Cloverland Dairy
Although dairies are often left out of tales of New Orleans food history, they played an important role in early New Orleanians lives. Through specialty traditions like Creole cream cheese, New Orleans’ only indigenous cheese, New Orleans dairy culture carries on.
Text
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.
Files
Cloverland Dairy
Cloverland Dairy opened its South Carrollton facility in October 1924. The giant milk-bottle sign was a local landmark. Rather than milk, the bottle held 35,000 gallons of water which was used for washing milk trucks and rinsing the dairy's driveway. The milk bottle stood for nearly 40 years until it was removed because of its deteriorating structure. Image Courtesy of Charles L. Franck / Franck-Bertacci Photographers Collection, The Historic New Orleans Collection Between 1979 and 1983.
Cloverland: Carrolton Milk Delivery
Image Courtesy of Charles L. Franck / Franck-Bertacci Photographers Collection, The Historic New Orleans Collection Between 1979 and 1983
Cloverland Dairy Products
Image Courtesy of Charles L. Franck / Franck-Bertacci Photographers Collection, The Historic New Orleans Collection Between 1979 and 1983.
Where The Cows Were: The Cloverland Dairy
Image Courtesy of Charles L. Franck / Franck-Bertacci Photographers Collection, The Historic New Orleans Collection Between 1979 and 1983