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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At the former intersection of Exchange Alley and St. Louis Street — now a parking gate for the Louisiana Supreme Court — once stood the meeting place for Fraternité No. 20, a racially integrated Masonic lodge that included George Herriman’s grandfather and father among its members.

“In spite of all the old prejudices, the Scotch Rite Masons have taken the initiative in unfurling the banner of fraternity and equality, under whose glorious folds so much good may be accomplished,” reported the New Orleans Tribune on June 23, 1867. Lodge minutes show that on July 9, George Herriman Sr. (the cartoonist’s grandfather) joined, and became an active member on the finance and charity committees. On January 15, 1873, he introduced his son, George Herriman Jr. (the cartoonist’s father), as a member. In the induction ceremony, the younger Herriman was praised for traits of courage, prudence, and modesty.

Meeting on St. Louis street, the members of Fraternité No. 20 would have been well aware that they were sitting near a vivid reminder of these old prejudices. Just across the street was the city’s most notorious site for the sale and purchase of enslaved people: the auction block at the St. Louis Exchange Hotel, at the location of the current Omni Royal Orleans Hotel.

“Society is now being reorganized among us, upon the true principle of freedom, and, to do this great work, we need harmony and friendship, for we want to build up an edifice that will stand,” wrote the Tribune in 1867. Yet the edifice did not survive long after that. The lodge appeared to disband in 1873, and the building where Fraternité No. 20 meetings took place probably fell in 1903, demolished with the rest of the block to make way for the Louisiana Supreme Court Building.

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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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First appearing in 1909 as the Zulus, the group first had its origins in a club comprised of a group of Black men called “The Tramps.” Social groups such as the Tramps worked as communal bonds and financial insurance for members of the Black community. In 1915, Zulu paraded with their first floats, a spring wagon decorated with palmetto leaves and moss, carrying men dressed in grass skirts and black face paint. Instead of the traditional "throws" of glass beads, they handed out coconuts purchased from local markets. In 1916, in the notarial office of Gabriel Fernandez, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club incorporated.

In the early years of Zulu, the king would arrive by barge on the New Basin Canal, where he disembarked to throngs of people and lead the parade through of back streets of the Lower Garden District, Back o Town, and Treme neighborhoods. The reign of Louis Armstrong as king in 1949 gave the club international notoriety and fame, and was the first time a celebrity monarch represented a New Orleans Carnival club.

In 1969, the city of New Orleans invited Zulu to join the official route and celebration on St. Charles Avenue and Canal Street preceding Rex, where they are a center attraction Mardi Gras morning. But Zulu breaks the standard Uptown route to still pass down Basin Street and Orleans Ave through the historically Black Treme neighborhood. During the 1970s and 1980s membership expanded and helped grow the size of the parade and number of floats.

Throughout the years, Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club has become a stable to New Orleans communities, providing Christmas baskets to needy families, contributing scholarship funds, and adopting schools. And of course, every year providing coconuts to visitors and New Orleanians of each generation. Today, Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club's headquarters is located at 732 North Broad Street.

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The Jugs Social Club was founded in the spring of 1951 by nine young enthusiast from Algiers; Ernest Brunet Jr., John Brunet Sr., Larry Bowie, Paul Richards, Alton Richards, Morris Richards, Harris Martin, Alvarez Phillips and Harold Ramson. The founding members wanted to establish a carnival organization with entertainment as its primary function but they would become more than just entertainment.

In the early 1960s, the Jugs crew built floats for All Saints Catholic School’s parades, also located in Algiers, and became fascinated with the thought of having their own parade crew during Mardi Gras. After years of trying, the club did not secure a permit to parade until 1969 and the first parade was held in 1970. It was then that NOMTOC was created. The name NOMTOC or New Orleans Most Talked About Club gave a sense of pride to these Algerines, especially because there was only one other African American Mardi Gras Parade running and that was the Crew of Zulu, located on the East bank of New Orleans. That very first parade only had 6 floats but now there are over 20.

After Hurricane Katrina, NOMTOC remained the only parade to run on the West Bank of Orleans Parish because all of the other crews either disbanded or moved to the more popular East Bank of New Orleans. For some Algiers residents, especially those who are unable to travel to the East Bank, NOMTOC is considered “their Mardi Gras”. Today Jugs is still a social aid and pleasure club and are known not only throughout Algiers but throughout New Orleans as leaders in the community as far as giving back with back with school drives, Thanksgiving giveaways, health fairs and lots of other community outreach events.

