Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

T HE L OUISIANA H ISTORICAL S OCIETY
PRESENTS:
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS:
A TRICENTENNIAL TRIBUTE
BY
W ILLIAM D. REEVES
W ITH CONTRIBUTORS

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T HE L OUISIANA H ISTORICAL S OCIETY
PRESENTS:
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS:
A TRICENTENNIAL TRIBUTE
W ILLIAM
BY
D. REEVES
WITH
G. HOWARD H UNTER, JARI H ONORA, VERNON VALENTINE PALMER, PRESCOTT N. DUNBAR,
C AROLYN G. KOLB, T. SEMMES FAVROT, LAWRENCE P OWELL, WILLIAM F OREMAN,
AND S ALLY K. REEVES
I LLUSTRATIONS LOCATED AND ARRANGED BY C AROLYN G. KOLB
F OREWORD BY S. FREDERICK S TARR
A Publication of
The Louisiana Historical Society
New Orleans
2018
HPNbooks
A division of Lammert Incorporated
San Antonio, TX

TABLE OF CONTENTS
3 LEGACY SPONSORS
4 BIOGRAPHICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS
5 INTRODUCTION
6 FOREWORD
7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
8 HISTORY OF LOUISIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
10 SUBSCRIBER LIST
11 BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORIES
126 INDEX
130 SHARING THE HERITAGE
216 SPONSORS
217 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
First Edition
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ISBN: 978-1-944891-43-5
Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 2018933833
Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute
editor: William D. Reeves
contributing writer for “Sharing the Heritage”: Garnette Bane, Wynn Buck, Brett Spencer, Brenda Thompson
cover artist: William Woodward
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
2
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project managers: Barry A. Black, Bob Sadoski, Brett Spencer, Bart Whitaker
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LEGACY SPONSORS
Through their generous support, these sponsors helped to make this project possible.
Archbishop Shaw Boys Catholic High School
1000 Barataria Boulevard, Marrero, Louisiana 70072-3052
504-340-6727 • www.archbishopshaw.org
COLUMBUS
PROPERTIES, L.P.
Joseph C. Canizaro, Columbus Properties, LP
900 Poydras Street, Suite 1700, New Orleans, Louisiana 70112
504-584-5000
Ed. Smith’s Stencil Works, Ltd.
4315 Bienville Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70119
504-525-2128 • www.edsmiths.net
Gardner Real Estate
3332 N. Woodlawn Avenue, Metairie, Louisiana 70006
800-566-7801 • www.gardnerrealtors.com
Hancock Bank • Whitney Bank
2510 14th Street, Gulfport, Mississippi 39501
800-448-8812 • www.hancockwhitney.com
Laitram, LLC
220 Laitram Lane, New Orleans, Louisiana 70123
504-570-1219 • www.laitram.com
Roubion Construction
824 Dakin Street, New Orleans Louisiana 70121
504-269-9909 • www.roubioninc.com
Xavier University of Louisiana
1 Drexel Drive, New Orleans, Louisiana 70125
504-520-7411 • www.xula.edu
LEGACY SPONSORS
3

BIOGRAPHICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABRAMSON, MARION 109
ALCIATORE, ANTOINE AND FAMILY 76
AMBROSE, STEPHEN E. 122
ARMSTRONG, LOUIS 108
BALDWIN, ALBERT 80
BECHÉT, SIDNEY 105
BEGUE, ELIZABETH 79
BEHRMAN, MARTIN 95
BIENVILLE, JEAN-BAPTISTE 11
BLANC, ARCHBISHOP ANTONIE 41
BOGGS, HALE AND LINDY 115
BRENNAN, OWEN AND FAMILY 112
BRION, JULIE 23
CABLE, GEORGE W. 82
CALDWELL, JAMES A. 37
CARONDELET, DON FRANCISCO 19
CELESTIN, OSCAR 98
CLAIBORNE, WILLIAM 26
CLAPP, REV. THEODORE 35
COHEN, WALTER LOUIS 91
COLE, CATHARINE 88
CORDEVIOLLE, ETIENNE AND
FRANCOIS LACROIX 44
COUVENT, MARIE C. 21
DART, HENRY PLAUCHÉ 90
DE ARMAS FAMILY 37
DEJOIE, ARISTIDE 83
DELGADO, ISAAC 82
DELILLE, HENRIETTE 47
DENT, ALBERT W. 109
DESDUNES, RODOLPHE 85
DOLLIOLE, JEAN LOUIS AND JOSEPH 28
DREYFOUS, FELIX 86
DUBREUIL, CLAUDE-JOSEPH VILLARS 14
DUNBAR-NELSON, ALICE 96
DUNN, OSCAR J. 78
DURHAM, JAMES 22
EASTON, WARREN 84
FAVROT, CLAUDE-JOSEPH AND FAMILY 20
FORTIER, ALCÉE 89
FRANCIS, MURIEL BULTMAN 119
GAYARRÉ, CHARLES 43
GODCHAUX, LEON 77
GOLDMAN, JEROME 120
GOTTSCHALK, LOUIS MOREAU 78
HALEY, ORETHA CASTLE 124
HANNAN, ARCHBISHOP PHILLIP 115
HAUGHERY, MARGARET 48
HENRY, TROY (CHINK) 111
HERBERT, WALTER 106
HIGGINS, ANDREW 99
HOLMES, DANIEL HENRY 73
JACKSON, MAHALIA 113
KING, GRACE 87
KOCH, RICHARD 102
LABORDE, ALDEN J. “DOC” 116
LAFFITE, JEAN AND PIERRE 31
LAFON, BARTHELEMY 25
LAFON, THOMY 46
LAVEAU, MARIE 41
LIVAUDAIS, JACQUES 12
MALONE, SISTER STANISLAUS D.C. 94
MARIGNY, BERNARD 33
MATAS, RUDOLPH 92
MATASSA, COSIMO 121
MCDONOGH, JOHN 29
MONTANA, ALLISON “TOOTIE” 119
MOREAU-LISLET, LOUIS 24
MORIAL, DUTCH 121
MORRISON, JACOB AND MARY 114
NAVARRO, FELIX 17
NEWMAN, ISIDORE 81
NICHOLSON, ELIZA JANE 85
NICKERSON, CAMMIE 101
OCHSNER, ALTON 104
PETERS, SAMUEL JARVIS 42
PILIÉ, JOSEPH AND LOUIS H. 34
PLESSY, HOMER ADOLPH 93
PONTALBA, MICAELA 39
POYDRAS, JULIEN 18
PRUDHOMME, PAUL 125
RILLEUX, NORBERT 45
ROBB, JAMES 73
ROBERTS, NASH 117
ROUDANEZ, LOUIS CHARLES 75
SALAZAR, JOSÉ 16
SAVARY, JOSEPH 30
ST. MAXENT, GILBERT ANTOINE 15
STERN, EDITH AND EDGAR 103
TOURO, JUDAH 27
TOUSSAINT, ALLEN 123
TUREAUD, A.P. 107
URSULINE NUNS 13
VACCARO, JOSEPH 89
WILLIAMS, L. KEMPER AND LEILA 100
WISDOM, JOHN MINOR 110
WOOD, ALBERT BALDWIN 97
WRIGHT, SKELLY J. 111
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
4

INTRODUCTION
On the occasion of the Tricentennial of the founding of New Orleans, the Louisiana Historical Society is pleased to honor a selection
of the men and women who contributed to the creation of our community. Some received notice in their lifetimes, others not. Their
achievements serve as models for our present generation, so that men and women of today will persevere in building up New Orleans.
We here begin our praise of these departed men and women, some who were famous, “but of others there is no memory….” 1 The one
hundred notables described in this volume include the famous like Lindy and Hale Boggs as well as the forgotten like Julie Brion. In many
cases each represents a class, or cause, or enterprise. But, as the prophet Sirach assures us, their virtues have not been forgotten; their heritage
remains with their descendants. These Notable New Orleanians explored the wilderness, laid out the city, established families and
businesses, engineered technological solutions, created music or literature, carved out our legal system, wrote history, spoke the language,
built our neighborhoods, preserved architecture, carried on customs, gave spiritual nourishment, nursed the sick, left bequests, or provided
political or civil rights leadership. This is a volume about contributions, not criticism. The individual histories do not seek to weigh
the pros and cons of each life. They present the positive and leave the negative for others. How poorer would our history have been without
their contributions?
“It is well,” writes Will Durant, “to study history as it was lived and made.” 2 With that truth in mind, we offer our notables in the order
in which they were born, confident that as the stories of our civic ancestors unfold, so develops the story of our community. Their contributions
were such that they affected the outcome of events, thus influencing the lives of citizens. As no successful leader works in a vacuum,
the participation of others has always been required to accept and carry on their inspiring work. In this way the achievements of
our notables have spread into the municipal culture, into its landscape.
It is evident that the Louisiana Historical Society can only present a limited number of achieving men and women from the city’s three
hundred complex years. But choices must be made and the Louisiana Historical Society is proud to offer its choices to contemporary New
Orleans. Among our criteria is that a given figure is deceased. Thus, representation from those born in the twentieth century was reduced.
In addition fame was not a requisite for being chosen. Though the volume begins with biographies of Jean Baptiste Bienville and the
Ursuline Sisters, continuing through Gilbert Antoine St. Maxent and Governor Francisco Carondelet, it includes the unknown such as
physician James Durham.
These one hundred men and women are notable for what they did and whom they helped. Charity was never far from their lives, but
it was principally their occupations in life that made them notable. Engineer Albert Baldwin Wood made pumps that changed New
Orleans. A. P. Tureaud fought lawsuits that revolutionized even more than New Orleans. Oscar Dunn set an example for business-like prudence
that shows where Reconstruction might have gone. The great doctors learned their profession and then worked ceaselessly to
advance it. Professor Stephen Ambrose not only conceived the National WWII Museum, but also donated substantial sums to make it happen.
John Schwegmann did not give away food, just a way to sell it to more people more conveniently. Dutch Morial didn’t give away
caresses; he demanded the right to do his job. The great families of Livaudais, Favrot, De Armas and Dejoie were great not because of their
generosity, but because of their self-confidence, their faith in the future. Unlike the modern family, they had numerous children, because
they were proud of their culture, present and future.
The Louisiana Historical Society has always stood apart from serving a political or private interest. Through eight lectures a year the
LHS invites all those who burrow in Louisiana’s archival records to speak about their work. It celebrates! For a century the LHS has hosted
a great banquet in honor of the victory at Chalmette of the American forces. It likewise hosts a commemoration at the Cabildo each
December to re-enact the transfer of Louisiana from France to the United States. In this volume this Tricentennial year the Louisiana
Historical Society points to the notable men and women of our past and asks your recognition.
William D. Reeves
NOTES
1 Sirach 44: 9.
2 Will Durant (Compiled and edited by John Little), The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 69.
INTRODUCTION
5

FOREWORD BY S. FREDERICK STARR
As New Orleans celebrates its founding three hundred years ago it is easy to assume that the city’s growth and success were inevitable.
Does it not owe its fortune to mighty forces, any one of which could have propelled the city forward? We all know that geography made
a key contribution, by presenting a water route across Lake Pontchartrain to Bayou St. John that saved sailing ships ninety-five miles of
arduous upstream tacking on the Mississippi River in the face of a roiling current. The river’s status as the best outlet for agricultural and
manufactured products from forty per cent of America’s territory assured the city’s economic prosperity. Politics helped, too, with three
empires—France, Spain, and Great Britain—vying to control this crucial port until the new United States finally won out in January, 1815.
Finally, social factors contributed, by making the city an attractive place for successive waves of immigrants to settle.
What, then, could be missing from this quartet of powerful and impersonal forces? The answer is simple: people. We may comfortably
assume that it was New Orleans’ good fortune that forces such as these drove it forward. But none of them, nor any combination of them,
accounts for the city’s distinctive identity or the range of fields in which its citizens have distinguished themselves. Nor can listing the geographic,
economic, political, and social forces acting upon it explain the city’s rich contributions to America in so many fields. In the end,
New Orleans’s survival, growth, and flowering trace above all not to impersonal forces but to people, specific men and women over 300 years.
An obvious point? Perhaps, but two generations of American historians and journalists thought otherwise. Instead, they stressed above
all the role of underlying social and economic forces in the development of societies. This caused individuals, with all their distinctive talents
and penchants, to slip into the background. Now our perspective has shifted again, allowing a more balanced appreciation of the role
of individuals in history, while at the same time acknowledging the larger context in which they function.
Embodying this welcome shift in perspective, the compilers of this volume set out to identify those men and women whose lives and activities
did most to define the identity, character, and contribution of New Orleans over the past three centuries. Moving beyond the narrow caricatures
promoted by the tourist industry, they delved into many fields of endeavor, from science to art, philanthropy, religion, law, music,
and technology. In each of these areas, and many others, New Orleanians richly contributed to the life of their city, country, and the world.
Author Dr. William D. Reeves and editor Sally Kittredge Reeves focused on one-hundred New Orleanians who left their mark on the
city and at the same time contributed to the larger culture. Selections were made with the help of a group of distinguished advisors and
contributors, among them Dr. Lawrence Powell, Dr. Carolyn Kolb, Distinguished Professor Vernon Palmer, Educator Howard Hunter, and
historians Jari Honora, Prescott Dunbar, and William Forman.
The resulting list of personages, each of whose biography is included in this volume, is amazing for its range and scope. Here you will
find colonizer and governor Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville (1680–1767); city planner and architect Barthélemy Lafon (1769–1820);
inventor of the Wood Screw Pumps that have saved the city from floods, Albert Baldwin Wood (1879-1956); pioneering newspaper editor
Eliza Jane Nicholson (1849-1896); the sustaining force at [Daughters of] Charity Hospital over sixty-two years, Sister Stanislaus (Catherine
Malone) (1863-1949); and human rights champion Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes (1849-1928). Together, the group of hundred forms a marvelously
talented and diverse tableau. Had space allowed, the list of candidates could have numbered two-hundred, or five-hundred. At any
length, there will inevitably be equally worthy folks who might have been included but weren’t. Take this as an invitation to add your own!
Thanks to the diligence of editors and authors, you have in your hands a remarkably interesting and engaging book. Whether you read
through it sequentially or skip around among the intriguing personalities presented therein, the story of these impressive New Orleanians is
bound to set you thinking. To this reader, these hundred biographical sketches served as a reminder of the sheer breadth and diversity of fields
in which people have contributed to the welfare of this city, and in ways that affected future generations. There is no single path, or limited
number of paths, by which people can become, in the fullest sense, “citizens,” respected and valued by those among whom they live and work.
Nor is there any correlation between a person’s abilities and contribution and his or her “visibility” during their life-time or later. Most of
those included in this compendium eschewed publicity and instead stayed focused on the task at hand. Those in the present day who seek
acclaim and short-term notoriety pale by comparison. Above all, the lives of those included here constitute a kind of group monument to the
lasting values of persistence and tenacity. Indeed, many did not live to see the full effect of their efforts, which are so clearly manifest to us today.
As New Orleans celebrates its three hundredth birthday, it is useful to pause on these and other thoughts to which this book might lead us.
This is not to say that the blind forces of geography, economics, politics, and society are insignificant in human affairs. They are present, of course,
and demand our recognition and study. But the story of the lives presented here reminds us that we are, in the end, masters of our fate. Each of
us has the capacity to build what needs building and to change what needs changing. This is precisely what these hundred New Orleanians did
over the course of three centuries. With luck, the coming years and decades will produce equally creative, positive, and tenacious New Orleanians.
S. Frederick Starr
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
6

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This volume would not have been possible without the assistance of the individuals and organizations that have made so many contributions
to its success. First, the Louisiana Historical Society would like to thank the over 150 members and businesses who have contributed
to this project as subscribers or underwriters. Their business stories are told as part of this tribute, and subscriber names appear
at the beginning of the volume. We also thank Ms. Nora Wetzel, president of the Louisiana Historical Society, for her many logistical efforts
to facilitate the project.
Our thanks go out particularly to Carolyn G. Kolb, who identified, collected, and attributed the photographs in this volume. For copies
and the use of those images, we extend special thanks to the following individuals, archives, museums, and collections that have allowed
us to use them. Their attributions appear as appropriate with the images:
We thank Rebecca Smith, Head of Reader Services, Williams Research Center, Historic New Orleans Collection; Melissa Smith, Assistant
Registrar, Louisiana State Museum; and, at Tulane University: Louisiana Research Collection, Head of Collection Leon C. Miller; Public
Services Librarian Sean Benjamin; University Archives, Ann Case; William R. Hogan Jazz Archives, Bruce Raeburn and Alaina W. Hébert;.
The Louisiana Division, New Orleans Public Library; Louisiana and Special Collections, Earl K. Long Library, University of New Orleans;
The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation of Newark, New Jersey; Executive Director Jackie Harris and the Board of Directors; The
Office of Archives and Records, Archdiocese of New Orleans; The Clarion Herald’s Peter Finney and photographer Frank Methe;
Alexander Richmond Favrot, Sue Favrot, Semmes Favrot, Judge Morris Arnold, Cokie B. Roberts, Jack Belsom, Michael Haley, Robert
Homes, Emily Leumas, and John Geiser have made particular contributions. Robert Hinckley, the author of William Woodward: American
Impressionist, kindly permitted the duplication of an important Woodward painting.
We also wish to acknowledge the ten historians who contributed nineteen of the one hundred essays in this volume as well as to other
features:
•S. Frederick Starr, Chairman, Central Asia. Caucasus Institute, American Foreign Policy Council: Foreword.
•G Howard Hunter, Academic Dean at Metairie Park Country Day School and past President of the Louisiana Historical Society:
deLesseps Morrison and Edith and Edgar Stern
•Jari Honora, high school history teacher: Dutch Morial, and Homer Plessy.
•Dr. Vernon Valentine Palmer, Thomas Pickles Professor of Law, Tulane School of Law: Louis Moreau-Lislet.
•Prescott N. Dunbar, historian and civic supporter: Martin Navarro.
•Dr. Carolyn G. Kolb, journalist and historian: Catherine Cole, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, “Chink” Henry, and Cammie Nickerson.
•T. Semmes Favrot, attorney and board member Louisiana Historical Society: The Favrot Family.
•Dr. Lawrence Powell, retired chairman of the Tulane Department of History: Leon Godchaux.
William Foreman, attorney: L. Kemper and Leila Moore Williams
Sally K. Reeves, M.A, C.A., archivist and past President of the Louisiana Historical Society: Jean-Louis Dolliole, Jacques Livaudais,
Joseph and Louis H. Pilié, De Armas family, and Bernard Marigny; and Chronicling Louisiana: Reflections on its Historians
How can the left hand acknowledge the work of the right hand? My wife Sally K. Reeves has been the right hand on this book. She has
done the voluminous work of editing the biographical profiles, correcting grammatical mistakes and infelicitous phrases, and generally
making them readable. In addition she has contributed six of the essays.
William D. Reeves
New Orleans
August 29, 2017
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
7

THE LOUISIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The oldest cultural organization in the state, the Louisiana Historical Society can, over its long history, count five major
achievements. Founded in January 1836, the Society continues unabated its primary work of collecting and promoting the history
of Louisiana. Its fifty-plus year publications of The Louisiana Historical Quarterly and its predecessor Publications still provide researchers
with an opulent trove of source materials and interpretation about the heritage of the state. Custodian of Louisiana’s official documents
since 1846 and of Louisiana’s French Superior Council and Spanish Cabildo colonial records since 1860, the Society re-collected them
amid the chaos of the post-Civil War period, eventually putting them on deposit at the Louisiana State Museum. That institution, founded
in 1906 and housed primarily in the Cabildo and Presbytere buildings, was also an outgrowth of the Society’s work. At the turn of the
twentieth century, when the future of the assemblage of civic structures facing Jackson Square was not at all certain, the Society was the
most important factor in their preservation. It then led the move to convert the Cabildo and Presbytere into museum buildings. Early
museum trustees and curators were partly synonymous with Louisiana Historical Society boards and members. The State Museum’s fundamental
deposit of portraits, landscapes, artifacts, books, and records was the collection that, over decades, the Louisiana Historical
Society had been amassing.
Several of the state’s greatest legal and historical leaders were among the Society’s founders. Its first president, Louisiana Supreme Court
Justice Henry Adams Bullard, served in the 1830s, delivering its first address at the “Native American Association” Hall. Bullard served
again after 1846, when Society members gathered in a store in the ground level of the St. Charles Hotel. That year, the Legislature formally
recognized the Society in an act of incorporation that also made it the custodian of the state’s public documents, journals, and reports. At
that time, the Society’s primary focus was to acquire copies of the state’s colonial records from the archives of France and Spain. To that
end, it supported the overseas work of antiquarian Benjamin Franklin French and historian Charles Gayarré. 1
Gayarré became president in 1860, before a period of dormancy during the Civil War. He served again from 1877 to 1888, when
Louisiana Supreme Court Justice William Wirt Howe was elected. Under the subsequent leadership of Tulane professor of Roman
Languages Alcée Fortier (served 1894 to 1913) and his successor, art and manuscript collector Gaspar Cusachs (served 1914-1929), the
Society entered its golden era, expanding from eighty-eight to eight hundred members, inaugurating its quarterly journal Publications in
1895 and co-founding the Louisiana State Museum.
In 1900, the Society mounted an exhibit at the Fisk Free Library of 266 manuscripts and historical objects from its growing collection.
To the vast exhibit were added over 2,000 items from the Favrot, Cusachs, T.P. Thompson, J.F. Couret, R.W. Walmsley, Wm. H. Seymour,
Alcee Fortier, Charles Gayarré, Mrs. Albert Baldwin, and William Beer collections, and from the Archdiocesan and Ursuline Convent
archives. The catalogue of this exhibit (in the collection of the Louisiana Historical Society) may be considered a record of the community’s
identified treasures in this era. Three years later, the state legislature placed the Society officially in charge of commemorating the 1903
centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. It was in anticipation of that event that the Society promulgated a resolution that it be “celebrated
by the dedication of a Colonial Museum in the old Cabildo buildings.” The legislature also had the Society lead the later centennials of
Louisiana’s statehood in 1912 and of the Battle of New Orleans in 1915. For those events, the Society arranged packed banquets, extended
parades, public lectures, patriotic speeches, and visits by national and international leaders. Longtime secretary Grace King colorfully
recorded these happenings as minutes in Publications, and later activities in the Louisiana Historical Quarterly, which continued the work
of Publications after World War I.
In 1917, The Quarterly began to publish transcriptions and translations by Heloise H. Cruzat of selections from the French Superior
Council documents in its care. Spanish period records began to appear in the Quarterly three years later. Under the towering leadership
of attorney and legal historian Henry Plauché Dart (q.v), calendars of both series began in sequence, as the Quarterly staff made their way
through the stacks of records stored in early 19th century cedar boxes. With funding from philanthropist William Ratcliffe Irby, the work
progressed until the Great Depression, when it continued under the WPA. Some long-sought Legislative funding for the Quarterly enabled
it to remain in print until the middle 1950s, with scattered issues appearing as late as 1975 through the support of General L. Kemper
Williams. General Williams also supported an attractive, illuminated index to the Quarterly by A. Boyd Cruise.
A roster of Society incorporators and officers reads like a who’s who of state leaders; just a few among them the Supreme Court Justices
and presidents noted, along with Governors Francis T. Nicholls and Louis A Wiltz, writers Gayarré, George W. Cable and Grace King, and
important educators Robert M. Lusher and Alexander Dimitry. Early Quarterly editors included John Dymond, Henry Plauché Dart, and
Walter Prichard, who in 1935 assumed the expansive role left by the much-lamented Henry P. Dart.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
8

In every decade, the Society has continued to produce new leaders who have kept alive its mission. Under longtime president Edward
Parsons, the custom of commemorating the Battle of New Orleans with a January 8 dinner at the famous Lake Pontchartrain restaurant of
Chef Lucien Boudro began. Moving to Antoine’s, the Society held its banquet there for over fifty years, continuing under the leadership of
leading intellectual Hugh M. Wilkinson, who succeeded Parsons in 1962.
To this day, the annual banquet never deviates from the 8th of January. Filled with festive greetings from allied parties, the banquet rings
with songs and toasts to France, to Spain, to England, to America, and to the lasting peace among them. A second annual event commemorates
the Louisiana Purchase with staged readings, held on a Sunday nearest December 20. The Society holds this annual event in the Cabildo’s Sala
Capitular, on which it holds a legal servitude for the presentation. In the year 2000 the Society launched a digital, searchable, Web republication
of the Louisiana Historical Quarterly, available on line to members, and an effective membership tool. Well-attended regular meetings and lectures,
held each month in season, have continued to the present day the Society’s work to find, produce, and promote the history of Louisiana. 2
NOTES
For Further reading see, William D. Reeves, “Recent History of the Louisiana Historical Society, 1940-2010” (Tulane University Archives). Concerning the history of
colonial documents, see Howard Margot, Survivor(s)! Historical Peregrinations of New Orleans’s French Superior Council and Spanish Judicial Records, in
Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals. Volume 11, No. 3. Summer 2015, pp. 171-184.
1 For an extensive exploration of Gayarré’s and French’s efforts in conjunction with the Society, see Faye Phillips, “Writing Louisiana Colonial History in the Mid-
Nineteenth Century: Charles Gayarré, Benjamin Franklin French, and the Louisiana Historical Society, “ Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical
Association, Vol. 49, No. 2 (spring, 2008), pp. 163-190.
2 Recent presidents of the Louisiana Historical Society are:1997-2003 William D. Reeves; 2003-2009 Sally K. Reeves; 2009-2015 Howard G. Hunter; 2015-
Nora Wetzel.
BIOGRAPHIES
9

SUBSCRIBERS
A Friend of the Louisiana
Historical Society
Adams, Marthell T.
Adatto, Dr and Mrs Kenneth
Atkinson, Anne R.
Axelrod, Tiki
Babin, Mary Hillery and Hunter
Bailey, Mrs. Barbara Becker
Bartee, Roberta Purvis
Bassett, Darleen
Bassich, Mrs. Beauregard
Beauford, Gertrude M
Benge, Dorothy O’Toole
Benjamin, Adelaide W
Bennett, Ann
Billiot, Chad M
Boudreaux, Lawrence and Patricia
Breaux, James P.
Breaux, Paul J.
Breitmeyer, Julie F.
Capomazza di Campolattaro, Mr.
and Mrs Carlo
Chadwick, Georgia
Chapman, Ron and Margaret
Chesnutt, Carolyn Aiken
Christovich, Mary Louise
Cook, William ”Bill” C.
Cornejo, Drs. Andres and Zoraida V.
Cox, Patricia W. and Ralph C.
Dauterive, N. Neville and Judith
Sinclair
de Montluzin, Katherine
Detweiler, Maureen and Bill
Dike, Douglas D.
Dugan, Patrick Murray
Duffy, Ann R.
Eaby, Thelia Jean
Eble, Drs. Bernard E, III and Susan W.
Edmiston, Edward and Ninette
Edmundson, Bob and Kathleen
Elmwood, Augusta B. and Robert F.
Elrod, Henry
Evans, Mr. and Mrs. Robert B.
Favrot, Alexander Richmond
Favrot, Ann Bruck
Favrot, Catherine and Semmes
Favrot, Mrs. Mortimer
Favrot, Mrs. Richmond Gerard
Favrot, Gervais Freret, Jr.
Fernandez, Shelia B.
Foreman, Wayne and Linda
Forstall, Richard L
French, Mary An Godshall and Alfred
Freyder, Christopher Thomas
Freyder, Melissa Nicole
Freyder, Dr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Scott
Gallagher, Lillie Petit
Gamble, Jacqueline
Gaudin, Judge H. Charles and Myra
Gehman, Mary E.
George, Julie and Ted
Grout, John C. Jr.
Heausler, Martha Richmond Favrot
Hero, George A. III
Hollier, Mona
Hoskins, Susan
Hughes, Edmund W..E. and Elizabeth L.
Hunter, Howard
Hyde, Dr. Tonya Nichole
Irwin, Dr. and Mrs. Thomas M.
Jumonville, Florence M.
Kauffman, Lura and Carl H.
Keck, William
Knight, Manuel Lisandro
Knutson, Don and Marie Tiberville
Kolb, Carolyn G.
Lancaster, William and Suzanne
Lawless, Paul and Virginia
Lawson, Frederick Lee
Lorenzen, Mrs. Becker Rutledge
Louviere, Barbara B.
Luke, Margie Laws
Margot, Howard M.
Marmillion, Janel and Norman
Martin, Louise and Ted
Mayer, Andy
McDonald, Georgia
McLellan, Marie Favrot
Mills, Bruce and Judy
Mills, James W. Jr.
Modzelewski, Jeff and Kathy
Molony, Carter Stevens
Moore, Mary and Doug
Morgan, Barbara B., M.D.
Morse, Anne and James
O’Brien, Dr. Pat
Parker, Thomas Airy II
Pena, Allison Heaps
Perlis, Suzanne G. and David W.
Perret, Dr. and Mrs. William
Prechter, Kate
Reed, Eileen K.
Reeves, Sally K.
Richard, Mary Margaret
Robin, Harriet E.
Ross, Dr. Bill III
Roux, Jara Dubroca and Jeffrey A.
Rufty, Helene and Al
Rusovich, Marilyn S.
Ryan, Elizabeth and John
Sanders, Caroline Bingham
Sarpy, Courtney Anne
Schiro, Hon. and Mrs. Gasper J.
Skiner, Dr. John R.
Smith, Judy M.
Sprott, Barbara and Jeff
St. Martin, Armand
Stahel, Mr and Mrs. Harry C.
Stouse, Suzanne E.
Strain, Timothy
Sullivan, Scott
Tanoos, Stella Carline
Thompson, D.D.
Thompson, Sheryl
Toso, Dr. Donald R.
Toso, Patricia and Michael J.
Trevigne, Barbara
Tupper, Joan Morrison
Von Uhde, Lance W.
Ward, Geraldline Elizabeth
Waring, Peter A.
Watts, James C.
Wetzel, Nora J.
Williams, Bob and Norris
Williams, Sheila Wilkinson
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
10

J EAN B APTISTE L E M OYNE DE B IENVILLE
(1680-1767)
Canadian-born Jean Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, founder of New Orleans, spent twenty years
working to establish the city at its present site. He first arrived in Louisiana in 1699 as a naval second
lieutenant of the French Marine under his elder brother Pierre d’Iberville. With his brother, Bienville
explored Louisiana and much of Mississippi and Alabama. By 1718 he knew more about Louisiana
than had anyone before his time.
Bienville located New Orleans based on his strategic understanding of its geography. Three
considerations—situation, security, and fertility—shaped his decision. In the first case, it sat cozily
between the Mississippi River and Bayou St. Jean, which emptied into Lake Pontchartrain and thence
into the Gulf of Mexico. This situation between river and bayou was good for convenience and
transportation. From the equally important point of security, the site occupied the first high ground
that could better protect its settlers from the elements. For military security, it was positioned well to
thwart an enemy just enough above English Turn, that great obstacle to upriver sailing vessels before
the age of steam. Finally, the less discussed, but really most important, consideration was the fertility
of the alluvial soils in and around New Orleans. Bienville and his company had learned the bitter
lesson that they could not provide for themselves on the sandy soils of the Biloxi area.
In 1917, the Louisiana Historical Society launched its Louisiana Historical Quarterly with an
issue devoted to Bienville to coincide with the Bicentennial of New Orleans. In one essay, writer
Grace King concluded that the founder settled fifty men on the spot that came to be New Orleans
in February 1718. This was essentially a three-year encampment until Royal Engineer Adrien de
Pauger arrived in 1721 to draw a plan for the city and oversee its construction. Bienville sent the
drawing to France, where it arrived just in time to be approved by the Company of the Indies—
technically the proprietors of the colony—and the French Crown. Although Pauger lasted only five
years after 1721 before succumbing to a fever, his city layout survives.
Bienville was one of the few Frenchmen who took the trouble to learn the Native American
languages, a skill that greatly facilitated cooperation and friendship. Serving as Louisiana governor from
1718 to 1724, he ably met the challenge of diplomacy with them. On the personal side, he claimed
several extensive tracts of east and west river bank land, which did not endear him with Company
agents. Less able to navigate the perils of Metropolitan versus frontier politics, he lost favor with the
Crown in 1724 and was recalled to France. While in Paris in 1726 Bienville sold the Society of Jesus his
East Bank tract, establishing the Jesuits in the city for the first time. After disastrous handling of Native
American relations forced the sacking of Bienville’s successor Étienne Périer, the founder was called back
into service as Louisiana governor from 1734 to 1744 1 during which time Bienville himself became
enmeshed in a protracted war with the Chickasaws, leading to his final removal.
Despite his pioneering and extended service, historians have given Bienville relatively little
credit for leadership. Grace King (q.v.) and Charles Gayarré (q.v.) looked at Bienville in the light
of romantic narrative adventure, in keeping with their times. Catholic Church historian Roger
Baudier found that “his conduct in so far as religious affairs are concerned cannot but be admired,”
redounding “distinctly to his credit.” 2 Baudier noted Bienville had strongly supported religiouslybased
education, initiating Jesuit and Capuchin schools for boys, while making the parish church
(now St. Louis Cathedral) the centerpiece of the foundation. Recently, historian Lawrence Powell
saw Bienville’s choice of the site for New Orleans between swamp and river as forcing a compact
city, where the various ethnicities were compelled to shape a distinct culture that “may be America’s
only original contribution to world culture.” 3 It is fairly safe to say, however, that Bienville had little
thought about ethnicities shaping an American culture.
Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville.
LOUISIANA IMAGE COLLECTION, LOUISIANA RESEARCH
COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
1 Lawrence N. Powell, The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans (London: Harvard University Press, 2012), 53-55.
2 Roger Baudier, The Catholic Church in Louisiana (New Orleans: 1939), 142.
3 Powell, The Accidental City, 163.
BIOGRAPHIES
11

