was still no electricity, or paved roads. She bought what’s now an entire block of Charbonnet Street in the Lower 9th Ward, built a ten-foot wall around her property, and got to work.

Mother Catherine was most known for her healing powers. She used simple ingredients like castor oil and Epsom salts to ward off or expunge disease. There are also descriptions of people having wounds healed through chickens that were tied onto their legs.

As word got around about Mother Catherine, more people trudged through knee-deep mud to visit her temple, which brings us back to the name: The Temple of the Innocent Blood. Mother Catherine related to women who were abandoned and abused by men, so she decided to service these women, first and foremost. But she also vowed to not turn anyone anyway, no matter their age, gender, or race. This is how the Temple of the Innocent Blood flattened racial hierarchies, which caused backlash, including regular arson attacks on the compound. People were not happy about an integrated healing space in Jim Crow New Orleans.

So why did white people go to her temple? Well, let’s say you didn’t have money to see a doctor, or you did see a doctor, who said there was nothing he or she could do. And then you heard there was a healer down in the Lower 9 who was curing tuberculosis? You went.

Mother Catherine Seals led the Temple of the Innocent Blood from 1922 until her death in 1930. Her Jazz Funeral was one of the largest in the city’s history, with thousands of people in the streets, and a write up in TIME magazine. Mother Rita was second in command to Mother Catherine, and kept the temple alive for another few years. Ultimately, it couldn’t survive without her. But her success inspired a larger spiritual church movement, and those churches kept a picture of Mother Catherine on their altars. In some ways, she’s the Lower 9th’s patron saint.

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-Errol Laborde

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

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

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

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

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

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The extraordinary life-history of Saint Louis la Nuit reads like a first draft of early New Orleans history. Born in Africa in 1728, he had a name, a family and an ethnic identity which defined his place in the world. Torn from his identity moorings by the slave trade, he was assigned a new legal identity—“esclave,” and a new name, St. Louis. As he negotiated his way from slavery to freedom through different racial regimes, he helped shape the social architecture and cultural fabric of New Orleans in fundamental ways that are recognizable today.

Freed from slavery for extraordinary service by his French planter “owner,” La Nuit’s new identity-making process began with his embrace of Catholicism, the building block of social organization and of the black cultural community in New Orleans. As god-parent for nine free and enslaved male children LaNuit established a spiritual bond between himself, the child and the parents that radiated out into the horizontal planes of the social community embracing both enslaved and free.

As a member of the Compagnie des Mulatres et Négres, LaNuit represents the 1770s and 1780s generation of black military leaders who fought under Galvez in the Mississippi River Campaigns of the American Revolution. The right to bear arms in the service of the nation provided an opportunity for men to practice civic behavior, the first step in the long road to citizenship for black Americans. For valor, LaNuit was awarded a silver medal of honor and a pension by the Spanish Crown.

Armed with valuable life experience, LaNuit was in the vanguard of black entrepreneurial men and women who claimed civic equality through the ownership of private property. The 8 arpents of land he purchased in 1774 on Bayou Road is a landmark on the map of black entrepreneurship and on the city of New Orleans itself. His sale of the land in two-arpent plots to free women of color put a territorial mark on the area that became Tremé and gives credence to its claim as the oldest existing black neighborhood in North America.

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Henriette Delille, a free woman of color, founded the Sisters of the Holy Family in 1842. Under her guidance the early Sisters, all free women of African descent, devoted themselves to the care of the poorest of the poor, the enslaved and free people of African descent. Today, 175 years later, the Sisters continue to provide for their community through education and care for the elderly and poor. Henriette was born on Burgundy Street in New Orleans in 1812 to a devoutly Catholic family. She worshiped at St. Louis Cathedral and was educated at the St. Claude Street Catholic School for free girls of African descent. In 1827, following the tradition of her feminine ancestors, she formed a liaison with the obscure Monsieur Bochno. Over the next three years, Henriette bore and buried two sons. After the deaths of her sons, she chose for herself a different path. In May 1836 she declared her intention to live a holy life.

