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

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

In this episode, Eddie and Lauren discuss the renaming of Robert E. Lee Blvd. to New Orleans music legend, Allen Toussaint Blvd.

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There are three buildings still standing in New Orleans where it is most likely young George Herriman spent his childhood days: St. Augustine Church, the site of the Herriman & Chessé tailor shop, and this handsomely restored Creole cottage on the corner of Burgundy and Kerlerac streets (or, during Herriman’s time, the corner of Craps and History). Here was the Chessé family home, just blocks from the Herriman home on Villere street.

More than cousins, the Herrimans and Chessés might best be considered one family. Justine Olivier raised her two Herriman sons in the Chessé family, and throughout their time in New Orleans, the Herrimans and Chessés worked together, worshipped together and — though there is no record of it — surely socialized together. Extended family members, including the Esnards, intermarried, deepening the family ties.

As with the Herrimans, members of the Chessé family moved from New Orleans where they would self-identify, or “pass,” as white. These include Ralph Chessé, who went on to become an accomplished painter and puppeteer. During his remarkable career, Ralph worked with the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Theatre Project, staging marionette shows including an all-puppet adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s drama The Emperor Jones. (Although not identifying as Black, in this and other works, Chessé explored racial themes in his work.) Other members of the Chessé family include Ralph’s son Bruce Chessé, also a puppeteer, and film editor Matt Chessé. Cousins to the Herrimans and Chessés include the writer Norman Rush, former commander of Joint Task Force Katrina Lt. General Russel L. Honoré (ret.), and the various members of New Orleans’ musical Boutté family. In 2018, singer John Boutté honored his ties to the Herrimans and Chessés by voicing the part of Krazy Kat in the song “Happy Land,” recorded with New Orleans’ Panorama Jazz Band.

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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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Juanita Pierre and her partner Leslie Martinez opened Les Pierres, the first Black lesbian owned bar in New Orleans, in the 1980s. Located on the corner of Pauger and Rampart Streets in the Marigny, their Saturday night crowd spilled out of the bar’s French doors and onto the street. Known for their drag queen and king shows, it was a place where “anyone was welcome.”

In some sense, this scene at Les Pierres was nothing new. Queers have paraded Rampart Street, found lovers in dark French Quarter bars, starred in gender-bending variety shows, and visibly defined the nightlife of the city since at least the 1920s. Queer women have long labored in the larger economy of sex and entertainment tourism here. Some bars they frequented were a part of the hustle economy and some were a relief from it: The Starlet Lounge, the Goldenrod Inn, Miss Kitty’s. Les Pierres was the kind of place locals went after their late shifts in the Quarter had ended. What was new about Les Pierres and this particular moment in lesbian bar culture was that, beginning in the 1950s with Dixie Fasnacht of Dixie’s Bar of Music, women now owned and operated these businesses for themselves. They joined the ranks of Brady’s, Charlene’s, Pinstripes and Lace, Rubyfruit Jungle—at least a dozen bars in total—that were women-run bars catering to lesbian patrons from the 1950s to the early 2000s in New Orleans.

“We did it for us,” Pierre firmly declares in her recent interview with “Last Call,” a podcast dedicated to the stories of people who experienced the thriving (and now non-existent) lesbian bar culture of that era. The stakes were high. Outside the doors of Les Pierres was a culture dedicated to profiting from these women while violently limiting their experiences, desires, and mobility, especially those who challenged gender and racial norms. But that culture was not simply outside the doors, safely at a distance.

A long history of police brutality and harassment in particular threatened what this community continually created together. The 1950s saw large-scale raids of bars frequented by gays and lesbians. In 1953, one lesbian bar in New Orleans was raided 78 times by the police. Women were frequently charged with lewd conduct, being improperly attired in men’s clothing, and having no visible means of employment. After arrest, their names and addresses were printed in the papers, and if they had jobs, they usually lost them.

By the 1960s popular white lesbian bars like Brady’s anticipated police surveillance and so limited dancing and touching in the bar, insisting on feminine attire for their clientele. Bar patrons and bar owners paid off police and the mafia in hopes of avoiding being targets of vice squads. Upon arrest, white women faced shame and stigma, while Black women faced time in state prisons. In the long glare of Jim Crow, gay and lesbian bars have been as segregated as the rest of social, political, and economic institutions of the city. Though often targets of state violence, white lesbian bars enforced the status quo as much as they challenged it.

When Les Pierres opened, they defied the past prohibitions on intimacy between women and the enforcement of gender norms. They created an erotic space of defiance for women of color. The energy of collective organizing was nurtured in spaces like Les Pierres. These bars were spaces of political incubation where radical visions and lifelong friendships were born.