J ACQUES J ULIAN E SNOUL D E L IVAUDAIS
(1696-1773)
Benjamin Latrobe, View of the Balize, 1818.
Benjamin Latrobe painted this view of the
Balize as it appeared a century after
Jacques Livaudais struggled to guide ships
through the mouth of the Mississippi. Not
much improvement had been made.
Jacques Julian Esnoul, Sieur de Livaudais (known as “Diego” in Spanish times) was Louisiana’s
most important eighteenth-century Mississippi River bar pilot and Captain of the Port of New
Orleans. Over a lengthy career managing the entrance to the river, Livaudais became one of the
earliest European-born experts on Mississippi River navigation. He remained at his post for nearly
forty years, married, lived a long life, and left a posterity that remains one of the most significant
Creole families in Louisiana. It is no small accomplishment that they are both numerous and
vigorous, retaining both name and a sense of identity in this place. Livaudais’ wife Marie Geneviève
Babin was a Mobile Creole, and apparently his cousin. After her marriage to Livaudais in 1733, she
carried and delivered eighteen babies in twenty-two years, nine of whom survived to adulthood.
Livaudais followed his ancestors into the seafaring trade. Born in the walled port of St. Malo,
Normandy, in 1696, he learned seamanship from his family and St. Malo traditions. His father
Jacques Esnoul, a privateer and naval officer, became the Sieur de Livaudais as a reward for service
to the French against English pirates. Esnoul became lord of the tiny village of Livaudais, just two
rows of houses on a hill in St. Jouan des Guerets, on the southeast side of Brittany, engendering
the name that survives in Louisiana.
A ten-year career sailing for the East Indies Company led to a transfer to Louisiana as a river
pilot in 1723, where by 1727, Livaudais succeeded Jean Sénat as Captain of the Port. At that time,
the Mississippi was discharging 500 million tons of sand a year with constantly shifting sands that
made it necessary to sound the passes every week when weather permitted. “You would have
difficulty without seeing it,” Livaudais wrote the minister in 1748, “how frequently the river
changes at its mouth from year to year…. For the twenty-one years I have served in the colony, I
have never seen the passes go even one year without change.” 1
By 1758, Livaudais had been Port Captain and chief bar pilot over thirty years. As Port Captain
he had functioned as harbormaster, inspected ships, managed dock workers, and occasionally
undertaken salvage operations for lost anchors or other equipment. Toward the end of the French
period, Livaudais gained the Croix de St. Louis to go with his ten-arpent plantation near the city and
another on the German coast. He died in New Orleans in 1773 at the age of seventy-seven.
Among his surviving children were the eldest, Jacques Esnoul, whose plantation upriver from
the city would become the Faubourg Livaudais, now the Garden District; Francois Esnoul, whose
land would become the Faubourg Annunciation; and the eighth child, Joseph Dugué Livaudais,
who pursued a career in lumber and resided on his 50,000-acre plantation in Lafourche Parish,
now Gheens Plantation. Almost countless children followed, as the Livaudais family was fruitful,
and multiplied.
—Sally K. Reeves
1 France, Archives Nationales Series C13A, 32, Fo. 74.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
12

U RSULINE S ISTERS AND M OTHER M ARIE T RANCHEPAIN
(1680-1733)
The Congregation of the Ursuline Religious of
New Orleans founded what continues as the
oldest school for girls in the United States. Since
1727, the New Orleans Ursulines have been a
fount of Christian culture that spread over the
community, free black and white, Native
American and slave. Much of New Orlean’s
distinctive Frenchness, all of its female literacy,
and all of its evangelizations among slaves and
free persons of color originated with the 18th
century New Orleans Ursulines.
Pursuant to a contract with the Company of
the Indies to provide housing and an annual
stipend, the first Ursulines arrived in New
Orleans in 1727. Their superior, Mother Marie
de Saint-Augustin Tranchepain (1680-1734),
arrived with thirteen followers, among them the
gifted epistolary Marie Madeleine Hachard. This
young nun’s letters to her father in France, full of optimism and unconcern for hardship, open a
window on the earliest experiences of these hardy missionaries, most of whom died young.
Following a disastrous massacre of French colonist by the Natchez Tribe in 1729, the
Ursulines undertook to care for the many orphans left from the event. From France, they
also received the so-called “Casket Girls,” sent to the colony as future wives of settlers. Mother
Marie instituted a lay confraternity of free women of color that laid the groundwork for the growth
of the African-Catholic population. She also offered retreats for women, by 1729 reaching two
hundred retreatants.
Mother Marie Tranchepain died before a new convent opened to serve the military hospital.
Among the most able nurses to serve there was Sister St. Françoise Xavier Hebert, who became the
pharmacist for the hospital. For the next twenty years the Ursulines managed the hospital at
increasing cost to themselves because the Crown did not increase their revenue. Their numbers
thinned, even though in 1750 they received their first native born supplicant, Illinois-born Mary
Turpin. By then, the initial convent had failed structurally. French engineers, with a better
understanding of environmental conditions in New Orleans designed and completed a new
convent in 1749, the current “Old Ursuline Convent” on Chartres St. in New Orleans.
The transfer of Louisiana from France to Spain in 1766 weakened the Ursulines’ sense of security.
Spain expelled the Jesuits, their diplomatic support in Louisiana. Instead in 1770, Governor
Alexandro O’Reilly had the nuns cease administering the hospital, a welcome step considering their
decline in numbers, allowing them to turn their attention entirely to their educational mission.
The American era began with an escape from conflagration in 1812 followed by the stunning
victory of the Americans over the British at the 1815 Battle of New Orleans. The citizens
overwhelmingly attributed a part of the victory to the prayers of the Ursulines sisters and their alumnae
to Our Lady of Prompt Succor. Local devotion to Our Lady of Prompt Succor has led today to the
formation of the National Shrine of our Lady of Prompt Succor at the Ursulines’ uptown church.
By 1818 the Ursulines were educating three hundred students in their convent on Chartres
Street. That year they offered hospitality and financial assistance to Religious of the Sacred Heart
Rose Philippine Duchesne and four companions, who had arrived in New Orleans to found their
educational ministry in the United States. Philippine and her companions remained with the
Ursulines at their Chartres Street convent for six weeks before boarding a steamboat for St. Louis.
Ursulines Arrive in New Orleans by
Madeline Hachard 1727. (Repainted by
Paul Poincy.)
COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF ARCHIVES AND RECORDS,
ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW ORLEANS.
BIOGRAPHIES
13

The Religious of the Sacred Heart will celebrate the bicentennial of their founding in America
concurrently with the tricentennial of New Orleans.
In 1824, the expanding city forced the Sisters out of their French Quarter convent by cutting
Chartres Street through their property. They moved to a country spot downriver from New Orleans
where architect Jacques de Pouilly designed a magnificent complex for them. The school remained
there until 1912, when a second expropriation forced another move. The Ursulines then purchased
land uptown and moved to their present school site facing State Street backed by Nashville Avenue.
Their enduring school remains the oldest continuously operating girls’ school in North America
and its seventh oldest private school.
For further reading see Sister Jane Frances Heaney, O.S.U., Ph. D., A Century of Pioneering: A History of the Ursuline Nuns
in New Orleans (1727-1827). Ursuline Sisters of New Orleans, 1993; Emily Clark, Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines
and the Development of a New World Society, 1727-1834. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
C LAUDE-JOSEPH V ILLARS D UBREUIL
(1697-1757)
Claude-Joseph Villars Dubreuil was New Orleans’ first general contractor. Dubreuil built
houses, saw mills, canals, levees and a church, giving existence to the nascent town in the early
eighteenth century. One of the first New Orleans colonists to arrive from France, he landed in 1719
with his wife, son and daughter in a party of eighteen. He brought along skilled carpenters,
coopers, joiners, a tailor, a shoemaker, and several domestics. 1 He settled on a large grant of land
next to the Chauvin Brothers at “The Chapitoulas,” now a part of Jefferson Parish near Ochsner
Foundation Hospital.
Dubreuil seems to have come to prominence by building the first levee across the front of
the city. To secure timber to sell for the construction of buildings he erected a sawmill below town
and had the first canal dug from the river towards Bayou St. John. Cypress logs for construction
lumber floated down the canal to its saw mill on the river. The city canal would later be expanded
as the Marigny Canal, and even later as the route of the Pontchartrain Railroad, the nation’s second,
now Elysian Fields Avenue. In 1740, Dubreuil also dug the first canal on the west bank of the
Mississippi, linking the river to Bayou Barataria and thus prefiguring Harvey’s Canal next to Gretna a
century later.
In 1736, Dubreuil built the first Charity Hospital, using funds supplied by the estate of the
sailor Jean Louis. As “Contractor for Buildings and Fortifications” of the French king, Dubreuil
received a commission to rebuild the port of Balize at the mouth of the Mississippi after a hurricane
in 1739. In 1745, Dubreuil began construction on the second Ursuline Convent, which still stands
as the sole survivor of his industry.
Dubreuil was equally interested in improving agriculture. He introduced the deep drainage ditch
that helped dry out plantations so they could be farmed. He experimented with growing tobacco
and indigo, later inventing a cotton gin. In cooperation with the Jesuit congregation in New Orleans
he also introduced sugar cane on their plantation just upriver from the city. In 1744, Dubreuil’s son
and namesake purchased from the Chitimacha tribe a 50,000-acre tract of land in Lafourche Parish
that during the nineteenth and twentieth century came to be known as Golden Ranch. 2 This
plantation passed through numerous successor owners and has survived intact to today.
1 Henry P. Dart, “The Career of Dubreuil in French Louisiana,” The Louisiana Historical Quarterly 18 (1935): 267-331. His
estate sale does not mention the skills or occupation of his slaves.
2 See act of 15 February 1820 before Hughes Lavergne, New Orleans Notarial Archives.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
14

G ILBERT A NTOINE DE S T . MAXENT
(1727-1794)
Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent was, with the industrialist and builder Claude Joseph Villars
Dubreuil (q.v.) and developer-philanthropist Andres Almonester y Rojas, one of the three most
important figures of Louisiana’s colonial economy. 1 A French native from Longny, St. Maxent
emigrated to distant Louisiana during the 1740s, married Creole New Orleanian Elizabeth
LaRoche, and enlisted in the French colonial regiment. To a modest but respectable amount of
money brought with him, St. Maxent added his wife’s dowry to begin a business as a merchant
importing and supplying manufactured goods from Europe to Illinois fur traders.
During the 1750s, St. Maxent allied with Governor Louis de Billouart Kerlérec in his struggles
with Intendant Louis Rochemore, establishing a pattern of political aptitude that for nearly four
decades would serve him well. In return Kerlérec, in 1753, promoted him to colonel and
commandant of the Louisiana Regiment.
Kerlérec rewarded him further with a monopoly on the Illinois fur trade 2 at a time when “peltry
still accounted for approximately one-third of the total value of commodities being exported from
Louisiana.” 3 Based on his franchise St. Maxent, in 1763, sent Pierre LaClède up the Mississippi
with a loaded flatboat to open a trading post that later became St. Louis. 4
In 1768, Spain, now the owner of Louisiana, installed Antonio de Ulloa as the Louisiana colony’s
first Spanish Governor. Defying the majority of Creoles who opposed the imposition of Spanish
authority, Maxent stepped forward following his established pattern to become one of the first
Frenchmen to pledge allegiance to the new governor. After the Creoles’ expulsion of Ulloa in the fall
of 1768, they imprisoned St. Maxent briefly at his plantation. The following January (1769) Maxent
thwarted the plotters’ efforts to enlist Native Americans in a planned resistance to any new Spanish
attempts to reclaim New Orleans. That same August, Spanish General Alexandro O’Reilly landed in
New Orleans with twelve warships filled with two thousand soldiers and definitively suppressed the
rebellion. No one was surprised when O’Reilly gave St. Maxent a new patent for the fur business under
the name St. Maxent and Ranson.
Over the next two decades St. Maxent became the richest man in Louisiana. He built the largest
home in the area just below the city’s downriver gate, which would, in 1798, become the home of
Pierre Philippe de Marigny and his family (q.v.). In 1770, Maxent’s second daughter Marie Elizabeth,
married the succeeding Spanish governor, Luis de Unzaga. In sequence, his widowed elder daughter,
An artist’s rendering of the house of the
French colonial commissioner of Louisiana.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION 1987.65 I-III /
PLAN DE LA NOUVELLE ORLEANS ET DES ENVIRONS DEDIE
AU CITOYEN LAUSSAT PREFET COLONIAL ET.
BIOGRAPHIES
15

Felicite, married Unzaga’s successor, Bernardo de Galvez. St. Maxent’s service to Spain during the
American Revolution from 1775-1782 was extensive and earned him a list of honors including
Commandant of the Militia of Louisiana, Lt. Governor of the Provinces of Louisiana and West Florida,
and Captain-General of the new Bureau of Indian Affairs of Louisiana and West Florida.
At the peak of his career in 1782, the British captured St. Maxent in the West Indies, dealing a
fatal blow to his credit. Subsequently, his notes lost much of their value. Though he was released,
the Spanish authorities began investigating his finances. His warehouse burned in the New Orleans
fire of 1788 and subsequently Spanish Governor Esteban Miró arrested him. He died in 1794, a
shell of his former stature.
1 See, for example Clark 1970: 52; Wilson, Farnsworth, and Mason 1987: 275.
2 J. J. Coleman, Jr., Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent: The Spanish-Frenchman of New Orleans (Gretna: Pelican Publishing,
1980), 14-20.
3 Daniel Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy, the Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 (Chapel
Hill:University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 247.
4 Coleman, Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent, 22-29.
J OSE
S ALAZAR
(1750-1802)
The Mexican-born painter Jose Xavier Salazar y Mendoza was the first professional artist to leave
an illustrated record of colonial New Orleans figures. His stylized, elegant portraits of prominent
New Orleanians, painted during the last two decades of the city’s Spanish colonial experience, have
provided the single most important visual record of the time. In addition to likenesses, the paintings
illustrate clothing and fabrics, jewelry and accessories, hairstyles, elegant military hats and medals,
and sometimes details of furniture, complementing the vast body of material objects described in
local archival inventories. Salazar’s sitters included military figures, merchants, prelates, physicians,
members of the Cabildo, and importantly, women, who otherwise might have been known only in
name. An example is the painter’s c. 1797 Family of Dr. Joseph Montegut, the single group portrait
known to the local colonial period. 1 It depicts Dr. Montegut with eight other family members, six
of them female. Salazar’s daughter Francisca (b. c. 1780), moreover, was the city’s first known female
painter. She grew up in New Orleans and began to paint under her father’s tutelage, art historians
speculating that she may have supplied some of the figures (and clothing) for his portraits.
Born in Merida in the Yucatan where he probably absorbed the spirit of Mexican painting, Salazar
arrived in New Orleans with his family to ply the technique and style of 18th-century Spanish
American painters. Although it is believed that he arrived during the early 1780s, most of his
surviving paintings date to the 1790s. Art historian Estill Pennington has divided his work into
paintings of couples, the one large group portrait, and portraits “in the grandmanner,” which includes
portraits of Andres Almonester y Roxas (q.v), and New Orleans Bishop Penalver y Cardenas.
Salazar’s consistent style makes his work recognizable. Most of his portraits are three-quarter
views of sitters holding symbolic or naturalistic objects such as women with birds or flowers, often
seated in luxuriant gowns. Male figures stand formally, hand in vest or placed stoutly on hip, in
military jackets or elegant waistcoats with prominent brass buttons, seldom in wigs. Colorful
clothing and highlighted flesh colors stand out against dark backgrounds. Frequently, the painter
placed his figures in an oval or tondo, bestowing emphasis on the sitter and a sense of greater
immediacy to the image.
Salazar married Maria Antonia Marana, with whom he had three surviving children—Jose,
Francisca (who married Pedro Gordillo, Sargento de Dragones) and Ramon. Widowed in 1793, he
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
16

continued to paint and raise the children with the assistance of servants. His will, dictated before
notary Narcisse Broutin in March, 1801, described his family, his being ill, and his plans for his
funeral Masses and charitable bequests. He died in mid-August 1802. After the Louisiana Purchase,
his family removed from New Orleans and do not appear again in city records. 2
—Sally K. Reeves
1 Art historians point out that this painting seems to be a coupling of two pieces, with one of the figures added by
another hand. See Estill Curtis Pennington, Downriver: Currents of Style in Louisiana Painting, 1800-1950 (Gretna, LA.
1991), 25-26.
2 At the current writing (summer 2017) the first comprehensive exhibition of Salazar’s work, curated by art historian
Cybele Gontar, is scheduled for March 2018
at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans.
F ELIX
N AVARRO
(1738-1793)
For twenty-two years Felix Martín Antonio Navarro administered Louisiana under eight
Spanish governors. His brilliant financial management funded Governor Bernardo de Galvez’
successful campaign against the British in western Florida during the American
RevolutionaryWar (1776-1781), and the rebuilding of New Orleans following three major
hurricanes (1772, 1779, 1780) and two disastrous fires (1779, 1788). Navarro’s 1780
“memorials” to the Spanish king strongly recommending free trade and increased population
as a means to economic prosperity resulted in the development of Spain’s Mississippi River
trade. The memorials also successfully recommended government-sponsored experiments in
the planting of flax,hemp, and tobacco, and the immigration to Louisiana of Isleños,
Malaguenos and Germans for these industries.
Navarro’s financial acumen underwrote the expenses of transportation for 1,600 Acadian
exiles from France to the western lands of Spanish Louisiana. His codification of a per capita
formula for support of immigrant families provided more than mere day-to-day subsistence
for them. In gratitude, innumerable immigrants named him godfather to their children,
earning him the title of “Le Bon Papa” throughout Acadiana and Nuevo Iberia.
Born in La Coruña, Spain, Navarro arrived in New Orleans, in 1766, with Antonio de
Ulloa and the first contingent of Spanish officials to govern Louisiana. He served as Royal
Treasury Officer until 1770, when he was promoted to Contador, or Minister of the Treasury,
a position he filled until 1779. For twenty years, from 1768 to 1788, he was acting Intendente
(Chief Financial Officer) in both unofficial and official capacities. The Spanish Crown had created
the office of Intendente late in its colonial empire to combine military and provincial assignments,
Navarro being its first appointee in Louisiana. “As a conscientious public servant,” wrote Gilberto
Din and John Harkins, “Navarro was deeply interested in promoting economic growth, which
would provide badly needed revenue to help offset the tremendous expense of retaining Louisiana.
Accordingly, he periodically sent reports to Madrid on how best to foster development.” 1
With his return to Spain in 1788, Navarro held the post of Intendente de Ejército (Chief
Financial Officer of the Army) for two additional years, advising Charles III and his council of
ministers on Louisiana matters. He ended his career leading a crucial trade mission to France
during their revolution in 1792.
Although Navarro never married, he recognized Adelaïde de Blanco Navarro as his natural
daughter. When she married Navarro gave her a generous dowry and two large land grants in the
Attakapas region. After his death Adelaïde and her husband Louis George Demarest established
Felix Navarro.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, GIFT OF MRS.
ROSE MILLING MONROE, 2005.0064
BIOGRAPHIES
17

what is now known as “Francis Plantation” on Bayou Teche, the first brick and half-timber house
in the area. Their descendants include two governor Fosters of the State of Louisiana, Ambassador
Jefferson Caffery, national and state legislators, career politicians, nationally-recognized
academicians and sports professionals. 2
—Prescott N. Dunbar
1 Gilberto C. Din and John E. Harkins, The New Orleans Cabildo: Colonial Louisiana’s First City Government, 1769-1803
(Baton Rouge, LA, 1996), 94.
2 Pat Powers and Sally K. Reeves also contributed to this profile.
J ULIEN
P OYDRAS
(1746-1824)
Julien de Lalande Poydras.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, GIFT OF THE
CHILDREN OF ALMA BALDWIN DENÈGRE: GEORGE
DENÈGRE, CAPTAIN THOMAS BAYNE DENÈGRE U. S. N.
By endorsing the United States after the Louisiana Purchase, Julien Poydras influenced
Louisiana’s French Creoles to accept American governance. Poydras’ leadership resulted in his 1805
election as president of the legislative council of the newly created Orleans Territory, which organized
the Louisiana area south of the 33rd parallel. His inaugural address urged citizens to the patriotic
goals of America’s founding documents. “The clouds of ignorance must be dispelled,” he thundered,
“cupidity restrained, and mankind convinced that private interest cannot be isolated from the
general good....”
Born in 1746 just outside of Nantes, Poydras settled in Pointe Coupée Parish during the 1760s.
Over the ensuing decades, he amassed a fortune from six plantations and a general store. Dividing
his time with New Orleans, Poydras led the way for a Chamber of Commerce-like organization and
established the city’s first bank. He purchased land along the riverfront near the street that bears his
name, subsequently leading a protracted struggle for the preservation of public access to the batture.
Poydras’ interest in the batture influenced his views on the preservation of civil law at a time
when jurists and legislators were debating Louisiana’s legal destiny. Toward the end of his tenure
as president of the Territorial Legislature, he opposed the common law proposals of Governor
William Claiborne (q.v.), saying , “We are on the eve of seeing confusion established by the forced
introduction of a voluminous body of common law to which we are total strangers….”
Elected as Orleans Territory’s delegate to Congress in 1810, Poydras urged statehood for
Louisiana. The 1810 census having demonstrated the area’s demographic eligibility, he petitioned
the United States Senate that the territory be declared a state. Congressional debate in January
1811 featured Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts blasting the “heathens of that swamp country,” and
equating Louisiana’s inhabitants with apes and alligators. Keeping in mind the history of witchcraft
that haunted Massachusetts, Poydras retaliated with “a tongue-lashing that scorched the ceiling as
well as the Congressman’s breeches,” according to an Eastern newspaper.
The following month Congress passed legislation authorizing delegates to organize a
government for the State of Louisiana. A convention to adopt the state’s first constitution convened
in November 1811, choosing Poydras president. There, he spoke again of the benefits of
republican government: “…Let us hail our emancipation from the odious servitude which has cost
us so dear; let us hail it, I say, with transports of gratitude.....”
In May 1812 President James Madison approved the new constitution, officially making Louisiana
the nation’s eighteenth state. At the following election Claiborne was elected governor and Poydras
state senate president. Poydras soon gave up active politics in favor of investing in New Orleans real
estate. His principal memorial is Poydras Street, now the heart of the Central Business District.
Poydras’ personal style curiously mis-matched his democratic views. General James Wilkinson
noted that although he was “in conduct and sentiment a Republican,” his style was monarchist. He
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
18

wrote neo-classic poems celebrating victories in battle and dressed in the manner of a subject of
Louis XV, sporting a queue, knee breeches, silk stockings, and shoes with silver buckles.
For further reading see Brian J. Costello, The Life, Family and Legacy of Julien Poydras. John & Noelie Faurent Ewing, 2001;
George Dargo, Jefferson’s Louisiana: Politics and the Clash of Legal Traditions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975.
D ON F RANCISCO L UIS H ECTOR, BARON DE C ARONDELET
(1748-1807)
Although few Louisiana governors have succeeded in favorably impacting New Orleans history.
Francisco Luis Carondelet (1792-1797) joins Jean Baptiste Bienville, William Claiborne, and John
McKeithen in having done so. Acting as both governor and de-facto mayor in the 1790s, Carondelet
prefigured Martin Behrman (q.v.) as a progressive who built up the infrastructure of the city.
Carondelet’s tenure began during the fury of the Haitian Revolution, which sent its first wave of
refugees to New Orleans in 1791. Ambitious and educated, the newcomers offered intellectual
competition to the Spanish government’s universe of verities through journalism and theater,
presenting the governor with the option of either suppression or co-option.
Carondelet chose the latter. By 1792 both the St. Peter St. Theater (Specâcle de la Rue Saint
Pierre) and the Moniteur de la Louisiane were functioning—with the governor’s conditional blessing.
Moniteur founder Jean Baptiste Le Sueur Fontaine (actor, journalist and St. Domingue refugee)
kept his editorials safely conservative and was rewarded with contracts for publishing
governmental decrees. On the theatrical side matters grew fluid, as audiences demanded French
Revolutionary music and the governor was called upon to keep the peace, if not the lid on. 1
Carondelet was most conspicuously acting mayor in the structure of city governance. His
perception of revolutionary challenges—real or imagined—led to a flurry of municipal
improvements, nearly all of them designed to strengthen public order. The governor divided the
city into four barrios (wards) with an “Alcalde de Barrio” or Cabildo judge to supervise each. The
city’s first police department appeared in 1796, consisting of a dozen “seranos” who patrolled the
city at night and announced the hours. To provide some lighting, Carondelet had oil lamps
suspended from ropes tied diagonally across street corners. He made a half-hearted attempt to
build some fortifications for the city, an effort abandoned by his successors as the threat of
revolution subsided. Not least of Carondelet’s contributions to New Orleans was the appointment
of its first regular corps of African-American militia.
Carondelet’s greatest achievement was the digging of the appropriately named Carondelet Canal,
for which he employed convict labor. Most historians believe the city’s location was selected
because of its proximity to Bayou St. John, but that was almost a century before Carondelet actually
provided its first water link. To be sure, it was not much of a link, more a ditch ten or so feet wide.
But its eventual success in promoting commerce with Lake Pontchartrain’s north shore and the
Mississippi Gulf Coast inspired both the construction of New Orleans’ first railroad to the lake and
the costly, competitive, deadly New Basin Canal. This canal brought building materials to the
Faubourg St. Marie, serving as a spur to the city’s upriver spread. Carondelet also ordered the
construction of floodgates in the levee, which successfully diverted flood waters from the city. 2
These were early examples of the principle of diversion exemplified by the Bonnet Carré Spillway,
and the difficult diversion of 1927 that flooded St. Bernard Parish.
Some of the most distinctive aspects of the New Orleans French Quarter date to Carondelet’s
administration. It was during his tenure that, after the city’s first great fire in 1788, new building
codes went into effect requiring brick with tile roofs and buildings sited close to the banquette.
New Orleans’ second great fire of 1794 provided the opportunity for even newer fire-resistant
Don Francisco Luis Hector Carondelet.
LOUISIANA IMAGE COLLECTION, LOUISIANA RESEARCH
COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
BIOGRAPHIES
19

codes. Carondelet’s codes have spurred an unending controversy over whether the “French”
Quarter is really, architecturally speaking, a “Spanish” Quarter.
1 Sally K. Reeves, “The St. Domingue Refugees in New Orleans” Louisiana Historical Society, Creole Family Symposium, 2001.
2 Gilbert C. Din and John E. Harkins, The New Orleans Cabildo: Colonial Louisiana’s First City Government 1769-1803 (Baton
Rouge: LSU Press, 1996), 242.
C LAUDE-JOSEPH F AVROT (1701-1777)
AND H IS D ESCENDANTS
Charles A. Favrot.
LOUISIANA RESEARCH COLLECTION, LOUISIANA IMAGE
COLLECTION NO. 1081, TULANE UNIVERSITY
The Favrot family has made its mark in each of the three centuries of New Orleans history,
tracing its Louisiana origin to the arrival of family progenitor Claude-Joseph Favrot (1701-1777)
from France around 1732. During a long military career, Favrot served at several military posts and
was wounded at the Battle of Ackia in the French campaign against the Chickasaw Indians in 1736,
for which he was awarded the prestigious Croix de St. Louis. In 1735, he married Louise-Elizabeth
Bruslé of New Orleans. Their two children left many living descendants in Louisiana, including
Pierre Joseph Favrot (1749-1824), who had his own long and distinguished career in the Louisiana
military, serving both France and Spain. In 1779, he participated in Governor Bernardo Galvez’s
expedition against the British forts at Manchac and Baton Rouge, where he fired the first shot on
the Baton Rouge fort. He owned a home on Royal St. in New Orleans, experiencing considerable
financial losses in its devastating fires of 1788 and 1794. In November 1814, Pierre Joseph (“Don
Pedro”) wrote an incisive (although inaccurate) analysis to Governor William Claiborne on defense
strategy regarding the anticipated British attack that resulted the following January in the Battle of
New Orleans. He was present in the Place D’Armes (Jackson Square) on Jan. 22, 1815 for Andrew
Jackson’s address to the people after their triumphant victory at Chalmette. Pierre Joseph spent his
later years on his plantation in West Baton Rouge, where he died in 1824.
For the next two generations, the Favrot family was firmly rooted in Baton Rouge, until two of
Don Pedro’s great-grandsons returned to New Orleans. In 1888, Henri Louis Favrot (1864-1918)
began, to study law at Tulane, and remained in the city for the rest of his life. A Spanish-American
War veteran, he had a distinguished career as a lawyer, state senator, and author, and is considered
the “Father of the Boy Scout movement in Louisiana.” He was an authority on drainage, road, and
land bond law, on which he wrote several treatises. He served for fourteen years as a state senator,
was a student of Louisiana history, and collected many documents on the history of the state. He
became an ardent supporter of the Louisiana Historical Society, authoring a pair of articles on the
West Florida Revolution for the Society’s early series Publications. His son, Henry Richmond Favrot,
was a lifelong New Orleanian, also a member of the LHS and of numerous genealogical societies.
Charles Allen Favrot (1866-1939), younger brother of Henri Louis, came to New Orleans in
1885 after being invited to work as an apprentice to his future father-in-law, noted New Orleans
architect James Freret. His thirty-nine year partnership (Favrot and Livaudais) with architect Louis
A. Livaudais produced several courthouses, the Hibernia National Bank building, the Municipal
Auditorium, the Cotton Exchange, and many fine uptown and Garden District residences. Active
in civic affairs, he influenced the creation of the New Orleans City Planning and Zoning
Commission, on which he subsequently served as chairman. For this and other work as a member
of the Tulane University Board of Administrators, and for founding the Bureau of Governmental
Research, he received the Times-Picayune Loving Cup in 1935. He authored “An Historical Sketch
on the Construction of the Custom House of the City of New Orleans,” published in the Louisiana
Historical Quarterly. His son Henri Mortimer “Morty” Favrot (1894-1953), son of Charles, served
as a young man with the Washington Artillery at the time of Pancho Villa trouble in Mexico in
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
20

1916. Returning home, he practiced architecture with Alan C. Reed. The Favrot & Reed firm
also designed many important local buildings, its successor firm later known as Mathes-Brierre
Architects. An avid historian, Morty was instrumental in early efforts to preserve, translate
and publish The Favrot Papers, an extensive collection of historical documents housed at
Tulane University. He also authored “Colonial Forts of Louisiana,” published in the Louisiana
Historical Quarterly.
Henri Mortimer Favrot, Jr. (1930-2015), son of Morty, known as “Tim,” was a fourth-generation
architect, receiving his architectural degrees from Tulane and Harvard University. He served in the
U. S. Air Force during the Korean conflict, after which his practice focused on the design of
apartment complexes. A passionate preservationist, he served two terms as president of the
Preservation Resource Center, as member of the City Planning Commission (founded by his
grandfather and later chaired by his uncle, Gervais) and in 2013 was named a Fellow of the
American Institute of Architects, his proudest accomplishment. Tim’s countless civic and
professional activities included leadership positions with the American Institute of Architects,
Tulane’s Board of Administrators, the National World War II Museum, the Louisiana Landmarks
Society, the Military Order of Foreign Wars, and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Thomas Blackburn Favrot (1923-2011), grandson of Charles Allen Favrot and son of Clifford
Freret Favrot, served in the Navy in the Pacific Theater during WWII. His love of New Orleans was
evident by his involvement in many organizations including the Louisiana Historical Society,
Louisiana State Museum, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Friends of the Cabildo, Save Our
Cemeteries, Preservation Resource Center, Lower Garden District Association, and Felicity
Redevelopment, which struggled to turn the New Orleans Central City neighborhood around. Tom
and others saved from demolition the former home of Henry Morton Stanley, the journalist and
explorer best known for his possibly apocryphal greeting, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” when he
found the missionary in Africa in 1871.
—Semmes Favrot
M ARIE
C. COUVENT
(1757-1837)
New Orleans’ first known African-American philanthropist. Marie Couvent, founded a school
for the education of orphans recorded in a will of 1837. The Couvent School would eventually
energize African-American intellectuals who widely influenced New Orleans’ African-American
community. Historian Keith W. Medley has identified several of the faculty members who taught at
the Couvent School, which opened, in 1848, at the Dauphine Street property that Madame
Couvent had bequeathed for the school. They included poets and writers Paul Trevigne and Joanni
Questy, mathematicians E. J. Edmunds and Basil Crockère, and dramatist Adolphe Duhart.
Trevigne, who taught at the Couvent School for forty years, also edited the newspaper L’Union.
Armand Lanusse, poet and writer, served as its second principal and published Les Cenelles, the
first anthology of poetry by people of color in the United States. 1
Marie Couvent was one of some 4,000 free people of color who fled the colony of St. Domingue
at the time of the Haitian Revolution. Born in Africa about 1757, she had been brought to the
colony as a child. By the time she reached New Orleans soon after 1800, she had the resources to
purchase land and slaves. In 1812, she married the free black carpenter Bernard Couvent.
Couvent, who never learned to read and write, sought to remedy that challenge for others by
stipulating that her property be “used in perpetuity for the establishment of a free school for the
colored orphans of the Faubourg Marigny.” A faithful Catholic, she directed that the school be
established under the auspices of Father Constantine Maenhaut [pastor of St. Louis Cathedral].
BIOGRAPHIES
21

