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…

By the early 1900s, the Melpomene neighborhood in Central City was a densely populated urban neighborhood, where many residents worked in occupations related to shipping, particularly in the nearby rail yards. Broadly speaking, the area was home…

In 2013, archaeological firms conducted test excavations in City Square 383 in the Melpomene neighborhood, the city block once bounded by Erato, Freret, Thalia, and South Robertson (or Locust) Streets. Testing focused on lots along the former corner…

In working class neighborhoods like the Melpomene in Central City, the importance of women’s labor in the household’s economy is visible both in historical records and archaeological materials. Women worked as dress makers, cooks, and laundresses.…

In 2013, archaeological consulting firm Earth Search, Inc., excavated a block of the Melpomene neighborhood originally bounded by South Liberty, Erato, Clio, and Howard/LaSalle Streets. Earth Search identified brick foundations and artifacts from a…

Between the 1930s and 1960s, racist policies at every level of government pushed Black residents of New Orleans into lower-paying jobs and racially segregated neighborhoods. Throughout the nation, local and federal government agencies used coded…

The French may claim New Orleans French bread, but later immigrant bakers' influence on the city's bread-making traditions is undeniable. At the turn of the nineteenth century, a wave of Sicilian immigration to New Orleans left a lasting impact on…

Bread-baking is a hard, physically demanding job. Before the Civil War, most bakery owners relied on apprenticeships and enslaved laborers to handle the workload. Postbellum bakery workers inherited a system of forced on-premises lodging, 16 to…

The intersection of St. Peter and Royal Streets is loud and busy with the passing hustle of to-go drinks, music, and tourists, making it hard to notice a faded patch of tile work outside the corner grocery store located at 701 Royal Street. However,…

Often visible in the background of historic images of the French Market, the three-story Italianate building with the “Garic’s Bakery" sign anchored the neighborhood. [1] Garic’s Bakery was once part of a bustling riverfront commercial corridor,…

In 2013, the reality cooking television series Top Chef filmed its eleventh season in New Orleans at 1231-33 Bourbon Street to revitalize the struggling restaurant and tourism industry following the effects of the 2010 BP oil spill on Gulf seafood.…

Before the Civil War, enslaved labor was an integral part of the commercial baking industry and the overall economy in New Orleans. While food historians note the role that French, Spanish, and Anglo colonial bakers played in shaping the city’s…

In 1924, journalist and political activist Dorothy Day lived in an apartment at 520 St. Peter Street while writing for the New Orleans Item. During her short time working at the newspaper, Day wrote articles generally concerned with the culture of…

In 1952, Lawrence Sintes Sr. opened Sintes Boat Works on the edge of Orleans Marina in Lake Pontchartrain with his oldest son, Lawrence Sintes Jr. The Sintes family’s move to the area, known as the West End neighborhood, coincided with a…

In the 1920s, the William H. Todd Corporation built Todd Shipyards on the shore of the Mississippi River in an area once known as McClellanville. The shipyard was located near the Algiers Naval Station at the present-day intersection of Merrill and…

The year was 1865; the Confederacy had just been defeated, and many emancipated African Americans departed the cane and cotton fields for New Orleans. Louisiana planters scrambled to assemble a new labor force, as did railroad investors, and learned…

The “Monument to the Immigrant” was erected in March 1995 and stands along the Mississippi River in Woldenberg Park. The monument depicts an immigrant family on one side and the other side a stylized figure shaped like the front of a ship, reminding…

"Ten thousand Micks/They Swung their picks/To dig th’ New Canawl, But the choleray was stronger’n they/And twice it killed them awl" And with that ditty, published in the Times-Picayune of July 18, 1937, the lore was born that thousands…

Domestic servants were a permanent feature of middle class families in 19th century America. We tend to think of them as lacking agency over their daily lives and without power to shape their future. Yet, Irish immigrant women belie that image, as a…

125 years ago, one of the greatest united strikes happened here in New Orleans – the General Strike of 1892. The general strike grew out of the labor movement struggles for improved economic well-being and Black peoples’ continued struggles for…