Cloverland Dairy

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In October of 1924, Cloverland Dairy opened a facility on South Carrollton Avenue. The giant milk-bottle sign towering above the building was a local landmark. The bottle is said to have held 35,000 gallons of water used to wash milk trucks and rinse the dairy driveway.

The Cloverland Dairy employed many people, including the legendary jazz musician Louis Armstrong. In his memoir, Swing that Music, Armstrong recalls that at fourteen he took a job at Cloverland Dairy. “While I was a newsboy I got a chance at a steady job at the Cloverland Dairy, and I took it and went to work there for a while.” (p. 25) He delivered milk on a Cloverland Milk wagon and received payment on Friday mornings around 10 o'clock. Armstrong recalls that a lot of the delivery boys would take their money around the corner from the dairy and play craps. He accounts in his book Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans, that one Sunday his foot missed the step of the wagon, caught his foot underneath the wheel, and crushed his foot, grinding it into the oyster shells that were broken up to make the road. The pain was so bad that the driver he worked with took him to Charity Hospital. (p. 117)

Following the Cloverland Dairy facility's closure, the U.S. Postal Service converted the building into a post office. The post office maintained the dairy's original white stone façade but removed the famous towering milk bottle.