After her death, a group of prominent free men
of color created L’Institution Catholique pour
l’Instruction des Orphelins dans l’Indigence, which
opened in 1848, and was known unofficially as
the Couvent School. For the past century and a
half five schools under various names have
operated at the site, located at 1941 Dauphine
Street. 2 One recent example was the Bishop
Perry School for Boys, which closed after
Hurricane Katrina. The Orleans Parish School
Board operates another Marie C. Couvent School
today at 2021 Pauger Street.
Plan Book 94, folio 6. Clerk of Civil
District Court.
1 Keith Weldon Medley, Black Life in Old New Orleans
(Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 2014), 69.
2 Neidenbach, Elizabeth Clark “Marie Couvent.” In
knowlouisiana.org Encyclopedia of Louisiana, edited by David
Johnson. Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, 2010–.
Article published March 15, 2011.
http://www.knowlouisiana.org/entry/marie-couvent.
J AMES
D URHAM
(1762 -1805)
In November 1788 Declaration of Independence signer and Surgeon General of the Continental
Army Benjamin Rush wrote a brief account of the life of James Durham, a Philadelphia-born
African American, who would become the single documented black physician in eighteenth century
New Orleans. The Rush account, along with scant notarial records, indicate that Durham
practiced in New Orleans for twenty years, from 1783 to his death in 1805. Although official
Spanish records of this period do not mention him clearly, a legal edict of 1801 described him as
“free negro Derum…having the right only to cure throat disease and no other,” a reference that
does not reflect other opinions of his ability. 1 Rush, the leading physician of Philadelphia, had concluded,
“I have conversed with him upon most of the acute and epidemic diseases of the country
where he lives, and was pleased to find him perfectly acquainted with the modern simple mode of
practice in those districts. I expected to have suggested some new medicines to him; but he suggested
many more to me.” 2
Durham was born about 1762 and raised as a slave in Philadelphia. He became successively the
property of two accomplished doctors who taught him the practice of medicine. At the end of the
American Revolutionary War Dr. Robert Dow brought him to New Orleans. Dow freed him in 1783
in exchange for a payment of 500 pesos. 3 Durham then began a practice under the Dow patronage,
earning the handsome sum of $3,000 a year. In 1788, Durham traveled to Philadelphia where he
applied to and joined the Episcopal Church; it was there that Dr. Benjamin Rush interviewed him.
Married at the time, Durham evidently returned to New Orleans about 1794 to purchase a home
on Bienville Street from Balderic Tomas, paying three hundred pesos cash and giving a mortgage
for three hundred pesos more. 4 On May 23, 1805, Durham called a notary and witnesses to his
house where he felt he was dying. He made a will and succession that transferred all of his property
to his wife Marie Françoise Diana. His assets consisted of his house, several slaves and his furniture
and effects. 5
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
22

1. Durham is mentioned in several secondary accounts.
Charles B. Roussève, The Negro in Louisiana: aspects of his
history and his literature. New Orleans: Xavier University
Press, 1937; Gilbert C. Din and John
E. Harkins. The New Orleans Cabildo: Colonial Louisiana’s
First City Government 1769-1803. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1996. These accounts are not
completely consistent.
2 Freeman’s Journal; or, the North-American Intelligencer 8
(November 1788), 153(Philadelphia, Penn)..
3 Roberto Dow to Santiago Durham, Emancipation, in
Leonardo Mazange, Notary Public, vol. 7, April 2, 1783,
New Orleans Notarial Archives.
4 Balderic Tomas to James Durham, free Negro, in Pedro
Pedesclaux, May 26, 1794, p. 528, New Orleans
Notarial Archives.
5 Will of James Durham [identified as Jacques Derhomme], May 23, 1805, in Narcisse Broutin, NP, vol. 9, p. 406-7, New
Orleans Notarial Archives.
Top: ”James Durham.
BALDERIC TOMAS TO JAMES DURHAM, FREE NEGRO, IN
PEDRO PEDESCLAUX, MAY 26, 1794, P. 528, NEW ORLEANS
NOTARIAL ARCHIVES.
Below: Julie Brion.
PORTRAIT OF A FREE WOMAN OF COLOR: "BETSY", BY
FRANÇOIS. (FRANZ) FLEISCHBEIN , HISTORIC NEW
ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1985.212.
J ULIE
B RION
(1760-1802)
Julie Brion, an influential colonial-era free woman of color, was an early model of the successful
New Orleans woman of color. As did her more well-known descendants, she seemed to have connections
everywhere, and was the ancestor of other important people of color to whom she left the properties
in which she had invested. In writing of the later Marie Laveau, historian Ina Johanna Fandrich
described “the remarkable free women of color who went on Sundays to the Cathedral, walked
proudly the streets of New Orleans during the week, dressed in beautiful outfits, owned property, and
ran their own businesses…. With close blood ties to both worlds, yet legally and socially separated
from either one, their peculiar situation of being between black and white, slave and free, rich and
poor enabled them to assume roles of power and economic independence unique to them.” 1
Born about 1760, Julie Brion was probably the daughter of Rene Brion and connected to the
Foucher family. A will dictated by her daughter Modeste Foucher, in 1848, identifies Julie as her mother
and Joseph Foucher, f.m.c. as her father. 2 According to Julie’s succession papers, plantation owner
Pierre Foucher was the tutor and curator of her children, having financed many of her property transactions.
Although her succession did not identify her parentage, it did identify her children: Modeste
and Rene Foucher; Benedicte and Achille Burel; 3 and Eugenie, Josephine, Antoine, and Julie Bonne,
all quadroons. 4 Two of these children subsequently received donations of property from Rene Brion,
presumed to be their grandfather. Julie Brion’s daughter Modeste Foucher was the mother of Thomy
Lafon (q.v.) and the known consort of surveyor, map maker, and adventurer Barthelemy Lafon (q.v.).
At Julie’s death, in 1802, she owned a two-story home on the prominent third block of Chartres
Street next to the elegant home of Jean Baptiste Destrehan, and across Conti Street from sugar
pioneer Etienne Boré. A couple of years after her mother’s death, Modeste Foucher sold the house
to Pierre Foucher, providing a circumstantial clue to their relationship. Julie also owned a house
on St. Anne Street, along with two more houses on Burgundy at St. Louis. Her slaves were
Hyasinthe, a cook, and Hyasinthe’s three children, Rosalia, Ambroise, and Victoire.
Julie Brion’s close connection to the Fouchers made her a cousin of the famous Madame Delord
Sarpy who owned a part of the Faubourg St. Marie. Madame Sarpy employed surveyor Barthelemy
BIOGRAPHIES
23

Lafon, Modeste Foucher’s consort, to survey her plantation and divide it into the streets now so
well known to local residents.
1 Ina Johanna Fandrich, The Mysterious Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveaux: A Study of Powerful female Leadership in Nineteenth-
Century New Orleans (Routledge, New York: Taylor & Francis, 2005), 71-72.
2 Modeste Foucher Succession. No. 8777 P. 118 of filmstrip, #213 Ancestry.com.
3 Benedicte’s heirs were, in 1812, her minor children Valcour, Patrice, Elizete, Pizeros and Aglae Foucher. See Sale 928
Toulouse, February 5, 1812, before Estevan de Quinones, NP, vol. 13, p. 366, Achille Burel, f.m.c., and Benedicte Burel,
f.w.c., were represented by Joseph Foucher, f.m.c., in the sale to Louis Dufilho. The act declared that Achille and
Benedicte Burel received the property through a verbal donation from Rene Brion and his wife Marianne Piquery. Achille
and Benedicte were the grandchildren of Rene Brion, if not Piquery.
4 Inventory of estate, Julie Brion, in Pierre Pedesclaux, NP, September 13, 1804, vol. 48, pp 939-940.
L OUIS C ASIMIR E LISABETH M OREAU-LISLET
(1766-1832)
Louis Casimir Elisabeth Moreau-Lislet.
L. MOREAU-LISLET AND HENRY CARLETON, THE LAWS OF
LAS SIETE PARTIDAS, WHICH ARE STILL IN FORCE IN THE
STATE OF LOUISIANA, NEW ORLEANS: JAMES M’KARAHER,
NO. 60. CHARTRES STREET, 1820.
Louis Moreau-Lislet may be the most important legal figure in the history of the State of
Louisiana. His drafting of two civil codes, in 1808 and 1825, laid the groundwork and determined
the future of the civil law in Louisiana. 1 An extraordinary jurist, linguist and public servant,
Moreau-Lislet was born in St. Domingue and educated in Paris where he studied law at the
Sorbonne. In 1789, at the age of twenty-three, he married Mlle. de Peters in Paris. His famous relative,
the statesman Moreau de St. Méry, served as his tutor and attended the wedding. Returning
to St. Domingue, Moreau-Lislet was appointed assistant public prosecutor (premier substitut de procureur
général) and served in various governmental capacities. During the revolutionary upheavals
in St. Domingue and prior to his departure for Louisiana he may have served as Toussaint
l’Ouverture’s personal secretary, a position that would have been consistent with his well-known
gifts as a linguist and translator. Finally fleeing the revolution he found refuge and initial employment
in New Orleans as a translator attached to the Orleans Territorial Legislature.
Moreau-Lislet’s talents as a lawyer and jurisconsult soon came to the attention of Louisiana
Governor William C. Claiborne. In 1806, Claiborne chose him and James Brown to draft a civil
code for the Territory, which was completed and
promulgated in 1808. This was the first code of
European law enacted in the Americas. In 1822,
Moreau-Lislet was again chosen as jurisconsult,
with Edward Livingston and Pierre Derbigny, to
draft the Civil Code of 1825, a work described by
Sir Henry Maine as “…of all the republications of
Roman law, the one which appears to us as the
clearest, the fullest, the most philosophical, and
the best adapted to the exigencies of modern society.”
Some indication of Moreau-Lislet’s prestige
in the legal community is that in the balloting
to select the three jurisconsults, he received
nearly twice the number of votes received by the
eminent Livingston.
Over the course of an extensive political career
Moreau-Lislet held nearly every office of public
trust in the State, including parish judge, state
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
24

epresentative, state senator and attorney general. At the bar he enjoyed an extensive and distinguished
practice in which he handled the greatest cases of the day, appearing as counsel before the
Louisiana Supreme Court in more than two hundred cases. In the process he amassed one of the
largest law libraries of his day, consisting of more than a thousand volumes in French, English,
Spanish and Latin. He was also renowned for his translations, most notably the first translation
into English (with Henry Carleton) of Las Siete Partidas, the Spanish code.
Despite his eminence as a jurisconsult and lawyer, Moreau Lislet died poor and suffered tragically
in his personal life.
—Vernon Valentine Palmer
Editor’s note: Only Henry Plauché Dart (q.v.) is comparable in the next century.
B ARTHÉLEMY
(1769-1820)
L AFON
A man of many talents, Barthélemy Lafon designed buildings, laid out suburbs, created maps,
surveyed the wilderness, made natural history drawings, taught engineering, speculated in land,
manufactured bricks, acted in theater, and dabbled in privateering. Engineer, architect, artist, surveyor,
he used his skills repeatedly over his thirty years in Louisiana. Lafon had a hand in laying
out two of the faubourgs adjoining New Orleans, St. Mary and Marigny. Famous homes such as
Bosque House at 617 Chartres have been attributed to him. His maps and surveys undergirded
Andrew Jackson’s defense of New Orleans, in 1815, and helped to explain the American victory at
the Battle of New Orleans. He served as chief deputy surveyor for New Orleans for four years, and
then as a chief surveyor for the entire state. Lafon’s 1806 map of Louisiana is one of the “earliest
comprehensive maps of any state or territory in US.” 1
Born in the Province of Languedoc, France,
Lafon arrived in New Orleans soon after 1790
and sought a grant to a key portion of the commons
along the future Canal Street. Soon after
that, however, the Spanish began rebuilding Fort
St. Louis, which overlooked the land. Lafon was
ordered not to develop it, though apparently he
had already constructed an iron works. This valuable
parcel remained forever outside of his grasp.
In 1801, Lafon purchased the 300-arpent Chef
Menteur plantation along Bayou Sauvage in what
is now Eastern New Orleans. His plan of the property, made in 1809, indicates a cypress house sur
sole (on a framed foundation) with cabins of poteaux en terre (posts in the ground), the buildings
roofed en pieux (roofing of elongated stakes), all in the method of early colonial construction.
There, he had four million bricks. He made a will that year, thinking he was dying, leaving his
instruments, books and drawings to his students, and leaving land to his natural children, but
Lafon did not die. At least not then. The property remained in his estate in various legal states until
1827, seven years after his real death.
About 1803 Lafon had joined the Laffites in the business of piracy. His justification was that his
vessels attacked Spanish ships only. Not impressed, the United States Navy condemned piracy
against any nation. In 1813, Lafon’s La Misère brought in as a prize the Spanish vessel Cometa. The
following year the United States government handed down indictments naming Lafon for his
attacks on Spain. Undaunted, Lafon also purchased property in Donaldsonville along the
Land owned by B. Lafon in Faubourg
St. Marie.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1980.187.
BIOGRAPHIES
25

Mississippi River at its juncture with Bayou Lafourche. From there he moved cargo and probably
slaves acquired from the Laffite brothers up and down the river. Piracy in the Gulf of Mexico was
never far from the Laffites (q.v.) and Lafon seems to have loaned his talents to the enterprise.
Profitability prompted the syndicate following the Battle of New Orleans to form the “Associates,”
consisting of Edward Livingston and other prominent New Orleanians, to invade Spanish-owned
Texas. Part of the plan was to acquire Galveston from Mexico and set up a town where smuggled
good could be stored. Nevertheless, these ventures did not enable Lafon to remain solvent after
1815. His plantation in the eastern part of the city later became Michoud and is now part of the
NASA site.
Lafon is also remembered as the consort of free woman of color Modeste Foucher, one of the great
lures of the era. An unacknowledged son named Thomy Lafon (q.v.) has often been attributed to him
because Thomy’s acknowledged mother Modeste was Barthélemy’s longtime consort and collaborator.
1 Alfred E. Lemmon, John T. Magill and Jason R. Wiese, Charting Louisiana: 500 Years of Maps (The Historic New
Orleans Collection, 2003), 139.
W ILLIAM C HARLES C OLE C LAIBORNE
(1775-1817)
William Charles Cole Claiborne.
LOUISIANA IMAGE COLLECTION, LOUISIANA RESEARCH
COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
Louisiana Governor William C. C. Claiborne presided over the peaceful integration of Louisiana
into the United States. An Anglo-American with an accommodating personality, he learned to
accept the strong French personalities in Louisiana who opposed his charge from Thomas Jefferson
to reconstruct the territory’s legal environment along the lines of the Common Law. Claiborne’s
compromising approach eventually led to his most important accomplishment, providing political
support for the adoption of a Louisiana code of laws based heavily on the civil law of France and
Spain. Louisiana remains the only Civil Law state in the Union.
Claiborne’s political background contributed to his success in Louisiana. Early on, his political
ambitions had led him to run for and win a seat in Congress from the State of Tennessee before he
was the constitutional age to be seated. He was still in Congress during the disputed Presidential
election of 1801 where he cast his vote for Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson reciprocated, appointing
Claiborne territorial governor of Mississippi. The purchase of Louisiana, in 1803, led smoothly to
an appointment as governor of the Louisiana Territory, where Claiborne’s political instincts carried
him through the next nine years leading the Louisiana territory. His success led to his becoming
the first elected governor of Louisiana after statehood in 1812, followed briefly by election to the
U.S. Senate where he died after only six months in office.
Tragedy marked William Claiborne’s personal life. He married three times, his first two wives
dying of yellow fever within five years of each other. With his second wife he had a son (William
C. C. Claiborne II) who helped preserve the Claiborne name to the present. Ironically, while governor
of the Mississippi Territory Claiborne was a pioneer in using mass vaccination against an epidemic,
in that case of small pox. The yellow fever epidemics that killed his wives were to plague
Louisiana for another century.
Historians have generally accorded little gravity to Claiborne’s service to Louisiana. The state’s
first published history by François-Xavier Martin found he was “honest and diligent, but somewhat
intimidated,” perhaps understandable in a milieu that included the millionaire Julien Poydras (q.v.)
and former New York Mayor Edward Livingston. 1 More insightful is the penetrating study of the
introduction of the Civil Code by legal historian George Dargo, which found that, “Claiborne’s
approval of the Civil Law Digest adopted by the territorial legislature, in 1808, a landmark in
the legal history of Louisiana, was to be uncharacteristically bold and creative.” 2 Legal scholar
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
26

A. N. Yiannopoulos found “the 1808 Code was a concise statement of principles and rules easily
ascertainable and readily available to all.” 3 In the end Claiborne was more important to Louisiana
than his more well-known contemporaries Jean Laffite or Andrew Jackson.
Louisiana’s Civil Code continued the rational European codification of laws and practice introduced
by the French and Spanish. Its Civil Law system clashed sharply with the English system of
judicial law that has ruled the rest of the United States. In most particulars it was so modern compared
to American private laws that over the years other states have adopted many of its protections
for the family, the widow, and the orphan.
1 See R. Randall Couch, “William Charles Cole Claiborne: An Historiographical Review.” Louisiana History 36 (1995): 453-
465 and Francois-Xavier Martin, The History of Louisiana from the Earliest Period, 2 vols. New Orleans, 1827-29.
2 George Dargo, Jefferson’s Louisiana: Politics and the Clash of Legal Traditions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 50.
3 A. N. Yiannopoulos, Louisiana Civil Law System (Baton Rouge: Claitor’s Publishing Division, 1977), 31.
J UDAH
T OURO
(1775-1854)
Judah Touro and John McDonogh (q.v.) were the most important philanthropists of antebellum
New Orleans, endowing religious, charitable, and educational causes. Touro and McDonogh also
shared remarkable personal histories. As young men, both participated actively in business, politics
and social life. But both, following their participation
in the Battle of New Orleans, gave up everything
but business and virtually ended all personal
relationships. Business dealings seemed to become
their only social outlets. It was almost as if the carnage
of the battle had lifetime effects on them.
The concerns that their wills addressed, Jewish
institutions in one case and public education in
another, were less evident in their lifetimes than
they were after their deaths. During his lifetime
Touro endowed the congregation Dispersed of
Judah, which became Touro Synagogue, and
founded what is now Touro Infirmary. “In later
life,” as Irwin Lachoff has written, “he sought to
return to his Jewish roots, donating generously to
the first Jewish congregations in the city. In the
will that made him famous, he bequeathed over
four hundred thousand dollars to Jewish and
Gentile institutions, both religious and secular.” 1
Earlier, Touro gave far more to explicitly Christian
institutions than to Jewish ones. As to McDonogh, he freed and educated most of his slaves, and
became the single most important factor in New Orleans Public Schools, but did not publically support
the public schools movement so crucial to the New Orleans American sector following 1840.
Born in Newport and orphaned as a youth, Touro was brought up by an uncle who eventually
established him in a mercantile business in Boston. In 1801, Touro left for New Orleans where he
established a merchant shipping business for his firm. As did McDonogh, he invested in New Orleans
real estate, a golden opportunity in the rapidly expanding city. Also like McDonogh in the decade
before the Battle of New Orleans Touro was active socially, yet by the Battle he too had remained single.
Judah Touro.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION,
1974.25.27.434.
BIOGRAPHIES
27

Severely wounded, Touro changed his lifestyle dramatically following his recovery. He became outwardly
parsimonious and privately generous, a trait that greatly contributed to his later fortune. His
largest real estate investments were the buildings on Canal Street (“Touro Row”) that came to be named
for him.
In the course of his life Touro donated to many Christian churches, such as Parson Clapp’s
Stranger’s Church (q.v.) and the construction of the new St. Louis Cathedral in 1849. But beginning
about 1845 Jewish leaders in New Orleans such as Gershom Kursheedt and Rabbi Isaac Leeser of
Philadelphia convinced him of the importance of being Jewish in more than words. He was persuaded
to fund a new Sephardic ritual congregation in New Orleans, in which he became an active
member. Along with this came the funding of a new hospital later known as Touro Infirmary. The
publication of his will assured his philanthropic reputation as he donated hundreds of thousands
of dollars to Jewish congregations across the United States.
Irwin Lachoff, “Introduction,” in Greater New Orleans Archivists, Jews of New Orleans:An Archival Guide (New Orleans,
1998), pp 12-13.
J EAN L OUIS D OLLIOLE (1779-1861) AND
J OSEPH C HATEAU (1816-?)
1440 Bourbon Street.
PHOTO BY CAROLYN KOLB.
Jean-Louis Dolliole, 19th century builder and community leader, played an important role in
maintaining the culture and traditions of New Orleans. Serving also as testamentary executor, legal
tutor or sponsor for friends and relatives, he helped to maintain the family lives and stature of the
city’s free black community. Best known as a talented builder along with his brother Joseph,
Dolliole applied his skills to the creation of homes built and framed in the “French-style.” Using
local materials like orange-red country brick and wood of cypress or pine, he drew largely on
French building methods such as the triangular roof truss, half-timber construction, and the use
of shingle, slate, hook tile roofing or over lathing strips to fashion rooflines. Dolliole’s home in the
French Quarter at 933 St. Philip represents the best of local vernacular architecture. Built, in 1805,
and owned by Dolliole for a half century, it was rescued from near ruin by a skilled local architect
and his wife, an historian and educator. Just steps from Esplanade Avenue, Dolliole’s masterpiece
at 1440 Bourbon stands on an irregular lot that reflects the crazy-quilt angles of the Faubourg
Marigny. Here in 1819, Dolliole assembled the haunting lines of a softly-colored plastered
brick cottage with a kaleidoscopic, double-pitched hipped roof of enduring flat tiles. Built not for
himself but for his mother-in-law
Catherine Dusuau, the house
remained in the family until
1858. Today it is one of the most
picturesque in the city.
Jean-Louis Dolliole was the son
of a Provençal Frenchman and
Geneviève Laronde, a mother of
African heritage, one of thousands
of free people of color whose legacies
survive in neighborhoods,
church life, business, politics,
music, writing and Francophone
culture. Their records abound in
local archives, dating from the
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
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18th century until the Civil War and later. Dolliole lived a long, prosperous life, census records of
1850 showing that at the age of seventy-one he was still a builder with real estate worth $10,000,
along with four slaves aged seven to forty-five. Ten years later, his household included the family of
mason Pedro Barthelemy and carpenter Leon Bonnecase.
Among other important builders of the antebellum period were Pablo Cheval, Paul Mandeville,
Bazile Dédé, August Philippe, Francois Darby, Charles Dupard, Manuel Moreau, Francois Boisdoré,
Louis Barthelemy Rey, Toby Dominique, Myrtille Courcelle, Francois Fils, Florville Foy, Pierre
Rillieux, and Joseph Chateau.
New Orleans-born Joseph Chateau (1816-) was one of the most prolific free black builders of
the antebellum period, with significant work of several types. New Orleans notaries of the 1840s
recorded seventeen contracts documenting his building activities, indicating that Chateau’s stockin-trade
was the Creole cottage. With façades usually scored (floché) to resemble stone, and decorative,
red-hued painting, they can still be found in the older neighborhoods. Chateau also worked
in other genres, building townhouses, renovating a store on Chartres St., and making innovations
to the vernacular cottage. His 1850 household included an Irish worker as well as two French-born
carpenters, possibly helping to explain the wide scope of his work.
—Sally K. Reeves
J OHN
M C D ONOGH
(1779-1850)
John McDonogh, the most important philanthropist in New Orleans history, began his career
in the trading house of William Taylor of Baltimore where McDonogh was born in 1779. Taylor
carried on an extensive trade with Europe, the West Indies and the South American countries. He
sent young McDonogh out repeatedly as the
owner’s representative, a responsible position for
one not yet twenty years of age. Though
McDonogh made his fortune in New Orleans, he
never forgot the city of his birth. McDonogh’s
elaborate will, devised a dozen years before his
death in 1850, laid out his plans for a spectacular
legacy to both New Orleans and Baltimore. Its
clauses shed light on the testator’s personal life
and beliefs. The high purpose of his life was the
establishment and support of Free Schools in said
cities, and their respective suburbs, (including
the Town of McDonogh as a suburb of New
Orleans) wherein the poor, (and the poor only),
of both sexes of all Classes and Castes of Color,
shall have admittance, free of expense for the purpose
of being instructed in the Knowledge of the
Lord and in reading, writing, Arithmetic, History,
and Geography. 1
A prominent feature of the will was a bequest to the City of New Orleans of the Louis
Allard Plantation on Bayou St. John, which the donor specified was to be used as a public
park. The land adjacent to it, he recommended, should be leased to farmers so the city could
use the income to finance operations. McDonogh died, in 1850, leaving his entire estate
equally to New Orleans and Baltimore. It took nine years and a protracted series of litigation
John McDonogh
LOUISIANA IMAGE COLLECTION, LOUISIANA RESEARCH
COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
BIOGRAPHIES
29

etween the cities to settle the estate, but by 1859, New Orleans was able to declare the Allard tract
a public (now city) park.
McDonogh was not under the illusion that his plans would solve the problems of education for
children. Rather, he challenged New Orleans and Baltimore to provide and pay for schools and
teachers for all of its children, implementing a real estate tax on the population for the purpose. As
he wrote in his will, it is an imperative, and Sacred duty, which each and every Government on
earth, is bound to perform, [to provide] by Law, for the education of every child, within the limits
of their respective Governments; To that effect, Parents, and Guardians of youth, should be made,
under heavy penalties, to send their Children to Schools, supported, (under a System of general taxation,
on real Estate;) at the sole expense of the Government.
McDonogh was one of several nineteenth century New Orleans philanthropists who practiced
austerity in their personal lives. Both he and Judah Touro opened their careers in the city as full
participants in society, but the Battle of New Orleans seems to have changed both into recluses.
McDonogh lived in a large plantation house on the west bank of the Mississippi in what is now
Gretna, Louisiana, accompanied mainly by slaves for whom he systematically provided the means
of purchasing their freedom.
Other philanthropists like Marie Couvent (q.v.) and Margaret Haughery (q.v.) did not bother with
public policy statements, but simply saved or invested their money. McDonogh was unusual in that
he gave very little away during his life time, his vast bequest after death coming as a corresponding
shock to the cities of New Orleans and Baltimore. His gift to Baltimore created one great school, the
John McDonogh School, which survives today. His gifts to New Orleans led to the construction of
over fifty public schools in the next half century, all but one named for him. Today political forces
have led the school district to rename most of the schools, much as Isaac Delgado’s Museum has
become the New Orleans Museum of Art.
1 McDonogh Will. New Orleans Public Library 5th District Court, #4112.
M AJOR J OSEPH S AVARY (1780-1830)
AND THE F REE B LACK M ILITIA
Chalmette Battlefield scene: American
rampart, War of 1812 cannons.
MALUS-BEAUREGARD HOUSE. CREDIT: NATIONAL
PARK SERVICE.
Major Joseph Savary led the St. Domingue battalion of the Free Black Militia in the Battle of New
Orleans. It competed with the older Creole battalion and won particular notice from General Andrew
Jackson. Before the Civil War, these two battalions were the only armed African-American forces in
Louisiana. Savary, a native of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) had fought with the French during the Haitian
Revolution. When Haiti became independent, Savary and his family settled in New Orleans. 1
Enrique Mentzinger, Captain Francisco Dorville, and Sergeant Vincent Populus led the much
older Creole Battalion d’Orleans, which had served in Spanish colonial times. 2 In 1807, the new
United States government accepted its members into a new Battalion of Free Men of Color. About
1809 the free black militias who had escaped from Haiti, Savary among them, began to importune
Governor William Claiborne for official recognition.
In December 1814 General Andrew Jackson arrived in New Orleans and immediately mustered 350
Creole veterans of the Spanish militia into the United States Army. Savary then raised a second black
unit of Haiti’s refugee soldiers. Jackson recognized Savary’s considerable influence and knew of his reputation
as “a man of great courage.” The Second Battalion, Free Men of Color of the Louisiana Militia,
some 256 men, including staff officers, were assembled in New Orleans and on December 19, 1814,
inducted into the service of the United States. On the same day, Savary, who had already assumed the
rank of captain, was promoted to the rank of second major. Arsène Lacarrière Latour wrote in his
Historical Memoir of the battle that “the gallant Captain Savary, who had occupied an honorable and
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
30

distinguished reputation in the wars of St. Domingo,” formed the newest battalion “chiefly with refugees
from that island.” 3
Four days after their mustering in, the Second Battalion’s first battle occurred during the savage
night-time battle of December 23 on the banks of the Mississippi River. During the skirmish, Savary and
his men fought back the British who were attempting to enter the city. In French, and reminiscent of
the La Marseillaise, he urged his men to “March on! March on, my friends, march on against the enemies
of the country.” After the commanding victory of the Americans on January 8, 1815, General Jackson
noted that the British rout began when one of Savary’s men killed British Commanding General Edward
Pakenham on the field of battle. Jackson publicly praised the Second Battalion and its commander, stating
that saying, “Savary’s volunteers manifested great bravery….” 4
On January 21 Jackson spoke to the troops assembled at Chalmette “recounting in glowing
words the major events of the campaign, and taunting the enemy with the miserable frustration of
their designs. He also used the occasion to laud the bravery of “Major Joseph Savary, a Free Man
of Color from Haiti who had performed spectacularly during the fight.” 5
When the war ended, however, white New Orleanians persuaded Jackson to order the black
troops out of the city. But, New Orleans and Louisiana did not forget Savary. In 1819, the State of
Louisiana granted him a pension of $30 a month, which ten years later was still in effect. 6 That year
Savary headed a pump brigade for the fire department, while the city council provided their lodging
on Hospital Street. 7 He had descendants for a century later; pioneering black historian Charles
Roussève noted that his granddaughter had married prominent Creole Joseph-Celestin Rousseau. 8
1 Marcus Christian, “Negro Soldiers in the Battle of New Orleans,” in Gary D. Joiner, ed., The Battle of New Orleans: A
Bicentennial Tribute (Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 2015), 229-252.
2 Jack D. L. Holmes, Honor and Fidelity: the Louisiana Infantry Regisment and the Louisiana Militia Companies, 1766-1821
(Birmignahm, 1965), 55. See also Roland C. McConnell, Negro troops of antebellum Louisiana; a history of the Battalion of
Free Men of Color (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968).
3 Christian, 243.
4 Charles Gayarré, History of Louisiana. The American Domination (New Orleans: F. F. Hansell & Bro., Ltd., 1903), IV, 433.
5 Winston Groom, Patriotic Fire: Andrew Jackson and Jean Laffite at the Battle of
New Orleans (New York: Vintage books, 2007), 228.
6 Robert Ewell Greene, Black Defenders of America, 1775-1973 (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company Inc.,. 1974);
Roland C. McConnell, Negro Troops of Antebellum Louisiana: A History of the Battalion of Free Men of Color (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1968). Annie Lee West Stahl, “The Free Negro in Ante-Bellum Louisiana” in Louisiana
Historical Quarterly, XXV (April 1942): 327-9.
7 New Orleans Argus Feb 23, 1828. P. 3
8 Charles B. Roussève, The Negro in Louisiana: aspects of his history and his literature ( New Orleans: Xavier University Press,
1937), 28-29, 65.
J EAN L AFFITE (1782-1823) AND
P IERRE L AFFITE (1770 TO 1822)
The subject of endless biographies; disagreements over whether he was a privateer or a pirate; controversy
over an authentic-sounding personal journal written on period paper with authentic-looking signatures
allegedly written decades after he was supposed to be dead; recognized and given a Presidential
pardon for his contributions to the Battle of New Orleans that at least one historian has now concluded
were of little significance; and a commodified tourist draw for New Orleans’ Jean Laffite will not go away.
Perhaps he is one of those figures who remain famous because everyone has heard of him. More
likely, easily impressed adventurers seeking the exotic in preference to the workaday prefer to hear
BIOGRAPHIES
31