And so in the dance, the music, the sexual energy of Les Pierres was a long legacy of electric resistance.

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The Algiers Folk Art Zone & Blues Museum, which is located directly across from the Mississippi River levee at 207 Leboeuf Street, was founded by Charles Gillam in 2000. A self-taught sculptor, wood-carver, and mixed media artist, Gillam was born in 1945 and raised in the Lower Ninth Ward. He traces his earliest experiences creating folk art back to his childhood when he and his brother worked shining shoes in the French Quarter. After stints in the military and the Black Panthers, Gillam devoted himself to creating folk art from found objects and materials like wire, grating, and Mississippi River driftwood. His work gained broader exposure in the early 1990s when the New Orleans House of Blues club commissioned Gillam to carve a bust of the iconic Delta blues man, Charley Patton. His hand-carved doors and other blues-related works were also purchased for display in other House of Blues locations.

The Folk Art Zone & Blues Museum consists of two houses joined by a carnivalesque courtyard filled with Gillam’s colorful creations that celebrate African American history and culture with a definite emphasis on the blues and New Orleans music and street life. Gillam explains: “Discarded materials from Hurricane Katrina, old cabinet doors that people have discarded, I turn them back into works of art by taking them apart and using the wood and creating the images and characters of New Orleans. When I carve these characters, it seems like they just tell me how to pull them out from that wood.” Gillam’s dedication to creating a folk art environment that repurposes materials is testified to by the roofing shingles that came off one of his buildings that were used to pave the courtyard and are now adorned with his mural art.

Inside the blues museum the walls are lined with concrete busts of blues men — Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Big Joe Williams, Roosevelt Sykes; blues divas — Billie Holiday, Sippie Wallace, Koko Taylor, Etta James, Memphis Minnie; and New Orleans greats — Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, James Booker, Allen Toussaint. In addition, Gillam’s museum displays work by an array of folk artists, including Lonnie Holley, Gregory “Mr. Imagination” Womack, Roy Ferdinand, A.J. Boudreaux, and Big Al Taplet. Of course, a visit to the Algiers Folk Art Zone & Blues Museum also means a guided tour by the effervescent host that combines history, culture, and art. Gillam also uses his Folk Art Zone for educational workshops, and each fall he and his wife Susan, who is also an artist, host the Algiers Folk Art Festival.

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In the late summer of 1963, propelled through treacherous rural Alabama by spirituals from his previous post in the civil rights battlefields of south Georgia, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field secretary and playwright John O’Neal arrived at the campus of Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi.

There, O’Neal joined with fellow field secretary Doris Derby and student Gilbert Moses, already hard at work on the curriculum for the Freedom Schools, to found a theater that would serve as a political education and empowerment tool for Southern organizers.

Political conditions including better access to funding and collaboration with other projects motivated the Free Southern Theater’s move to New Orleans in 1965. From this base the company toured across the rural South, inspiring members of its racially integrated cast to become activists as well as artists.

The FST drew support from the Black communities where it performed in churches, classrooms and barns, and from Black artists and writers around the country. Its first donation – a check for $5 – came from Langston Hughes himself.

Under the direction of writers including O’Neal, Tom Dent and Kalamu ya Salaam, the FST’s works were inspired by the wit and wisdom of ‘common folk’.

One memorable character, first performed in the Tougaloo days, is storyteller and narrator Junebug Jabbo Jones. In 1980, a debut performance of O’Neal’s Junebug solo piece, ‘Don’t Start Me to Talking, Or I’ll Tell Everything I Know,’ symbolically concluded the Free Southern Theater and inaugurated its successor, Junebug Productions.

O’Neal served as Junebug’s artistic director through his retirement in 2011. Today the organization carries on the FST’s mission, supporting activism through creative means including the Story Circle process, the Color Lines project, and drama, dance and poetry performances."

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During the 1920s, the Lyric Theater was New Orleans premiere African American vaudeville theater.

Formerly located at the downtown-lake corner of Burgundy and Iberville streets in the French Quarter, the Lyric Theater was touted as “America’s Largest and Finest Colored Theater." The playhouse catered to great musicians and featured the orchestra of locally prominent violinist and bandleader Professor John Robichaux. The orchestra was adept at performing both hot jazz and more formal orchestral music. Pianist Margaret Maurice, drummer Zutty Singleton, clarinetist Alphonse Picou, and cornetist Andrew Kimball all performed in the orchestra.

From 1919 to 1927, the theater hosted well-known singers, dancers, and entertainers working the Theater Owners Booking Assoc. (TOBA) black vaudeville circuit, including Esther Bigeou, Sara Martin, Josephine Baker, and Ethel Waters.