The Jugs Social Club often collaborates with the Mardi Gras Indian tribe, the Mohawk Hunters who is the oldest Mardi Gras Indian tribe in Algiers. In 2019 JUGS also collaborated with the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club by welcoming Zulu to the West Bank to celebrate Zulu’s annual Flag Raising event, an event that was held on the West Bank of New Orleans for the first time ever.

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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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Numerous 19th-century travelers who frequented New Orleans for business and pleasure described the slave auction block in St. Louis Hotel. Sensationalism aside, visitors recorded their surprise at the grandeur and spectacle of the Hotel’s exchange area, which functioned as a sort of auction theater compared to the clandestine, modest showrooms of most other Southern cities’ slave markets. Today the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel stands on the site of the former exchange where so many families were separated and lives changed. Today, if you face the Chartres side of the Omni Royale Orleans Hotel, above the columns located near the parking garage, the word “CHANGE” is clearly visible. Originally there was a sign that read, “NEW ORLEANS EXCHANGE.” This is the only remnant of the old St. Louis Hotel and now serves as a constant reminder of the location’s telling past. Built around 1841, the St. Louis Hotel & Exchange was revered for its beautiful architecture featuring a large rotunda lined with exquisite designs, decorative walls, and columns which weaved throughout the entire building. The hotel owners built on a site that had previously been occupied by several different exchange “coffee shops,” which sold coffee in the morning, alcohol at night, and enslaved people six days a week. Many prominent politicians, planters, and businessmen from around the country stayed at the St. Louis Hotel and attended its extravagant balls. Seven auctioneers took turns auctioning human lives in French, Spanish, and English, while free visitors bid, sipped drinks, played billiards, and admired the St. Louis Hotels’s ostentatious, decorative elements. Auctions were held in the hotel’s lobby and oversaw the sale of such possessions as paintings, goods, and even human beings. While the majority of slave auctions took place on the street, the levee, and in privately-owned slave pens and homes, St. Louis Hotel’s auctions attracted widespread attention and boasted large newspaper advertisements. Live auctions of enslaved persons typically occurred as a part of the estate of a wealthy slaveholder who had died or to collect money for a slaveholder’s debts. Auctions were held every Saturday under the domed rotundas of several extravagant hotels, including St. Louis Hotel. Sometimes small-time dealers would sell enslaved persons, usually the youngest and strongest, to such large auctions around the city, including those held at the St. Louis Hotel & Exchange. Slave traders forced enslaved people to stand on top of a large wooden stage called a slave block and an auctioneer would present the enslaved to the audience. The auctioneer stressed all the person’s physical attributes such as height, strength, or health, and encourage audience members to make the highest bid. Enslaved individuals were typically sold according to racial categories, which were recorded in sale records, but could often be fictions created by slave traders depending on the appearance of those for sale. Common racial categories included negro (black), mulatto (biracial), griffe (of African and Native-American descent), quadroon (¼ black), and octaroon (⅛ black). From there, the slave’s dealer would conduct a business transaction with the buyer, draw up a bill of sale, sign papers, and then the individual would be handed over to the buyer as property, continuing their life of enslavement. 

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For many Congo Square is the site that inspires the most fantastical images of enslaved life in New Orleans. From the 1840s to the 1880s, intellectuals and artists like George Washington Cable, Louis Gottschalk, and Lafcadio Hearn brought Congo Square into national imagination as a site of exoticized, sexualized abandon. The area famed for its African drumbeats and dances, now marked in Louis Armstrong Park, became famously known as “the birthplace of jazz.” But the history associated with the actual location stands in the shadow of its mythology, one created primarily by white writers who had never even seen enslaved people there.

From 1796 to 1803, 2800 enslaved people were baptized at St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square, more than 700 of them of Kongo background. Therefore it’s not a stretch to imagine that the enslaved people participating in Sunday afternoon revelry were incorporating music and dance from West Africa.

By 1817 New Orleans city laws had restricted gatherings of enslaved people to Sunday afternoons in Congo Square, then called Place Publique. Due to mounting concerns about abolitionists invading the city and the threat of revolution, Sunday afternoon music and dance was shut down in 1835, resumed, and then shut down again in 1851. By 1856, people of African descent were no longer legally allowed to play horns or drums in the city. After that the area was used primarily for military exercise. However, as was often the case in New Orleans, music and dance continued in circles of enslaved people, if hidden in secret.