Jean Laffite.
LOUISIANA IMAGE COLLECTION, LOUISIANA RESEARCH
COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
about the mariner whose birthplace and death remain obscure and who practiced piracy in the balmy
waters of the Gulf of Mexico, depositing his loot (and smuggled slaves) in the wilds of swampy
Barataria south of languid New Orleans.
The truth is, there are actually primary records that document Laffite’s activities and those of his
brother Pierre in their adventurous New Orleans period. Although some have called it privateering,
Jean and Pierre Laffite practiced piracy out of New Orleans for twenty years. They dealt in clothing,
food stuffs, slaves, anything from a captured vessel. They smuggled in slaves to the continent after
Congress had outlawed their importation, selling them clandestinely at their Barataria hideout, or
openly in the public offices of New Orleans notaries.
While otherwise respectable citizens tolerated their activities because they provided desirable
goods, the federal government was less amused. Naval Commodore Daniel Patterson and his forces
raided their camp in September, 1814, seizing goods and providing a U.S. District Court record
that historians have used. In their own days the Laffites basked in glory for having donated a sizable
quantity of flints to Andrew Jackson’s army during the Battle of New Orleans. Their most
recent biographer has concluded, however, that the Laffites’ military roles were minor, their “greatest
influence being…the moral force of their siding with the Americans, thus bringing leading
French Louisianans over to that side.” 1
Although there have been arguments otherwise, the most convincing evidence is that Pierre Laffite
was born and raised in Bordeaux, Jean in the nearby wine-producing region of Pauillac. During the
1790s they traded with the colony of St. Domingue until the French Revolution and its attendant
wars made that impossible. Events not fully understood brought them to New Orleans about 1803. 2
While the brothers were separated by twelve years of age, once they arrived in New Orleans they
became close. Over the next decade the Laffites captained and organized pirating operations and
landed many of their prizes at Grand Isle on the Louisiana coast. During preparations to face the
British invasion of the Louisiana coast in late 1814, Jean Laffite famously refused a British naval
officer’s offer of wealth and immunity to join the invaders. The Laffites boasted of their loyalty to
the United States, Jean vowing he would never attack an American flag merchant man. He offered
his services instead to Andrew Jackson. Jackson, hard up for flints, guns, and soldiers, took a
chance and accepted the offer. President James
Madison later sent the pardon.
Following the Battle of New Orleans, Jean was
out of ships and having trouble raising money to
outfit new privateer expeditions against either
Spanish or English merchantmen. He then
embarked on a spying engagement for Spain
within the large assortment of buccaneers in New
Orleans plotting the overthrow of Mexico and/or
the capture of Texas. The purpose of the spying
was the monthly pay from Spain’s operatives,
headed in New Orleans by the Capuchin friar
Antonio de Sedella.
The “Associates,” a subset of the above-mentioned
buccaneers, put together the money that
enabled Jean Laffite to establish a base at Galveston
for new attacks on merchant shipping in the Gulf.
Peace between Spain, England, and the United
States led to the gradual extirpation of privateering,
putting an end to it. About 1823 the Laffite brothers
died separately at sea near Campeche, Mexico.
The romance of the Laffites naturally attracted
writers, an initial novel appearing within three
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32

years of their deaths. The Memoirs of Lafitte turned out to be a fictional romance that went through
six editions and led to a stage performance. Newspaper articles tying the Laffites to Lord Byron’s
poem “the Corsair,” and Joseph Holt Ingraham’s 1835 two-volume novel The Pirate; or, Lafitte of the
Gulf of Mexico spread legends about pirate treasure.
Until recently historians have scarcely done a better job of understanding the subject. 3 A highlight
of the biographies was that by Stanley Clisby Arthur who, having access to federal court records in
his capacity of Director of the Survey of Federal Records during the Great Depression, claimed in a
preface that his work was the last that needed to be done on the subject. At least eight Laffite biographies
have succeeded his. The most thoroughly researched and the standard today is the 2005 work
by William C. Davis, The Pirates Laffite.
1 William C. Davis, The Pirates Laffite: The Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf (New York: Harcourt, Inc.,
2005), 223.
2 Davis, The Pirates Laffite, 5-7.
3 A partial list of the biographies, not including those in Spanish. Mary Devereux, Laffite of Louisiana 1902; Lyle Saxon,
Laffite le Pirate 1935; Stanley Clisby Arthur, Jean Lafitte: Gentleman Rover 1952; Iris Vinton, We Were There with Jean
Laffite at New Orleans 1957; Robert Tallant, The Pirate Laffite and the Battle of New Orleans 1951 and 1989; Jane Lucas De
Grummond, The Baratarians and the Battle of New Orleans 1961; Catherine Troxell Gonzalez, Lafitte, the Terror of the Gulf
1981; Jack C. Ramsey, Jean Laffite: Prince of Pirates 1996.
B ERNARD X AVIER P HILIPPE DE M ARIGNY DE M ANDEVILLE
(1785-1868)
Bernard Xavier de Marigny de Mandeville, the founder of the Faubourg Marigny and the Town
of Mandeville, made his reputation in antebellum New Orleans as a land developer, politician, and
embodiment of all things French and Creole. Born in the third generation of his family to live in
Louisiana, he lived a span that covered four national flags.
Romantic lore surrounded Marigny’s legacy from the time of his minority. Orphaned at the age of
fifteen, he became a brash young man at twenty-five who told tall tales of dueling exploits that never
occurred. Romantic writers, within a decade of his death, began to exploit his memory as a bon vivant
Frenchman whose love for gambling caused the loss of a vast inherited fortune, depicting him as the
richest man in America who became the poorest.
In fact, Marigny was never as rich or as poor as legend would have it. True, he inherited wealth
from both of his parents’ estates at a much too young age. But as a developer who astutely financed
his sales of land at interest, he earned as much wealth as he inherited. His 1805 development of his
parents’ plantation into the Faubourg Marigny sold out in a short span, the owner retaining only
two squares of ground where stood the family home. Twenty-five years later, Faubourg Marigny had
grown into a settled neighborhood dense with Creole cottages, a sprinkling of Creole townhouses,
churches, commercial and industrial enterprises facing the Mississippi, a market and ferry landing,
and a vibrant public square at Elysian Fields Avenue.
In 1829, when American Sector developers of the Pontchartrain Railroad sought to purchase
Marigny’s two reserved squares and a right-of-way alongside a canal on his land, he realized that
the line would offer convenient access to Lake Pontchartrain and its northern shore. He refused the
sale to the railroad, leased his house to a hotel developer, and kept the rights to the Mississippi
waterfront at the mouth of his canal. The incident led to his decision to develop the Town of
Mandeville on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain.
Marigny began to accumulate land in the future Mandeville in 1829, completing his acquisitions
two years later. By 1834 he had had his town cleared and laid out, developed a public relations
Bernard Xavier Philippe de Marigny.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, GIFT OF MR.
G. WILLIAM NOTT, 1974.61.1.
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program, and sold the lots at auction. Occasional defaults on sales in Mandeville were handled like
those in Faubourg Marigny: a repossession, default on the deposit, and a subsequent re-sale to
Marigny’s profit. The Northshore development became the Town of Mandeville, which to this day
honors the one stipulation in the founder’s sales: to keep its lakefront clear of development.
Marigny’s political life was just as extensive and complicated. At 26, he was elected to his first
public office, a seat on the New Orleans City Council, where he served several short terms. He
served in the Louisiana State Senate from 1822 to 1823, subsequently losing two races for governor.
But he was elected to two state constitutional conventions (1812 and 1845), where he successfully
battled for the preservation of requiring French in all things legal.
The Panic of 1837 led to bankruptcies nationwide and a general depression in the American economy,
the hard times lasting through most of the 1840s. Highly leveraged with bank loans, by 1845
Marigny had to surrender most of his assets to his bankers. In subsequent years he was never again
wealthy, but unlike others in the business community, he never declared bankruptcy.
Married twice, Marigny had seven children and two unhappy experiences in marriage. His first
wife Mary Ann Jones died in childbirth, their two sons both dying in early manhood. With his second
wife Anna Morales, daughter of former Spanish Intendant Juan Ventura Morales, Marigny had five
more children and numerous grandchildren, nearly all of whom have posterity today. After fifty years
of unhappy marriage, Marigny and his second wife finally divorced in 1859. The following year, he
purchased a gracious home on the Mandeville lakefront. There, near the home of a daughter and
grandchildren, he rode out the Civil War, and at the time of his death in 1868, was spending much
of his time. The house subsequently became Mugnier’s and then Bechac’s Restaurant. The last and
only extant home of Mandeville’s colorful founder, the house still stands.
—Sally K. Reeves
G IL J OSEPH (1789-1846) AND
L OUIS H. PILIÉ (1821-1886)
Joseph Pilé.
Father and son Joseph and Louis Henri Pilié were the two most important City Surveyors of
19th century New Orleans. Between them, they designed and managed the major portion of the
city’s 19th century infrastructure, from roads and bridges to wharves and public markets. With
400 known drawings in the Notarial Archives (Office of the Clerk of Civil District Court) and
another 300 drawings in the City Archives (New Orleans Public Library), Joseph Pilié pioneered
the art of drawing property surveys and house indications for the New Orleans civil engineering
profession. As Deputy Surveyor and then City Surveyor following his father, Louis H. Pilié managed
the maintenance and rebuilding of markets, streets, curbs, wharves, and other public facilities
over a forty-year period. His son Edgar (b. 1845), although not a City Surveyor, continued the family
profession as a civil engineer in late 19th century New Orleans. His colorful, small-scale survey
drawings are usually attached to acts in the Notarial Archives collection.
The office of City Surveyor was part of municipal government from the 1805 incorporation of
New Orleans. Louisiana-born Jacques Tanesse was the first to fill the position, having served first
as surveyor general in St. Domingue. He is best remembered for an 1812 map of New Orleans and
for having, in 1813, designed the French Quarter’s meat market, still standing. Joseph Pilié
assumed his office at the death of Tanesse in December 1818, remaining in office until 1836, just
before the city split into three municipalities. Ironically, the St. Domingue-born Pilié then left the
“First Municipality” (the French section) and at forty-seven went to work in the American Sector
as the surveyor of the Second Municipality until 1844. He also did engineering for private clients
in this period, working sometimes even for the Third Municipality, surveying until not long before
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his death in 1846. One of his greatest works was to design and draw specifications for a multi-level
steamboat wharf that could function when the river was at high or low water.
The City Surveyor’s chief responsibility was to provide for the municipality’s orderly physical
growth. He was the city architect, engineer, and health and safety official. He surveyed and marked
lot lines, issued building permits, inspected theaters, walls, sidewalks and encroachments, laid out
streets and supervised their construction, and designed and let contracts for market buildings, firehouses,
asylums, prisons, courthouses, wharves, school houses, and other public facilities. An
expert on the growth of the city and its property titles, the Surveyor was usually the expert witness
in boundary dispute cases.
The elder Pilié came to New Orleans with his family as a refugee child. In 1805, the sixteenyear-old
entered into a contract with Barthelemy Lafon (q.v.) to learn the surveying business. He
became a draftsman in the office, one of his assignments being to make a property-owners’ map of
the Vieux Carre that was issued in 1809. Before the Battle of New Orleans, General Wilkinson
appointed him “to survey the lakes near the city and establish forts from Bayou St. John to
Mobile.” 1 Appointed City Surveyor for Orleans Parish in late 1818, Pilié began to make drawings
that appear in notarial records the following year. Many are small in scale with lot lines only; a large
number, however, are “indications,” depicting the footprint of every structure on a lot with convincing,
shaded roof shapes that explicate the building’s massing. Pilié’s last known drawing dates
to 1846.
Joseph Pilié sent his son Louis Henry to study at Janin’s College in St. Louis. At the age of fifteen
he joined his father’s private firm. At twenty-two (1843) he received an appointment as deputy surveyor
of the First Municipality, becoming City Surveyor after the reunion of the three municipal
subdivisions in 1852. He worked steadily in that capacity until the Civil War. One of his great
achievements from 1858 until 1861 was to survey and make oversized water color auction drawings
of the vast stock of property in Orleans and surrounding parishes owned by John McDonogh
and left to the city. Louis Pilié’s drawings for the McDonogh auctions fill entire plan books of the
Notarial Archives Division. His painting style and graphics were straightforward—clean and softly
colorful, without a great deal of linear detail.
In 1862, Union General Benjamin Butler had Louis Pilié seized and thrown into jail in the federal
Customhouse on a spurious charge. In 1865, Pilié sued the city over the extortion of money
and Butler’s false imprisonment, and won his case in both district and the Louisiana State Supreme
Court when Louisiana was still under federal control. 2 Louis H. Pilié went on to serve the City of
New Orleans for another twenty years.
—Sally K. Reeves
1. Deposition, Louis H. Pilié, “New Orleans Canal and Banking Co. vs. the United States,” USDC No.28; April 14, 1874.
2 Louis H. Pilié vs. City of New Orleans, 19 LA Annual Reports 274 appeal from 5DC No. 15070.
T HEODORE C LAPP (1792-1866) AND
B ENJAMIN M ORGAN P ALMER (1818-1902)
Unitarian Dr. Theodore Clapp and Presbyterian Reverend B. M. Palmer were the most popular
white sermonizers of New Orleans history, although their Protestantism varied. Clapp began as a
Presbyterian, and then rejected Calvinism a few years after becoming the preacher at First Presbyterian
Church. His followers became the First Congregational Unitarian Society, a church that revolved
around only Parson Clapp. The parson’s oratory made Clapp a minor tourist attraction, as visitors to
the city were persuaded to hear him preach in such numbers that his church became known colloquially
as the “Strangers” church. An audience of a thousand was not unusual, especially since the church
BIOGRAPHIES
35

Rev. Theodore Clapp.
LOUISIANA IMAGE COLLECTION, LOUISIANA RESEARCH
COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
was immediately next door to the voluminous
St. Charles Hotel, and across the street from the
Verandah Hotel.
Memorialist Eliza Ripley, in her Social Life in
New Orleans recorded some keen observations of
Clapp’s church:
No Bible class, no Sunday school, no prayer
meeting, no missionary band, no church committee,
no Donor’s Society, no sewing circle, no donation
party, no fairs, no organ recital, absolutely
“no nothing,” but Dr. Clapp and his weekly
sermon. The church was always filled to its
utmost capacity. 1
Clapp was close to several prominent local merchants,
most notably the humble and generous
Judah Touro (q.v.). Touro provided the funds to
build Clapp’s church and, when it burned two
decades later, the funds to rebuild. Clapp recalled that after the fire no Christian church would extend
a hand to the Unitarians. Meanwhile, his fabled tolerance invited vigorous debate. “I think it very
wrong to apply disparaging epithets to any person on account of his honest opinions on religious matters,”
he wrote in his memoirs. “A minister should never denounce, but he may discuss, and entreat
with all long-suffering and forbearance.” 2
New Orleanians appreciated Clapp for his courage during the cholera and yellow fever epidemics
of the 1830s and 1853. He unhesitatingly visited the sick and dying, conducting funerals
daily of many who had great plans for their future. “I went, one Wednesday night,” he wrote, “to
solemnize the contract of matrimony between a couple of very genteel appearance. The bride was
young, and possessed of the most extraordinary beauty. A few hours only had elapsed before I was
summoned to perform the last office over her coffin. She had on her bridal dress….” 3
Clapp’s attitude towards slavery shifted twice, initially from a critical posture and then to accommodation.
By the 1850s, however, he had begun to believe that slavery was antithetical to Christianity.
Such were not the views of his former First Presbyterian Church. Clapp remained pastor of his congregation
for thirty-five years, departing in 1856 to live his final years in Louisville, Kentucky.
That year, First Presbyterian welcomed the Rev. Benjamin Morgan Palmer, founder of the
Southwest Presbyterian Seminary (now Rhodes College) and an orphanage at Columbus,
Mississippi, one of the early ministries in his career. Palmer had become a “fire eater,” an outspoken
promoter of the Southern cause. His 1860 speech in behalf of secession swung many to that view.
Palmer’s was the city’s dominant Protestant Congregation. The steeple of his Camp Street church
overlooking Lafayette Square, the city’s tallest, was a local landmark. His oratory firmly established
the Presbyterians in New Orleans. His speech, in 1891, against the Louisiana Lottery is credited with
halting its extension. A political Progressive in his last decade, he endorsed its two principal tenants,
opposition to the Louisiana lottery and support for racial segregation. 4 Towards the end of his life
he moved to 1718 Henry Clay Avenue. Reverend Palmer remained pastor of First Presbyterian until
his death in 1902. He was accidently killed by a streetcar while walking on the St. Charles Avenue
neutral ground. After his death the City renamed the lake side of Henry Clay Palmer Avenue.
1 Eliza Ripley, Social Life in Old New Orleans: Being Recollections of my Girlhood (Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company,
1998), 123.
2 John Duffy, ed., Parson Clapp of The Strangers’ Church of New Orleans (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1957),
87.
3 Duffy, 81.
4 See also Samuel Wilson, Jr. The First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans. New Orleans: Louisiana Landmarks Society, 1988.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
36

J AMES
H. CALDWELL
(1793-1863)
James H. Caldwell pioneered English-speaking opera and drama in New Orleans, built the city’s
most magnificent theatre, and founded the gas manufacturing company needed for lighting its
immense arena. Promoting the growth of his American Sector, he served as alderman and aldermanic
board president as well as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives. With other investors,
he organized the New Basin Canal, the New Orleans and Nashville Railroad Company, the New
Orleans Water Works, and the Verandah and St. Charles hotels. His contemporaries Samuel J. Peters
(q.v.) and James Robb (q.v.) collaborated in their efforts to achieve social prominence in American New
Orleans. A thoroughly Anglo-American entrepreneur, he was in modern parlance a developer who
injected cultural and economic energy into the New Orleans business community (albeit on the
American side of Canal Street).
An English actor who made his American debut at Charleston in 1816, Caldwell moved to
Washington, D. C. in 1817, and began a managerial career. The following year he built a theatre in
Petersburg, Virginia, but by 1820 had brought his theatrical company to New Orleans. There it
opened at the St. Philip Street theatre (Théâtre St. Philippe). Within months Caldwell had transferred
to the Orleans Theatre (Théâtre Orléans), sharing it with a resident French-speaking company.
Recognizing greener pastures and a market void, Caldwell moved in 1835 to the American side
of town. That year he opened the opulent St. Charles theatre at a cost of $350,000. The building
seated an astounding 4,100 and was lighted by a gas chandelier twelve feet high with 250 gas jets
and 23,200 crystal drops. Seven years into the venture the theater burned in a spectacular fire, a
common fate for theatres of the time. Caldwell was nevertheless “the Pioneer of the Drama in the
South,” according to a study of theatrical management. 1
In 1833, Caldwell founded the New Orleans Gas Light and Banking Company pursuant to a
Legislative charter. It began operations in 1834, with a thirty-year contract to light the city of New
Orleans. In 1835 he sold his interest to the newly-incorporated New Orleans Gas Light and Banking
Company, which would evolve in time into New Orleans Public Service, Inc., now Entergy.
As the Civil War began, Caldwell moved with his wife Josephine Rome to Cincinnati and then
to New York where he died in 1863. 2
James A. Caldwell.
LOUISIANA IMAGE COLLECTION, LOUISIANA RESEARCH
COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
1 Sol Smith, Theatrical Management in the West and South for Thirty Years (New York, 1868), 153, cited in Arthur
Henry Moehlenbrock, “The German Drama on the New Orleans Stage,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly XXVI April
1943, 370.
2 Louisiana Wills and Probate Records 1756-1868, Orleans wills 1860-1865, p. 481-7, New Orleans Public Library.
D E A RMAS F AMILY OF N EW O RLEANS
Since just after 1800, the multi-talented de Armas family of New Orleans has produced notaries
and artists over numerous generations, producing a vast record of the Early American, Antebellum,
and even Post Civil War city. The oldest known public figure was Christoval Loubis de Armas y
Arcila, an Isleño born in Santa Cruz on the volcanic Canary Island of Palma. Christoval practiced as
a notary only later in life (from 1815 until his death in 1828), having lived earlier in Baton Rouge,
and probably he was involved in some earlier legal disputes. He emigrated to Louisiana before 1783,
when he married Amiraud Duplessis of New Orleans. The couple had seventeen children, of whom
seven survived to adulthood. Christoval’s acts reflect the old Spanish and French Creole populations
of the city during its Early American years. 1 Never wealthy, he and his wife Amiraud resided in a
small rental cottage in the 400 block of Bourbon. His library was small, his inventory nevertheless
identifying a notarial press and the books a notary should have: the indispensable Parfait Notaire;
BIOGRAPHIES
37

De Armas, Notarial License.
GEORGE H. AND KATHERINE M. DAVIS COLLECTION,
LOUISIANA RESEARCH COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
two Civil Codes; and the interesting Tratato de Clausulas Instrumentals, which would have provided
the formularies for Spanish wills, marriage contracts, sales, and mortgages.
Christoval’s oldest son Miguel (1783-1823),
the notary Michel de Armas (volumes 1809-1823)
became the first important city notary of New
Orleans. His acts record the activities of the city
corporation in dividing the “Commons” along
what is now Canal St and Esplanade, along with
dozens of sales of the lots to individuals. Michel
also passed the 1810 act of sale to the city of their
plantation by Mr. and Mrs. Claude Tremé. This
transaction precipitated the city’s creation of the
Faubourg Tremé and its sales of land there, Tremé
being the only faubourg not created by private
landowners. Among hundreds of clients, Michel
counted second-generation members of the Enoul
Livaudais family, Edward Livingston, Louise de la
Ronde Castillon (widow of Andres Almonester
and mother of Madame de Pontalba) and Bernard
Marigny, many of whose early sales of land in his
faubourg appear in Michel de Armas’ volumes.
An avid book collector and student of civil law,
Michel assembled one of the most important
libraries of Early American Louisiana. His library,
which he kept in his home and office in the 400 block of Chartres Street, consisted of some 3500 volumes
in French, English, Spanish, Latin, Italian and Greek. As S. Reeves has reported, “Because of his
notarial and legal practice, about a third of the library consisted of legal books such as civil law treatises,
digests, and court reports,” along with the world’s great classical works, natural histories, and
literature in English and French. 2 Michel de Armas died sadly in 1823 at forty, leaving a wife
(Gertrude Dubreuil) and four minor children. The inventory of his estate, including his property, furniture,
books and papers, took a notarial team and family members three months to compile. 3
Michel’s brother Felix Nicolas de Armas (1796-1839) assumed Michel’s notarial and city notary
commission in 1823, practicing as a notary until his death at forty-three, another short life. His acts
reflect the continuing activities of the city to complete its sales and quittances in Tremé, along with
almost innumerable Creole family activities and succession sales—Destrehan, Foucher, Freret,
Marigny, the Rivardes of Bayou St. John, and so on. Felix de Armas became the family notary for
Bernard Marigny, his early 1834 acts recording the sales of land in Mandeville after Marigny’s great
auction of lots there after assembling the tracts of land that would form the town.
Their youngest brother Octave de Armas (1804- ca. 1889) seems to have made up for the short
lives of his siblings, practicing as a notary from 1828 until 1889 (a record) and completing 108 volumes.
His vast works cannot be encapsulated, except to note that Octave became the notary for the
Catholic Church and Archdiocese of New Orleans, along with several white Protestant and African-
American religious groups. Much of the growth of local churches shows in his record of building
contracts, mortgages, sales, and acts of incorporation. He was never a city notary, however.
In the third generation, Felix, Jr., and Charles A. de Armas (1824-ca. 1889), sons of Felix; and
Arthur de Armas (1850-1903, son of Michel, appear in local records, Felix, serving only briefly as a
notary, and Charles’ notarial volumes covering only the period 1833 to 1836. Notarial practice was
not his calling, as Charles de Armas was one of the great artists of New Orleans history.
With some 300 Plan Book drawings and surveys and thousands of sketches, Charles Arthur de
Armas found his calling in the public auction system of civil law New Orleans. A gifted artist, he
drew and painted a vast body of mid-19th Century water color drawings for hanging in the auction
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
38

houses of New Orleans. Made to comply with civil law’s public notice requirements in cases of property
rights involving minor children, creditors, women, or absent heirs, the drawings depict houses,
lots, and tracts of land all over the city’s seven municipal districts. Skilled in perspective and a gifted
colorist, Charles de Armas painted in an easily recognizable style that combined a soft, almost pastel
palette with sharp, linear, highly-detailed images and “stop-ornament” style graphics. His favorite
hues seem to have been pale ochre, used when needed to depict stucco-covered exteriors; Paris
green, appropriate for the city’s ubiquitous batten and louvered shutters; and lavender-grey, which
de Armas lavished on images of the slate rooftops that covered the city’s Creole cottages.
Today, Charles de Armas’ Plan Book drawings are housed at the Notarial Archives Division of the
Office of the Clerk of Civil District Court. In addition, his research-worthy and interesting, “Sketch
Books,” to be found at the Historic New Orleans Collection, provide rare insight into the making of
the auction drawings that later became “Plan Book” drawings. Made directly from field observations,
these pencil sketches of the buildings and streetscapes that he would later paint as water colors are
full of interesting details and title notes. Several contain notations that the property sketched was sold
in an earlier period on a certain date before “Grandpere,” (meaning Christoval de Armas).
Charles de Armas’ last years and death date remain unresolved. In his prime, he signed his
drawings either “C. A. de Armas, or “Chs. de Armas,” with his distinctive signature and drawing
style. During part of his career, he signed as Deputy City Surveyor, and appears in the 1880 census
in this capacity. He was evidently made a prisoner during the Civil War, and no drawings can be
positively attributed to him after 1867. There followed a body of strikingly similar work signed by
“A. de Armas,” sometimes “Arthur de Armas,” Charles’ cousin, whose notarial and sketch book
drawings were also prolific. Historic New Orleans Collection records show that Arthur de Armas
used the Charles de Armas sketch books and continued to make great numbers of entries in them
from 1868 to 1886; as did George de Armas (1850-1915) from 1862 to 1914. 4
According to family visiting the Archives, the de Armas family has continued to produce artists
to the present day, enriching its heritage as it has for so long.
1 Historic New Orleans Collection MSS 125.365, Letter from Etienne Boré, mayor of New Orleans, to Pierre Clément
Laussat (1803 December 10 (18 frimaire an XII)); H. Lavergne, N.P., 11-1-1827; Notarial Archives Division; New
Orleans Public Library Will Book 4, f. 176. .
2 Sally K. Reeves, Introduction, Jacques-Felix Lelièvre’s New Louisiana Gardener (Baton Rouge, 2001), 17; H. Lavergne, 9-
10-1823.
3 H. Lavergne, N.P., September 10 to
December 3, 1823.
4 Reference obtained from Howard Margot, Archivist/Curator, Historic New Orleans Collection, August 23, 2007.
M ICAELA A LMONESTER DE P ONTALBA
(1795-1874)
Micaela Almonester de Pontalba and her father Andrès Almonester y Roxas made indelible marks
on New Orleans with the construction of the city’s most iconic buildings surrounding Jackson Square.
After the city’s two great fires of 1788 and 1794, Almonester provided the gifts and loans that made
possible the rebuilding of the St. Louis Cathedral, the Cabildo, and the Presbytere. Nearly sixty years
later his daughter Micaela had the thirty-two Creole row houses built that fill two sides of Jackson
Square and partially define its appearance. In her memory, they are known to history as the Pontalba
Buildings. Between 1782 and his death in 1798 Almonester also donated funds to build a new charity
hospital, the old having been destroyed by hurricanes; along with an orphanage, a Lepers’ Hospital, a
new chapel for the Ursuline Nuns, and a replacement public school. Almonester financed his other
BIOGRAPHIES
39

Micaëla Leon Arda Antonio
Almonester Pontalba.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION,
1974.25.27.358.
two projects, a replacement for the Cabildo, and a Presbytere, with a loan that the city eventually
repaid. Of Almonester’s buildings, the latter two alone remain standing.
Andrès Almonester came to New Orleans from Spain, in 1769, as the royal notary or escribano royal
with General Alexandro O’Reilly. He practiced as a notary until 1782, when he gave up his commission,
purchased a seat on the Illustrious Cabildo, and began investing in New Orleans real estate. As a young
man he lived frugally, at one point without any servants. In 1787, he married Louise de la Ronde, a
Creole from a socially prominent family who spoke no Spanish and lacked a dowry. It appears they had
been lovers, since five years before the marriage Andres had given her a large house with servants.
Micaela was the Almonesters’ only child to reach adulthood. Her father’s death, in 1798, left his
estate in the hands of his wife Louise, who turned out to be a wise investor. Although citizens
ridiculed her second marriage, in 1803, to a man much younger than she, the union soon ended
in the husband’s death. In 1811, about the time she began looking around for a husband for
Micaela, she received a letter from Joseph Xavier Delfau de Pontalba in France, a distant relation.
The letter suggested Pontalba’s son Célestin would be a good match for Micaela. Louise agreed, and
in a matter of just months Célestin arrived in New Orleans, met Michaela, and married her in an
outsized ceremony at St. Louis Cathedral.
The couple, followed by their two mothers, moved to the Pontalba estate Château Mont-l’Évêque
outside of Paris. There Micaela met Célestin’s father, a New Orleans-born Creole and newly-established
Napoleonic baron. Pontalba soon displayed his reason for arranging the marriage: enriching his family
at the expense of his daughter-in-law. Micaela, with the resolve of her parentage, resisted his efforts to
give him full control of her money. As a result he made her life miserable, treating her as an outcast. All
the while, the young couple lived together most of the next twenty-three years until 1834 when Baron
Pontalba succumbed to his rage at Micaela for her
failure to turn her personal fortune over to him. In
her small bedroom in the Chateau, he entered and
shot Micaela with a pair of pistols and then, after
brooding all day in his study, fatally shot himself.
With two balls lodged in her chest, Micaela
lived on for forty years. Her first task was to get out
from under the Pontalbas, a legal process that took
several years before she received a divorce, a New
Orleans judge giving her full control of her fortune.
By 1840 she was established in Paris where
she lived comfortably in her first building project,
the Hotel Pontalba. This magnificent structure now
houses the American Embassy in France.
The Revolution of 1848 prompted Micaela to
leave France, first for London and then for New
Orleans. In the city, she examined Jackson Square
and the aging rental property that her father had
built flanking the square. Reflecting on the elegant, galleried appearance of the Place Royale (now
Place Vosges) in Paris, she conceived of the great project of her life, row houses for each side of the
Place d’Armes, soon renamed Jackson Square. It took Micaela three years and $300,000 to design
and launch the construction of the Pontalba buildings that stand today as an exquisite echo of Paris
in New Orleans.
Over the course of her marriage, Micaela had four sons and a daughter. She outlived her former
husband, dying in Paris, in 1874.
For additional reading see Christina Vella, Intimate Enemies: The Two Worlds of the Baroness de Pontalba. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1997; Leonard v. Huber and Samuel Wilson, Jr., Baroness Pontalba’s Buildings and the
Remarkable Woman Who Built Them, New Orleans, 1964.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
40

A RCHBISHOP A NTOINE B LANC
(1792-1860)
New Orleans Archbishop Antoine Blanc presided over the greatest expansion of the Catholic
Church in New Orleans history. During his thirty-five year tenure Archbishop Blanc added fortyseven
churches and a dozen Roman Catholic congregations to his diocese, including newly-founded
parish churches for Creole, Irish, African-American, and German congregations. Among the
churches were St. Vincent de Paul in Faubourg Marigny, St. Augustine in Tremé, Annunciation and
St. Mary’s Churches in the Irish Channel, St. Joseph’s Church in the Business District, St. Theresa
of Avila in the Lower Garden District, and St. Stephen’s Uptown. Blanc’s work transformed the
Catholic Church in New Orleans into the multi-faceted organization it is today.
Born in Sury in central France, Blanc came to the United States, in 1817, as a missionary. He
began his American ministry in northern Louisiana, working there until 1835 when he was called
to succeed New Orleans Bishop Leo Raymond de Neckère, who had died in office of yellow fever.
The new bishop almost immediately opened the diocese’s first boys’ college and its first seminary.
He subsequently invited the Society of Jesus back to New Orleans from which, in 1760, it had been
expelled. The New Orleans Jesuits went on to found Jesuit High School, the Baronne Street landmark
Immaculate Conception Church, Holy Name of Jesus Parish, and Loyola University of the
South. By 1860 Blanc was directing almost one hundred priests and had recruited a remarkably
diverse group of religious orders to serve the city’s explosive population, which doubled during his
long tenure. Among the congregations were the Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Notre Dame, the
Good Shepherd Sisters, and the Congregations of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and of the Holy Cross.
On behalf of the diocese Blanc took on the considerable and long-standing political power of
the Marguilliers (wardens) to control St. Louis Cathedral. In 1844, the Louisiana Supreme Court
rejected the claims of the Marguilliers and the Bishop quietly took possession of his cathedral.
Blanc’s success in that proceeding finally settled the long and divisive dispute over staffing, paving
the way for a church of growing local influence. Blanc’s appointment as an Archbishop, in 1850,
cleared the way for a new St. Louis Cathedral. This National Historic Landmark, designed and built
during Blanc’s tenure, by the gifted architect Jacques de Pouilly, stands today as an emblem of the
Catholic Church of New Orleans and the city.
Archbishop Antoine Blanc.
COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF ARCHIVES AND RECORDS,
ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW ORLEANS.
For further reading see William Lemuel Greene, Antoine Blanc 1792-1860: Fourth Bishop and First Archbishop of New
Orleans. Baton Rouge, La.: Claitor’s Publishing Division, 2008; Roger Baudier, The Catholic Church in New Orleans. New
Orleans: A. W. Hyatt Stationery Mfg. Ltd, 1939.
M ARIE
L AVEAU
(1801-1881)
Marie Laveau set herself the task of performing and preserving the African rituals that reached
New Orleans in the eighteenth century. These rituals, collectively known as Voudou, fascinated and
frightened many 19th century New Orleanians, drawing crowds of black and white participants
into a level of shared experiences previously suppressed.
Marie Laveau was born in 1801 into the web of free people of color led by Julie Brion (q.v.). Her
parents Charles Laveaux, free mulato, and Marguerite Darcantel, free mulata, had her baptized by
Capuchin friar Antonio de Sedella six days later. Her father owned several houses and a grocery
store in the Faubourg Marigny. It is likely he was the son of Charles Laveau Trudeau, surveyor
and first president of the New Orleans’ City Council. 1 Her mother Marguerite was the daughter
of Catherine Henry, from an equally well placed family. Marie’s aunt married into the Foucher
BIOGRAPHIES
41