The theater often held "midnight frolics" for white-only audiences. Local white newspapers promoted these midnight performances as the latest popular entertainment for their white patrons.

Cornetist/Trumpeter Punch Miller, in a Hogan Jazz Archives interview, remembered: "The Lyric used to be crowded every day in the week, upstairs and downstairs. A group would come for a week, start a new show Monday, play it Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Then on Thursday they would change the show, have the same cast, but a different show. Friday and Saturday they had "midnight rambles" which were different, a little nasty. They started at 11, ended at around 2 am. They would let the white people in on "ramble" nights." [3]

Louis Armstrong also remembered the Lyric with fondness: "I went to the Lyric Theater quite often. Located downtown on Iberville and Burgundy streets. Robichaux Orchestra was always the best. They all read music. John Robichaux. They used to play for the stage shows. Andrew Kimball was the cornetist in the band (my choice)." [4]

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The Bell Theater was originally located at Bell and Dorgenois Streets, where it operated between 1914 and 1921. In the early years, the theater served not only as an entertainment venue, but was frequently the location of community organizing meetings and large-scale fundraisers for non-profit organizations. [1]

After closing the original location, proprietor William Junqua reopened the Bell in August of 1922 at 2800 Grand Route St. John at Gentilly Boulevard, near Bayou St. John and only four blocks from the City Park Fairgrounds. Lauded for its solid construction and unique interior, the new Bell was the largest theater “north of Canal Street,” and brought the grandeur of the downtown theater to the expanding suburbs. [2] With 1,100 seats, the new location was the largest suburban theater in the city, and quickly became one of the most successful. At the opening performance, over 2,000 people “applied for admittance,” and capacity houses were reported every night for the first two weeks. The popularity of the theater prompted Junqua to begin the process of adding an 800-seat balcony to accommodate growing crowds and presumably to increase the theater’s earning potential. [7]

Early into its new life, the Bell was lauded as “the most pleasing and artistic auditorium to be found in any suburban theater of the city.” Despite its size, it was described as “simple and dignified, achieving an atmosphere of intimacy and hominess.” [8] The theater was designed and built by general contractor J.W. Fleetman of New Orleans and cost an estimated $18,000 [9], the equivalent of about $247,000 today, accounting for inflation. [10] The theater was uniquely ornamented in the Dutch style, including Cyprus wood paneling and handmade chairs. [11]

On April 9, 1966, the Bell Theater was destroyed in a fire that began in the roof and quickly spread through the entire building. The fire caused the evacuation of 30 homes in the neighborhood, and an estimated $100,000 in damages to the theater and surrounding structures. [16]

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The Imperial Theater opened in 1922 at Hagan Avenue and Dumaine. Owned by Rene Brunet Senior, a member of a prominent New Orleans theater family, Imperial Theater was Brunet's third theatrical endeavor. The exterior of the Imperial was in the Art Deco style popular throughout the 1920s and 30s. The theater advertised its “typhoon” cooling system. [2]

The story of the Imperial Theater, like other neighborhood theaters in New Orleans, contrasts with the image of the movie “palaces” and first-run houses owned primarily by major production corporations. At this time, the film business was “vertically integrated,” and included production, distribution, and exhibition. Theaters played a huge part in the success of film corporations. [1]

Throughout the life of the Imperial, the theater operated not only as an entertainment venue, but a gathering place for local families. The Brunets offered a variety of specialty nights that Rene Brunet Jr. details in his book, including yo-yo nights for children and “ladies gift nights,” where door prizes could include 52-piece dinnerware sets. Other events and contests used to attract people to the theater were amateur night, and even giving away live turkeys during Thanksgiving and Christmas! [2] Imperial Theater regularly supported fundraising and community benefit campaigns throughout the 1920s and 30s for a variety of causes.

Mr. Brunet were not the only members of their family involved in the daily operations of the Imperial. Rene Brunet Jr. once recalled that his sister ran the box office, and his grandmother took tickets from the time of the theater’s opening until it closed. Rene Brunet Sr. died in October 1946 from a heart attack. Shortly afterward, Rene Brunet Jr. took over operations of the Imperial. [2]

The Imperial was destroyed by an early morning fire in March 1957. The fire caused approximately $80,000 in damage [3] The Imperial was never reconstructed.

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Built in 1918 to replace the older Orpheum, the new Orpheum Theatre opened with great pomp and circumstance on February 5, 1921, with a matinee performance in the afternoon. [1] However, according to the coverage of the New Orleans Item, “The real opening of the magnificent theatre did not take place until the evening, when an audience socially brilliant and thoroughly representative of the city’s life assembled to get a first glimpse at one of the finest theaters in America…like a gala night at the opera.” [2] However, the wealthy and lavish were not the Orpheum’s only patrons, nor was their presence at its opening “thoroughly representative of the city’s life,” as the Item proclaimed.