Henriette founded the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a confraternity of free women of color who vowed to live pious lives, care for one another and for their people. She worked with her best friend, Juliette Gaudin, to lay the foundation for the Sisters of the Holy Family. In 1851 she entered the novitiate of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Convent, LA. Upon her return to New Orleans she converted a Bayou Road home into her own convent. Over the next decade, 12 women joined her ministry to the enslaved and impoverished free. Her 1862 obituary paid tribute to the success of her improbable vision: “for the love of Jesus Christ [she] had become the humble and devout servant of the slaves.” The Sisters struggled after Henriette’s death, but by the early 20th century they numbered over 150. Today, nearly 100 Sisters continue their ministry to the African-American community.

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Saint Anthony’s Garden is located just behind the landmark St. Louis Cathedral in the heart of the French Quarter. The space is easily identifiable by the large iron fence and the statue of Jesus with his arms outstretched that casts a remarkable shadow against the back wall of the Cathedral.

The history of St. Anthony’s Garden is complex. The garden did not begin to take own its present form till 1845. Originally, Orleans Street went all the way to the back of what became St. Louis Cathedral, meaning that the upriver and downriver sides of today’s garden have different developmental histories in the 18th century. The downriver side of the garden, for instance, was the location of a garden maintained by Capuchin monks in the early years of the city. Later, Spanish curate Antonio de Sedella, also known as Pere Antoine, is said to have maintained a residence in the area behind the church. Pere Antoine is also said to have allowed the church grounds to be used for temporary housing after the Good Friday fire of 1788. This practice was later institutionalized in a series of residences fronting on Royal Street, none of which remain today. During the early 19th century, the open square behind the church was a popular meeting place and an informal market for residents of the French Quarter.

St. Anthony’s Garden was badly damaged during Hurricane Katrina, and the Getty Foundation supported an effort to restore it afterward. Archaeological investigations were conducted in order to provide insight into how the space functioned historically and to inform plantings in the restored garden. The wealth of materials from well-defined proveniences and stratigraphic contexts will make the St. Anthony’s Garden excavations an invaluable source for future research in New Orleans. Among the noteworthy aspects of the excavations was an abundance of Native American wares in Colonial-era contexts, including materials associated by Dawdy and her team with trade and reciprocal relationships between French and Indians in the early years of the city. The dig produced a substantial assemblage of hand-formed wares, with some 225 sherds of hand-built earthenwares of likely Native manufacture, including many red-filmed shell-tempered varieties, one of the largest such samples from urban New Orleans. Dawdy interprets many of the Colonial-era features as indicative of an informal marketplace that would have contributed to the formation of creole or hybrid practices through trade and co-labor. Later deposits demonstrate the degree to which this formerly public space is closed to access and regulated in later periods, with the neighboring Cathedral coming to dominate the space’s use.

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During 1977 and 1978, the University of New Orleans conducted an archaeological project within what is now Armstrong Park. It focused on two areas, the Jazz Complex, a small area around what had been Perseverance Hall, and Congo Square, the commons area known as a gathering site for the city’s African-American population in the antebellum period. The site of Congo Square was once also the site of Fort St. Ferdinand, a colonial-era fortification on what had been the outskirts of the city. Until 1970, much of the area that became Armstrong Park was a densely developed portion of the Treme neighborhood; at that time, 9 blocks were razed to make way for the proposed cultural center intended to be at the center of the park. As these blocks were cleared and landscaped, bottle and relic hunters had almost unfettered access to the area, and presumably, most of the intact archaeological deposits in the park area were destroyed as a result. The excavation done in 1977 and 1978 had little success in finding intact materials associated with the use of the area as Congo Square, though it was able to identify some intact urban features like privies and wells, the foundation of a spring house, and remains from Fort St. Ferdinand.

Fort St. Ferdinand and the Colonial Fortifications of New Orleans

Although some maps from the French era depict elaborate fortifications surrounding New Orleans, these actually consisted of only a simple moat until about 1760. Fear of a British attack prompted the French to improve this system, adding palisades and bastions, including one in the vicinity of Congo Square. These were in a state of constant decay and disrepair until the 1790s, when Spanish governor Baron de Carondelet, this time fearing attack by the Americans, had a series of five more permanent bastions, surrounded by a moat and connected by a rampart and banquette (or sidewalk), constructed. The remains of the 1794 bastion uncovered beneath Congo Square fit well with some of the contemporary descriptions, including remnants from an arched brick walkway that extended over the moat.