Marie Laveau.
MARIE LAVEAU AND DAUGHTER MARIE, THE HISTORIC
NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1974.25.23.131.
family. Marie Laveau herself in August 1819 married Jacques Paris, a free quadroon from Haiti, at
St. Louis Cathedral.
Abundant notarial records show that it was not uncommon for free women of color to engage in business
or build their own homes. Francoise Fusillé, Marie Laveau, Modest Foucher, Madeline Oger,
Charlotte Morand, Rosette Rochon, Eulalie Mandeville, and Helene Toussaint, were among the many who
built homes or engaged in business. Real estate, however, did not interest Marie Laveau. The comfort the
spiritual world provided the poor drew her to Voudou rituals that evoked her and her people’s African
backgrounds. Voudou services were primarily small affairs conducted in small rooms such as those at
Marie Laveau’s home on St. Ann Street. The center piece was an array of food, plants, and candles displayed
on a white tablecloth spread on the floor. A series of chants led swiftly to dancing movements that
gradually spread throughout the room. Charms and gris gris were created and distributed as desired.
Just before Laveau died in 1881, The Daily Picayune sent a reporter to the house. His description
suggests it was a Spanish style cottage with a tile roof; inside, a walnut bedstead almost filled the room
on which rested the Voudoo queen. The house had
“a low roof of red tiles that peeped over the top of
the rude decrepit board fence…The room was one
of those low, close compartments with whitewashed
walls and ceiling and bare floor…through
the passage way back could be seen the yard, and
further back a house, well lighted, whence came
the music of the organ and the sound of dancing.”
The census of 1880 records persons of color Marie
[Laveau] Glapion living here at 95 [actually 80]
years of age. Her daughter Philomène Glapion
Legendre, thirty-nine, kept house, along with her
three children Fidelia, Noemie, and Alexandre.
In Marie’s view, Voudou had a dimension of
social service along with its spiritual qualities. In
that capacity she served as chaplain for condemned
men in parish prison. 2 Unfortunately, none of
Marie’s children seem to have carried on her arts.
Her daughter Marie Philomène Glapion strongly
objected to such allegations, selling the house on St.
Ann Street a few years after Marie’s death.
1 Ina Johanna Fandrich, The Mysterious Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveaux: A Study of Powerful female Leadership in Nineteenth-
Century New Orleans. Routledge, New York, 2005. See also Liliane Crété, Daily Life in Louisiana, 1815-1830. Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978.
2 Carolyn Morrow Long, A New Orleans Voudou Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau. (Gainsville: University
Press of Florida, 2006}, 110, 164.
S AMUEL J ARVIS P ETERS
(1801-1855)
Samuel Jarvis Peters was the embodiment of the Anglo-American civic leader and businessman
who emigrated to New Orleans and led its American Sector growth. As a banker he was president
successively of City Bank and Louisiana State Bank. As a businessman in 1832, he founded a New
Orleans Chamber of Commerce. As a politician in 1836, he ran for the city council and opposed
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
42

the breakup of the city. As a reformer he revamped the financial structure of the city, permitting
the funding of streets and wharves. As an advocate for public education, he oversaw the creation
of the city’s first public school system.
Peters arrived in New Orleans at the age of twenty and joined a merchant house with ties to New
York. In 1823, he formed Peters and Millard, wholesale grocers. He sold, borrowed, and loaned until
1829 when his personal fortune enabled him to run for the city council. In one term he uncovered fraud
in city finances and revamped them. In 1831, he helped start the Pontchartrain Railroad, the city’s first,
and served as its president. He persuaded the city to build wharves along the Faubourg Marigny. The
next year he founded the Chamber of Commerce in order to persuade businesses to pull together.
Meanwhile the Mississippi River embankment had been moving, depositing acres of new soil
along the American sector riverbank above Canal Street and rendering the wharves there useless.
When the Creoles refused to cooperate in their rebuilding, the various interest groups decided to
separate into three municipalities. Peters argued successfully that they should not go so far as to
create three different mayors, that the municipal councils should function with a single executive.
The arrangement continued from 1836 to 1852, when the factions voted to reunite, adding the
upriver City of Lafayette as a fourth district to balance the politics between Creoles and Americans.
During the period that he led the Second Municipality, Peters worked to create a public school
system in the American sector. He traveled to New England to study their schools, reputedly the
best in America. There he met with Horace Mann and John A. Shaw of Massachusetts, who became
the Supervisor of the Second District schools. The district was launched, in 1842, with just 300
students, but by the end of the year that number had increased to 800. By the 1850s the system
had twenty-six schools, all funded without McDonogh (q.v.) money. Peters was intimately involved
in getting the new city hall, known as Gallier Hall, completed. He was equally important to the
construction of the new Custom House at the foot of Canal Street. 1
Peters married Marianne Angelique Myrthe de Silly and had three children, S. J. Peters, Jr.,
Benjamin Franklin Peters and Harriett Angelique, who married Jules A. Blanc. Towards the end of
his life Peters and his son-in-law Blanc purchased the Calhoun estate in the uptown New Orleans,
later the Academy of the Sacred Heart. Peters died at the mansion after owning it for only two
years. His funeral was held near the fountain that still splashes water there.
Samuel Jarvis Peters.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1974.25.12.80.
Rita Katherine Carey, “Samuel Jarvis Peters” in the Louisiana Historical Quarterly XXX (April 1947), 441-480.
C HARLES E TIENNE A RTHUR G AYARRÉ
(1805-1895)
Charles Etienne Arthur Gayarré was the first historian to show how records in France could
correct and inform Louisiana’s colonial history. He spent years in France copying documents and
composing histories, yet his life was not confined to such writing. He practiced law, served in
legislative, administrative, and judicial offices, and led the Louisiana Historical Society. Gayarré
was one of the most cosmopolitan men of nineteenth century New Orleans. The “Judge” was
majestic, “in his high satin stock that held his head inflexibly erect.” Grace King (q.v.) recalled his
height which towered over her tall father. 1
Gayarré grew up on his grandfather Etienne Boré’s plantation where sugar was first commercially
granulated. A few years at the College d’Orléans prepared him for law school in Philadelphia. His law
degree, impeccable social connections, and adequate inherited income enabled him, in 1830, to win
a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives. He had hardly settled into the House before the governor
selected him deputy state attorney general. Originally aligned with the Whig party, Gayarré did
not remain so, but became an active Jacksonian Democrat. In 1834, he was elected to the United States
BIOGRAPHIES
43

Charles Etienne Gayarré.
LOUISIANA IMAGE COLLECTION, LOUISIANA RESEARCH
COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
Senate from Louisiana, but illness forced him to decline the seat. Fortunately for Louisiana history, he
spent his next seven years of “retirement” in France and Spain where he devoted himself to tracking
down and laboriously copying documents amplifying Louisiana’s barely understood colonial history.
During the 1840s Gayarré reentered politics, winning a seat in the Louisiana House of
Representatives. This led to his appointment as Louisiana Secretary of State where he served for eight
years, using his office to acquire historical documents from Spain. His Jacksonian politics put him in
the [John] Slidell wing of the Democratic Party, a wing that opposed compromise before and during
the Civil War. The troubled 1850s saw him join the Know Nothing nativist party, but his Catholicism
kept him inactive. In 1856, he entered into what was to be a happy but childless marriage. The Civil
War culminated this decade and led to the loss of his fortune and political influence. 2
History proved to be Gayarré’s salvation. In 1860, the Louisiana Historical Society elected him
its president, although the Civil War and Reconstruction hindered its development. Gayarré served
when it was reorganized in 1877, and remained its president until 1888. The post Civil War years
saw his major works published, including Philip II of Spain (1866); and the well-written A History
of Louisiana (4 vols., 1866). The Louisiana history still has considerable value and represents the
accumulated research of Gayarré’s pre-war efforts.
1 Grace King, Memories of a Southern Woman of Letters (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1932), 31. Another summary
of his life is at http://www.neworleanspast.com/todayinneworleanshistory/january_9.html.
2 Faye Phillips, “Writing Louisiana Colonial History in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Charles Gayarré, Benjamin Franklin
French, and the Louisiana Historical Society” in Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, vol.
49 (Spring, 2008), 172-3.
E TIENNE C ORDEVIOLLE (1806-1868) AND
F RANCOIS L ACROIX (1795-1876)
Merchant tailors Etienne Cordeviolle and François Lacroix were a partnership of ante-bellum free
people of color who dominated the fine clothing business of New Orleans. They promoted both the
latest styles of Paris and their own tailoring for gentlemen. Chartres was the street of fashion, featuring
“Cordeviolle and Lacroix, tailors,” at No. 123 and “Colvis & Dumas,” merchant tailors nearby at
No. 124. Two other fine tailors, August Jansemme, fils, and Erasme Legoaster worked from the same
shop, and would go on to found their own stores.
Cordeviolle & Lacroix’s customers knew their shop as “The Fashionable Store.” Its inventory
offered garments of cashmere fabric and eleven colors of cloth for gentlemen’s fine suits. The partner’s
ten lines of frockcoats included velvet, cashmere, silk, and satin. The partners imported from
Paris the dress coats of the latest fashion, frock coats, and Paletots [double-breasted French topcoats]
in six styles. 1 According to The Daily Picayune “Cordieviolle [the son of an Italian and a local
free woman of color] was a very flashy, elegant looking fellow, a duelist and a ‘blood’ of the first
water.” Cuban-born Lacroix, more staid, was an artist, “a maker of coats that passed muster before
the severest tribunals of Europe, of trousers that made the dandies of rotten Row, or the Champs
Elysees groan with envy. They were the models of style, the expression of the esthetics of dress.” 2
As their profits grew both partners plowed them into real estate. They ended up owning property
all over the city, in one case 23 St. Charles, a storehouse that Cordeviole used as a business
and residence. The partnership prospered until 1849 when Cordeviolle sold his interest to Lacroix,
and moved to Paris, where he carried on his stylish designs before moving to Italy. In 1865, King
Victor Emmanuel of Italy honored him with la Croix de Chevalier de l’Ordre de St-Maurice et
Lazare. 3 Since the sixteenth century this papal honorific has been awarded to individuals noted for
their charity to the poor and lepers.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
44

Lacroix’s end was not so honorable,
although by 1870 his success in business
and real estate had made him a millionaire.
In 1874, after he consistently refused to
pay his property taxes, state officials auctioned
his property at a fraction of its value.
Lacroix died a pauper three years later.
According to The Daily Picayune’s report,
there were many opportunities for Lacroix
to have settled with the city, but he steadfastly
refused. Looking back, his apparent
paralysis could have been owing to the fate
of his sons. One was killed in 1866 in the
Mechanic’s Institute riot, and Lacroix disowned
the other after the son gambled
away $30,000 intended for the taxes. 4
Julien Colvis and Joseph Dumas, another
partnership, used their profits from tailoring
to purchase New Orleans real estate.
While still in their thirties, they owned
twenty-one houses in Tremé, five in the
French Quarter, three in the Marigny, eleven in the St. Mary Faubourg, and one in the town of
Mandeville. 5 During the 1850s Dumas moved to Europe but returned during the Civil War to claim his
property from the Federal government. His son Francis Dumas joined the Union army as a captain in
the Second Regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards, earning a military decoration. After the war he
entered Reconstruction politics, running for Governor in 1868.
Billhead from Cordeviolle and Lacroix
Fashionable Store.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1955.27.
1 Daily Picayune, November 21, 1843.
2 Daily Picayune, September 9, 1874.
3 New Orleans Tribune, October 13, 1865.
4 More information on François Lacroix is available on line at nutrias.org/exhibits/lacroix/intro.htm
5 Sally K. Reeves, Essay on free people of color, 2000. (unpublished).
N ORBERT
R ILLIEUX
(1806-1894)
The American Chemical Society recognized Norbert Rillieux as one of America’s great chemical
engineers, naming his “Multiple Effect Evaporator under Vacuum” as a National Historic Chemical
Landmark. Rillieux’ patents did much for the sugar industry, but his process has also had widespread
application in other industries. The 1844 invention decreases the pressure in the boiling
process of sugar and other commodities, the best method for lowering the temperature of all industrial
evaporation, saving large quantities of fuel. Rillieux’s principles are used even today to produce
condensed milk and freeze-dried foods.
Born in New Orleans in 1806, Norbert was sent to school in Paris. By the age of 24, he was an
instructor in applied mechanics at the Ecole Centrale in Paris. Around 1830, Rillieux published a
series of papers on steam engines and steam power before returning to Louisiana, where he began
thinking about the problems of sugar making. About 1844 he began fabricating his first “Rillieux
steam process” and by 1850 fourteen major Louisiana plantations were employing it. It soon became
BIOGRAPHIES
45

Above: Norbert Rillieux, carte-de-visite
(reproduction of).
AFTER 1864. COURTESY OF THE LOUISIANA
STATE MUSEUM.
Below: Thomy Lafon.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION,
1974.25.27.221.
essential to the sugar business, leading to a substantial income for its inventor. In spite of Rillieux’s
professional success, life in Louisiana in the 1850s for men with African ancestry was becoming
increasingly uncomfortable and insulting. Near the end of the decade Rillieux returned to Paris where
he spent the next forty years, teaching, writing, and investigating the mysteries of the Rosetta Stone.
Rillieux came from an important Creole family. The mixed-race branch descended from François
Rillieux, prosperous white Frenchman who had two important sons—Pierre and Vincent. Pierre
formed a household with Rosalie Dusuau, a free woman of color, with whom he had two sons—Elisée
and François Rillieux. The two Rillieux sons bought and developed plantations, putting together many
of the farms that eventually became the core of the later Godchaux plantation. After that venture they
moved upriver to Pointe Coupée Parish, where they briefly owned parts of the later Alma Plantation.
Pierre’s brother Vincent developed the cotton press system in New Orleans with his first press at
Tchoupitoulas and Poydras. He also took a free woman of color, Constance Vivant, as his consort.
They had six children, notably Norbert and Edmund Rillieux, a prominent Creole builder in New
Orleans. Norbert did not marry or have children, dying in Paris, in 1894.
T HOMY
L AFON
(1810-1893)
Thomy Lafon was the most prominent of two known African-American philanthropists of nineteenth
century New Orleans. Historians have debated his parentage, the consensus being that his
mother was Modeste Foucher, a free woman of color and daughter and granddaughter of planters
Joseph and Antoine Foucher. His father was probably the French-born civil engineer and architect
Barthèlemy Lafon (q.v.), who came to New Orleans about 1790 and died in 1820. The elder Lafon
acknowledged children by Modeste Foucher in an 1809 will—not including Thomy—who was born
the following year. Lafon never acknowledged Thomy, who was left to grow up with his mother. Until
his death at the age of 82, Thomy Lafon coyly refused to speculate on the identity of his father.
The younger Lafon became a merchant, as listed in an 1842 city directory. His mother Modest
Foucher died in 1848, leaving him a majority interest in two city properties. 1 Provided with additional
capital, Lafon moved on to speculation in real estate. His wealth increasing, he acted as a
private banker in the Creole community, a common practice in an age of limited public credit.
Emerging from the Civil War financially intact, Lafon built his fortune from real estate and
businesses. He became active in politics, helping to found the Friends of Universal Suffrage, an
interracial organization committed to securing the vote for African American males. By 1870, his
wealth was estimated at $250,000, making him one of the wealthiest African Americans in the
nation. Despite this circumstance, Lafon lived in a modest house on Ursulines Street in the
Faubourg Tremé, where he died in 1893. At that time his estate was inventoried at over $400,000. 2
Lafon is remembered today as one of New Orleans’ five great bachelor philanthropists. He founded
the Lafon Orphan Boys’ Asylum and the Home for Aged Colored Men and Women. He also
donated to other charitable and religious organizations including the American Anti-Slavery Society,
the Underground Railroad, the Catholic Institute for the Care of Orphans, New Orleans University,
the Sisters of the Holy Family, the Little Sisters of the Poor, and the Lafon Old Folks Home.
A bust of Thomy Lafon resides in the Cabildo in New Orleans. 3
1 Modeste Foucher Succession. No. 8777 P. 118 of filmstrip, #213 Ancestry.com; Louisiana, Wills and Probate Records,
1756-1984 Orleans Wills, 1846-1853 Before First District Court of New Orleans, Judge John C. Lane April 25, 1853. Her
children at this point were Josephine Lacoste, Thomy Lafon and Alphe Lafon.
2 Inventory of Thomy Lafon, in Antoine Doriocourt, January, 1894, Act 7, New Orleans Notarial Archives.
3 Robert Jeanfreau, The Story behind the Stone (Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 2012), 49.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
46

H ENRIETTE D ELILLE (1812-1862)
In 1842, Henriette Delille founded the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family in New
Orleans, which continues to provide sustenance to the poor, the elderly and the sick. Her order of
nuns spread around the Western Hemisphere and today stands at two hundred sisters.
Henriette grew up in New Orleans’ unique free women of color community, which had produced
such notables as Marie Laveau (q.v.) and Julie Brion (q.v.). A Catholic community, it revered
the sacrament of baptism. Early on, the Church
had promised to baptize all African-Americans,
free or slave, for which local Archdiocesan
records offer much evidence. Baptism required
godparents, who often were selected from unrelated
families. These relationships helped to unify
the community of free women of color.
Henriette’s mother Marie Joseph Diaz maintained
a white liaison by whom she had four children. Her
older daughter Cecile followed in her footsteps, taking
a white lover, though remaining in the Diaz
household. Henriette, then about fifteen, determined
to take her life in another direction. By 1829
she had formed friendships with Juliette Gaudin and
Josephine Charles, two other spiritually gifted free
women of color. The three determined to live a life
of faith, praying at St. Louis Cathedral and propagating
the faith through teaching catechism to poor
blacks. By 1836 Henriette was called to write in her
prayer book, “I believe in God. I hope in God. I love.
I wish to live and die for God.” Within a few months the friends had formed their first official church
organization, The Congregation of the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Their three
rules called first, for pious behavior, second for mutual support, and third, for a concern for “the sick,
the infirm, and the poor.” 1 Today the Sisters date the founding of the Sisters of the Holy Family from
1842, when the Diocese purchased a home on Bayou Road for the active Sisters of the Presentation.
In 1850, Henriette used part of her inheritance to purchase another house on Bayou Road,
which came to be the principal residence of the nascent community. Aided by Jeanne Marie
Aliquot, who was linked to the Ursulines, the Sisters remained committed to teaching catechism
to the poor, preparation for first communion, and educating girls. After another ten years of quiet
service. Sister Henriette Delille died in 1862. By 1900 the Sisters had a mother house, eight schools
and orphanages, and convent schools in three communities outside of New Orleans.
Today, believers consider Henriette Delille a saint. In 2010 Pope Benedict XVI approved her
heroic virtues and named her Venerable. The Congregation for the Causes of Saints gave its formal
assent for the commencement of the cause of beatification with the declaration of “nihil obstat”
(nothing against) on 22 June that year. Delille was then given the title of Servant of God and soon
may become the first native born New Orleanian to be canonized.
Henriette Delille.
COURTESY OF THE SISTERS OF THE HOLY FAMILY.
For further reading see Cyprian Davis, O.S.B., Henriette Delille: Servant of Slaves, Witness to the Poor. New Orleans, LA:
Sisters of the Holy Family, 2004. The official biography of Henriette Delille, co-published by the Sisters of the Holy
Family and the Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. See also the recent Virginia Meacham Gould. Henriette
Delille. Strasbourg: Éditions de Signe, n.d.
1 Virginia Meacham Gould and Charles E. Nolan, “Mother Henriette Delille (1812-1862): Servant of Slaves” in Dorothy
Dawes and Charles Nolan ed., Religious Pioneers: Building the Faith in the Archdiocese of New Orleans (Archdiocese of
New Orleans, 2004), 31.
BIOGRAPHIES
47

M ARGARET G AFFNEY H AUGHERY
(1813-1882)
Photo of Alexander Doyle portrait statue.
TAKEN BY CAROLYN KOLB.
Margaret Gaffney Haughery, orphaned as a
child, became the outstanding exponent of
orphans of New Orleans history. Her statue in
Margaret Place in the New Orleans Lower Garden
District depicts her with children. Margaret can
also be considered an exemplar of the successful
business woman. From a destitute beginning she
rose to begin a small business that grew into a
powerhouse baking factory, its profits supporting
Margaret’s causes.
Born in Ireland, Margaret went first to
Baltimore and then, in 1836, to New Orleans.
After her husband’s death left her penniless, she
began working as a laundress at the St. Charles
Hotel. Moved by the large number of orphans in
the city, she approached Sister Regis of the Sisters
of Charity with an offer to donate part of every
wage she received. Noting how much milk was in
demand, she used her remaining wages to acquire
a dairy cow and begin to peddle its milk, gradually
adding other cows. Each day Margaret delivered
milk in the French Quarter from
a cart, stopping at hotels and restaurants to beg
for food for orphans. Margaret soon saw the
opportunity to acquire a bakery on New Levee
Street. Improvements quickly followed, the business
becoming the first “steam bakery” in the
South. Margaret’s Bakery bread and cakes were
eventually sold throughout the city, with much of
it sold at cost to the local orphanages.
Over the years this “Mother of Orphans” built
and supported Louise Home for working girls at
1404 Clio Street, the St. Elizabeth House of
Industry at 1314 Napoleon Street, and St. Vincent
Infant Asylum at Race and Magazine Streets. She
also funded the Camp Street Female Orphan Asylum of the Sisters of Charity. Her charity was nondenominational,
extending to Protestants and Jewish institutions including the Seventh Street
Protestant Orphan Asylum, the German Protestant Orphan Asylum, and the Widows and Orphans
of Jews Asylum.
At Margaret’s death in 1882, her pall bearers were Governor Samuel D. McEnery; former
Governor Francis T. Nicholls; Mayor Joseph A. Shakspeare, George Nicholson, publisher of The
Daily Picayune; and others. New Orleans has memorialized her with a large marble statue by
nationally prominent Alexander Doyle, sculptor of the Robert E. Lee and P. G. T. Beauregard monuments,
standing in Margaret’s Place at Camp and Prytania.
For further reading see Raymond Martinez, The Immortal Margaret. New Orleans: Hope Publications, 1967, Robert
Meyer, Jr., Names Over New Orleans Schools, and Ann Gilbert, “Margaret Haughery: The Bread Woman of New Orleans.”
Inside New Orleans. IV, 2 (April-May 2017), 40-47.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
48

William Woodward, 1859-1939, Old Ursuline Convent and Cottage Chartres (oil and crayon on board (ca. 1929).
Impressionist William Woodward’s eye-catching view of the French Colonial Ursuline Convent (completed 1751) with a tile-roofed Creole cottage in the foreground provides precious
evidence of the early twentieth century appearance of important components of the old French Quarter. The second convent on the site, the Ursulines’ building was designed by Ignace
Broutin and built by Claude-Joseph Villars Dubreuil (q.v.). The cottage, built in 1798 for the Ursuline Nuns (q.v), remained in their possession until 1834 when they sold it to notary
Hughes Pedesclaux. The picturesque house survived until about 1926 when it was demolished for a filling station, the loss shocking Woodward and other citizens into action to preserve
the distinctive character of the Quarter. It was that year that the first legal tools to save the Vieux Carré were put into place, leading to the confirmation of the Vieux Carre Commission
in 1936.
The filling station itself later became the focus of an important legal battle in the annals of preservation, City of New Orleans vs. Pergament, when the city prosecuted its operator for
“displaying on its premises a large advertising sign without the permission of the Vieux Carre Commission.” Pergament responded that the city’s action was arbitrary, deprived him of his
property without due process, and could not apply to a modern building. The city’s state Supreme Court victory in the case brought a wider scope of French Quarter property under the legal
purview of the Commission. New Orleans preservationist and city attorney Jacob Morrison (q.v) would cite the case in later legal battles to preserve the French Quarter. The current
Lyons and Hudson townhouse on the site replaced the filling station in 1983.
Meanwhile, in the background, the Old Ursuline Convent has survived periods of neglect and decay to become a museum operated by the local Catholic Cultural Commission. Donated to
the local bishop by the Ursuline Nuns in 1824, it was still the bishop’s residence at the time of the Woodward painting. It has been an icon of the city for over 250 years.
COURTESY OF ROBERT HINCKLEY.
BIOGRAPHIES
49

CARTE PARTICULIERE DU FLEVUE [sic] S.t LOUIS dix lieues au dessus et au dessous DE LA NOUVELLE
ORLEANS ou sont marqué les habitations et les terrains concedes à Plusieurs Particuliers AU MISSISSIPY (n.d.,
n.d., [ca. 1723].)
Jean Baptist Bienville may have had his finest hour at the age of nineteen when he bluffed a British captain into turning back at the
bend of the Mississippi known to history as Détour des Anglais, or English Turn. Although its configuration would be better
understood in later decades, the famous double bend is shown in detail on this ca. 1723 map of the New Orleans area “ten leagues
above and ten leagues below” New Orleans. The young French officer’s bravado in 1699 put him, literally, at a turning point in history
as he convinced the British captain to turn back with a claim that the French were already established further up the river with armed
vessels to protect them. Less familiar is the wider context of the story. As every good sailor knows, a sailboat can tack against a
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
50

current, or against the wind, but not against both at the same time. It is for this reason that British Captain Louis Bond and a shipful
of would-be Huguenot colonists, ascending the river from its mouth with the aid of a southeast wind, had to stop and anchor at the
first reach of the Turn. There they had to wait for the wind to change to northeast to propel the corvette through the first reach of the
Turn. Bond would have known that there was no way he could maneuver upriver until the wind changed, and it was precisely then
that Bienville and his companions, in “two bark canoes” came paddling downriver from their explorations above the site of New
Orleans. An experienced sailor and naval captain, Bienville would have immediately recognized Bond’s predicament. His further
consideration was that he had encountered this same captain earlier at the Battle of Hudson’s Bay, where his brother Pierre d’Iberville
had captured him. As Bienville later wrote, “I knew this captain; I knew him to be timid.”
COURTESY OF THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY, CHICAGO, ILL. SCAN COURTESY HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION.
BIOGRAPHIES
51

José Salazar y Mendoza (ca. 1750-1802), Andrès Almonester y Roxas (1796).
José Salazar, commissioned by the New Orleans Cabildo to render a portrait of the “insufferably pompous” Andres Almonester, depicted its oversized benefactor in all of his social glory,
his heraldic insignia and cross of Carlos III displayed proudly. On behalf of the Cabildo, Almonester had funded the construction of the Cabildo and Presbytere buildings as they stood before
the addition of Mansarde roofs as seen today. After a great fire in 1792, Almonester also funded the rebuilding of the damaged New Orleans cathedral, which stood until 1850 when the
current more French style church replaced it. Between 1782 and his death in 1798 Almonester also donated a new charity hospital, the old having been destroyed by hurricanes; along with
an orphanage, a lepers’ hospital, a chapel for the Ursuline Nuns, and a replacement public school.
While in Spain as a young man Almonester had seized the opportunity to become the Royal Notary in the soon to be subdued colony of Louisiana. As Royal notary he was a necessary
participant in official contracts. He practiced for thirteen years before retiring to the Cabildo and commencing a career investing in New Orleans real estate, which built his fortune. His wife
Louise de la Ronde helped him through his final ten years and gave him his surviving child.
In the next generation, their famous daughter Micaela Almonester de Pontalba (q.v) planned, funded, and supervised the construction of the Pontalba buildings along the two sides of
Jackson Square, completing the civic package underwritten by her father.
COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF ARCHIVES AND RECORDS, ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW ORLEANS.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
52

School of José Salazar, Pierre-Joseph Favrot (ca. 1795).
This distinguished Salazar-style portrait of Pierre Joseph Favrot (q.v.) has provided posterity a likeness of a second-generation ancestor of one of Louisiana’s most ancient and prominent
families. It depicts “Don Pedro,” as the family refers to him, in full military regalia, emblematic of his long military career. Favrot’s military service began in Louisiana’s French Colonial
period and continued into its Spanish period, when he served with Governor Bernardo Galvez in his expeditions against British forts at Manchac and Baton Rouge. The portrait depicts him
at approximately forty-five, in the height of good health, silver-tipped sword at his side and three-cornered hat embellished in feathery red. The earnest gaze, erect posture, and serious
demeanor apparently sent a mandate to his descendants, who have continued the family tradition of civic service.
COURTESY OF ALEXANDER FAVROT AND RICHMOND FAVROT FAMILY.
BIOGRAPHIES
53

Detail, Joseph Antoine Vinache, Plan De La Nouvelle Orleans Et Des Environs Dedié Au Citoyen Laussat Préfet
Colonial Et Commissaire De La République Française (1803).
Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent (q.v.) is assumed to be the builder of this extraordinary, ten-bay late colonial mansion. One hundred
and twenty-seven feet wide and sixty-four feet deep, with two kitchen buildings and numerous other dependencies, it was oversized
even for its wealthy owners—St. Maxent in the 1780s, Laurent Sigur in the 1790s, and, briefly, Pierre Philippe de Marigny from 1798
until his death in 1800. At the time that French Commissioner Pierre Laussat administered New Orleans in late 1803, the house had
passed to Marigny’s surviving children Jean Baptiste, Bernard, and Celeste Marigny Livaudais. Laussat’s engineer Vinache painted this
detail of the house as a cartouche on his 1803 “Plan of New Orleans and Environs Dedicated to Citizen Laussat….” Below his
painting of the house, he inscribed it “Palais du Préfet Colonial Commissaire du Gouvernement Francais à la Louisiane en l’an
12 de la République/Dessiné sur les lieux/Vinache fecit.
The mansion was famous for the entertainments given there, the most impressive probably a 1799 ball staged by Pierre Philippe de
Marigny in honor of the Duke d’Orléans (Louis-Philippe), future king of France and his brothers the Duc de Montpensier and the
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
54

Comte de Beaujolais. French Commissioner Laussat also gave a ball there on the 16th of December (1803), which lasted from mid
evening until 9:30 the following morning, as guests ate, danced, and gambled all night. “You never saw anything more brilliant,”
Laussat wrote in his journal. “Entertainment lasted twelve hours. ….Sixty places were set at the main table, 24 at the small table, and
146 on 32 small round tables. As a local touch, twenty-four gumbos were served, six or eight of which were sea turtle.” 1 On the
evening of the transfer to the United States, Laussat hosted another all-night extravaganza for American, French, and Spanish
participants where supper finally appeared at 1:00 a.m. Among other card games, the guests play craps, evidence that the game was
well known in New Orleans before Bernard Marigny ever came home from school in Europe.
Laussat leased the house from Bernard Marigny (q.v.) from April to December, 1803, the extent of his tenure in New Orleans.
Following Marigny’s 1804 marriage to Mary Ann Jones, he lived there occasionally until her death in 1808, and later with his second
wife and family, until 1818. That year, he relocated and leased the mansion to a variety of tenants. It was demolished in 1831.
COURTESY OF THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION 1987.65 I-III.
NOTE: 1. PIERRE CLEMENT DE LAUSSAT, MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE. TRANSLATED BY AGNES-JOSEPHINE PASTWA, .O.S.F. ED ROBERT D. BUSH, (BATON ROUGE, 1978), 86.
BIOGRAPHIES
55

Detail, John L. Boqueta de Woiserie, A VIEW of NEW ORLEANS TAKEN FROM THE PLANTATION OF MARIGNY (1803).
De Woiserie’s interesting 1803 view of New Orleans from below the city shows an under-utilized port and the city at a crossroads, the Louisiana Purchase at its doorstep. While numerous
full rigged ships are waiting at anchor, a naval shipyard at the foot of St. Philip Street occupies valuable riverfront. Ships are half-careened there, waiting for repairs. Not long afterwards,
city authorities would evict the shipyard facilities, sending them to the west bank of the river, where they remained. Meanwhile Antonio de St. Maxent’s (by then Bernard Marigny’s)
lumber mill and canal at what is now the foot of Elysian Fields occupy more waterfront. Citizens were accustomed to stroll on the levee in the cool of the evening, a pastime whose days were
numbered. (View taken from the gallery of the St. Maxent/Marigny (q.v.) house. City surveyors Joseph and later Louis H. Pilié (q.v.) would in due time be responsible for wharf
designs that would accommodate a growing American port and drastically change the waterfront.
COURTESY OF THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1958.42.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
56

Detail, Marie Adrien Persac (ca. 1823-1873), View of New Orleans Skyline from Port and City of New Orleans (c. 1860).
Adrien Persac’s incomparable view of New Orleans in 1860 reveals the drastic changes to its port and waterfront wrought by ante bellum prosperity. Gone are the pastoral environment of
the 1803 levee scenes and the prevalence of lumberyards and ship repair facilities. The appearance of the steam engine, both for the river trade and for use in seagoing vessels, has
magnified the prosperity promised in 1803. City surveyors Joseph Pilié, Louis H. Pilié (q.v), John Communy, and others have designed and installed long finger wharves over both the
levee and the docking areas, occupying the port in front of the old city.
Along the Faubourg Marigny waterfront, a ferry, its landing, and the 1840 Port Market figure prominently. Commercial buildings occupy the site of the Marigny plantation garden, the
depot of the Pontchartrain Railroad just visible behind them.
Beginning in the 1830s, civil engineers designed wooden wharves that made tying up safer and more convenient. Some wharves featured sloping decks allowing the wharves to reach down to
the water no matter the height of the river. These were used primarily for the steamboat wharf, deep in the background of the painting in front of the American Sector. In the middle distance
appears the gabled end of the U.S. Mint.
COURTESY OF THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1988.9.
BIOGRAPHIES
57

Barthelemy Lafon, Plan of the Mouths of the Mississippi (c. 1810).
Barthelemy Lafon’s colorful depiction of the lowest reaches of the Mississippi River illustrates its principal features from Plaquemines
Bend and Fort St. Philip through Head of Passes to the river’s three main outlets. Bayou Mardi Gras received its name from Pierre
d’Iberville at the time of his 1699 explorations. At the bottom, Southwest Pass (today’s primary outlet) came into favor after 1906
and the construction of [James] Eads’ second Jetties. The “South Pass” designation sows confusion, as this outlet (never a preferred
pass) is located in the middle, between Southeast Pass and Southwest Pass. Southeast Pass itself divides into Northeast Pass and Pass
à L’Outre (Otter’s Pass).
The fortress and community of the Balise (“seamark”), their buildings and lighthouse drawn at top, built to guard the river and
accommodate pilots, dated originally from the early French Colonial period. Destroyed and rebuilt several times, the Balise
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
58

community was abandoned after 1850 in favor of Pilot Town, now above Head of Passes. Jacques Enoul Livaudais (q.v.), one of the
original pilots, was stationed at the Balise as early as 1723.
The Spanish erected Fort St. Philip above Head of Passes at the juncture of Bayou Mardi Gras to defend the entrance to the river. It
stands on the Mississippi’s east bank at the sharp curve where the river turns 90 degrees east. Here Colonel Pierre Joseph Favrot
(q.v.) served as commander during the 1790s. Effective in the age of sail, the fort suffered heavy bombardment after the Battle of New
Orleans and by 1862 was rapidly overcome during the Civil War. Indications of obstructed bayous may have been added to the
drawing at the time of the Battle of New Orleans. The river, after only a couple of miles flowing west to east near the fort, turns
sharply south again.
COURTESY OF THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1970.2.2_O2.
BIOGRAPHIES
59

Joseph Pilié, PLAN des terrains, représentant également la belle maison ainsi que les dependances, occupés par
Mr. J.A. Fort dans le Faubourg La Course/Dressé à la requisition de Mr. J.A. Fort/Nlle. Orléans le 18 Avril
1827/Jh Pilié/Voyer de la ville.
Joseph Pilié’s (q.v.) polished drawing of the Jean-Baptiste Marigny plantation complex (“the landscape representing equally the
beautiful house as well as the dependencies”) appeared long after Marigny’s death in 1805. At the time (1827), the plantation
buildings were intact and there was still a pathway to the river, but J.A. Fort was the owner, and the Faubourg LaCourse was growing
up around them. At the corner of the property, Annunciation Square would soon fill with Greek Revival houses, replacing the rural
buildings of an earlier generation.
Marigny’s parents, Pierre Philippe and Marie Jeanne D’Estrehan Marigny, had assembled the eleven-arpent plantation beginning in
1790, when Jean-Baptiste was nine years old. By 1800, both parents were deceased and Jean-Baptiste and his siblings Bernard and
Marie Celeste Marigny Livaudais inherited the estate. Jean-Baptiste received this property in a partition, but died childless a few years
later. After a second partition, his sister sold the plantation in 1807 to Pierre Robin Delogny, who developed the Faubourg LaCourse
around Annunciation Square in the Race Street (Rue de la Course) area.
The drawing is an excellent example of Joseph Pilié’s preferred drawing technique and palette at the peak of his career as City
Surveyor, with a complex of rooftops masterfully shaded to show their ascent. The procedure followed the technique of his drawing
teacher Barthelemy Lafon and of his predecessor as City Surveyor Jacques Tanesse, but neither of them ever achieved the finesse of
Pilié’s “indication” drawings. From his representations, combined with the scale at the bottom of the drawing and the property
measurements on the block, it is easy to compute the size, massing, and framing of these seven hipped roof buildings. A further
refinement is the depiction of ornamental gardens with their par terres and surrounding hedges of orange trees.
IMAGE ATTACHED ACT OF H.K. GORDON, NOTARY, MAY 2, 1827. COURTESY DALE N. ATKINS, CLERK OF CIVIL DISTRICT COURT, PARISH OF ORLEANS, NOTARIAL
ARCHIVES DIVISION.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
60