The Orpheum was segregated. The first balcony was reserved for white customers, and its stairs rose from the orchestra foyer. The second balcony was sanctioned "colored only" and its stairs rose from the exterior alleys. [3] It was a three-story building with luxurious appointments including marble mosaic floors in the lobbies. The building had at least twenty two dressing rooms spread throughout all three stories. [1]

The Keith-Orpheum Circuit provided the Orpheum with vaudeville acts, which were considered “big time“ as compared to the Loew Circuit and aimed at a “classy audience,” the kind that went to Broadway plays. [4]

A film projector was placed in the original plans for the building. While the Orpheum was primarily intended as a stage theatre, it is significant that a motion picture projector would share the space at this point in time. The Orpheum in New Orleans became the recipient of the films, and by 1931, they had surpassed vaudeville as the main attraction of the theater. [4] The onset of the Great Depression fueled both musicians and stagehand strikes enough to force the Orpheum to drop vaudeville altogether. [4] By the end of the 1930s, the Orpheum showed only full-length feature films and also became the home of RKO pictures.

In 1981, the Orpheum Theatre underwent an extensive renovation keeping most of its historical form and details. Since then, the New Orleans Symphony (later, renamed the Louisiana Philharmonic in 1991) played there until 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit. [5] The theatre sat empty and filled with water until 2010. The theater reopened in 2015 after extensive restorations.

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In the early years of the film industry, few aspects of the industry were more important than distribution. Film exchanges handled the repair, rental, and advertisement of motion pictures both locally and across geographic regions. Exchanges worked with different production companies to license reels. Their operations could be quite controversial as production companies tried to create exclusivity agreements and prevent piracy. New Orleans exchanges were notorious for not obeying their contracts with Northern producers.

This Metro Film Company Exchange office was a sub-office of the Southern Metro Film Corporation, which held its headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee and controlled distribution in all the southeastern states. [1] The Metro Film Company Exchange office was an important regional distributor. Located downtown at 407 Carondelet near Exchange Row and under the leadership of manager Karl A. Bugbee, exhibitors would view films in a private screening and sign rental contracts that stipulated how long the film would be shown and the price of the rental. [2, 3] Metro operated from 1915 to 1917.

K.A. Bugbee served as manager until January 1918 when he resigned and opened a ‘state’s rights’ exchange, a film exchange that usually buys “exclusive territorial rights on films from independent producers, and in turn sell exhibition rights to the theaters, either for a flat price or on a percentage basis.” [4] Moving Picture World noted his resignation by saying that Bugbee “built up the business from an inconsequential volume to one of the strongest film institutions in this territory.” [5] Bugbee was also considered “one of the best-known film men in the south” for his work in the New Orleans film industry. [6]

The Metro exchange distributed many films throughout its existence. One notable distribution in the New Orleans community was the Times-Picayune photoplay feature involving fifteen women from the New Orleans exchange territory who were given “an opportunity to demonstrate their natural talents for the screen.” [7]

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The Liberty Theatre owned by the Saenger Amusement Company and managed under the auspices of Boehringer Amusement Company opened in 1918. The theater was lavishly designed with the intention of being “the most complete motion picture theater in the South.” [1] The theater was complete with ceiling frescoes completed by Italian artist Guiseppe Rossi, a marble staircase leading to its foyer, and a miniaturized Statue of Liberty adorning its cornice. [2]

When Liberty first opened the theater regularly screened a combination of dramatic films, newsreels, and short comedies. Matinee screenings began 1 p.m. and cost just 10 cents. Evening screenings, which ran from 6 p.m. until midnight, cost a whopping 15 cents. [3]

The Liberty Theatre was acquired by RKO Pictures by the 1950s and ultimately shuttered its doors in 1955. The structure was demolished and today the site is home to a portion of the Pan American Life Center.

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A Streetcar Named Desire is the title of a 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tennessee Williams, adapted in 1951 for the big screen by director Elia Kazan. It is undoubtedly one of the most famous film depictions of the City of New Orleans, despite the fact that the much of the production took place in Burbank, California film studios. Williams lived in the French Quarter throughout much of his adult life, he lived in this apartment at 632 1/2 St. Peter Street while writing A Streetcar Named Desire.