When Benjamin Latrobe, a British born architect, described the musical scenes at Place Publique (also known as Circus Square) in 1819, he got caught up in what he sees as a ‘wild’ display. The derogatory racial attitudes of the era certainly enhanced this perception, but his drawings and specific descriptions of certain dances draw a parallel with the musical life of St. Domingue.

It’s likely that many of the people who filled the square on Sundays had spent the past couple of decades evading violence first in St. Domingue and then Cuba. They brought with them bamboula drums, banjos, and propensity for using clothing and dancing to mock social mores. The contredanse, for example, mocked high society partnered dances. Along with the more often sensationalized, sexualized African dancing, the contredanse appears in the testimony of not only Latrobe in New Orleans, but also Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry in Saint-Domingue only 20 years prior.

Besides dance and music, Place Publique was known during the colonial phases and the less restrictive years of the antebellum era as a place where enslaved people could sell their wares. Vendors also hawked food and set up recreational amusements, such as the performances of a Havana-born circus performer. In the early French colonial era, enslaved people and Native Americans even played a version of lacrosse for the entertainment of wealthy Frenchmen. When it comes to the area known as Congo Square, we’ve only scratched the surface in terms of its significance for New Orleans enslaved population over the last 300 years.

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Bernard Walter Lomax was a Mardi Gras Indian who lived from 1927-1955. In 1950 he composed "Shallow Water," a song that is still popular with Mardi Gras Indians today. The words "Shallow Water" are repeated to form the chorus of the song by the same name. It is one of the most recognizable songs that the Mardi Gras Indians sing today.

Mr. Donald Harrison, Sr., Big Chief of the Guardians of the Flame, stated in a 1991 interview that:

"My earliest influence was Bernard Lomax, a gentlemen that introduced the song 'Shallow Water.' His mother is still alive. She lives Uptown. She's elderly—she's just like a second mother to me. When I started masking in 1949, I was influenced mainly by Bernard Lomax."

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In 1947, the Seventh District Carnival Club, originally formed in 1924, returned to parading after a hiatus during World War II. The club changed its name to the Krewe of Carrollton and also changed its Mardi Gras parade route to include Carrollton Avenue, ending with a review stand at Palmer Park. The 1947 theme was a “Fantasy of Fairytales.” That same year the Krewe also held an Easter parade, culminating in an Easter egg hunt in Palmer Park for local White children and orphans from throughout the city. Members of the Krewe dressed up as Easter bunnies and hid the eggs throughout the park. The Krewe is now one of the oldest existing Mardi Gras parade organizations.

In 1979, the Spontaneous Krewe of Platefaces made their debut at Palmer Park. The organization was founded by John Smith, a New Orleans resident that decided to form a Krewe that anyone could afford to join; the only requirement was a paper plate with holes cut for the eyes and mouth. The Krewe assembled at Palmer Park and then boarded the streetcar to toss out handmade doubloons to passersby. The Krewe has continued to participate in Mardi Gras festivities, even having an annual ball at Joey K's Restaurant on Magazine Street.

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Palmer Park was a site for several of the city's World War II neighborhood bond shows. A show in June 1944 featuring speeches by wounded veterans, a parade, and music raised over $123,000 dollars. Residents throughout the city bought over 20 million dollars worth of war bonds.

March 11, 1945 was a notable day of commemoration and remembrance in Palmer Park. The day marked the beginning of a week-long celebration of the centennial of the incorporation of Carrollton. The Carrollton Men’s Business Association organized the event which featured speeches by Archbishop Joseph Rummel, Lt. Governor Emile Verrer, and Edward Alexander Parsons, president of the Louisiana Historical Society. The New Orleans Police Band performed. The main event was the dedication of a monument in the center of the park. The monument bore inscriptions commemorating the centennial and included a dedication to the residents of Carrollton who had fought in World War, still ongoing at the time; names of those who had been killed during the war were also inscribed.

Palmer Park was the site of yearly Memorial Day services after WWII. The commemorations in the immediate years after the war were large events in which wreathes were laid at the monument, Gold Star mothers were honored, speeches and prayers delivered, bands performed music and songs were presented by groups like the New Orleans Opera Association, and review parades of military and civilian units were held. A flagpole was dedicated by the Carrollton Post No. 228 of the American Legion at the 1949 Memorial Day commemoration. The flag was donated by Mrs. Frederick Shell, whose nephew had been killed at the Battle of the Bulge. The flag had originally draped his casket.

A parade and rally was held in Palmer Park for Veteran’s Day in November 1948. The rally's purpose was to advocate for the hiring of disabled veterans. The event featured military personnel, a speech by the mayor, and a screening of the navy film "Operation Crossroads," which showed an atomic bomb being detonated on the Bikini atoll in the Pacific.