Charles de Armas, PLAN/OF TEN LOTS OF GROUND/WITH THE BRICK & WOODEN BUILDINGS THEREON/2d. DISTRICT (June 14, 1862).
Charles de Armas’ exalted view of the Philippe Avegno complex on Toulouse, St. Peter, and Burgundy Streets glows with color. The drawing, which depicts a pair of arched-front Creole
townhouses on Toulouse and cottage rental property on the opposite street, was made to advertise Avegno’s 1862 succession sale. As with most notarial Plan Book drawings, the image
features four categories of information. The clever title portion, in de Armas’ recognizable graphic style, announces that ten properties will be sold. The site plans—the most legally
enforceable part of the drawing—illustrate the accurate lot dimensions and building footprints, which de Armas would have surveyed himself, potential buyers relying on that information
to calculate their bids. The elevations, which show the houses at their greatest potential, remind us of the beauty of the original buildings, less obvious today after a century and one-half
of change.
(PLAN BOOK 6, F. 100, COURTESY OF DALE N. ATKINS, CLERK OF CIVIL DISTRICT COURT, PARISH OF ORLEANS, NOTARIAL ARCHIVES DIVISION.)
BIOGRAPHIES
61

Jean Joseph Vaudechamp, Antoine Jacques Philippe de Marigny de Mandeville (1833).
Mandeville Marigny (1811-1890), Baptized “Antonio Santiago de Marigni de Mandeville,” to accommodate his Spanish mother, was
the third son of Bernard Marigny, and the oldest surviving child by his second wife Anna Mathilda Morales (1789-1859), daughter
of the controversial Spanish Intendant Juan Ventura Morales. His French Creole father and Spanish Creole mother had various views
about his name, the nickname “Mandeville” soon winning out over the Spanish “Antonio Santiago,” and the French version “Antoine
Jacques.” Born just a few years after the untimely death of his uncle Jean Baptiste Marigny, Bernard’s older brother, he was nicknamed
for the uncle, whom Bernard’s father (Pierre Philippe) had called Mandeville.
Born to wealth and shown in the Vaudechamp portrait in the prime of young manhood as a handsome cadet at a French military
school, Mandeville lived a life of sincerity and honor, but increasing misfortune. His marriage to the glamourous Sophronie Claiborne,
daughter of the governor, produced five children, three of whom survived to adulthood, and none of whom stayed close to their father.
Over fifty years of the long and unhappy marriage of his parents, he tried to stand by his mother, who died in 1859. Mandeville’s
investments and attempts at business were generally unsuccessful, his wife eventually suing for separate estates in their marriage. In
1860, she left New Orleans for New York and never returned. There, she resided with her prominent mother, Susannah Bosque
Claiborne Grymes, widow of the successful lawyer and public official John R. Grymes.
At the time of Mandeville’s death in 1890 as a roomer in a boarding house on Dauphine St., his daughters traveled from New York to
New Orleans to identify his remains, but did not stay for his funeral. This was a pity, as they would have seen that Mandeville
Marigny’s funeral cortege to St. Louis No. 3 Cemetery on Esplanade Avenue was accompanied by a lineup of the most prominent and
important citizens of New Orleans.
COURTESY OF THE LOUISIANA STATE MUSEUM, FM 1235.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
62

George Peter Alexander Healy (1813-1894) James Robb (1852)
James Robb (q.v.) and his predecessor James Caldwell (q.v.) were two of the most distinctive business promotors in ante-bellum New Orleans. Robb is linked to railroads, necessary to
New Orleans to permit the city’s port to develop imports, the weak side of a port that was booming through the export of cotton and food stuffs. Robb also understood that city support was
necessary to make a successful railroad. That insight made him the leading promotor of reunification of the City in 1852. His New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad eventually
became part of the Illinois Central Railroad.
COURTESY OF THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1988.43.+
BIOGRAPHIES
63

Francois [Franz] Fleischbein (ca. 1801-1868) Portrait of Betsy. Oil on canvas, 1837.
This portrait stands in place of a portrait of Julie Brion (q.v.), a free woman of color whose biography is included in this volume. She has dignity and presence befitting an influential
member of the community. Her hat or tignon is remarkable and must have stirred envy amongst the ladies of the time. Ear rings and a brooch round out her impressive persona.
COURTESY OF THE HISTORICAL NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1985-212.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
64

George H. Grandjean, Plan/MICHOUD PLANT.n /the property of/Alphonse Michoud/ Containing 36,056 Acres—40067 Arpent. Exclusive of areas owned by the
United States, the L&N Railroad and the New Orleans and Northeast Railroad Co. /situated in the Parish of Orleans LA/1883
George H. Grandjean’s stunning plan of the Michoud Plantation was the result of his own and Land Office surveys, depicting topographical features from Pointe aux Herbes and its
lighthouse on the southern shore of Lake Pontchartrain down to the northern shore of Lake Borgne; and from Chef Menteur Pass on the east to the Gentilly Dreux plantation on the west.
Throughout the drawing undulates the verdant line of Bayou Sauvage or Gentilly, named by New Orleans settlers Pierre and Mathurin Dreux before 1720.
In 1883 the tracks of the New Orleans and Northeast Railroad (now part of the Norfolk Southern system) opened across the northern edge of the property on its way to the Northshore,
probably the occasion for the plan. The older Louisville and Nashville (founded as the U.S., Mobile, and Chattanooga R.R., now part of CSX) line had built tracks across the land in 1873
on its way to Mobile and Nashville. The L & N built the Michoud Station on the plan as a convenience to hunters.
On the eastern edge, Fisherman’s Bayou was the infamous site where “Spanish fisherman” admitted the British army into eastern New Orleans on their way to attack the city in 1814
during the War of 1812. Fort Macomb, named for Army engineer General Alexander Macomb was known at one time as Fort Wood. Built in 1822, it has never seen military action. The
fort still stands, tenuously. The Petit Bois (“petty bwa”) or Little Woods encampment on Lake Pontchartrain was once a holiday favorite of New Orleanians, who enjoyed waterfront living,
fishing, and crabbing from its row of camps raised high over lake waters.
This easternmost section of New Orleans is one of the few locally where township and range (TX RXIII) are used in property descriptions. Granted to fur trader Antoine de St. Maxent in
1763, the tract passed in 1801 to engineer Barthelemy Lafon, who used it as a brick plantation, retaining most of the tract until 1812 when he lost it to creditors. Antoine Michoud made
his first acquisition of the tract in 1827, adding to it by numerous purchases until 1855. Michoud developed the land as a sugar plantation, the Grandjean plan indicating remnants of his
residence, sugar house and cane fields on the alluvial overflow plain of Bayou Gentilly. His heirs retained the tract for almost a century.
Later owners were Robert E.E. de Montluzin and Higgins Industries, which (unsuccessfully) undertook to build liberty ships and then cargo planes for the U.S. during World War II. The
U.S. Army had tank engines manufactured there during the Korean War, followed by NASA, which commenced Saturn vehicle stages in 1961.
PLAN ATTACHED TO ACT OF E. GRIMA MAY 28, 1910, COURTESY DALE N. ATKINS, CLERK OF CIVIL DISTRICT COURT, PARISH OF ORLEANS, NOTARIAL ARCHIVES DIVISION.
BIOGRAPHIES
65

Department of the Gulf. Map No. 5. Approaches to New Orleans.
This plan was drawn to show the Confederate fortifications constructed in the brief interval between the outbreak of the Civil War and the fall of New Orleans from the sea in April 1862.
The works known as Camp Parapet ended up serving as a Union defense of New Orleans. The plan shows the routes of the two northerly railroads—the 1830s “New Orleans and
Nashville” road that never reached further than the swamps of St. Charles Parish; and the James Robb road “The New Orleans Jackson and Great Northern” that reached Jackson,
Mississippi before the war. The plan also shows the New Orleans Carrollton Railroad, now the St. Charles Streetcar line, and its continuance to the Jefferson and Lake Pontchartrain
Railroad that extend from Carrollton to Lake Pontchartrain. Shown as bare land are Audubon Park and the future campuses of Loyola and Tulane. Fortifications are also shown along
Bayou St. John and the Pontchartrain Railroad, now Elysian Fields Avenue. On the West Bank, fortifications defend the successful New Orleans, Opelousas and Great Western railroad.
DEPARTMENT OF THE GULF. MAP NO. 5. APPROACHES TO NEW ORLEANS, PREPARED BY ORDER OF MAJ. GEN. N. P. BANKS, HENRY L. ABBOT, CAPT. AND CHIEF TOP. ENGRS. FEB. 14, 1863. SURVEYS UNDER DIRECTION OF CAPT. ABBOT BY MR. J. G.
OLTMANNS, ASST. USCS; MR. CHS. HOSMER, ASST. USCS; MR. T. W. ROBBINS, CIVIL ENGR.; MR. J. DEUTSCH, CIVIL ENGR.; ZIMPEL’S MAP OF NEW ORLEANS. SURVEYS BY W. H. WILDER.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
66

Louis H. Pilié, PLAN OF A VALUABLE PROPERTY/SECOND DISTRICT, September 30, 1880.
After an extended career as a municipal engineer and surveyor, Louis Henri Pilié’ was still making surveys and drawings as Deputy City Surveyor as late as 1880. He had begun in 1841
as apprentice and deputy in the Surveyor’s Office at the age of twenty-one. The heart of his career was his service from 1849 to 1862 as Surveyor for the First Municipality. During that
period, Pilié created innumerable specifications for public market repairs, prisons, school houses, wharves and levees, and street repairs. During the Civil War, he endured a run-in with
Union General Benjamin Butler, but was back in office by 1866. He served again as Deputy Surveyor from 1873 to 1880, signing the present drawing that year in his capacity as Deputy.
Pilié’s fairly simple illustration of a row of gable-sided Creole cottages at Toulouse and Bourbon is a fair example of his lettering preferences, site plans, and style of rendering. He seldom
devoted time to embellishing title sections, preferring a monochromatic lettering scheme in three-part “Tuscan-style” graphics. At the bottom of the sheet, his painting of the houses appears
in a uniform plane with only modest light and shadow, the storefront window and open doorway getting the most attention.
The strength of this drawing is Pilié’s greater interest in the site plan, which clarifies the partitions and interior use behind a continuous, eight-bay façade. From its configuration, we learn
that the row consists of a corner store with a family quarters behind it; a second premises with a three-room domicile next to an interior alley offering the complex access to the rear (and
explaining the open shutters in the elevation); and a third, three-room residence. At the rear, kitchens serve each domicile, the corner property also using what was possibly a storeroom.
With nearly 400 examples of his work preserved in Notarial records* and City Archives, Pilié’s record has left New Orleans with one of its greatest bodies of documentation.
BIOGRAPHIES
67

Above: Banana Port post card, undated.
The Vaccaro Brothers (q.v.) started in the retail fruit business in the
French Quarter in the 1880s. Beginning with the new century they
began importing fruit, notably bananas from Central America. The
business paid for the purchase of ships that enabled the brothers to
expand into other markets. They soon formed Standard Fruit
Company that came to rival the United Fruit Company. Both
strengthened the Port of New Orleans and both improved the quality
of port operations so evident in this post card. Bananas are no longer
carried by stalks but moved on conveyor belts from ships and then to
trucks.
Below: J. Scordill, Madame Bégué’s Restaurant, New Orleans
La.,
ca. 1910
Madame Begué’s restaurant had been a tourist attraction for several
decades when John Scordill, a Greek immigrant with a souvenir shop
on Canal St., published this postcard of the famous building at
Decatur and Madison. At the time, the building also housed a barber
shop; next door was a florist. The Begué’s sign, with “Exchange”
beneath the restaurant label, signaled that the business also housed a
corner bar inside, as all “exchanges” were really taverns. The absence
of Tujague’s Restaurant as part of the scene also signals a date for the
photograph before 1914, the year that Guillaume Tujague’s partner
Philip Guichet purchased the business from Begué’s heirs, eventually
expanding into the adjoining space. The building, built in 1838 on the
site of the old United States arsenal, was never owned by the
restaurant’s proprietors.
In hindsight, if it is possible for two restaurants to become one that
pair was Begue’s and Tujagues. French Market butcher Guillaume
Tujague opened his restaurant in 1856 nearby on Decatur Street
across from the Marché aux Boeufs (Beef Market). Two years later
Madame Begué (Elizabeth Kettering, q.v.) married Louis
Dutreuil and soon afterwards opened a coffee shop in the building
that became the restaurant in the image. After his death she married
another butcher, Hypolyte Begué, with whom she built their
restaurant trade, renaming it Begué’s “Exchange.” The early clientele
for both restaurants were the butchers and workers in the French
Market across Decatur Street. Their day started early so it legally
ended between 10:00 a.m. and noon, making their first meal
breakfast. The restaurants made both their breakfasts and their
hospitality famous, the subject of popular postcards like the one
pictured here. After Madame Begué’s death in 1906 her daughter
took it over, only to sell it in 1914 to the business successors of
Guillaume Tujague. Their heirs, the Philip Guichet family, owned
Tujague’s until 1982 when Steven Latter purchased it.
SALLY K. REEVES, POST CARD COLLECTION.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
68

Unknown Artist, Roy Alciatore (1902-1972).
The portrait appropriately places Roy Alciatore, 20th century proprietor of Antoine’s Restaurant, in an armchair with a view of Jackson Square in the background, his Confrèrie des
Chevaliers du Tastevin cup shown prominently on its sash. The grandson of Antoine Alciatore (q.v.) Roy was the last of the restaurant’s proprietors to bear the Alciatore name. Serving
from 1934 to 1972, he developed the restaurant’s cuisine and service to its highest prominence, serving princes to presidents such delicacies as Oysters Rockefeller, Pompano en Papillote
and Pommes de Terre Soufflés. As the New York Times reported at the time of his death, Roy Alciatore “seemed no less aristocratic than the dignitaries he served.” It was a commonplace
among the many local patrons for whom “Dinner at Antoine’s” was the ultimate delight that “no dish ever exited the kitchen at Antoine’s without passing under his inspection.”
BIOGRAPHIES
69

Johnny Donnels, John Kuhlman, and Southland Records LP 206, Papa Celestin’s Golden Wedding.
Southland Records’ LP album of Papa Celestin’s favorite hits was one of many New Orleans recordings that the St. Louis Street studio produced in the 1950s. Released posthumously after
Celestin’s death in 1954, the album shows one of the city’s most beloved trumpeters looking down at his classic instrument in his signature bow tie. The recordings on the album—from
Marie Laveau to Oh Didn’t He Ramble were so familiar to Celestin’s clients that they invariably gathered to sing them whenever the orchestra tuned them up. Orchestra members included
Edward Pierson on trombone, Adolphe Alexander on clarinet, Sidney Brown on bass, Jeanette Kimball on piano, Albert French on banjo, and Louis Barbarin on drums. Of these, Albert
French would lead the band into the following decades.
COURTESY WILLIAM RANSOM HOGAN JAZZ ARCHIVE, TULANE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES AND DR. BRUCE RAEBURN.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
70

Michael P. Smith, Allison "Tootie" Montana, Big Chief, Yellow Pocahontas
Michael P. Smith’s photograph of Allison “Tootie” Montana (q.v.) captures the essential beauty of Montana’s all pink “Indian” costume on Mardi Gras Day, 1991. Montana channeled the
beauty of sewing art into a vehicle of peace for an important segment of the African-American population of New Orleans. For decades they had fought among themselves for dominance
among the “Mardi Gras Indian” groups, some of whom claimed descent in some manner from Native Americans of south Louisiana. The descendants increased in numbers and associated in
neighborhood bands with increasing confrontation. Tootie’s contribution was to persuade the bands to make costume representations of their ancestors with the finest winning honors for their
art instead of for physical dominance. His Mardi Gras Indian costume set the standard for the “prettiest,” as the tribes still march on various routes in their finest attire on Mardi Gras Day.
Tootie’s plan is a model for conflict resolution to this day.
COURTESY OF THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 2007.0103.2.122, PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL P. SMITH, 1937-2008. COPYRIGHT HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION.
BIOGRAPHIES
71

[Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans], Our Drainage System Protects OUR CITY.
Under stress at the present writing both politically and financially, the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board was founded in 1899 when it absorbed the 1896 New Orleans Drainage
Commission. The agency operated (and was viewed) as a municipal reform for almost a century. Board members served without compensation; meetings were public; and contracts received
by sealed public bid. With the power of expropriation, the right to use city streets, mayoral support from Martin Behrman, and a variety of funding sources, the board undertook the vast
work of connecting every premise in the city to the sewerage and water system. The system received its greatest enhancement in 1913 when the gifted and philanthropic engineer Albert
Baldwin Wood donated his brilliant Wood Screw Pumps to the city, “the pumps” passing into the local language as a general assumption of public benefit. Wood may be considered the single
New Orleanian who did the most good for the most people over the longest time in the city’s 300-year history.
COURTESY SALLY K. REEVES COLLECTION.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
72

J AMES
R OBB
(1814-1881)
Antebellum banker James Hampden Robb was the most important promotor of railroads in
Louisiana. His persistence led to his greatest accomplishment, the opening of the New Orleans,
Jackson and Great Northern Railroad in 1858. Robb’s business leadership during the 1840s led the
way for Louisiana to redraft its law of incorporation, which freed corporations from ad hoc decisions
of the legislature. In politics, Robb was also the principal spokesman for the reunification of
New Orleans in 1852, following its sixteen years of division into three municipalities.
Born in Pennsylvania, Robb migrated to New Orleans during the 1830s and entered banking.
He survived the nationwide financial Panic of 1837, and throughout the next decade his business
grew as he built a chain of banks. Early on, he noticed that New Orleans’ dependence on exporting
foodstuffs from the Midwest was not a sufficient economic anchor. The city needed imports, and
for imports to be feasible it needed railroads to send goods north in exchange for foodstuffs that
floated down the Mississippi River. Although the city’s first short line railroad linked the city to
Lake Pontchartrain and by coastal vessels to easterly markets, going north internally required traversing
the entire state of Mississippi to reach northeastern markets. A railroad to Nashville had
been planned during the 1830s, but was never executed. Robb took over that project and launched
the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad.
Political support had to proceed hand in hand with business development. The city’s 1836 division
into three municipalities had paralyzed attempts to put its full support behind that development.
Robb thus entered politics with the two-part objective of reforming state corporation laws
and re-combining the municipalities into one. He won election as a state senator in 1851, from
which post he persuaded the legislature to remove the cap on incorporations as well as removing
a one-million dollar capital limit on banks. He also led the movement to merge the neighboring
city of Lafayette into the city of New Orleans.
In April 1851, Robb hosted a major railroad convention at which he challenged the city to unify
and tax itself to finance the northern railroad. The populace strongly opposed his property tax proposal,
but in 1852 Robb ran for the post of city alderman, from which post he successfully passed
the tax. The reunification of the city and its new tax permitted the commencement of the Great
Northern Railroad, completed in 1858.
That same year, at the height of his accomplishments, Robb’s fortunes failed to survive a second
widespread national banking panic. His empire collapsed as his chain of banks suffered unsustainable
losses following the panic. Robb then lost his Garden District mansion and left New Orleans.
When he returned briefly after the Civil War, memories of his tax and pro-Northern sentiments
made him unwelcome.
James Robb.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1988.43.
D ANIEL H ENRY H OLMES (1816-1898)
Daniel Henry Holmes introduced the department store to New Orleans and made it a success.
He learned the business at a young age, having been sent by his father at twenty to New York to
work for Lord & Taylor, founded just ten years earlier by Samuel Lord and George Washington
Taylor. Recognizing the opportunities available in a New Orleans branch, the partners searched for
and found in Holmes a willing clerk who could speak fluent French.
Arrived in the city, Holmes instead joined Taylor, Medley & Co. Dry Goods on Chartres Street,
the city’s most prominent commercial artery. In 1842, at the age of twenty-six, he decided to go
out on his own, opening D. H. Holmes Department Store. By 1846 he was importing goods directly
from Paris, where he opened an office. Holmes’ Parisian bonnets, garments, and frock coats suited
BIOGRAPHIES
73

Daniel Henry Holmes.
ILLUSTRATED NEWS NEW ORLEANS, VOL. 3 NO. 22, APRIL
22, 1922.
the tastes of New Orleans and became a longtime
hallmark of his store. The business prospered
on Chartres Street until 1849 when
Holmes decided that Canal Street had even better
prospects. That year, he had the contractor
Charles Pride build a four-story Gothic-style
store in the 800 block of Canal, complete with
lancet windows, hood moulds, and an interior
atrium. Its full-length shop windows were predecessors
of the memorable holiday-dressed windows
dear to Orleanians for a century. It was the
heart of boom times in New Orleans owing to
the explosive growth of the cotton trade. 1
Daniel Henry Holmes’ retailing innovations
became legendary. He introduced home delivery
in horse-drawn carts or by streetcar, a convenience
that housewives had never experienced.
The Holmes delivery system ultimately developed
into the Mercedes-Benz brown-on-brown
delivery trucks familiar to New Orleanians until
the demise of the store. Holmes also introduced a
guaranteed-return of merchandise policy, one
with a known loss rate outweighed by the
increase in volume it promoted. During the Civil
War, he hired female clerks owing to a shortage
of men, a practice that survived the war. He operated
on a cash-only basis, avoiding the dangers of
credit in an economy that usually required business
owners to wait weeks or months to be paid.
He opened an office in New York to handle much of the ordering and shipping. 2
During the 1850s Holmes, growing wealthy, decided that the summer climate in New Orleans
was too dangerous for his family. He purchased land across the Ohio River from Cincinnati where
his old French friend Eugene Levassor now lived. After the Civil War Holmes constructed a monumental
stone castle there, which survived until 1936.
As did several other successful men in 19th century New Orleans Holmes avoided society,
declining to join political organizations or social clubs. While he had little or no formal education,
he learned languages throughout his life and at his death spoke fluent French, Spanish, Italian,
Greek and Hebrew. He married Eliza Maria Kerrison of New Orleans in 1847 and had four children.
Only two survived him—his namesake D. H. Holmes, Jr., and Georgine Holmes who lived
into the 1940s and had a shop in the French Quarter.
Before his death Holmes turned the management of the store over to two associates, Samuel
Geoghegan in New Orleans and James T. Walker in New York. After his death, local businessmen
Hugh and Bernard McCloskey led a consortium to buy out Holmes’ heirs and to found D. H.
Holmes Company, Limited. The company expanded into the New Orleans suburbs and south
Louisiana while its Canal St. store remained a landmark where New Orleanians made it a custom
to meet under its clock. It prospered until 1989, when it was sold to Dillard’s Department Store,
which closed the Canal Street store and abandoned it to the City of New Orleans.
1 Betty Lee Nordheim, Echoes of the Past: A History of the Covington Public School System Published May 2002 see
http://covingtoncsd.ky.schoolwebpages.com/education/school/schoolhistory.
2 Obituary D. H. Holmes, in The Times-Picayune, July 4, 1898.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
74

D R . LOUIS C HARLES R OUDANEZ
(1823-1890)
Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez launched Reconstruction politics in New Orleans in 1862 with the
publication of his first newspaper, L’Union. The paper announced that African-Americans must
have the right to vote. Dr. Roudanez pursued this goal for the remainder of the War and
Reconstruction, diminishing as a voice with the end of formal Reconstruction and the expiration
of his second newspaper the New Orleans Tribune.
Born in St. James Parish, Roudanez received a first-class education for the
time. He attended Dartmouth College and later received a medical degree from
the University of Paris. His professors urged him to remain in France, as they did
for Norbert Rillieux (q.v.), another Creole. But Roudanez was inspired by his participation
in the French revolution of 1848, which led to the end of slavery within
the French empire. This inspiration led him to return to New Orleans where
he began a successful practice as a physician on Customhouse Street (Iberville)
at the edge of the French Quarter. His clientele there were probably both black
and white.
In September 1862, with Union troops in the city and General Benjamin
Butler considering his options, Dr. Roudanez, assisted by his brother Jean
Baptiste and Paul Trevigne, launched their L’Union, the first black-sponsored
newspaper in the United States. Primarily aimed at the French Creole population,
it also carried English content and for two years came out three times a week.
From the beginning it brought up the right to vote, although aware that neither
Butler nor President Abraham Lincoln was prepared to endorse black voting.
In March of 1864 the Roudanez-inspired petition for voting rights signed by
one thousand African-Americans in New Orleans was presented to Lincoln at the
White House. That July, L’Union folded, to be succeeded two days later by another
Roudanez newspaper, the New Orleans Tribune. This paper was far more radical,
calling for the end of discrimination in public accommodations, street cars, and
segregated public schools. The New Orleans Tribune eventually became a daily
newspaper, widely read in Washington and New York, and wielding significant
influence over the politics of Louisiana Reconstruction. In October 1865 Frederick Douglas wrote
J. B. Roudanez praising the paper and stating that he read it whenever he could.
In 1867, Roudanez achieved his dream when a state election to a new constitutional convention
saw 75,000 voters, of which most were black. Although the constitution it produced contained
most of Roudanez’ Tribune agenda, internal politics within the Republican party spelled the end of
the paper within a year. The Republicans backed the Creole Francis Dumas for Governor against
Henry Clay Warmouth, fearing Warmouth was too close to the Democrats. Warmouth’s narrow victory
led to a Republican party boycott of the Tribune. Warmouth went on to veto legislation implementing
the radical planks of the constitution, just as Roudanez had feared. The new governor also
delisted the Tribune as an official government journal, and by 1869 it was virtually out of business.
Roudanez carried on his efforts, best evidenced by his prominent role in the Unification
Movement of 1873 led by General P. G. T. Beauregard. This large group supporting racial solidarity
among blacks and whites had a life of only one year. Removed from politics, Roudanez continued
to practice medicine almost until his death in 1890, just before Homer Plessy (q.v.) took his fateful
train ride.
Louis Charles Roudañez.
COURTESY OF ROUDAÑEZ HISTORY AND LEGACY,
WWW. ROUDAÑEZ.COM.
For further reading see Mark Charles Roudané. The New Orleans Tribune: An Introduction to America’s First Black Daily
Newspaper. New Orleans: Mark Roudané, 2014. Gospel Banner (Augusta, Maine). September 1, 1866. on the Tribune. Keith
Weldon Medley. http://www.theneworleanstribune.com/main/celebrating-dr-louis-charles-roudanez/, by McKenna Publishing,
150th Anniversary of the original New Orleans Tribune.
BIOGRAPHIES
75

A NTOINE A LCIATORE (1824-1875)
Antoine Alciatore.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1994.89.61.4.
In 1840, Marseilles native Antoine Alciatore opened his first restaurant in New Orleans.
Relocated to its present location in 1868, Antoine’s Restaurant is still owned and operated by his
descendants, a feat unmatched in longevity by any other local business. Notable for its food, size,
reputation, and glamour, Antoine’s Restaurant has been the oldest in the city since at least 1905,
when a dining room renovation led to newspaper headlines about “the old Landmark, famed for
its excellent cuisine.” 1 Alciatore early on established his importance by offering his customers the
experience of dining out for celebration as opposed to offering a rooming house that fed its boarders
a daily meal or a tavern that fed travelers.
Born and trained as a chef in Marseilles, Alciatore emigrated through New York to New Orleans,
where he worked at the St. Charles Hotel. His first restaurant was part of a boarding house. He
married Julie Freyss, an Alsatian whom he had met when both were crossing from Europe to
America. With a growing family of seven children, the couple in 1868 purchased a double Creole
townhouse on St. Louis Street, to which in 1874 they added cast iron pilasters and a prominent
Mansard-style roof. At the time, the business operated as a restaurant, lodging, and boarding
house. Three years later, Antoine returned to France, where he died of tuberculosis.
Widowed with a large family, Julie Freyss Alciatore stayed on, managing and improving the business
until her retirement in 1887. She sent her young son Jules to France for training. Jules would
become the next proprietor, inventing some of Antoine’s signature dishes including Oysters
Rockefeller, “often imitated, but never duplicated.” A typical advertisement for Antoine’s dating from
1916 names Jules Alciatore “Proprietor” and his list of new creations Oysters à la Ellis, Soufflé of
Pompano, and Poulet à la Rupinicoscoff. 2 Under Jules’ leadership, the restaurant expanded into nearby
buildings on both sides of 713 St. Louis St., demolishing adjacent service buildings to create a covered
courtyard space now known as the Edwardian Room. An expansion into another courtyard created
the elegant Rex room, perhaps the city’s most prestigious private dining space. In the meantime,
the little French family passageways that are part of every Creole townhouse remained, adding to the
sense of spatial mystery that diners experience as they navigate the restaurant’s complex floor plans.
Jules’ eldest son Roy Alciatore succeeded him in 1934, serving as proprietor with great distinction
until 1972. No dish left the fabled kitchen without passing his inspection. The last proprietor
to be named Alciatore, he left children and grandchildren as proprietors, all of them direct descendants
of Antoine. At the present writing, the proprietor is Rick Blount, Roy’s grandson.
At a capacity of one thousand, Antoine’s size has made it the premier site in New Orleans for
banquets. During Carnival season, social, political and Mardi Gras organizations compete to dine
there as the ideal place to see and be seen in a festive season. Seldom open to the public, these
events contribute to the restaurant’s cachet with a sense of exclusiveness that has never hurt it. Its
Rex and Proteus organization luncheons have filled the restaurant to the brim. For fifty years, the
festive Battle of New Orleans banquet of the Louisiana Historical Society (q.v.) filled the Edwardian
room with toasts and historical speeches lasting well past midnight.
The formally attired waiters at Antoine’s are exceptional, trained to explain the intricate menu
with its French-named dishes. They remember their customers, who also ask for them by name.
This practice is found occasionally elsewhere, but remains distinctively Antoine’s, where at the current
writing waiter Sterling Constant is in his fiftieth year. In 1918, when another waiter died
approaching his fiftieth year with Antoine’s, headlines read, “one of the most familiar figures in
New Orleans, and for nearly half a century connected with Antoine’s restaurant….” 3
For further reading, see Roy F. Guste, Jr., Antoine’s Restaurant, Since 1840, Cookbook (New Orleans, 1978); Acts of Abel
Dreyfous, N.P., December 24, 1877, Notarial Archives Division; Civil District Court docket 209-046.
1 The Times-Picayune, October 1, 1905.
2 New Orleans Item, January 22, 1916.
3 New Orleans States, July 4, 1918.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
76

L EON
G ODCHAUX
(1824-1899)
At the time of his death in 1899 he was New Orleans’ most famous businessman,
his passing noticed in newspapers across the country. He was hailed as the
“Sugar King of Louisiana,” not to say the mastermind of a clothing empire. No one
knows when “Lion Godchot” arrived in New Orleans from the small French village
of Herbeville in the Lorraine Valley. It could have been 1837 when he stepped
onto the levee and became Leon Godchaux.
Godchaux started out in business as a teenaged Jewish backpack peddler working
the French-speaking sugar plantations of the Mississippi River’s lower coast.
Shrewd and keenly observant, alert to what his customers wanted in the way of
New Orleans notions and gossip, he was an instant success. Soon he took on a
partner, Joachim Tassin, a light-skinned free man of color from Jamaica whom he
had befriended on the voyage to New Orleans and who would remain in business
with him throughout their lives.
The partnership’s peddling concern hurried into overdrive. Leon bought a
horse and wagon to handle the additional inventory. He built a store in Convent,
Louisiana, then another on Decatur near the French Market where he sold urban
garb to transient seafarers. He was only twenty years old. He brought his family
over from France. One brother, Mayer Godchaux, joined the firm, which soon
expanded to the addresses on Canal Street where the great clothing emporium
that bore Godchaux’s name followed the Civil War. In 1858, using sewing
machines that were beginning to revolutionize the ready-made clothing industry,
Leon established a clothing factory in New Orleans to supply the retail and wholesale
sides of his growing business.
All the while, sugar was on his mind. He was convinced he could grow cane and refine sugar
with greater profit than could his country customers. He got the chance during the Civil War, when
Louisiana’s sugar industry teetered on the brink. Leon Godchaux converted many of his assets into
gold and silver and in 1862 bought at auction the foreclosed La Reserve plantation. By war’s end
more plantations had fallen into his orbit, some through foreclosure on loans extended by
Godchaux. By the time he was finished, he had accumulated 60,000 acres of timberland and
10,000 acres of cane land—fourteen plantations all told. He centralized sugar manufacturing in a
few large mills, connecting them by a dense network of “tramways” (small-gauge railroads). He
even founded a dairy business. “He seemed to be everywhere,” Bennett H. Wall observed, “and yet
at the same time hard to find.”
Leon sired ten children. The entire family, like most nineteenth century New Orleans Jews, was
highly assimilated. They relished music, dancing, the French Opera. They belonged to Rex. The
Godchaux’ were exceptionally civic-minded. To name one example: they supported the campaign
that led to the establishment of Touro Infirmary at its present location.
During his lifetime not even the great sugar trusts of the age could shove Leon Godchaux aside.
By 1958 times had changed. The year the National Sugar Refining Company purchased the
Godchaux sugar empire and shuttered it shortly afterwards. In 1986, the Godchaux Department
Store chain closed.
—Lawrence N. Powell, retired Professor of History, Tulane University
Leon Godchaux.
RUDOLF BOHUNEK, 1875 CA.-1913 ACTIVE, LEON
GODCHAUX, OIL ON CANVAS, 30 X 25 IN. (76.2 X 63.5 CM),
1909. COURTESY OF THE LOUISIANA STATE MUSEUM.
For further reading see Elliott Ashkanazi, The Business of Jews in Louisiana, 1840-1875 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press, 1988). Bennett H. Wall, “Leon Godchaux and the Godchaux Business Enterprises” The American Jewish Historical
Quarterly, 66 (1976), 50-66. Laura Renée Westbrook, “Common Roots: The Godchaux Family in Louisiana History,
Literature, and Politics” (Ph. D dissertation, The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2001). Peter M. Wolf, My New
Orleans, Gone Away: A Memoir of Loss and Renewal (Harrison, N.Y.: Delphinium Books, 2013).
BIOGRAPHIES
77