The creation of Streetcar and its ongoing impact on the image of New Orleans is particularly interesting in our modern era of “runaway production,” in which many states offer tax incentives to lure production to locations outside of Hollywood. In the early 1950s however, film crews were much less mobile and the industry was highly concentrated in Southern California. [1]

Regardless of the filming location, even today, the sultry depiction of New Orleans’ French Quarter provides a draw to tourists interested in seeing where Stanley (played by Marlon Brando) famously bellowed “Hey Stella!” to his wife from the base of the curving wrought iron stairs of their rundown apartment.

Streetcar begins with Blanche (Vivien Leigh) arriving at her sister Stella’s (Kim Hunter) run-down apartment in the French Quarter. Blanche lives in a “dream world of long-gone gentility,” and is dismayed by her sister’s way of life, including her marriage to brutish Stanley (Marlon Brando). Throughout the script, Stanley taunts Blanche, eventually revealing a secret that sends her into a complete breakdown. Ultimately Stanley is rebuffed by his wife and friends, left alone to witness the result of his cruelty. [2]

The famous opening scene of the film shows Blanche arriving at Stella’s French Quarter apartment aboard a trolley car displaying the name “Desire,” on the front. This is referential to the Desire Streetcar line, which ceased operation before the film was released. One of the “Desire” cars was recalled from retirement by then Mayor Morrison and New Orleans Public Service for the shooting of the opening scene at the L&N station at the foot of Canal street. [2]

Richard Day, who won an Academy Award for the sets he created for the film, “had to create a scene that was both real and believable, yet symbolic of decay and gradual disintegration.” Further, “they had to be the kind of scenes you might see in certain parts of New Orleans.” Day traveled to New Orleans for several weeks before production began to find inspiration in “picturesque aspects of various street and buildings of the Vieux Carre,” resulting in a “striking set for the “Elysian Fields apartments” in which the majority of the film’s action is set. [1]

Whether the scenes of A Streetcar Named Desire were filmed on location in New Orleans or recreated on a Hollywood Sound Stage, the image of the city was spread throughout the states. A press booklet promoting the theatrical re-release of the film after the 24th Academy Awards (where the film received five awards) suggests, “A Streetcar Named Desire reveals a side to the lovely Southern city that has startled American play and motion picture fans.” [3]

In 1965, fourteen years after the release of the film, state tourism director John Carroll attempted to revive the imagery of the Desire Streetcar to spur tourism interest. Originally from New Orleans but trained in Hollywood, Carroll emphasized that the state needed to “think big if it wanted to get into the big league in tourism.” One of his suggestions included putting the “streetcar named Desire” on a trailer and send it “rolling around the country loaded with promotional materials for potential visitors.” Additionally, an undated, but probably 60s-era tourism brochure featured a map of the Desire streetcar line’s former route. [3]

Today, visitors to New Orleans have a few options for “Streetcar” tourism since much of the movie was filmed on set in California. Each year in late March the city plays host to the Tennesse Williams Festival, featuring lectures, performances, and a "Stella" screaming contest to honor the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. Visitors can also visit Stella! or Stanley, two restaurants in the French Quarter named after the characters from the story.

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The Saenger Amusement Company purchased this lot on Canal Street in 1921 for $250,000 with plans to erect a lavish million-dollar theater. [1] The Saenger Theater opened its doors on February 5, 1927. [2] The venue began as a silent movie house, with a ticket box office and main entrance at 1111 Canal Street. [3]

The Saenger Theatre, while part of the larger Saenger Amusement Company theater chain, was the company's flagship venue. The Saenger was exceptionally ornate, including life-size and smaller statues, crystal lighting fixtures, oil paintings, and fine crystal. [5] The Saenger was deemed “lavish and beautiful,” with two different arcades that contained all the amenities, men’s lounges, women’s powder rooms, smoking rooms, a mezzanine, and a seating capacity of 4000 persons. [5]

A staple of the early days of the Saenger Theater was the between-show recital on the Mammoth Theater Organ. A Times-Picayune article in 1960 noted that the Organ initially accompanied silent movie pictures with mood cues such as “mysterioso,” “hurry,” “love scene,” and “gallop.” Bob Mack, a theater organist, noted how the organ could “imitate with uncanny accuracy the songs of birds, the roar of jungle beasts, the lowing of cows, the barking of dogs, the mewing of cats and the howls of wolves." [4]

When the Saenger first opened its doors, it competed with the Keith-Orpheum and Loew circuits to attract vaudeville acts. As a result, The Saenger struggled to offer a comparable quality and variety of entertainment to their audiences. [5] Just two years after its opening, Saenger Theater was sold to the Paramount-Publix chain for more than $10 million. [7] Aware of Saenger Theater's inability to draw first-class entertainment, the new management moved quickly to install a sound system and capitalize on the growing motion picture enterprise. [5] By June 1933, the Saenger had discontinued vaudeville entirely and offered only first-rate sound films distributed by Paramount Pictures. [6]