Congo Square

The ‘Place Publique’ at the edge of the city became known as Congo Square soon after New Orleans became part of American territory, and the dances and gatherings that took place there was a frequent source of fascination for visitors to the city in the antebellum period. In the 1890s, its name was changed to Beauregard Square in recognition of Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard—part of a large-scale campaign to enforce racial hierarchy in the Jim Crow era city by valorizing those who fought for slavery. The name was only officially changed to Congo Square in 2011, a reminder that racist and white supremacist memorials are remarkably persistent in New Orleans and the South, even when their historical intents are starkly apparent. Unfortunately, because of the degree of landscaping in the park area, archaeologists found few deposits that could be associated directly with the public gatherings at Congo Square. A layer lined with ballast stone cobbles, only sporadically present across the site, may represent the old surface of the common area.

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On February 14, 1957, New Orleans' New Zion Baptist Church hosted a meeting of local pastors. The Reverend Martin Luther, Jr. was in attendance, and by the end of the day, the Southern Leadership Conference (SLC) was formed. A precursor to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the spiritual leaders would elect Reverend King as president later that same year.

African American churches were at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement in New Orleans. Highly visible and outspoken, pastors led the fight for equal rights, desegregation, and justice for New Orleans' African American communities. The churches served as community hubs for protesters and allies through group meetings, fundraisers, strategy sessions, voter registration drives, economic planning, and counseling for non-violent strategies. As a result, pastors were targeted by the police, harassed, jailed, and dragged out of public buildings during protests and sit-ins. Many of the participants were targeted by police while going about their daily lives.

One of the most striking images of New Orleans Civil Rights Movement is Reverend Avery Alexander's arrest at the City Hall sit-in, as he was dragged by his heels down the stairs. The video can be viewed in the articles below.

During the Civil Rights Movement, New Zion Baptist Church was led by Reverend A. L. Davis. One of the oldest and largest African American churches in the city, New Zion played a central role in leading, inspiring, and supporting Civil Rights protesters.

Located across the street from Shakespear Park, New Zion Baptist Church was central to protests and civic engagement through the founding and participation in The Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of New Orleans, NAACP Youth Council, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Consumers League of Greater New Orleans (CLGNO).

Below, Don Hubbard recounts his experiences as a young man in New Orleans during the Civil Rights Movement. He describes his involvement and gives several examples of how local ministers were involved. He is interviewed by Dr. Raphael Cassimere, a former UNO student and professor, also active in the Civil Rights Movement. The men discuss their memories and the consequences of their participation in the fight for Civil Rights.

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The Knights of Peter Claver, Inc. is the largest historically African-American Catholic lay organization in the United States. The Claver Building as it is often called, was the headquarters of the New Orleans branch of the NAACP and was a pivotal location where organizers gathered to plan and implement the boycott of Canal Street businesses during the Civil Rights Movement from 1963 to 1965.

Before the Canal Street boycotts were initiated, African Americans were not allowed to work in sales positions in stores such as Sears, Krauss, and Maison Blanche. They were also not allowed to sit alongside white patrons at the lunch counters at places such as McCrory's and Woolworth's all located on Canal Street, which is the busiest and most popular shopping districts in New Orleans still to this day.

Inez Cassimere, who joined the NAACP in 1960 as a student at the University of New Orleans (then LSUNO), was the secretary of the NAACP's Youth Council and actively participated in the Canal Street boycotts. Although Cassimere mentions a church on Dumaine and Galvez, the building on Orleans Ave is where the local branch of the NAACP met. This local branch office was in fact the Knights of Peter Claver building and it was the headquarters of the local chapter of the NAACP, where plans for the Canal Street boycott began. The Knights of Peter Claver allowed the NAACP to use their space despite the negative attention it may have brought to the organization and the church. This building was an anchor for the Civil Rights Movement in New Orleans and as Cassimere states, "It was home."