O SCAR
J. DUNN
(1826-1871)
Oscar Dunn.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1970.11.155.
Oscar J. Dunn combined a background in private business with scrupulous honesty
to meet the challenge of navigating Reconstruction in Louisiana. He set an example for
the newly emerging African-American leadership. His most prominent work fell in the
period from 1866 until his premature death in 1871, when as the state’s lieutenant governor
he was poised to become governor. On November 20, 1871, he suddenly fell ill and died two
days later.
Dunn’s family had worked for successful pre-war businessman James Caldwell (q.v.), who,
in 1819, had freed Dunn’s father James. James Dunn subsequently purchased the freedom of
his wife Marie and their two children, Oscar and Jane. James Dunn’s father had been a valued
carpenter for Caldwell during the construction of the St. Charles Theatre in New Orleans.
Oscar Dunn subsequently joined his father’s trade as a plasterer. But he was also able to
become a popular violinist and taught lessons with the instrument. During the 1850s Dunn
joined the Prince Hall Freemasons and rose rapidly as Master and Grand Master of Richmond
Lodge No. 4. The lodge, founded in 1850, was an offshoot of the St. James A.M.E. Church. 1
Dunn did not volunteer for either side of the Civil War. But, towards the end he saw that
the new Freedmen’s Bureau needed administrative help. He opened an employment agency
that found positions for the former slaves. Joining the Advisory Committee of the Freedmen’s
Saving and Trust Company of New Orleans, a private company, he was selected its secretary.
At the same time he launched the Louisiana Association of Workingmen’s People’s Bakery.
Dunn’s comparatively short political career began with an appointment to the New
Orleans City Council in 1867. In 1868, he ran successfully for lieutenant governor on the
ticket of Henry Clay Warmouth. Dunn then served until his death in 1871. His honesty was sufficiently
tested as he was head of the Metropolitan Police and the state Printing Committee, both of
which had million dollar budgets, and the board of Straight University.
Dunn’s alliance with Warmouth unraveled as Dunn joined the “Federal” or “Custom House” faction
of the Republican party, led by Stephen B. Packard. New U. S. Senator William Pitt Kellogg
also followed Packard and Dunn, all of them finding Warmouth too close to the Democrats. In this
political situation Dunn was poised for higher office, except for his premature death.
See Joseph A. Walkes Jr. Jno G. Lewis, Jr.—End of an Era: the History of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Louisiana, 1842-
1979. Leavenworth, Kan.: J.A. Walkes, Jr., c1986.
L OUIS M OREAU G OTTSCHALK
(1829-1869)
American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk never abandoned his New Orleans roots, and
New Orleans music has never abandoned him. Gottschalk’s compositions—celebrated in France,
Brazil, and California—demonstrated a distinct, home-based rhythm that spread through the late
nineteenth and twentieth century world of popular music. New Orleans composers who followed
him owed his music a considerable debt. Biographer S. Frederick Starr wrote “No ragtime composer
exploited [Gottschalk’s]Caribbean and Creole syncopated rhythms more thoroughly than [did]
Jelly Roll Morton….” 1 The French-speaking population of New Orleans played Gottschalk’s works
regularly, notably Gottschalk’s piano music based on the great operas of the time. “Jelly Roll prided
himself on his ability to “rag” the Miserere from Il Trovatore, which he almost certainly learned
from Gottschalk’s transcription.” 2
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
78

Born in 1829 New Orleans, Gottschalk grew up in a Creole household with a grandmother and
a nurse from St. Domingue, the fount of Creole influences. His genius was to corral his surrounding
musical influences and through his creativity and inventiveness influence others. In 1842, after
a career as a child prodigy in New Orleans, the thirteen-year-old went to Paris, very much on his
own. He was already self-conscious of his talent and had set goals for his life that included making
his own living. Though not admitted to the Parisian Conservatoire, he studied with private tutors
and within a few years had made a reputation as an outstanding pianist. His first major compositions—Bamboula,
La Savane, Le Bananier, and Le Mancenillier, date to these years.
In 1853, Gottschalk returned to the United States. Travels across the country on paid piano
recitals brought him occasionally to New Orleans. The ensuing Civil War seemed to have only a
slight effect on his schedule. However, in California in 1865 he began a relationship with a student
that turned sour, led to threats, and Gottschalk’s permanent departure from the United States for
South America, especially Cuba and Brazil. Four years later he was dead at the age of forty, apparently
suffering a stroke while finishing his performance of Mortel!
His diary reveals Gottschalk as a person honest with himself. He recognized his own abilities
and criticized the fetishes of European pianists, such as the long hairstyle of Franz Liszt. Yet when
he overdid himself as he often did, playing exhausted from travel, he admitted to himself that he
cheated his audience.
Louis Moreau Gottschalk.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1979.144.6.
1 S. Frederick Starr, Bamboula! The Life and times of Louis Moreau Gottschalk (New York, Oxford University Press,
1995), 447.
2 Starr, 447.
M ADAME E LIZABETH K ETTERING B EGUÉ
(1831-1906)
The first New Orleans chef to achieve renown as a female, Madame E. K. Begué was the central
figure of New Orleans’ late nineteenth century bistro world. That world revolved principally
around the Gascogne–born butchers in the storied French Market, where her husband Hypolyte
and other butchers worked. Born not in France but in Bavaria, Elizabeth emigrated to New Orleans
in 1858. Where she married butcher Louis Dutreuil. During the 1860s, Elizabeth and Dutreuil
opened a coffee house at the present-day site of Tujague’s Restaurant, located on Decatur Street
across from the Marché aux Boeufs (Beef Market).
Widowed after the Civil War, Elizabeth, in 1877, married Hypolyte Begué, with whom she built
their restaurant trade, renaming it Begue’s “Exchange,” a nineteenth-century word for a corner bar
and restaurant. The Begués’ primary clientele were the butchers of the market, who famously
enjoyed Elizabeth’s multi-course breakfasts commencing after ten a.m. when city ordinances
required that the market close in summer. As word spread of the hearty times there, the restaurant
acquired acclaim in newspapers and guidebooks, especially following the 1884 World’s Fair.
Begué’s food and ambiance soon brought in tourists and the well-to-do who came for her snails,
tripe, cheese, eggs, steak, brandy, and wines served in an old European ambiance. Elizabeth’s cookbook
“Madame Begué’s Recipes of Old New Orleans Creole Cookery,” published in 1900, helped
publicize New Orleans cooking nationwide. 1 Madame Begué was probably an early celebrity chef
in the sense that tourists who visited New Orleans sought out her restaurant as one that they had
read about. Her restaurant was a destination.
At Elizabeth’s death in 1906, The Daily Picayune exclaimed Madame Begué had been the
“Queen of Cooks for Over Thirty blessed Years.” 2 “The name Begué,” the Picayune continued,
“has been associated with the highest expression of epicureanism not only with the
BIOGRAPHIES
79

people of this city, but with men and women, some of whom are famous in literary and
artistic circles…who have enjoyed a breakfast at Begue’s, and have returned home to sing the
praises of that excellent rendezvous of lovers of savory and original menus.” A few months after
her death, the New Orleans Item reveled in the memory of “a breakfast that, once tasted, would
never be forgotten; a breakfast that had power to call men and women back from foreign lands—
breakfast that was an ounce of poem and comforter.” 3 After his wife’s death, Hypolyte Begué married
again—to the widow of a French Market butcher. Today, their historic building houses
Tujague’s Restaurant.
Elizabeth Kettenring Begue.
MME. BEGUÉ AND HER RECIPES: OLD CREOLE COOKERY. SAN
FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA: SOUTHERN PACIFIC, SUNSET
ROUTE, C1900, RARE BOOKS DEPARTMENT, HOWARD-
TILTON MEMORIAL LIBRARY, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
For Further reading, see Sally K. Reeves, “Making Groceries,” Louisiana Cultural Vistas, (fall, 2007), 24-35; Poppy
Tooker, Tujague’s Cookbook: Creole Recipes and Lore in the New Orleans Grand Tradition (New Orleans, 2015).
1 Elizabeth M. Williams, New Orleans: A Food Biography (New York: Altamira Press, 2013), 103-4.
2 The Daily Picayune, October 20, 1906.
3 New Orleans Item, June 20, 1907.
A LBERT
B ALDWIN
(1834-1912)
Albert Baldwin built the firm of A. Baldwin & Co. into the most significant hardware firm in
New Orleans. Born at Watertown, Massachusetts, and raised in Boston, he had a reputation as a
gifted mathematician that served him well in business. At twenty-four (1857) Baldwin migrated to
New Orleans with his first wife Rhoda Maria Griffin and their son Jacob to work as an accountant.
His employer was a firm known as “Richards, [Cuthbert H.] Slocomb & Co,” where Albert’s brother
Henry Baldwin was a partner. Founded in 1822, Richards, Slocomb and Co. were “Importers and
wholesale dealers in Foreign and Domestic Hardware.” Some items from their inventory reflect the
needs of a growing nineteenth century city:
“700 tons of Snede and American Bar iron, 500 tons of Hollow Ware and Castings, 800
dozen Axes, 900 dozen shovels, 9,000 ploughs.”
Sorrow beset Baldwin’s early life in New Orleans. As chronicled by Bouligny family historian
Fontaine Martin, “In the autumn of 1858, about a year after the Baldwins’ arrival in New Orleans, both
mother and child died of yellow fever.” Martin also reports that a few years later Baldwin’s older brother
Henry also lost his life in a storm on Lake Pontchartrain. The death occurred during the Union occupation
of New Orleans, during which time Cuthbert Slocomb was serving in the Confederate Army. 1
“To keep the firm going on the death of one partner and the absence of the other,” Martin writes,
“Albert as executor of his brother’s estate gave up his previous positon and took over the temporary
management of the firm. When the war was over and Colonel Slocomb returned to New Orleans,
Albert was formally made a partner and the firm became Slocomb, Baldwin, and Co.” In 1874, the
firm became A. Baldwin & Co., by which it was known until Baldwin’s death.
In 1862, Baldwin remarried to New Orleans-born Arthémise Bouligny with whom he would
engender thirteen children. In 1869, the Baldwins purchased the most elegant home on Esplanade
Avenue, known today at the Dufour-Baldwin House. Designed by prominent architects Henry
Howard and Albert Diettel in 1859, the Italianate mansion dominated the 1700 block of
Esplanade, where its monumental mass and galleries still command the interest of local citizens
and visitors. The Baldwin family remained there until 1912.
Surviving Reconstruction, in the 1870s Baldwin purchased controlling stock of the New Orleans
National Bank. Over the next four decades, the bank grew explosively, the share price opening at
$40 and reaching $750 a share by 1912 when Baldwin died. Baldwin became vice-president of the
Times-Democrat Publishing Company, and also served as director of the American Brewing
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
80

Company, the National Rice Milling Company, the New Orleans Waterworks Company, and the
Sun Life Insurance Company.
Not surprisingly, Baldwin was preeminent in the social world of New Orleans. At one point his
charming personality and wit had made him a member of every prominent club in the city. Among
them, he co-founded the School of Design (Rex Organization), reigning over Carnival as Rex in
1876. He became an active sailor on Lake Pontchartrain and served as Commodore of the Southern
Yacht Club. 2 He eventually established an estate on the North Shore of the lake, which his family
inherited. An Episcopalian who was generous to the needy throughout his career, Baldwin in his
will made bequests to Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish charities. 3 His important grandson Albert
Baldwin Wood (q.v.) was likewise a devoted sailor.
1 Fontaine Martin, A History of the Bouligny Family and Allied Families (Lafayette, LA., 1990), 254-55.
2 New Orleans Item, April 22, 1912; The Times-Picayune, April 22, 1912.
3 Martin, Bouligny Family, 256.
I SIDORE
N EWMAN
(1837-1909)
Isidore Newman made his fortune in banking and street railways rather than in land, using his wealth
to endow a series of charitable and educational causes. As did John McDonogh, Thomy Lafon, and Judah
Touro before him, Newman gave generously to the needy of many faiths, including all orphan asylums,
the Home for Incurables, Touro Infirmary, and the Jewish Children’s Home. After the turn of the twentieth
century, Newman decided that the most important educational tool that poor children needed was manual
training, which led him, in 1901, to found Isidore Newman Manual Training School. After more than
a century of growth, it survives today in evolved form as Isidore Newman School.
Newman came to Louisiana from Bavaria in Germany in 1854. Nothing is known of his education.
From early in his career he demonstrated a keen speculative sense. During the 1870s he saw
an opportunity in the depreciation of State of Louisiana notes. The Panic of 1873 had forced the
state to issue script to its employees. As one of the few investors with cash at the time, Newman purchased
many of these rapidly depreciating notes from needy state workers. Over the next few years
the finances of both state and city strengthened, permitting both the state and the city to honor their
obligations. Their notes and bonds gradually rose in value, yielding Newman a fine profit.
Newman made his investments through a private bank, Isidore Newman and Son. During the 1890s,
it successfully invested in the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad, making it profitable. Newman then
invested in street railways across the South, including railways in Birmingham, Nashville, Memphis,
Little Rock and Houston. During the 1890s he consolidated all of his street railway companies into the
American Cities Railway and Light Company, later incorporated into New Orleans Public Service, Inc.
Newman’s impact on New Orleans shopping was equally memorable. In 1897, he refinanced
and rebuilt the Maison Blanche Department Store, turning the property over to his son-in-law
Simon Schwartz and Mark Isaacs. It was then, during those closing years of the nineteenth century,
that an enduring competition between Maison Blanche and D. H. Holmes (q.v.) began.
Unlike some earlier philanthropists, Newman was no recluse. He married Rebecca Keifer with
whom he had seven children, three boys and four girls. The boys joined Newman’s firm and then
branched out. A son became president of the New Orleans Stock Exchange; daughter Marie married
architect Emile Weil. Another daughter married wood products manufacturer S. T. Alcus.
In 1903, Newman received the Times-Picayune Loving Cup, the second in what became a prestigious
series. At the time, a reporter caught this quotation: “Why, don’t you know that a good Jew
must be a good Christian, and to be a good Christian you must be a good Jew!
Above: Albert Baldwin.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, GIFT OF THE
CHILDREN OF ALMA BALDWIN DENÈGRE: GEORGE
DENÈGRE, CAPTAIN THOMAS BAYNE DENÈGRE U. S. N.
Below: Isidore Newman.
FROM "THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF NEW ORLEANS," BY
IRWIN LACHOFF AND CATHERINA KAHN.
BIOGRAPHIES
81

I SAAC
D ELGADO
(1839-1912)
Isaac Delgado.
LOUISIANA IMAGE COLLECTION, LOUISIANA RESEARCH
COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
Isaac Delgado, along with John McDonogh, Judah Touro, and Thomy Lafon, was one of New
Orleans’ four great bachelor philanthropists. A Jamaican native who made his fortune as a sugar
broker, Isaac emigrated to New Orleans at the age of fourteen to join the firm of his uncle Samuel
Delgado. Unlike some earlier philanthropists, Delgado participated in social life and was a member
of the Boston Club and the Chess, Checkers and Whist Club. Delgado impacted New Orleans art,
education, and medicine. His sugar brokerage firm came to include Thomas McDermott whose fortune
built the uptown Holy Name of Jesus Church.
In 1908, Delgado donated $200,000 to Charity Hospital for a building to house its operating
rooms and 140 additional beds. This building came to be known as the Woman’s Hospital and survived
until 1951, when it was demolished and its land given to the LSU Medical School. Long a
proponent of trade schools, Delgado, in 1909, bequeathed the residue of his estate to the City of
New Orleans to establish a manual training school for youth. Perhaps he was inspired by Isidore
Newman (q.v.) who a few years earlier had donated funds for a manual training facility that grew
into Newman School. With Delgado funds the city purchased fifty-seven acres adjacent to City
Park, leading to the 1921 opening of Delgado Trade School. Manual training has given way to technical
training in keeping with the demands of the modern economy. In 1970, the City donated the
school to the Louisiana State Board of Education and Delgado expanded its mission into the
Delgado Community College.
Isaac long resided at the Delgado home of his uncle, 1220 Philip Street, a house filled with
paintings, sculpture, and objets d’art. For many years he continued to purchase art, supporting the
Art Association of New Orleans, an organization of artists and their sponsors dating to the 1880s.
He followed in the footsteps of his uncle and aunt who had long collected art on their many trips
to Europe. 1 At the age of seventy-one Delgado wrote to the board of the City Park Improvement
Association that he wished to build a new fire-proof art museum, and wondered if City Park would
donate the land. So it transpired. In December 1911 the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art opened with
the Delgado collection as its centerpiece, just a month before Delgado’s death.
1 Obituary The Times-Picayune, January 5, 1912.
G EORGE WASHINGTON C ABLE
(1844-1925)
George Washington Cable succeeded at the unlikely task of humanizing and romancing Creole
life in New Orleans while not glossing over race and miscegenation. Although he never achieved
the first rank in American literature, he wrote in an era when local color was gaining popularity in
reading circles. Owing to his skillful management of colorful material, Cable was widely read and
admired both locally and nationally.
Born in New Orleans to a well-to-do Anglo-Presbyterian family, Cable absorbed the colorful life of the
city as a boy. His Virginia-born family had settled in New Orleans in 1837, seven years before George was
born. They changed residences frequently within a radius of the lower Garden District, not far enough
away from the Mississippi River and Canal Street to prevent a boy with a keen sense of wonder to take it
all in. His father, a restless optimist with an entrepreneurial spirit, entered into numerous ventures before
failing in business, leading to an early death in 1859. Cable had to go to work, but he learned French,
which he put to good, if controversial, use in his writing. A stint in the Confederate Army left him with
malaria, following which he turned to writing, apparently expanding on his reflections while sick. His
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
82

eflections led to short stories, some published
nationally, notably “Sieur George.” For several years
thereafter, he wrote for The Daily Picayune.
Collected in Old Creole Days, published in
1879, Cable’s early stories made his reputation.
The book opens with “Madame Delphine,” carefully
unfolding a triste life as the quadroon lover
of a fearless privateer, who might have been Jean
Laffite but turned out otherwise. The following
year Cable’s first novel, The Grandissimes: A Story
of Creole Life, became his best work. The
Grandissimes were a French Creole family whose
elegant lifestyle gradually devolved into a shell of
its former self, although with a certain dignity.
Cable’s contemporaries in New Orleans criticized
his positive view of racial harmony, especially
his thinly-veiled insinuation that many
were partly African-American. By 1885 he had
moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, where
his six children attended school and the family enjoyed the harmony of a New England town. The
literary spirit that had flourished in New Orleans, however, refused to adopt New England; whereupon
a dozen works focused again on Louisiana flowed from his pen before he died in 1925. These
works never had the bite of his early volumes. Among the later works is Strange True Stories of
Louisiana (1890), apparently based on stories supplied to Cable by Louisiana poet Sidonie de la
Houssaye, which themselves originated with compositions by her colonial grandmother Comtesse
Françoise Bossier. 1
Cable and his close friend Lafcadio Hearn are remembered most frequently for their steady criticism
of Southern racism. 2 Novelist Shirley Ann Grau described him as “the first writer of the modern South.”
George Washington Cable.
LOUISIANA IMAGE COLLECTION, LOUISIANA RESEARCH
COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
T HE D EJOIE F AMILY
(1847-1917)
Aristide Dejoie had an enduring influence on the African-American business environment in
New Orleans. After the Civil War he settled Uptown, and during Reconstruction entered politics.
He was elected to the Louisiana State Legislature, and later still state assessor for the city’s Sixth
District. In 1884, the City of New Orleans appointed him commissioner of the Cotton Centennial
Exposition, a position that opened his transition from politics to business.
Influenced by the writings of Booker T. Washington, Dejoie began in the 1890s to devote
his efforts entirely to business and the National Negro Business League. 1 He established Dejoie’s
Cut-Rate Pharmacy at 1832 Dryades Street, an emporium with an ice-cream parlor featuring
a ceiling fan, pure-fruit sundaes, soda water, and assorted candies. In 1906, Dejoie combined four
small burial societies into the Unity Industrial Life Insurance Company. By the mid 1920s United
was the largest black insurance company in Louisiana with 80,000 policy holders and an annual
revenue of $637,000. The firm supported a clinic for expectant mothers and babies, and gave to
the Community Chest contributed financially to the formation of Flint-Goodridge Hospital, and
gave another $19,000 to build the important black YMCA on Dryades Street, now O.C. Haley
(q.v.). 2 When Dejoie died Walter L. Cohen (q.v.) succeeded him as president of the local Negro
Business League.
BIOGRAPHIES
83

Aristide Dejoie was the father of seven children and grandfather of fourteen. The family resided
at 4807 Magazine Street and attended St. Luke P. E. church. Paul, his elder son, was the first
African-American to pass the Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners. Another son Constant
C. Dejoie took over Unity Insurance after Paul’s 1921 death. Paul Dejoie’s wife Ella also went into
business, serving as treasurer of Unity Insurance in New Orleans as well as of its Chicago offshoot.
Ella Dejoie also founded Broadmoor Laundry, Cleaning and Dyeing Company. In 1925, C. C.
Dejoie and a partner founded the Louisiana Weekly newspaper, still publishing today and an enduring
voice of the African-American community. 3
Above: Aristide Dejoie.
COURTESY OF RENETTE DEJOIE HALL AND THE
LOUISIANA WEEKLY.
Below: Warren Easton.
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, EARL K. LONG LIBRARY,
UNIVETSITY OF NEW ORLEANS.
1 John N. Ingham and Lynne B. Feldman, African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary (Westport,
Conn.:Greenwood Press, 1994), 174-178.
2 After Dejoie’s death, Walter L. Cohen {q.v.) succeeded him as President of the local Negro Business League.
3 For more information see also Jara Honora, The Dejoies of New Orleans Part 2, in CreoleGen, an online history, August
20, 2015 and Ryan Whirty’s essay in The Times-Picayune, May 3, 2017.
W ARREN
E ASTON
(1848-1910)
Warren Easton shaped the early twentieth century New Orleans Public School system. That
Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of its infrastructure in 2005 cannot obscure a century of success.
Easton grasped the halting efforts of the nineteenth century and made them comprehensive. At his
death in 1910 at the age of 61 the national Journal of Education noted that the New Orleans public
schools constituted one of the “notably good school systems of the country. No one has evolved a
more complete and satisfactory system in an old city than did Mr. Easton,” it wrote. At the time of
Easton’s death, enrollment had reached almost 40,000 students and included
numerous special education programs.
Easton and has successor Joseph Marr Gwinn oversaw the erection of the first
major high schools in the city. They also encouraged “cooperative clubs” (PTAs)
of which there were soon fifty-three, all supporting libraries, school-room decorations,
grounds, and athletic equipment. The cooperative clubs also served a
“penny” luncheon for the benefit of needy children. Cooking, sewing, and manual
training classes were extended, and programs for the deaf and disabled were
launched. As a result of Easton’s leadership, the city began directly supporting
the school system. At the state level, the legislature revamped the school board’s
structure, reducing its size to five and mandating attendance in school until the
age of fourteen, sixteen if the student were unemployed. 1
Easton was born in New Orleans, graduating from Louisiana University in
1871. After a short stint teaching in 1873 he was appointed principal. In 1884,
he began a four-year term as State Superintendent of Education. Easton regularly
attended the annual meetings of the National Education Association and
served as president of the Louisiana Education Association, promoting progressive
ideas in education. 2
Easton’s untimely death left citizens with a feeling of considerable loss. A high
school bearing his name was dedicated in 1911. Today it is fitting that Warren Easton High on Canal
Street should be experiencing a wave of improvement inspired by the computer revolution.
1 A. E. Winship, “Looking About”, Journal of Education. May 29, 1913.
2 Journal of Education. October 27, 1910.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
84

R ODOLPHE L UCIEN D ESDUNES
(1849-1928)
Over a life that spanned the decades from Reconstruction through Progressivism, Rodolphe
Lucien Desdunes followed his calling as a writer, poet, and educator to advance the cause of civil
rights in New Orleans. Known most prominently for his seminal history of Francophone African-
American Creoles Nos Hommes et Notre Histoire, Desdunes is also remembered for co-founding the
activist Comité des Citoyens. This group brought the legal action leading to the United States
Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which from 1896 until 1954 allowed “separate but
equal” public facilities in public accommodations.
Born in New Orleans and a life-long Republican who served as secretary of the Republican State
Central Committee, Desdunes graduated with a law degree from Straight University. With several
other prominent Creoles such as Walter Louis Cohen (q.v.), he worked at the U. S. Customhouse
in New Orleans, the principal Federal patronage job of the day. In 1874, he fought the White
League at the Battle of Liberty Place and was wounded. During the following years he became dedicated
to the Odd Fellows organization and wrote for newspapers such as the Republican Crusader.
With his brother Aristide and a group called L’Union Louisiannais, Desdunes in 1884 reopened the
Marie Couvent (q.v.) School for poor blacks. There, both brothers served on the board of directors,
with Rodolphe teaching history.
The Louisiana Legislature’s 1890 passage of the “Withdraw Car Act” (better known as the “Separate
Car Act”) had forced blacks and whites to sit in separate railway cars. In response, Desdunes and others
planned to challenge the law. His son Daniel was the first to stage a violation, but his arrest was
voided because it occurred on an interstate train. In June 1892, Homer Plessy (q.v.) volunteered to
be arrested the Comité securing his immediate release. Subsequent legal proceedings culminated in
the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the arrest had not violated Plessy’s rights and that the state
law was acceptable. The Comité soon disbanded and Desdunes turned to history, beginning a multiyear
effort to capture the biographies of notable New Orleans African-American leaders. He wrote Nos
Hommes et Notre Histoire in the early twentieth century, after he had withdrawn from activist politics.
Desdunes married Mathilde Cheval, by whom he had five children. Less admirably, he subsequently
lived with Clementine Walker and had four more children. One daughter became the wellknown
blues pianist Mamie Desdunes.
Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 59-110-L.
E LIZA J ANE N ICHOLSON
(1849-1896)
Although by her own words, Eliza Jane Poitevent Nicholson “was the wildest girl in her class,” she
ended as one of New Orleans’ most successful business women. Nicholson took a stodgy, financially
troubled nineteenth century newspaper full of business news and built it into the city’s most long-lived
and successful daily. Through her leadership, The Daily Picayune came of age, living on to become The
Times-Picayune, a decades-long daily monopoly that until the age of the Internet influenced politics,
supported culture, identified society, promoted sports, and was the go-to place for checking obituaries.
Among Eliza’s innovations at The Daily Picayune were the “big Sunday paper,” loaded with features,
including the Weather Frog; bordered advertisements, and the concept of the family newspaper with
content aimed at men, women and children. Nicholson created the Society Column, authoring it herself
for years. With an eye for newspaper talent, she promoted promising writers such as Catherine
Cole, Grace King, and Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, better known as “Dorothy Dix.”
Set against these accomplishments of the first woman in America to run a major daily paper was
Eliza Nicholson’s personal life. Raised practically alone by an aunt in the backwoods of Mississippi,
BIOGRAPHIES
85

Eliza Jane Nicholson.
FROM MOUNT, MAY W., SOME NOTABLES OF NEW
ORLEANS, MAY W. MOUNT: NEW ORLEANS: 1896.
she attended a nearby school and soon claimed the title of wildest in the class. Yet it was in
Mississippi that she first began to write, choosing the poetry of nature as her subject and the pen
name “Pearl Rivers.” After the Civil War, Eliza began to submit poems to various journals, including
The Daily Picayune newspaper. In the 1930s Grace King recalled Eliza Jane as “our poet laureate,”
who encouraged young writers.
Showing up in New Orleans after the Civil War determined to make a name for herself with her
poetry, Eliza Jane Poitevent caught the eye of The Daily Picayune’s elderly (and married) proprietor,
Colonel A. M. Holbrook. The lack of a literary editor prompted him to offer the post to this
unknown author from Mississippi. At age nineteen Eliza Jane seized the position and evidently
took steps to acquire the proprietor, steps that brought success in 1872 while enraging the absent
wife, who returned to New Orleans, went to the office and fired two shots at Eliza, followed by a
bottle over the head. None of her blows was successful, Eliza escaping as the incipient proprietor
of the newspaper. She was 23; Holbrook was 64. The marriage, no more successful than The
Picayune, lasted three years, ending with the Colonel’s death. Eliza Jane Poitevent Holbrook, 26
years old, found herself with a newspaper.
Not long thereafter, Eliza found companionship in the paper’s business manager, George
Nicholson. They married in 1878 and carried the newspaper to success, with the lion’s share of the
credit to Eliza. In 1896, they died of influenza within a week of each another.
F ELIX
D REYFOUS
(1851-1946)
Notary, businessman, legislator, civic leader, and reformer, Felix Dreyfous was New Orleans’
first “Progressive.” The “reform era” between 1888 and 1900 led up to that optimistic period in
American history known as Progressivism, an era that commenced about 1900 and ended with
World War I. During that era Felix Dreyfous and his fellow reformers achieved many of their goals -
—suppression of the Louisiana Lottery, flood control, police reform, sewerage and water service,
dock reform, election reform, and the bold establishment of the still-functioning New Orleans City
Park Improvement Association. Felix Dreyfous played a major role in each of these issues.
Born in New Orleans to Alsatian Jewish attorney and notary Abel Dreyfous and his Bavarianborn
wife Caroline Kaufman, Felix grew up in the Esplanade Avenue neighborhood near Bayou St.
John. He entered the legal office of his father and received his first notarial commission in 1892.
He would go on to complete more than 300 volumes of notarial acts in his long career.
Elected to the Louisiana legislature in 1888, Felix Dreyfous wrote the New Orleans Police Board
bill, his first major piece of legislation. 1 Long a football of politics, the New Orleans police department
had declined in quality for decades. The Dreyfous legislation transformed the police department
from one of patronage to one of civil service principles. An unpaid board supervised the new
department and its newly created pension fund. At that time, the Louisiana Lottery was the last
political remnant of Reconstruction, indeed of Post-Reconstruction. Originally chartered in 1868,
it was set to expire in 1895. Dreyfous led the move to deny its re-chartering, marking a major
Progressive victory.
Repeated flooding of the “back-of-town” lands had long diminished property values and threatened
the city’s health. In 1890, Dreyfous persuaded the Legislature to create the Orleans Parish
Levee Board through Act 93, which formed the Parish of Orleans into a public levee district. The
legislature empowered the new board to levy a one-mill tax that would be due in 1890, the very
year of the passage of the act. The new board also had the power to expropriate land necessary for
levees, either in New Orleans or in the surrounding parishes. Felix Dreyfous took his oath to serve
as Commissioner from the Second District on August 4, 1890, 2 commissioners electing him the
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
86

first president of the Levee Board. By the spring of 1892, the board had built over twenty-one miles
of levees using 314,257 cubic yards of earth. All the levees along both river banks as well as the
Old and New Basin Canals were expected to be completed in 1892.
In 1896, Dreyfous turned to city politics and ran successfully for the City Council. From that
position he wrote a bill for the legislature to establish the nine-member Drainage Commission of
New Orleans with a variety of funding sources, power of expropriation, and right to use city
streets. In 1899, it became part of the new Sewerage and Water Board. No member of the new
board was to receive compensation; meetings were to be open to the public, and contracts by
sealed public bid. Its central power was the authority to compel all premises in the City of New
Orleans to connect to the Sewerage and Water system.
As president of the Levee Board Dreyfous had observed how detrimental to business the port’s
wharf leasing system had become. His campaigning led the State Legislature to step in and create
the Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans (Dock Board), the public agency that has
successfully operated the docks throughout the twentieth century.
In 1891, Dreyfous helped organized the City Park Improvement Association. Felix J. Dreyfous,
the most influential of all City Park leaders, served as acting president and then president for seventeen
years. He was a member of the board for fifty-five years, from its start in 1891 until his
death in 1946. His son Julius Dreyfous served after his father for another fifty years. Dreyfous had
three children, but no grandchildren survive him.
Felix Dreyfous.
FROM THE ARCHIVES OF TOURO INFIRMARY.
1 An Act Creating a Police Board for the City of New Orleans.... No. 63, approved July 11, 1888.
2 Dreyfous files, Levee Bd.
G RACE
K ING
(1852-1932)
Grace King filtered the Southern past to produce a beautiful corpus of writings exalting her ancestors.
They were the ancestors of many in Louisiana. While King is notable as the champion of “the Lost
Cause,” a more appealing quality is an appreciation of racial harmony found in some of her works. She
contrasts with Alice Dunbar-Nelson (q.v.) whose works turned often on tragic individual conflicts.
A Protestant Anglo-Saxon, King lacked the Catholicism that animated much Creole writing. Still,
one of her two best books, Creole Families of New Orleans, is the standard introduction to Creoles of
white extraction. Following World War I African-Americans of mixed race appropriated the term
Creole since their ancestry also extended before the war. As Alcée Fortier (q.v.) has shown, the Creole
language of the blacks was quite old and was not dependent on a mixed race ancestry. In Monsieur
Motte King restricts her use of Creole to the language or to whites, as when she wrote of the school
girls’ mothers who were once, “little creoles like themselves.” In The Pleasant Ways of St. Medard King
writes …“pretty dancing Creole girls of Monsieur Pinseau’s dancing days….” 1
Grace King considered herself a Creole based entirely on her parent’s residence in New Orleans
prior to the Civil War. Her father seems to have been a stern Protestant and her mother a rather
subservient creature with a surprising fund of stories exalting the old days. That King became a
writer might be attributed to her father’s straightened post-war circumstances, but her natural
story-telling seems inevitably to have led to literature. Charles Gayarré (q.v.) was a close friend of
her father, inviting the young Grace and her sister to spend summers at his plantation. In the mid
1880s George Washington Cable’s (q.v.) accounts of mixed-race Creoles were much resented by the
white Creoles and led to the first stories collected in Monsieur Motte. Cable and King had similar
trajectories moving through the genre from local color to history. Cable left New Orleans permanently
because of his definition of Creole, while King remained exalted.
BIOGRAPHIES
87