In February 1964, the Saenger made plans to convert the real estate into two movie auditoriums, or what’s known as a piggyback theater. The upstairs portion of the theater would seat 900 customers, the downstairs 1,900. The manager at the time, Walter Guarino, expected to convert the lesser area for road-show attractions, extended-run films, or as he put it, “whatever the product is.” [8] The addition of another screen was an effort to catch up with the times. By the 1960s, the Saenger's single auditorium was a classic version of the movie house, already vintage in the eyes of movie houses with multiple auditoriums and a selection of movies. The renovation was viewed with disdain by many locals. [9]

Ultimately, however, there was an attempt made in 1960 to preserve the historic Saenger Theater. Manager Walter Guarino issued a public request in the New Orleans States-Item, soliciting the help of locals to piece together the history of the Saenger Theater. Guarino requested photographs, programs, brochures, and newspaper clippings about the early days of the Saenger. The article noted that Guarino wanted to revamp the theater to its original state. [10]

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Mahalia Jackson

Often referred to as the “Queen of Gospel,” Mahalia Jackson was one of the most influential figures for contemporary gospel and blues singers. Born in 1911, Jackson grew up in a shotgun home in New Orleans. She quickly found her greatest refuge at Mt. Moriah Baptist Church where she sang at least six times a week. It was at Mt. Moriah that her talents were first recognized. At the age of sixteen, Jackson moved to Chicago with her aunt in order to seek better employment opportunities. In Chicago, Jackson joined the Greater Salem Baptist Church.

Jackson's career would not take off until the late 1940s, after a failed record deal and many years of touring. With her success, she frequented radio stations and performed as the headliner at Carnegie Hall. In the 1950s, Jackson regularly appeared on television shows hosted by Ed Sullivan, Dinah Shore, and Steve Allen, and departed on her first European tour.

Jackson was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, she lent her voice to rallies, marches, and demonstrations throughout the country. In 1963, during the historic March on Washington, Jackson performed "I Been 'Buked and I Been Scorned" before Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Jackson later sang at John F. Kennedy’s presidential inauguration, as well as his funeral, and the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King.

After collapsing in 1971 on tour in Munich, Jackson died early the next year of heart complications in her home in Chicago.

The Theater

Designed by architect William Bergman, the theater was first opened in 1973 as The New Orleans Theater for the Performing Arts. Its 2,100 seats were filled up with those citizens of New Orleans who sought to be entertained by some of the finest performers in the city. Jazz and gospel singers, brass bands, ballet companies, and other performers of the fine arts regularly performed here. The first performance to play at the theater was The New Orleans Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, and they entertained a full house with Giuseppe Verdi's Manzoni Requiem.

In 1995, the New Orleans City Council and Mayor Marc Morial, with grants from New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation and the Louisiana Division of the Arts, renamed the New Orleans Theater for the Performing Arts after the New Orleans-born Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson.

Theater Renovation

The Mahalia Jackson Theater suffered significant water and wind damage during Hurricane Katrina. The theater was renovated and reopened in 2009.

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The Saenger Amusement Company, organized in 1912 by brothers Julian and Abraham Saenger, grew into one of the largest motion picture chains in the south, with a peak total of 324 Saenger theaters operating in 12 southern states, along with Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Panama.

The Saenger Brothers, who previously owned their family drug store, began their foray into the world of amusement in 1911 with the construction of The Saenger, a vaudeville theatre in downtown New Orleans. After a year of exclusively vaudeville content, the Saengers decided to shift their focus to motion pictures and introduced short films into the Saenger’s program. [1]

With the ever-rising demand for motion pictures in the early 20th century, the Saenger Company, then under the management of E. V. Richards, began expanding from New Orleans into Texarkana and Alexandria. Saenger’s later acquisition of the formidable Fichtenberg Amusement company, which controlled houses in Vicksburg, Houston, and Pensacola, as well as New Orleans, marked an acceleration in the Saenger brothers’ rise. The Company formally established its New Orleans headquarters in 1917 and constructed Strand Theater in that same year. By 1924, Saenger began expanding into a dozen states, and in ’26 and ’27, they made landfall in Cuba and Jamaica. Saenger’s direct and indirect New Orleans holdings eventually expanded to include the Saenger, the Strand, the Globe, and the Liberty.