Palmer Park was also the site of the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the annexation of Carrollton by New Orleans in April 1949. A parade featuring turn of the century vehicles started at St. Charles Avenue and ended at Palmer Park, where a program of speeches, high school marching bands, and community songs followed.

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The Arts Market, held the last Saturday of every month in Palmer Park, has a become a popular event. The market, sponsored by the non-profit Arts Council of New Orleans and held in Palmer Park since 2007, features over one hundred local artists, craft people, food vendors, and musicians. The November and December markets are holiday-themed and last both Saturday and Sunday. The park is also the site of the annual Carrollton caroling, an event originally began in 1979-when it also featured a live nativity scene-and revived in 2007.

Holiday celebrations in the park go back over eighty years. In 1930 the city for the first time decorated trees with colored lighting, including the oak trees in Palmer Park. On December 25, 1933, the Old Regular Democratic Organization distributed toys to children while a 60 person band played Christmas songs. In 1946, Palmer Park was the site of “Yule Fest” on Christmas Eve. The event featured the Loyola University male choir singing carols; speeches by the mayor, the president of Loyola, and the pastor of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church; and the “Carrollton Tree of Life,” a Christmas tree that had electric lights fit by the city engineer.

In 2011, new playground equipment was installed. The project, spearheaded by the Friends of Palmer Park, was a partnership with Kaboom!, a national non-profit dedicated to building playgrounds, Disney, and local volunteers. Children can often be seen in the new playground, marking a striking contrast to efforts for decades to keep playground equipment and sports out of the park.

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Music has played an important role in the history of Palmer Park. A band stand was built in 1923 and every summer a series of concerts was held in the park featuring military bands, marching bands, and bands representing diverse groups. The Works Progress Administration’s federal music project, local dairy farms, and police organizations all at times featured bands performing in the park. The bandstand was torn down in 1946 after years of neglect during World War II.

Carroltonian John Paul Bordes remembered the concerts in his 1978 Carrollton Columns collection: “Who could forget the band-stand in the park, where every Thursday night a band played and kids came to sit on the grass and listen, or play games and eat candy and ice cream, or just walk around and flirt with each other! Friends from all over Carrollton came. It was real good fun” (1978, 48). It should be noted that only white families were allowed to attend the concerts.

Music did continue to be part of the park during celebrations like the annual Memorial Day commemorations in the years after World War II. Concerts were brought back to the park in the early 1970’s with free shows sponsored by the New Orleans Recreation department and featuring performances from local groups like high school and college bands, the Mardi Gras Chorus, the In His Name Singers, and the Storyville Jazz Band. In recent years, bands have performed in the park as part of the monthly Arts Market, held the last Saturday of each month, as well as an annual concert by the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.

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On the evening of February 23, 1887, a crowd lined St. Charles Avenue to witness a procession of lanterns floating like a swarm of fireflies through the darkened street. First came the bandwagon, pulled along by four horses led by the famous acrobat and vaudeville theater magnate Signor Faranta. Behind that came seventy of those novel, wheeled machines (bicycles) that had appeared on the city streets just seven years before. Perched four feet from the ground on his high wheel bicycles came the costumed “Romeo,” and behind him Mephistopheles astride flapping wings of red.

Dressed as The Mikado, the Grand Marshall appeared on a tricycle illuminated by eighteen Chinese lanterns and covered by a twelve-foot Japanese umbrella, from which dangled fifty jewels. Nanki Poo and his friend rode together on a tandem tricycle, its large wheel woven with gold and silver sunfish, topped with a Chinese pagoda fourteen feet across, fifteen feet high, and graced with six dozen lanterns in crossing arches. Behind them came more in costume: a man dressed in black with the figure of a human skeleton outlined in white; a young man dressed as a ballerina; devils, jockeys, princes, harlequins; silk, velvet, and glitter all displayed in a procession on wheels.

This spectacle was the Carnival bicycle parade held on Ash Wednesday. The parade, organized by the New Orleans Bicycle Club and put on by cyclists from New Orleans and cities all over the South, intended to roll the Monday prior to Mardi Gras and the press billed the procession a central feature of that years’ Carnival celebrations. However, pouring rain on Lundi Gras forced the postponement. Despite the awkward date—normally a day of quiet sobriety—Rex and his queen watched from a balcony and applauded the luminous scene, as did the crowd along St. Charles Avenue. Almost every house was light up and many of the balconies decorated for the event.