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In 1896, the Daughters of Charity boarded a barge on the Mississippi River at Canal Street heading to Carville, Louisiana, about 70 miles upriver from New Orleans. Carville was the new site of the Louisiana Leper Home, where the Sisters performed both managerial and nursing duties. It was no coincidence that a religious community became the caregivers to leprosy patients. By the time the Federal government instituted isolation facilities in the late 19th century, religious communities had a long history of caring for the sick. In 1633, Vincent DePaul organized young peasant women in France, known as Filles de la Charité, to answer the country’s need for caregivers to the sick and the poor. In 1809, Elizabeth Seton founded the Sisters of Charity in the United States based upon the tradition of DePaul’s group. The Sisters answered the call in both war and peace, providing professional nursing services to those who fought in the Civil War and the Spanish American War as well as caring for the sick, orphaned and poor. In 1850, the Sisters joined with the Daughters of Charity to become one religious community.



In 1832, before the two orders merged, Bishop Rosati summoned two Sisters of Charity to teach at the Poydras Asylum in New Orleans. Less than a year later, members of Charity Hospital’s Board of Administrators requested additional Sisters to take the reins of management and care at their hospital. The two Sisters worked at the Poydras Asylum until 1836, but then joined the other Sisters at Charity Hospital and nearby orphanages. During this time period, those diagnosed with a disease presumed to be contagious, including leprosy, were housed at Charity. In 1859, the Sisters opened a hospital of their own called Hotel Dieu (most recently LSU Interim Hospital, now closed). Through their work at Charity Hospital and Hotel Dieu, the Sisters became known as caregivers to those who New Orleans’ society had cast aside.



In 1891, the Daily Picayune published an article alerting the public to at least 25 known lepers loose in the streets of New Orleans and the pitiful conditions in which they lived at a “pest house” on Hagan Avenue. The 1883 passage of ACT 85 by the Louisiana Legislature appointed the Hagan Avenue pest house, previously a smallpox hospital, as the site of containment for those diagnosed with leprosy in New Orleans. The Daily Picayune article caused a public outcry to clean up the pest house and the streets.



When the New Orleans City Council did little to act, noted Tulane dermatologist Dr. Isadore Dyer and the newly formed State Board of Control took it upon themselves to provide suitable medical care to those suffering with leprosy. Dr. Dyer attempted to find a locale that was contained but also convenient for researchers and doctors coming from New Orleans. The Board of Control received numerous letters from local residents about available property close to the city, but the general public often reacted in hysteria to the suggestion of housing leprosy patients near their communities. It is unclear why the Board of Control selected Carville, seventy miles northwest of New Orleans in an isolated bend of the Mississippi River, when they had other offers for land much closer to the city. It is possible that the Board of Control believed the more isolated setting would result in fewer outcries from the public.



In the twilight of a November night in 1894, seven residents of the Hagan Avenue pest house stepped off of a coal barge and onto the overgrown, swampy grounds of the abandoned plantation. For the next two years, these patients lived in the delapidated former slave cabins with only one resident physician, Dr. L.A. Wailes. Soon finding himself overwhelmed, Dr. Wailes implored Dr. Dyer and the Board to request help from the Daughters of Charity. In March of 1896, the Sisters agreed to the duties of managing the home and caring for those confined there.



On April 16, 1896, four Sisters boarded the Paul Tulane to begin their journey to Carville. On that day, a crowd gathered at the Canal Street Wharf to see the Sisters off. A reporter from the Daily Picayune described the scene: “It was something of the tribute that a hero receives when he goes forth with deathless courage to battle to the end and wrest victory in a cause that is all but lost.”



Following an 18-hour journey up the Mississippi River from New Orleans, Sister Beatrice described the enthusiastic welcome from leprosy patients in a letter to the Visiatrix.



“The lepers watched the boat…until we finally stepped out. We told them that we had come to stay, wishing to do all that we could to comfort their lonely, suffering condition. It was touching to see the happiness of these poor people when they caught sight of the Sisters. They almost wept with joy. ‘Have you really, really come to stay with us?’ they kept repeating.”



In the following years, Sr. Beatrice expressed a desire to relocate the home. Heeding Sr. Beatrice’s plea to find a more suitable location, and with a sum of money appropriated by the State Legislature to purchase a site and build a leprosarium, the Board of Control settled on Elkhorn Plantation in present day Kenner. This site boasted 400 acres stretching from the river to the railroad at the back of the property, just isolated enough for the patients but close enough for city physicians to continue studying the disease. The property was sold under the belief that it would be used as a truck farm and fruit orchard. When nearby residents discovered the truth, protests forced the Board to take the matter under advisement.