The 1916 Saenger family reunion evolved into a company party and was attended by numerous local business and political leaders including Consolidated Exchange manager Al Shear, Mayor Ford of Shreveport, and Mayor Behrman of New Orleans. While there, Mayor Behrman expressed his pleasure with Saenger’s role in New Orleans and subsequently congratulated the company on the then-forthcoming opening of the Strand. [2] In December 1916, Saenger hired a supplementary night shift of steelworkers to ensure the indulgent theatre’s timely February opening. [3]

In 1917, Saenger gained the rights to “First National Exhibitors Circuit” productions, showcasing stars Charlie Chaplin and Madame Petrova, and began shopping for booking deals with New Orleans theaters, while limiting exclusive first-run access to the Saenger-owned Strand and Globe. [3]

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

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In 1940, the patient population was between 400 and 450 and a massive renovation was underway. The improved hospital created individual rooms for 450 patients and the 13” thick concrete walls made the buildings as fireproof as possible. Fire was always a concern.

Here’s a list of what was built in 1940:

• 17 two-story dormitories

• 20,000 square-foot recreation building with library, theater, canteen and ballroom

• Over two miles of two-story corridors that link all patient buildings together

• Facilities' engineering building

• Staff dining hall

• Residence for Daughters of Charity, a Catholic nursing order

All of these improvements cost around 4 million dollars.

To your right, the two-story buildings with the orange metal awnings are female patients’ dorms. The dormitories are arranged in two quadrangles connected via covered corridors. This provided patients, many in wheelchairs, access to all buildings. Creating a fireproof hospital was a major aim of the last renovation, so even the patients’ room furnishings were metal instead of wood.

Every dorm had 30 individual rooms--each with an oscillating fan and radiated heat for winter. Each floor had shared bathrooms and a common parlor. The original design provided men and women with separate dorms. Later on, when patient couples ran away and returned married, they developed a thriving “suburbia” of homemade cottages towards the rear of the facility so that they could live together.

A Carville “date” often involved a hot-plate in the woman’s room, a card table across the threshold with the man sitting in the hall. In the 1960s, one of the dormitories was remodeled into apartments to allow for the cohabitation of couples. Each apartment had a private kitchen and bathroom.

Dormitory #24 was designated the “Carville Mall,” where free enterprise thrived. A patient could open her own shop to provide goods or services to fellow patients.

Some popular patient-run businesses included a radio repair service, a barber shop, a bicycle repair shop, a beauty parlor, a photography shop, and even a dry cleaner's.

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In 1936, a $250,000 Works Progress Administration beautification project took place at the airport and included extensive landscaping, paving roads and runways, and this fountain. Enrique Alférez sculpted each statue to represent one of the four winds, hence the name “The Fountain of the Four Winds.”

This project signified early federal involvement in the construction of airports. Because of the Great Depression, the federal government helped cash-strapped cities improve their airports. Federal involvement helped the unemployed, but it also kept airports up-to-date in case the military needed them. This need would arise in World War II, when the military commandeered airports, including the Shushan Airport.

Despite the stunningly attractive airport, by 1939 Louisiana and federal government officials could no longer ignore the rampant embezzlement of government money, including WPA funds. Coming to light in “the Scandals” were examples of, Shushan and the Orleans Levee Board inflating the savings collected from the bonds sold for the lakefront project in order to give themselves a significant amount of money. Shushan and other officials were indicted and convicted of tax evasion and fraud. Shushan went to prison, and though President Truman pardoned him, the damage was done. The Shushan Airport was renamed the New Orleans Municipal Airport.

For the final part of the tour, walk toward the hangar across the street and face the administration building.

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Emma Barrett, a self-taught jazz pianist and vocalist, was born on March 25, 1897, and began performing in venues across New Orleans at just twelve years old. [1] Despite being unable to read music, Barrett was often in high demand and quickly became a fixture in the New Orleans Jazz scene. [2] In addition to recording her own work, Barrett performed and toured with The Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

When she first began gracing New Orleans with her unique voice, she was known as the "Bell Gal" for her sense of style. She had a habit of, "...wearing a red dress, red woven skull cap and attaching bells on her garters that jingled as she tapped her feet to glorious jazz rhythms." [1] Barrett's sense of style never faded and she could be seen performing in clubs on Bourbon Street dressed in her trademark outfit into her eighties. [2]

Barrett's fashion sense was not the only thing that caught the attention of jazz-enthusiasts along Bourbon Street, however. At a time when it was considered “…unladylike to play the trumpet or saxophone,” Barret flocked to voice and piano. [2] By 1923, Barrett was playing with, 'Papa' Celestin and later, Bébé Ridgley's Original Tuxedo Orchestra. [1] During her time working with these, and many other, major names in Jazz, she further developed her musical style. Her favored approach with the piano was known as the "pile-driver attack" and can be best described as blunt, while her vocals were noted for their, "...naughty double entendres with...perfect delivery." [1]