Only seven years prior to this celebrated parade, bicycles were considered by the people of New Orleans an unwelcome intrusion: the riders considered undignified and the vehicles a menace that did not belong on the streets. 1887 was the year bicycle enthusiasts convinced New Orleanians otherwise.

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The signature attraction of the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition held in New Orleans was MART (Mississippi Aerial River Transit), a $12 million aerial gondola transport system that connected the fair site on the East Bank of the Mississippi River with the West Bank (Old Algiers). For the price of a $3.50 round-trip ticket, fair riders were shuttled 2,500 feet across the Mississippi River in one of 53 six-passenger, teapot-shaped cars strung from cables suspended 320 feet above the river. After the fair, the gondolas briefly became part of the city's mass transit system.

The gondola project was the long-time dream of Mardi Gras float designer and native Algerian Blaine Kern, who envisioned a "combination thrill ride and practical commuter vehicle" to connect both banks of the river, according to a May 6, 1984, Times-Picayune article. During the 1960s, Kern partnered with architect August Perez III to organize MART, Inc.

Two decades later, the concept reemerged during plans for the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition (LWE). The system's initial price tag of $8 million was too steep for area banks. Kern pulled his financial backing from the project, but Perez continued with a consortium of investors to form MART/Perez Inc. The World's Fair and the system's projected $10 million in ticket sales during the first six months of operation gave impetus to the lagging endeavor. Perez found a French bank, Banque de L'Union Européenne of Paris, willing to underwrite the project. Though new to the Louisiana market, the bank was quite familiar with gondola systems. Upon the approval of a 60-year city franchise, the gondolas became a reality.

Construction of the custom-built aerial gondola system began on September 29, 1983, after a host of clearances from sixty-four state, city, and river agencies that shared jurisdiction over the project. Pomagalski S.A., of Grenoble, France supplied the equipment while MART/Perez Inc. constructed the gondola system.

To operate in a generally flat city, two 360 foot steel cable towers spaced 2169 feet apart were built to anchor the aerial gondola system. They were designed at a 20-degree tilt toward the river in order to protect the integrity of the Mississippi River levees. The gondola system included eight safety switches and a unique rescue vehicle known as a Pomabus; this was a self-propelled cart that could traverse a stopped cable and enclose a gondola so passengers could be removed and brought back to the terminal. Evidence suggests that the Pomabus never had to be used.

MART ranked with Disney's Space Mountain ride as the two best thrill rides in America during the six months of the exposition. Despite its popularity, the gondola struggled to attract the anticipated 3 million riders -- mainly because of the fair's low attendance. The fate of the gondolas was tied closely to the fair's success -- or lack of success. Riders either had to buy a fair ticket or possess a season passport before they could purchase a gondola ticket.

After the fair closed, the gondola system was promoted as a unique commuter system. MART officials hoped that West Bankers would ride the gondola daily to and from the east bank, especially to the Central Business District. A commuter could purchase a $25 unlimited (per month) ride ticket or a $50 ticket; the latter included daily parking at the lot adjacent to the West Bank terminal. West Bankers did not embrace the concept nor did the residents of old Algiers welcome the additional automobile traffic during the fair. Four months after the bankrupt LWE closed, its signature attraction ceased operation permanently.

While legal battles concerning loan payments, property rights, and ownership ensued, the last remaining structure of the fair remained idle. The New Orleans Dock Board began the process of having the entire system dismantled. In 1992, the passenger cars were sold, and in 1994 the US Coast Guard ordered the removal of the 360 foot steel towers and their cables. MART did not become a legendary landmark of the 1984 World's Fair, but for thousands of fairgoers it provided a lifelong memory.

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When planning the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition (LWE), fair and city officials decided to build a monorail system. This project had two objectives. First, it was intended to move many visitors so as to limit traffic congestion in the Warehouse and Downtown districts directly adjacent to the fair. Second, this advanced transportation infrastructure was supposed to stay in New Orleans as a tribute to modernity. Mayor Ernest “Dutch” Morial had hoped to build a line down the middle of Poydras Street to connect the new Convention Center to the Superdome. The city wanted to repeat the successful conversion of the Seattle World’s Fair monorail into permanent transit infrastructure.

When the Reagan administration refused to fund the monorail, the city decided to build it on the 80-acre riverfront site of the fair. Six companies bid, and the contract was awarded to Universal Mobility Inc., a Salt-Lake City company which had built 8 other monorail systems in North America. New Orleans’ system was a $15 million, 1.4 mile rubber-tired monorail based on the Straddle - Steel Box Beam technology. Introduced in the 1960s, this technology is still used.

