On August 6, 1928, Zora Neale Hurston wrote a letter from 7 Bellville Court, Algiers, Louisiana, to Langston Hughes in which she writes "I have landed in the kingdom of Marie Laveau and expect to wear her crown someday” (Kaplan, 124). In Algiers,…

The term ‘Maroon’ refers to enslaved people who ran away from slave owners and remained in the south to join or establish independent, hidden settlements. Maroons utilized the area’s topography to evade capture. While one might expect maroons to…

During the mid-1800’s ships tightly packed the port of New Orleans, according to historian Walter Johnson, “one could walk deck to deck from one end of the city to the other.” All along the docks, ships unloaded and loaded cargo daily. New Orleans…

During the major slave-trading season, September through May, yards surrounded by high brick walls called slave pens bustled with activity in the areas surrounding the French Quarter. Slave traders forced enslaved men, women, and children to line up…

The house today marked 727-729 Burgundy Street, relatively unchanged since the early 1800s, has a history that reflects the tricky navigation of enslavement and freedom by a family called the Beaurepaires. On August 25, 1828, Louis Beaurepaire, a…

The Harmony Club of New Orleans was an elite men's social club. Though it was not completely sectarian, it was understood to be for the Jewish elite of the city. Founded in 1872, the club moved locations several times before building its own…

The Boston Club was a social club founded in 1841 through which rich, white men could enjoy the popular card game called “Boston.” [1] Members of The Boston Club organized and rented rooms in their clubhouse to play “Boston” as well as other card…

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…

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…

Founded in 1834 by seven medical doctors, The Medical College of Louisiana's mission was to train New Orleans doctors in the combat of cholera and yellow fever [1, 2]; two of the most deadly diseases which plagued the U.S. south during the…

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…

Established in 1875, St. Roch Cemetery lies just north of the Faubourg Marigny in the St. Roch neighborhood. The founder of St. Roch Cemetery was Father Peter Leonhard Thevis, pastor at Holy Trinity Church located closer to the Mississippi River…

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

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…

The site of Audubon Park today was once a twelve and one-half arpent plantation bought and owned by Pierre Foucher. Foucher abandoned his plantation before the Civil War and fled to France, never returning to Louisiana. The abandoned plantation was…

“One of the handsomest structures in the city will be the new building of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association,” [1] said an article from the New Orleans States when the Athenaeum opened in 1896. With various Jewish families from the New Orleans area…

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a 2008 Oscar winning film by director David Fincher, filmed primarily in uptown New Orleans. The film was adapted from a 1922 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald by the same name, from the collection “Tales of…

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…

The Leeds Iron Foundry was owned and operated by Charles Leeds. It was located at Delord and Constance Streets during the Antebellum period of the nineteenth century. The foundry was opened in 1824. Leeds became a partner in 1844 upon his father’s…

The Prytania Theatre is the oldest operating theater in New Orleans, dating back to 1915. It is the only single-screen, suburban theater in the state of Louisiana. It caters to film buffs and families alike with its eclectic selection of film…