By 1947, the Bell Gal was also often referred to as "Sweet Emma", and she was working steadily at Happy Landing, a local club. [1] Throughout the 1950s, she created and worked with her own band Sweet Emma and the Bells [1]. Barrett began recording her music in the 1960s. She released her first recording for, "...her own album for Riverside Records New Orleans: The Living Legends in 1961," and at this time, she also began working with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. [1] The Preservation Hall Band specialized in Dixieland-style jazz, and could almost always be found somewhere on Bourbon Street, especially at the Preservation Hall on Saint Peter Street in the French Quarter, where they were hired as an attraction to draw patrons to the new art gallery, which they quickly outshone. [1]

Despite the multiple tours she and her Preservation Jazz Hall Band went on - including a one to Disneyland in 1963, and a few overseas - and a write up about her in Glamour magazine, Barrett remained true to her city, spending most of her time in the French Quarter. [1] She and the Preservation Jazz Hall Band even briefly appeared in the movie "Cincinnati Kid," which was filmed in the city in the mid-1960s. [1] Even a stroke that left her partially paralyzed could not slow Barrett down, and she continued to contribute to the French Quarter's jazz scene right up until her death on the 28th of January, 1983. [1]

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University of New Orleans 2010 History MA graduate Laurel Dorrance created a cartoon-style history of Oak Street's Comic Book Shop for the 2009 Po-Boy Fest History Center. The following is her overview of the project.

I first conducted interviews with More Fun Comic Shop owner Steve H Thomas and manager DC Harbold. Next, I wrote a narrative, illustrated using photos and artwork. Steve and DC's homes, along with their belongings (including photos), had been destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, so there was little left to work with. It was necessary to stage "recreations." These stagings were guided by the interviews themselves.

The title page, photo frames, and text were designed and illustrated by New Orleans comic book artist Caesar Meadows, who draws Mumbeaux Gumbo for Where Y'at magazine and Qomix for Anti-Gravity magazine. In illustrating the piece, he used a style called "Fumetti," which is characterized by an approach that combines photographic elements with hand-drawn illustrations. Arriving in the United States as part of the web comics movement of the late 1980s and 1990s, this genre has slowly gained in both legitimacy and popularity.

This visual history was created as part of the University of New Orleans' Carrollton History Project. It later was included as part of UNO's poster session at the National Council on Public History 2010 conference in Portland, Oregon. UNO's History Department awarded this project the Public History Award for 2010.

Assembled in neworleanshistorical.org by Brandon Keene and Lacar Musgrove.

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Under the guidance of Ellsworth Woodward, the Newcomb pottery program began flourishing in the mid-1890s. In 1896, the first public display of the pottery produced by the students was presented, to polite enthusiasm.

In March 1900, the program was invited by the Ceramic Association of New York to send a few of their pieces to the Paris Exposition. Because there were no collection pieces on hand, the exhibit was composed of random pieces hastily gathered from various owners. Surprised and delighted by the medals earned, enthusiasm for the program increased.

The Art School was across the street from the Pottery Building, and it hosted many classes during Newcomb's stay on Washington Avenue.

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Continue on the path in the direction you have been traveling, along the Olmsted lagoon. Soon you arrive at one end of the Foucher alley of oaks, planted in the eighteenth century. Scores of exposition visitors remarked on their beauty and noted the Spanish moss hanging from them. The trees are also replete with "Resurrection fern" that is brown in dry weather but becomes green when it rains. Live oak trees can live hundreds of years; a few here are named and registered with the Live Oak Society.

On this end of these oaks, the Cotton Centennial's Art Hall stood. Even if the work was fine but not acclaimed, imagine standing before art for the first time, as many visitors did. Natural light poured in through the building's many skylights, and electric lights enhanced the view.

On the far end of this alley stood the glass-framed Horticultural Hall, the only exposition building intended to be permanent. The city of New Orleans funded its construction for $100,000. During the fair, it housed produce and exotic plants brought in by various countries, including fascinating succulents from Honduras and Mexico. Over time, small plants became huge ones, and Horticultural Hall was beloved as a botanical marvel by the citizens of New Orleans until the hurricane of 1915 demolished it.

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The art building is one of the four original buildings that were the Broadway campus when Newcomb moved there in 1918.

In 1997, the original art building underwent massive renovations, and the school was careful to make sure that the exterior architecture of the building was preserved. The building expanded during this time and it currently encompasses the original building, the pool, Woodward Way, and the gymnasium. After the renovations, its name was changed to the Woldenberg Art Center.

Inside, the art building contains studios, lecture halls, classrooms, and galleries.

To continue the walking tour, please proceed to the Caroline Richardson Building, campus building number 84.

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