Three elevated stations were designed by Charles Sanders of Perez and Associates Architecture Company. The New York Times advised that “the silent, elegant monorail will loop everywhere, diving at points into buildings.” The ten car, 146 passenger monorail circled the Exposition counterclockwise. It reached speeds of 10 miles per hour and took 12 minutes to complete the trip. One of the transit stations hosted a local television news broadcast center, which allowed live coverage of the fair.

Several plans were considered for the subsequent use of the monorail system. Allan Eskew, the main architect of the fair, proposed to give it to Audubon Park or City Park to move the public within their grounds. Later, the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) announced that that they were interested in purchasing the monorail to install it in the center of Poydras Street, as previously envisioned by the Mayor Morial administration. The federal money that RTA had traditionally used to buy transit equipment could not be used to buy monorail systems, and the RTA failed to raise private money to fund the project.

Unfortunately, the fair did not attract the 11 million visitors that the LWE officials had expected, so the fair left a $102 million debt. The LWE had to file for bankruptcy and could not pay its contractors. Universal Mobility sued Petr Spurney and Floyd Lewis, respectively president and chairman of the Louisiana World Exposition. In a 1985 hearing, the US District Judge ruled that LWE officials were not personally responsible for the debts. The assets of the LWE were auctioned in 1985, including the monorail and its three elevated stations.

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The Audubon Driving Park Track was used in the late 1880s as a horse racing track. ("Driving" referred to horse riding.) Audubon Park, built in 1879, had been the site of the World's Industrial Cotton Centennial Exposition in 1884 and 1885. Starting in 1887, the arena hosted a new amusement for the people of New Orleans: bicycle racing.

In May of 1887, a tournament was the first bicycle racing event to be held on a track in New Orleans. Attendance for that race was disappointing. But the sport gained quickly in popularity that year. As the Daily Picayune reported:

“A bicycle contest has largely become the people’s choice, close upon if not rivaling the horse race. It is by no means strange that the bicycle race should so invariably attract the public, for a contest of these beautiful steeds, the will-o’-the-wisps of modern speed, is indeed one of if not the finest sights in American sports.”

The tournament held that fall was attended by around 3500 people, the majority of the spectators being women, to the pleasant surprise of the cyclers. Enthusiasm for the bicycle as spectator sport and pleasurable transportation rose over the next four years. Reports on the races took up more and more space in the newspapers. The bicycle races at Audubon park became grand affairs for the city’s bourgeoisie. Women were especially caught up in the racing fever, filling the majority of the stands and wagering personal articles on their favorites.

From 1887 to 1890, the Louisiana Division of the League of American Wheelmen held their annual tournament at the Audubon Park track. By 1891, however, the track had been abandoned, to the wistful regret of the cyclists.

“What sad thoughts are suggested to one who gazes on the ruins of the Audubon Driving Park track, that familiar place where four of the most successful race meets have been held, the wreck of the immense grand stand upon which thousands of the fairest daughters and interested mothers have gathered to witness their brothers and sons contesting for glory and fame on their winged wheels, at the meets of the Louisiana Division. All is gone, even the track itself can hardly be seen through the grass that covers it, and the wheelmen of New Orleans will have to look for other fields of contest, but the memory of this place, and the many pleasant occurrences therein will be fresh in the minds of the boys, and old men also for many years to come.”

In 1891, the League began holding tournaments at the Fair Grounds.

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Captain Yelverton N. Oliver of Virginia, who “cast the seed of enterprise upon the rich alluvial soil of Louisiana,” rejuvenated the languishing sport of thoroughbred racing in New Orleans by launching the Eclipse Course at Carrollton in March 1837. Horsemen from across Louisiana (from St. Francisville, Alexandria, and Attakapas) as well as Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Georgia—even as far away as the Old Dominion of Virginia—brought their stables of distinction to New Orleans for the track’s inaugural race meeting, amassing “the greatest number of race horses and of greater celebrity than has ever been seen on any race course in the South,” Oliver announced in an advertisement. “The public may probably never have it in their power again to witness such sport (!).”