In the early morning hours of May 23, 1901, a group of Jefferson Parish residents cut the Board’s advisement period short by setting the old Elkhorn plantation house on fire in protest of the proposed leprosarium. It then became evident to the Sisters that Carville would remain the Home’s permanent site, as this act of arson effectively ended any further attempts to find a new locale.

To learn more about life at the National Leprosarium in Carville, LA, visit the following tour: Carville: The National Leprosarium.

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Today, nothing identifies the location in the Lower Ninth Ward where Mother Catherine Seals' “Temple of the Innocent Blood” once stood. This was true even before Hurricane Katrina devastated the area in 2005 when the nondescript block where it was located was home to an array of post-World War II tract homes. But for a brief period from the 1920s to World War II, for the followers of Mother Catherine, the compound she founded was the center of a thriving spiritual community, a ‘Bethlehem’ at the fringes of the city.  Mother Catherine Seals was born Nanny Cowans in Kentucky in 1887, and she moved to New Orleans in her mid-teens, working as a laundress. After being denied treatment by a white faith healer because she was Black, Mother Catherine vowed to start her own fellowship—one that would not discriminate based on race. She soon moved her church to the undeveloped ground near Bayou Bienvenu in the Lower Ninth Ward, encouraging her converts to buy lots around her. There, she conducted an active healing practice, while her church became a safe haven for unwed mothers, abused women, and orphans— the “innocent blood” for which she named her Temple. First-hand accounts provide descriptions of the sprawling complex. Tall wooden fencing surrounded two main structures—the Church and the Manger, a pavilion for public gatherings. The compound had hundreds of oil lamps strewn across the grounds, large statues of Catholic saints, sculptures, and eclectic ornamentation. Like other spiritual churches of the era, the Temple of the Innocent Blood blended Catholic iconography, with elements of spiritualism and mediumship, Protestant revivalism, and African-derived religious practices. Her following was comprised of people from diverse communities that spanned racial, gender, and class lines. The Temple was a space that subverted oppressive social hierarchies and racial segregation. The Temple compound was investigated archaeologically in a UNO summer field school under the direction of Juana Ibañez and D. Ryan Gray. Recent residents of the block reported recovering statuary and small engraved marble slabs on the site. These stones, identified as ‘ex votos’ by historian Ina Fandrich, are used in Catholic shrines to express thanks for the intercession of saints. During excavations, archaeologists found stratigraphic layers associated with the compressed shell floor of the Temple compound, though architectural features definitively from the church or manger have so far been elusive. There is also a rich artifactual record of the early years of post-war development of the Lower Ninth Ward at the site, some of which may overlap with the latter days of the Temple. Mother Catherine’s time at the Temple was brief. Two weeks before her death, she is said to have received a message from God informing her that she would soon pass away, and she ventured back to her birthplace in Kentucky, where she died on August 9, 1930. Her funeral was attended by thousands of followers and received nationwide newspaper coverage. The property rights of the Temple of Innocent Blood were up for grabs not long after Mother Catherine’s passing due to a mishap with her signature on her will; she had placed only an ‘X’ on the top of the document rather than signing her name. After a legal battle, the property rights were eventually handed to Mother Catherine’s successor, Mother Rita, who managed to keep the Temple operational till around 1940. By the time new residents moved to the surrounding blocks in the 1950s, the Temple was already almost forgotten.

This item includes information about archaeological sites already investigated in Orleans Parish. Some of these sites are now destroyed. Others are no longer accessible or have considerable untapped research potential. Most are on private property and not readily accessible to the public. As there are few protections for archaeological resources in the city, the locations of some of these projects are only approximate. We ask that you do your part to help us preserve and protect the cultural heritage of the city. Please contact us or the Louisiana Division of Archaeology if you are aware of archaeological resources that are being destroyed.

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Established in 1875, St. Roch Cemetery lies just north of the Faubourg Marigny in the St. Roch neighborhood.

The founder of St. Roch Cemetery was Father Peter Leonhard Thevis, pastor at Holy Trinity Church located closer to the Mississippi River at St. Ferdinand and Dauphine Streets. According to a famous New Orleans legend, Father Thevis prayed to St. Roch during the deadly yellow fever outbreak of 1868 and vowed to build a chapel to him if the Holy Trinity congregation was spared. No one died, and Father Thevis indeed built the chapel a few years later in the cemetery he had established for the church.

