The Gex Pottery Site at the Lafitte Housing Project

In 2009-2010, archaeologists from ESI excavated the remains of a pottery from one of the blocks during the Lafitte Housing Complex renovation along what used to have been the Carondelet “Old Basin” Canal. Archival research links the pottery at City Square 281 to Lucien M. Gex from 1890-1891, enumerated as 253 Carondelet Walk, the walking path that paralleled the shipping canal. Further research unravels that this pottery was likely a salvage venture, stemming from another failed pottery, Porcelain Works, two blocks away. Advertised in 1883 as Porcelain Works, this original pottery purported to manufacture Limoges porcelain manufactured with American clay. However, newspaper articles indicate that Porcelain Works failed after only a year, and then burned to the ground in 1885. The remnants of pottery at the second site, 253 Carondelet Walk, includes hand-worked clay, biscuit ware, irregularly fired pottery sherds, and kiln furniture with a spatial distribution that suggests the site was an active site of pottery production. By 1900, the United States Census enumerates Lucien M. Gex and his family in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, leaving his pottery venture behind.