The course’s six-day race meeting, which boasted purses as high as $2,000—rivaling those of other top national tracks—ushered in a new era for the Southern turf. Closing out the week of racing was the New Orleans Plate, a two-miler won by Antelope, a mare entered by Colonel Adam L. Bingaman of Mississippi. The New Orleans Daily Picayune remarked in its final race report, “the day will come when the Eclipse Course will be the first in the United States.” Only one year later, in April 1838, the Spirit of the Times would declare it as such, stating, “The Eclipse is the ne plus ultra of courses,”—the ultimate of race tracks.

Eclipse’s Jockey Club was the first anywhere to hold races on the Sabbath, with Sundays in New Orleans being regarded as a day of recreation. There were objections, nonetheless, by members of the Club and the general public. “It is a matter of notoriety that during his presidency of the Eclipse Jockey Club, the late lamented Judge Alexander Porter never visited the course on that day,” reported the American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine. The Louisiana Association Jockey Club resolved in December 1844 that no races would be run over the Eclipse on a Sunday, “removing a very serious objection to the Sports of the Turf in Louisiana, as urged from the pulpit.”

Yet the rule was quickly broken. The next spring meeting of 1845 hosted the two-mile Carrollton Purse on Sunday, April 13; this race for $200 was won by the four-year-old colt Croton, entered by John R. Grymes, the city’s District Attorney. Later that year, however, the Club’s five-day December meeting was held at the Eclipse only from Tuesday through Saturday.

If a Sabbath ban had been in effect, again it was short-lived, for the Club ended its six-day race week in April 1846 on a Sunday—holding two races that garnered larger attendance than any other day during the spring meeting. Thoroughbred racing over the Eclipse Course continued for three more years until its last meeting of April 1849; six days of races closed with the Carrollton Purse for $250, best three-in-five of one-mile heats, with the five-year-old entry Ӕolus beating two fillies—on a Sunday.

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In 1924, Oak Street merchants formed the Seventh District Carnival Club, which became the Krewe of Carrollton. The krewe’s original parade route was around the Carrollton neighborhood, centering upon the Maple and Oak Street commercial districts. Until 1948, they paraded on Mardi Gras Day. The frames of Carrollton’s original floats were built on garbage wagons bought from the city of New Orleans. The krewe’s original den was on Oak Street, where it remains today. The Krewe of Carrollton is the 4th oldest parading Carnival organization in New Orleans. The Krewe of Carrollton for many years had a tradition of presenting each king, queen, and captain with a small porcelain doll wearing a miniature replica of their costume for their year.

In 1933, the club had made history as the only daytime parade of the Mardi Gras season because of heavy rains. A fire in 1938 forced the krewe to use loaner floats from other krewes until 1941. The club stopped parading during the Second World War. In 1947, John Ackerman reformed the club as the Krewe of Carrollton, with a 10 float parade. In 1948, Carrollton changed its schedule to parade on the first Sunday of the Mardi Gras season, instead of their traditional Mardi Gras Day.

In 1950, Carrollton was the first krewe to be pulled by tractors. Seven years later, the krewe rented floats to the Krewe of Zeus and helped them get started. In 1959, Carrollton, still parading on Oak Street, changed its route to pass in front of Gallier Hall.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Krewe of Carrollton changed its route multiple times. A tragic accident took place on the Jeff Davis overpass in 1970 when tornadic conditions tipped the float and caused a krewe member to fall to his death. In 1995, Carrollton returned to its roots and started once again from its original spot on Oak Street. The Krewe of Carrollton currently parades on the Sunday before Mardi Gras, which some older Carrolltonians still refer to as “Carrollton weekend.”

The following memories were recorded in 2008 when UNO history graduate student Nicole Romagossa interviewed family members about their long connection to Carrollton history:

“My family’s roots are deep in the Carrollton/Oak Street area. My great-grandmother, Pauline Stubbs, was raised in the first house built in Carrollton when dairy farms existed where closely built houses sit today. […] As a child, I loved to hear my grandparents and great aunts tell stories about their lives in old Carrollton. I especially loved to hear my mother and grandfather talk about his reign as King of Carrollton with my mother as a page in his court. During the 1930s, the Krewe of Carrollton paraded on Mardi Gras afternoon and was quite an event for the Carrollton residents. Years later, when my parents were dating, my mother was telling my father about the year that she was a page in the Krewe of Carrollton. As it turned out, my father marched in that very parade with his school band. How typical for New Orleans natives to discover the common thread that draws us together.”

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Cartoonist and artist Bunny Matthews, radio personality and food writer Tom Fitzmorris, and Vance Vaucresson of Vaucresson's Sausage Company engage in a lively debate regarding the proper way to order New Orleans' favorite sandwich: Po-Boy or Poor Boy.