Upon his death 25 years later, Father Thevis was buried in the center of the Chapel, beneath the marble floor in front of the altar and the statue of St. Roch. The inscription on his tombstone is engraved in Gothic rather than Roman script; Gothic script, prevalent in Western Europe from the 1100s to the 1600s, was used much longer in Germany, throughout the 19th and until the 20th century.

SAINT ROCH

Who is the saint to whom Father Thevis prayed for protection from yellow fever and to whom he dedicated the chapel in which he himself was later buried? According to Catholic legend, Saint Roch was born in Montpellier, France, around 1295. Roch was very devout and lived an ascetic life from an early age. After his parents died, he gave all of his worldly possessions to the poor and, in 1317, set out on a pilgrimage to Rome. He came to Italy during a plague epidemic. It was said that his touch, prayers, and signing of the cross healed the ill. He ministered to the sick in the hospitals of several cities. On his way back from Rome, he himself succumbed to the plague at Piacenza. He was cast out of town and retreated to the forest, where he would have died, had it not been for the dog of a nobleman which brought him bread and licked his wounds, healing him. After Roch recovered, he continued healing those afflicted by the plague.

Based on this legend and due to recurrent outbreaks of plague from the 14th to the early 18th century, St. Roch became a very popular plague saint all over Europe, including countries north of the Alps such as Germany.

GERMANS IN ST. ROCH CEMETERY

A number of clues scattered throughout St. Roch Cemetery reveal the presence of German immigrants in the neighborhood. German names adorn many of the graves, including Schmidt, Klein, Schneider, Koch, Ueberschlag, Ahsenmacher, and Elzensohn. The high proportion of German names on the tombs demonstrates that the nineteenth-century community that first established and used this cemetery was heavily comprised of, though by no means exclusively, people of German descent.

Many of the tombstones are engraved with additional words and expressions in German such as Familie, Geb[oren], Gest[orben], Hier ruht, Hier ruht in Frieden*, and *im Alter von.

Further evidence of a German influence in the St. Roch Cemetery is found in the name of one of the cemetery’s two main walkways. The walkway leading from the front gate of the cemetery to St. Roch Chapel is St. Roch Avenue Walk is named after St. Boniface, the patron saint of Germany. St. In St. Roch Cemetery, his name also appears on a vault established by the St. Bonifacius Verein, the benevolent association of St. Boniface Church. The latter, along with St. Boniface School, was founded at Galvez and Laharpe Streets in 1869 for those Germans who had moved to the St. Roch neighborhood.

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Loyola University formed WWL in 1922 for the simple purpose of raising funds. Loyola needed to raise $1.5 million in order to construct six new campus buildings. The call letters, WWL, had no specific meaning to Loyola University, as they were randomly assigned.

On March 31st, 1922, WWL began the history of broadcasting in Louisiana with its debut at 10:52am. The initial broadcast was a speech given by Father Edward Cummings. Father Cummings devoted part of his speech toward explaining the purpose of the radio station, saying, “We are organizing the radio operators in the state to spread the story of Loyola’s needs. Will you lend your support to our campaign, both by radio and individual effort which will aid us in making Loyola University one of the greatest institutions of learning in the Southland?” Following the speech, WWL played a musical selection by Giuseppe Farate of Tulane’s Newcomb College Faculty, who played an original piano composition.

Loyola operated WWL as a commercial station, but soon faced issues regarding Canon 142 of the Catholic Church. Canon 142 states “Clerics are forbidden to engage personally or through another in business or to carry on commerce whether for their own benefit of for that of others.” WWL got around this due to the fact that religious magazines and newspapers were allowed to sell advertising in order to cover the costs of operation. By devoting the same amount of time to educational and religious programming and commercial programming, WWL was able to continue its operations.

However, WWL's main purpose after 1929 was to furnish endowment funds for Loyola University, which held its license. Loyola then formed WWL Development, which was a privately owned holding company run by local businessmen that operated WWL. WWL Development would then compensate Loyola for the revenue the station would bring in. One Loyola president described WWL Development as "a corporation of convenience which saves us Priest-Educators from dealing in the commercial world."

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