Bunny Matthews, best known for creating the "Vic and Nat'ly" cartoon, published a groundbreaking history of the po-boy in 1981 in the Times-Picayune and launched the first (but short-lived) po-boy festival decades before the current Po-Boy Festival debuted in 2007. Tom Fitzmorris hosts "The Food Show" on 1350AM and authors restaurant reviews for New Orleans CityBusiness. Fitzmorris also has published several books regarding New Orleans food culture. Vance Vaucresson's family has operated the city's best known sausage company since 1899. The Vaucressons sell various sausage po-boys during Po-Boy Fest and other festivals. The accompanying photographs capture other great moments in Po-Boy Fest history.

These video excerpts were recorded during the first history panel discussion held as part of the inaugural Po-Boy Festival in 2007. The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities funded the History Center activities. Since 2011, the Po-Boy Fest History Center has been located at Squeal Bar-B-Q at 8400 Oak Street.

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As late as the 1830’s, the former French and Spanish colony of Louisiana still lagged far behind in the British sport of thoroughbred racing, which had been flourishing on the East Coast for the last half-century. Even the Daily Picayune was dubious about the prospect of local racing, stating, “It was thought that the effort to establish a course in New Orleans would prove a failure.” It would be one of Les Americains—a man from the racing mecca of Virginia—who would lay the foundation for the Crescent City to become a formidable contender in the national sport.

Captain Yelverton Oliver, accomplished turfman and former proprietor of the National Jockey Club Races at Washington, D.C., reached New Orleans in 1836. He seized the opportunity to launch a course that would spark the renewal of racing, the potential of which had never been fully realized in the port city, despite its creation of a jockey club more than a decade earlier.

Oliver leased land to build his Eclipse Course in the new village of Carrollton, located on the old Macarty Plantation approximately four and one-half miles upriver from New Orleans. Carrollton had been created just three years earlier when its owners subdivided the land in 1833; one of these owners was the former District Attorney John Slidell, who would be elected in January 1837 as vice president and line judge for the city’s new Jockey Club. An 1840s map of Carrollton and Greenville shows the location for the course being bounded by the streets of Lowerline, Levee, and present-day St. Charles Avenue.

For the construction of his course, Oliver was the first proprietor anywhere to blend sand with soil, creating such a fast track that the legitimacy of speed records over the Eclipse would often be questioned. “The objections to racing heretofore in this vicinity will now be entirely remedied,” the Captain declared, “as the track will be covered with sand and sawdust, rendering it good in any weather, and at all times free from mud or water.”

Drawing tens of thousands of spectators as well as horsemen and their stables from across the country, the Eclipse Course’s opening in March 1837 galvanized the sport in New Orleans. As soon as the following spring, both the Louisiana Course and Metairie Race Course were also operating, these efforts again being led by visiting Virginia turfmen. The Eclipse would remain active for more than a decade, continuing to stage spring and fall races until it fell into disuse by late 1849; by this time, the track was no longer able to compete with two other local courses, both of which had also been managed by Capt. Oliver during the 1840’s: the new Bingaman Course across the river in Algiers, and Metairie, the city’s premier track that would reign supreme until the Civil War.

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From December 16, 1884 until June 1, 1885, the spectacular World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition covered these grounds with gigantic wooden structures and broad, lighted paths. Too little is known of the event, even by New Orleanians, for later, grander expositions dwarfed its accomplishments. Yet, it is worth another visit, so come and re-imagine it today fanned by ghostly images from the past.

Disembark at the entrance to Audubon Park and walk through the classic Maurice Stern gates. Enter the paradise that the park-design firm of Frederick Law Olmsted created after the 1884 World's Fair. The exposition had only partially developed the grounds. The Olmsteds drew the master plan for the oasis around you. Olmsted's son Charles designed this pair of entrances that Maurice Stern's wife financed in the 1920s to honor the philanthropist.

This approximately 150-acre section of Audubon Park (from St. Charles Avenue to Magazine Street) reflects the Olmsted philosophy for public parks: quiet natural beauty designed to offer city dwellers an escape from the artificiality of city life. Now, an 18-hole public golf course occupies most of this section of the park, while the path on the periphery teems with bicyclers, joggers, and children. Another 190-acres section (from Magazine Street to the Mississippi River) forms the more commercial area of the park: Audubon Zoo, tennis courts, stables, baseball and soccer fields, and other amenities, including restaurants.

Begin your journey at the edge of the lagoon before you that wanders the width and one length of the park.

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