A classic Grand Dame in her later years, King became “a complimentary member” of the Orleans
Club when it was organized in 1925. She was president of Le Petit Salon from the time of its chartering
in 1924. King also belonged to the Athenae Louisianais, Les Causeries de Lundi, the
Quarante Club and the Casino Espagnol. 2
For additional reading see Robert B. Bush, A Southern Destiny. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1999.
1 Grace King, The Pleasant Ways of St. Medard (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1916), 61.
2 The Times-Picayune, January 15, 1932.
C ATHERINE
C OLE
(1855-1898)
Above: Grace King.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION,
1974.25.27.214.
Below: Catherine Cole.
FROM MOUNT, MAY W., SOME NOTABLES OF NEW
ORLEANS, MAY W. MOUNT: NEW ORLEANS: 1896.
Catharine Cole, the pen name of Martha Reinhard Smallwood Field, brightened the pages of The
Picayune and then The Times-Democrat, as she churned out columns of newspaper copy in the last
quarter of the nineteenth century.
Miss Cole was unabashedly sentimental, but fearless in going after a story, producing eminently
readable work. Still, she was a writer of her time, prey to the racist comments and dialogue then
acceptable to whites, if not to blacks. Ultimately, Cole gives a picture of New Orleans in a specific
period that rings true. A working journalist all her adult life, Cole did her writing by hand, and
when her Parkinson’s disease had progressed, she dictated to her daughter Flora (“Flo”) Field, who
also became a New Orleans reporter. Cole apparently never used a typewriter.
Her father, a colonel in the Union Army, moved the family from Missouri to New Orleans
after the Civil War where he became Postmaster. 1 In the 1870s, Cole followed her father into
journalism and is said to have worked on the San Francisco Post. While there she married Charles
Field, had her daughter Flora, and when he died, returned with her child to her family’s home
in Carrollton.
Picayune owner Eliza Nicholson hired Cole to write her own Sunday column and be a fulltime
reporter. She covered major events and took on travel assignments, reporting back from
Europe and from almost every corner of Louisiana. In March 1893, when Governor Murphy
Foster called an “Immigration Convention” at the St. Charles Hotel, The Daily Picayune reported
that Cole, as “the only lady delegate, was escorted to a seat in the front row.”
Cole’s travel writing described Louisiana’s fertile farmland, attracting farmers to the state. Her
travels were arduous, but her descriptions were compelling. “The dense green wildernesses of
the great Atchafalaya swamp” were filled with “splendid clusters of the dwarf palm, the warlike
Spanish dagger, the beautiful, sprawling latanier…” But, “one of these days, I doubt not, this
jungle will perish and in its place will be the panorama of peaceful farms and prosperous fields.”
Cole took pride in her fellow female journalists: at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago,
she reported that the Louisiana exhibit included women’s literary work, and “the committee decided
that some of the liveliest work of Louisiana women appeared in the papers”. She wrote of the
everyday gracefully: “Ten cents worth of sweet basil bought in the market for the dear sake of its
fragrance is worth more than prized orchids arranged for effect,” she advised. Her favorite writings
seem to be sentimental stories and essays. In “A Little Good-by to Arcady,” she wrote of her
Carrollton neighborhood, where “cowbells tinkled dreamfully down the uncertain roads.”
—Carolyn G. Kolb
For additional reading see Martha Field, Louisiana Voyages: The Travel Writings of Catharine Cole and Catharine Cole’s Book
(1897).
1 The Daily Picayune, December 7, 1994.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
88

J OSEPH V ACCARO (1855-1945)
AND F AMILY
Joseph Vaccaro, his two younger brothers (Felix and Luca), and his sister Marie, represented by
her husband Salvador D’Antoni, created the prominent New Orleans shipping business Standard
Fruit & Steamship Company in the heyday of the Port of New Orleans. Along with its rival United
Fruit Company, Standard Fruit made New Orleans the nation’s premier importer of fruit, from
coconuts to bananas. The business was particularly important to New Orleans because imports had
long been a weakness of the port.
Born in Contessa Entellina, Sicily, Joseph Vaccaro arrived in the United States with his father
after the Civil War. At first a common laborer, by the age of twenty he had started a small retail
fruit business in the French Market. He transformed it into a wholesale business, then added the
Louisiana orange crop to his inventory. A great freeze, in 1899, forced Vaccaro into bananas and
other imports, a decision that led to purchasing ships to transport the fruit.
After 1899 Joseph operated as the Vaccaro Bros, only later becoming the Standard Fruit &
Steamship Company. The company incorporated in 1905 with Joseph Vaccaro as president and
brother-in-law Salvador D’Antoni Foreign General Manager. Later the Vaccaro Bros. invested in ice
companies, Union Indemnity Insurance Company, the Chalmette Oil Refinery, and Tropical
Printing Co. In 1925, they purchased the declining Grunewald Hotel and built an annex on
Baronne Street, nearly doubling its size. It was then that Vaccaro Brothers renamed the Grunewald
The Roosevelt Hotel.
The following year Standard Fruit went public, with bankers Washington Irving Moss, Harold
Newman, and Rudolph Hecht joining the board of directors. Moss then became chairman of the
board and Felix Vaccaro president.
In 1931, Salvador D’Antoni became president of Standard. Two years later Standard reverted
back to the Vaccaros when the Great Depression prevented the bankers from honoring their commitments.
At this point Felix Vaccaro became chairman of the board and Salvador D’Antoni president.
In 1935, Salvador D’Antoni bought out the now elderly Vaccaro brothers. His son Blaise
D’Antoni became vice president in 1947 and followed his father as president from 1949-1952. Dr.
Joseph D’Antoni followed his brother until 1964, when the family sold out to Castle and Cook,
Inc. By 1968, Castle and Cook had assumed full ownership, the Vaccaro-D’Antoni assets now an
indistinguishable part of the Dole Company.
Joseph Vaccaro.
FROM NEW ORLEANS: THE CRESCENT CITY, NEW
ORLEANS: GEORGE ENGELHARDT, 1903.
For additional reading see Thomas L. Karnes, Tropical Enterprise: The Standard Fruit & Steamship Company in Latin
America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978.
A LCÉE
F ORTIER
(1856-1914)
Alcée Fortier established the legitimacy of New Orleans Creole literature as an academic discipline.
A professor of French at Tulane University, he studied and wrote about the various dialects
in Louisiana and incorporated them into his class lectures.
Born in St. James Parish the grandson of fabled planter Valcour Aime, Fortier was connected to
most of the prominent Creole families. Yet, he studied all Louisiana dialects, including the Acadian,
Isleno, and African-American. The Modern Language Association, formed in 1883, later elected
him president. His concern for Louisiana dialects led him to be active in the American Folklore
Society, while his history of Louisiana led to the presidency of the Louisiana Historical Society during
one of its most productive periods.
BIOGRAPHIES
89

Alcée Fortier.
TULANE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES, LOUISIANA RESEARCH
COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVESITY.
In 1885, Fortier first published folktales based
on the Creole dialects he had absorbed from the
stories of blacks along the Mississippi river. 1 Of
the three types he explored—the lyrical, the fairy
tales from India, and the animal tales from
Africa—the last are best known. In 1895, Fortier
published the principal volume of his Louisiana
Folk-Tales. 2 In the introduction he noted his
thanks to his nieces Misses Désirée and
Marguerite Roman and Mr. Zenon De Murelle residents
of St. James Parish. The very first sentence
points to a sociological problem Fortier faced: “It
is very difficult to make a complete collection of
the negro tales, as the young generation knows
nothing about them, and most of the old people
pretend to have forgotten them.” The Creole
dialect “is not merely a corruption of French, that
is to say, French badly spoken, it is a real idiom
with a morphology and grammar of its own…,a
speech concise and simple, and at the same time
soft and musical.”
Fortier’s books were Sept Grand Auteurs du XIXme Siècle; Histoire de la Littérature Française;
Louisiana Folk-Tales: In French Dialect and English Translation; History of Louisiana. Nineteen hundred
and four saw the publication of Fortier’s Illustrated History of Louisiana in four volumes.
Fortier’s educational contributions led to an appointment on the Louisiana State Board of
Education and the naming of the major public uptown high school after him. Following Hurricane
Katrina the Alcee Fortier High School became Lusher Charter High School.
1 Gerard Labarre St. Martin and Jacqueline K. Voorhies, Ecrits Louisianais du Dix-Neuvieme Siecle: Nouvelles, Contes et Fables
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), xxiv.
2 Alcée Fortier, Louisiana Folk-Tales: In French Dialect and English Translation. Boston:Houghton-Mifflin and Company, 1895.
H ENRY P LAUCHÉ D ART
(1858-1934)
Henry Plauché Dart, whose writings launched The Louisiana Historical Quarterly, combined great
legal acumen with a most extensive grasp of New Orleans history. Constant work at long hours
brought him to an understanding few achieved before or after his time. Without the luxury of
schooling beyond a single term in the Jefferson City High School—his family was unable to provide
much formal education—he was rich in intellect and curiosity. He went to work at the age of fourteen,
paid his own schooling and apprenticed as a law clerk and student in the important office of
Cotton & Levy. Passing the Louisiana Bar examination in 1879, he founded the influential law firm
of Dart and Dart. Nine years after his Bar exam, Dart argued his first case in the Louisiana Supreme
Court, where he was to try over 300 cases over a 55-year career. Among his many clients were the
New Orleans States newspaper office, and future Chief Justice of the United States Edward Douglas
White, whom he represented while White served on the U. S. Supreme Court bench. On the occasion
of White’s death in 1921, it was Dart who gave the most important address before the bar of
the United States Supreme Court.
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A constant interest was the structure of the law profession in Louisiana. In 1896, Dart led an early
struggle to create the Louisiana Bar Association (predecessor of today’s state bar association) and was
rewarded with its presidency. Dart’s New Orleans practice during his early career led him to advocate
the union of various courts and archives into a new Supreme Court building, constructed in 1910. Until
its completion, the Louisiana Supreme Court shared the Cabildo with a Police Court, while the Court
of Appeals, Civil District Court, and Bar Association Library occupied the Presbytere.
Dart was equally facile in English, French and Latin, an aptitude that drew him to Louisiana’s
colonial history. His fifteen-year career as editor and archivist of The Louisiana Historical Quarterly,
where he penned over 130 articles and introductions to colonial records, encapsulates his service
to the history of Louisiana. From his editor’s chair, (and with the able work of Laura L. Porteous
and Helene H. Crozat) Henry Plauché Dart illuminated the treasures of Louisiana’s French Superior
Council and Spanish Cabildo records.
A passionate commitment to Louisiana’s Civil Code led Dart to delve into its history and importance.
His 1911 address to the Louisiana Bar Association on “the Sources of the Civil Code of
Louisiana” is a classic in the complex annals of its historiography. Printed by Hauser of New Orleans
the year of its composition, it came into print again through Harvard Law School Library. In 1921,
the association published his “Courts and Law in Colonial Louisiana,” 1 the first published analysis of
Cabildo practice in Louisiana. Dart’s ”Lectures on the Civil Code of Louisiana,” delivered as visiting
professor at Loyola Law School, were also published (Upton, 1925) and more recently reprinted.
After his death, the Louisiana Historical Society held “Commemorative Exercises in Memory of
Henry Plauché Dart” in the Cabildo’s historic Sala Capitula. The Quarterly devoted an entire issue
to his life and work, opening with a description of the memorial: “In the audience were the members
of Mr. Dart’s family, officials of the State and City, men and women of the Louisiana Bar and
of the Universities, members of the Louisiana Historical Society, and a cross section of the public
of metropolitan New Orleans.” 2
Dart’s papers are preserved at the University of New Orleans. For additional reading see the
Henry P. Dart Memorial Number of The Louisiana Historical Quarterly XVIII (April 1935).
—Sally K. and William D. Reeves
Henry Plauche Dart.
DEACON, WILLIAM MADEN, REFERENCE BIOGRAPHY OF
LOUISIANA BENCH AND BAR, NEW ORLEANS: COX
PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY, 1922.
1 22 LA Bar Association Reports 17 (1921); Louisiana Historical Quarterly II:255 (1922); Gilbert C. Din and John E. Harkins,
The New Orleans Cabildo (Baton Rouge, 1996).
2 Louisiana Historical Quarterly 18:2 p 239.
W ALTER L. COHEN, SR .
(1860-1930)
Walter L. Cohen led the local Republican Party in the Progressive Era of the “black and tans,”
and from 1890 to 1930 was New Orleans’ most notable practitioner of the philosophy of
Booker T. Washington.
Cohen began his career in his early twenties as a protégé of P. B. S. Pinchback and a member of
the Fourth Ward Republican Club. He soon became the secretary of the Republican state central committee,
a position that led to his first appointment as Inspector of the Port of New Orleans. He served
in this capacity until the end of the 1890s when he received an appointment as Register of the United
States Land Office in New Orleans. Over the course of the following decade Cohen cemented a relationship
with Booker Washington and top Republicans such as Marcus A. Hanna, Boies Penrose, and
Will Hays. Cohen served as president of the Iroquois Literary and Social Club, and the Société
d’Economique, which had been organized in 1836 and was “composed of the oldest and best French
families who are very careful and scrupulous as to the reputation of the character” of their officers.
BIOGRAPHIES
91

Walter Cohen, Sr.
OCTAVE LILLY, JR., PAPERS, AMISTAD RESEARCH CENTER.
He was active in the NAACP, the Knights of
Pythias, Elks and Odd Fellows. He continued his
political work such as organizing a campaign to
have blacks pay the poll tax of 1910, a campaign
that led to at least five hundred new black voters. 1
In 1910, Cohen founded People’s Benevolent
Insurance Company, which during the 1920s converted
to People’s Industrial Life Insurance
Company. He also founded two People’s Drugstores
to rival Dejoie’s (q.v.), Labranche’s, Baumann’s, and
Nelson’s drugstores. Coincident with the 1920s
return of Republicans to power in Washington he
received a plum federal political appointment as
controller of the Port of New Orleans.
Just a week before his death Cohen was participating
actively in the Christmas Gift Fund for
poor children sponsored by black businessmen in
New Orleans. Cohen was a member of Corpus
Christi Catholic Church in New Orleans. He was
married there to the former Antonia Manadé. The
couple had three children: Walter Cohen, Jr., Bernard J. Cohen, and Margot C. Farrell.
For further reading see John N. and Lynne B. Ingham, African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary.
Westport, Conn.:Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994; “Cohen, Walter L.” in A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, vol. 1,
Louisiana Historical Association (1988); Robert Meyers, Jr., Names Over New Orleans Public Schools. New Orleans:
Namesake Press, 1975.
1 New Orleans Item, December 23, 1910.
R UDOLPH
M ATAS
(1860-1957)
Forty-eight years after receiving his M.D., but still almost thirty years before his death, Dr.
Rudolph Matas received honorary degrees from his alma maters Tulane and Princeton Universities.
What struck the Daily States at the time was that he had already received thirteen honorary degrees
from American and eight from European universities. 1 Although Tulane and Princeton were late to
recognize their own, Matas was the most honored physician in New Orleans history. He served as
Chair of Surgery in the Medical Department of Tulane University, he headed the Department of
Clinical Surgery in the New Orleans Polyclinic, was a chief surgeon of Touro Infirmary for decades,
performed surgery as visiting surgeon at Charity Hospital, and consulted in surgery at the New
Orleans Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital. At a time of segregation in medicine he also supported
the work of black physician Dr. J. T. Newman to found the Provident Sanitarium and Training
School for Nurses. Chicago-trained Newman had in 1871 been appointed the first black surgeon
at Charity Hospital.
The dapper Matas wore a fastidiously trimmed beard and mustache with his jet black hair. His
enormous energy left him no patience with antique ways of doing things. While Tulane’s dean of
surgeons Edmond Souchon still used a bulky knife in surgery, Matas went directly to the newlyinvented
small-bladed modern scalpel. Insightfully, he concluded that the calomel-induced purgings
and blood lettings that constituted the contemporary treatment for yellow fever were “homicidal.”
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Matas was one of the first to support Havana physician Carlos Juan Finley’s hypothesis that mosquitoes
were a vector for spreading yellow fever. After Finley published his research, the only journal
that cared to republish the work was Matas in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal. The
Cuban government, in 1940, responded by awarding Matas its first Finley Medal.
Matas was born in St. John the Baptist parish in 1860, the son of a doctor. He studied in the literary
department of Soule’s College, spent three years in Matamoras where he studied Latin and
Greek, graduated in 1876, and entered the Medical Department of Tulane in 1877. During the local
yellow fever epidemic of 1878 the young student helped in the struggle. His close friendship with the
nocturnal writer Lafcadio Hearn yielded numerous late-night observations of the world of working
people in the city—put to use for medical observation. In 1879, the national board of health’s yellow
fever commission recognized his worth and sent him on a research mission to Havana. Throughout
the 1880s he published scientific papers both on yellow fever and on surgical techniques.
In 1909, Matas was elected president of the American Surgical Association, followed in 1924 by
the presidency of the American College of Surgeons. He died in 1957 at the age of 97 after assembling
his formidable History of Medicine in Louisiana, which was edited by John Duffy in two volumes
as The Rudolph Matas History of Medicine in Louisiana and published by LSU Press (Baton Rouge,
1958). Matas’ riveting biography by Isidore Cohn and Hermann Deutsch reads like a novel.
Rudolph Matas.
LOUISIANA IMAGE COLLECTION, LOUISIANA RESEARCH
COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
For further reading see Isidore Cohn, M.D., with Hermann B. Deutsch, Rudolph Matas: A Biography of One of the Great
Pioneers in Surgery. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1960.
1 New Orleans States, June 25, 1928.
H OMER A DOLPH P LESSY
(1863-1925)
To characterize Homer Adolph Plessy as merely a thirty-year shoemaker when he entered the
annals of history in 1892, is just as overly simplistic as the long-popular portrayals of Rosa Parks,
some sixty years later, as merely a tired worker who would not relinquish her seat on a bus. Homer
Plessy emanated from the same community that gave birth to the Civil Rights movement of the
twentieth century.
Homère-Patrice Plessy was born on 17 March 1863 to Joseph-Adolphe Plessy and Rosa Debergue.
His family history extended to colonial New Orleans and included ties to the colony of Saint-
Domingue. He was baptized and married at Saint Augustine’s Church in the Faubourg Tremé, where
his paternal grandmother, Agnès Mathieu, a free woman of color, was among the original landowners.
After the early death of his father, Plessy came under the influence of his stepfather, Victor Dupart,
and the related Demazellière family. Plessy followed his stepfather into the shoemaking business.
He came of age following Reconstruction. In 1887, at twenty-four years of age, he joined many veterans
of that period in forming the bilingual Justice, Protective, Educational, and Social Club. Plessy
served as vice-president of the association, which fought for equal educational opportunities. He was
also later an officer in the Société des Francs Amis, Cosmopolitan Mutual Aid Association, and the
Scottish Rite Masons. The onerous Separate Car Act of 1890 was passed by a “redeemed” state legislature,
which was a far cry from the well-integrated body it was in Plessy’s youth. Within a year of its
passage, the Comité des Citoyens was organized to wage a legal battle against legalized segregation. It
solicited donations from individuals, churches, and societies in the city, which enabled them to plan
and execute a test case utilizing Homer A. Plessy as the plaintiff. On June 7, 1892, a thirty-year-old,
neatly-dressed Plessy purchased first-class passage on the New Orleans and Northeastern Rail Road to
Covington, Louisiana. Plessy’s fair complexion enabled him to obtain the ticket and subsequently
board the “whites-only” first-class car without detection. The conductor and the detective who would
BIOGRAPHIES
93

Historical marker at Press and Royal
Streets., commemorating Homer Plessy’s
arrest, which sparked the Plessy-Ferguson
legal case.
PHOTO BY CAROLYN KOLB.
demand that Plessy move to the “colored” car or be
arrested and forcibly ejected were both informed of
the event in advance and played the roles orchestrated
by the Citizens Committee. The ensuing
court case, which questioned the constitutionality
of the Louisiana act and similar laws like it came to
judgment in the United States Supreme Court in
May 1896. The court ruled that “separate but equal”
access to public services did not imply inferiority,
nor did it violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
Homer Plessy and the other members of his
community adapted as best they could to life in
an intensely segregated society. Unlike many,
Plessy did not migrate out of the South, nor did
he “pass for white.” He continued his involvement
in various benevolent societies and ultimately
became a collector with the People’s
Industrial Life Insurance Company, founded in
1910 by Walter L. Cohen, Sr. (q.v.). Plessy and his
wife of thirty-six years, Louise Bordenave, had no
children. Homer Adolph Plessy, activist and community leader, died on March 1, 1925, and was
interred in Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1.
—Jari Honora
S ISTER S TANISLAUS C ATHERINE M ALONE
(1863-1949)
Daughter of Charity Sister Stanislaus Malone was the towering figure in the storied history of
Charity Hospital. She served the sick poor there for sixty-two years, many of them as “Sister
Servant” or director of nursing at Charity. Perhaps her birth in a mining town in the West and
orphaned childhood prepared her for this life. Catherine Malone eventually became (with Dr.
Rudolph Matas) one the two most important figures in the history of Charity. In 1884, after just a
few months as a novice in the Daughters of Charity, the Sisters assigned her to New Orleans, a city
ravaged by yellow fever and poverty. She sprang to work at the old Charity hospital, earning from
her first days the admiration of the hospital’s head of surgery Dr. A. B. Miles. With energy and a
personality best described as sparkling and cheerful, Sister established herself as a force, all the
while gravitating to children and the elderly, bringing them candies and cheer.
Sister St. Stanislaus was instrumental in establishing the hospital’s School of Nursing, becoming
in 1897 its first graduate. As Charity Hospital historian Dr. John Salvaggio has written, “The role of
the school of nursing and its students in managing and serving Charity Hospital soon became phenomenal.”
1 For twenty-five years Sister St. Stanislaus was also in charge of Charity’s operating
rooms. She raised money for the hospital’s expansion, persuading Mrs. Richard Milliken to donate
funds for a children’s wing and Mrs. John Dibert to give funds for a memorial building to treat tuberculosis
patients. In 1916, she played an important role in establishing the school of anesthesia.
Until Huey Long became governor of Louisiana the Daughters of Charity administered the hospital.
Faced with the challenge of Long’s interference during the 1930s, Sister Stanlaus persuaded his
administration to permit the Charity Nursing School to become an affiliate of the new LSU Medical
School in New Orleans, an affiliation that enabled the nurses in training to attain advanced degrees.
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In 1933, Dr. Rudolph Matas (q.v.) testified to Sister’s years as directress of the operating theater
“it was in that busy workshop that my duties as a visiting surgeon and later, as professor of surgery
in Tulane, brought me in almost daily contact with her, and it was there that I learned to appreciate
the admirable qualities of head and heart that so greatly endeared her to those who enjoyed the privilege
of her ever alert and loyal collaboration.” 2 In 1943, the Times-Picayune Publishing Company
awarded Sister St. Stanislaus Malone its cherished Loving Cup for her work at Charity Hospital.
1 John Salvaggio, New Orleans’Charity Hospital, A Story of Physicians, Politics and Poverty (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State
University Press, 1992), p. 90.
2 Times-Picayune, February 13, 1945, Loving Cup presentation.
M ARTIN
B EHRMAN
(1864-1926)
Mayor Martin Behrman was fortunate to preside over a prosperous city, which while beholden
to machine politics, was also on the cusp of progressivism. Behrman operated a well-known political
system based on the precinct and ward divisions of the city, which for four terms generated the
votes necessary to keep himself and his candidates in office. Although seen as the product and
exemplar of the early twentieth century “machine,” Behrman also supported a concurrent spirit of
municipal reform. Perhaps that is why he was the city’s longest-serving mayor, remaining in office
from 1904 to 1920, and re-elected in 1925.
The centerpiece of Behrman’s tenure was the creation of the New Orleans Sewerage and Water
Board. The organization and authorization of that board, along with a Public Belt Railway, Orleans
Parish School Board, and a Police Department reorganized under mayoral control, are still the most
important products of his time. The Sewerage and Water Board provided for the removal of sewage,
drainage and flood control, and a supply of fresh water to most of the city. The water system led directly
to fire hydrants, dramatically reducing the dangers of fire and the cost of fire insurance. Meanwhile,
drainage of the streets made more of them passable and the neighborhoods they crossed less unsanitary.
The sanitary disposal of sewerage also alleviated the pollution of the surrounding waterways. In
1975, the Louisiana Engineering Society named the New Orleans Sewage and Water Board’ achievements
one of the ten top engineering projects in Louisiana history (see Albert Baldwin Wood).
In the area of education Behrman strongly supported the expansion of public schools. During
his tenure, the number of schools increased to a point that allowed for the first time mandatory
attendance laws, while enrollment reached fifty thousand (v. Warren Easton). Behrman supported
a revision of the school board that took elections from wards and had the members elected citywide.
The new five-member school board then focused on education without having to compromise
with the demands of other city agencies.
On the industrial side, the creation of the New Orleans Public Belt railway was an extraordinary solution
to manage the logistics needed to take advantage of the six national railroads reaching New Orleans.
Providing these companies equal access to the port eliminated their wasteful struggles for accomodations.
The new public agency worked closely with another comparatively new agency, the Board of
Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans, known as the Dock Board, to systemize the operation of the
port. Through their efforts, the cost of moving a single railway car dropped from $6.00 to $2.00.
Similarly, Behrman strongly supported the so-called Commission Form of government.
Proposed in 1912, it was adopted by the legislature, and then confirmed by local voters. The plan
provided for all commissioners to be elected at large, a move intended to weaken the power of traditional
ward politicians. Never at a loss politically, Behrman used the change to make the political
class more dependent on the mayor.
Sister Stanislaus Malone.
COURTESY OF DAUGHTERS OF CHARITY, PROVINCE OF ST.
LOUISE, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI.
BIOGRAPHIES
95

In the area of parks and recreation, in 1909, Behrman oversaw the creation of the Parks and
Parkway Commission and charged it with beautifying streets such as St. Charles Avenue. The commission
operated from a new public nursery in Gentilly that still supplies plants to the city. The West End
Park was removed from amusement companies and converted to a quiet park, while City Park, which
since 1892 had been managed by an independent agency, prospered. 1
In 1920, “Reform” era politics removed Martin Behrman after sixteen years in office. Andrew J.
McShane served four years before Behrman was back in office, from which he died in 1926, after
a little over a year. A lifelong bachelor and resident of Algiers, Behrman left only nieces and
nephews to mourn his passing, (that is, if one does not count thousands of citizens). Today a street
in Algiers and a circle in City Park preserve his memory.
Martin Behrman.
LOUISIANA IMAGE COLLECTION, LOUISIANA RESEARCH
COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
For further reading see John R. Kemp, ed., Martin Behrman of New Orleans: Memoirs of a City Boss. LSU Press, Baton
Rouge: 1977.
1 See Williams, Robert W., Jr. “Martin Behrman and New Orleans Civic Development, 1904-1920,” Louisiana History, II
(1961), 373-400.
ALICE MOORE DUNBAR-NELSON
(1875-1935)
Alice Dunbar-Nelson, a mixed-race writer, speaks with power from her own perspective of late
nineteenth century New Orleans. She grew up in the same complex cultural milieu that provided
material for George Washington Cable (q.v.), Grace King (q.v.), and Kate Chopin. Her first two collections
of stories and poems, Violets and Other Tales, 1895, and The Goodness of St. Rocque, 1899,
were both set in New Orleans. Dunbar-Nelson was an outspoken advocate for women, and an
astute chronicler of the late nineteenth-century city.
Dunbar-Nelson was born Alice Ruth Moore in New Orleans in 1875 to Patricia Wright, a dressmaker
and former slave, and Joseph Moore, probably a merchant seaman. After an unpleasant number
of years in public school, at twelve she happily entered the high school program of Straight (now
Dillard) University, completing teacher training there in 1892. She began teaching in New Orleans,
was active in African-American women’s clubs, wrote for local publications and, using the city and
its people as her inspiration, began writing stories and poems. Tulane Associate Professor Kate Adams
co-edited a 2016 issue of Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers devoted to “Recovering Alice
Dunbar-Nelson for the Twenty-First Century” where she and her co-editors concluded “Her work and
life speak in important ways to already lively areas of scholarship and teaching, including black print
culture and periodicals….” The Legacy issue contains a chilling short story “St. John’s Eve,” in which
a doubting Yankee newcomer to New Orleans is transported to a frightening “voudou” ceremony.
Dunbar-Nelson’s stories are sometimes bittersweet as she follows her outsider characters as they confront
poverty, loneliness, adventures and lost loves in the neighborhoods of the city. She puts in poems,
and essays, and even a somewhat psychedelic account of getting chloroform at the dentist’s. “M’sieu
Fortier’s Violin” in St. Rocque is a carefully drawn study of the audiences and performances at New
Orleans’ French Opera House in the early 1890s, ably demonstrating Dunbar-Nelson’s knowledge of
music and musicians, including allusions to the mixed-race composer Edmond Dédé. “Anarchy Alley” in
Violets is an essay on Exchange Alley and its bohemian lifestyle, before construction of the building housing
the Louisiana State Supreme Court obliterated that part of the street between Chartres and St. Louis.
Returning to the city’s history Alice published “People of Color in Louisiana” in The Journal of Negro
History in 1916 and 1917 in response to Charles Gayarré’s and Grace King’s views. She wrote a personal
essay “Brass Ankles Speaks,” short stories, and an incomplete novel loosely based on the life of
Jordan Noble, an African-American drummer boy at the Battle of New Orleans. After World War I she
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96

contributed a chapter on African-American women during World War I to (Emmett Jay) Scott’s Official
History of the American Negro in the World War.
Alice Dunbar-Nelson, with mother and sister, left New Orleans in 1897 and was soon teaching in
New York. Seeing her picture published with a poem in the Boston Monthly Review, well-regarded
African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar began corresponding. They married in 1898. Their difficult
union ended in 1902 with a legal separation. He died in 1906. She would marry twice more (the
third time happily) and continue living on the East Coast, in Delaware and Pennsylvania, until her
death in 1935. Selected writings are available at www.Gutenberg.org and https//www.poetryfoundation.org
(accessed August 5, 2017).
—Carolyn G. Kolb
A LBERT B ALDWIN W OOD
(1879-1956)
Engineer and inventor Albert Baldwin Wood contributed the most ongoing good to the greatest
number of citizens in the history of New Orleans. His invention—and subsequent donation to the
city—of his three Wood Screw Pumps, has drained the city during rainstorms and floods for over a
century, while pumping out the sewage. Wood’s “low lift pump,” and his “Wood Centrifugal pump,”
not only clear the city of standing water, but preclude the many consequences of water on a land that
will not naturally drain. Wood’s pumps in fact have made great swaths of the city inhabitable, allowing
tens of thousands of middle class folk to build or reside in more affordable housing. Their importance
to New Orleans can hardly be overstated, as demonstrated in August 2017, when power failures and
an apparent lack of planning left important pumps
inoperable during an extraordinary rainstorm.
In 1899, fate placed Wood where his inventions
would do the most good, as engineer of the
newly-created Sewerage and Water Board of New
Orleans. His low-lift pump facilitated the movement
of water through the underground canals of
the city to its pumping stations. There the “Screw
Pump” lifted water almost effortlessly ten feet up
to sea level, actually the level of Lake
Pontchartrain. Meanwhile, Wood’s Centrifugal
Pump pushed water and sewerage into the new
sewerage system, using a pump with added vanes
that blocked large items from lodging in the
works and blocking their action. Between 1899
and 1934, the Baldwin Wood pumping system
enabled the city to double the number of residential
premises from 67,000 to 125,000, increasing
drained acres from 13,000 to 50,000. 1 As biographer
R. H. Thompson has written, within Wood’s adult lifetime New Orleans was transformed from
a dirty, swampy, pestilential city (1897) to “the most perfectly drained and healthiest in the U. S.” 2
Wood attended Tulane University during the 1890s graduating from its School of Engineering in
1899. His class was extraordinary, including lawyer and notary Percival Stern, industrialist Ernest
Lee Jahncke, and the brilliant jurist J. Blanc Monroe. A few months after his graduation Wood joined
the city’s new Drainage Commission, soon to be the Sewerage and Water Board, remaining at the
agency until his death fifty seven years later. For much of that time Wood’s salary was $5,000 a year.
Above: Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson.
FROM DUNBAR-NELSON, ALICE, THE DUNBAR SPEAKER
AND ENTERTAINER, NAPIERVILLE, ILL.: J. L. NICHOLLS &
CO., 1920.
Bottom: Albert Baldwin Wood.
COURTESY OF THE NEW ORLEANS SEWERAGE AND
WATEER BOARD.
BIOGRAPHIES
97

Toward the beginning of his career, Wood offered his inventions to the Sewerage and Water Board
at no charge. His pumps were subsequently used around the world, yielding Wood substantial royalties
(much of which he spent on his sailboat). Wood consulted and designed the drainage, pumping,
and sewage systems for Chicago, Milwaukee, Baltimore, and San Francisco, as well as managing
projects in Holland, Canada, Egypt, China, and India.
Wood’s commitment to the Sewerage and Water Board was equaled only by his commitment to
sailing, especially on the Gulf Coast. His grandfather Albert Baldwin (q.v.), Commodore of the
Southern Yacht Club, was also a regular sailor to and from his home in Mandeville. Wood died at
the age of 77 at the helm of his small yacht Nydia, now on display at the Biloxi Maritime Museum.
1 Nicole Romagossa, “Albert Baldwin Wood, the Screw Pump, and the Modernization of New Orleans” M.A. Thesis,
University of New Orleans, December 2010.
2 Ray M. Thompson, Biography of Albert Baldwin Wood, typed manuscript in the Louisiana Division, Tulane Library.
O SCAR
“PAPA” CELESTIN
(1884-1954)
Oscar Celestin.
LOUISIANA STATE MUSEUM, PHOTOGRAPH, 7 3/4 X 10, IN.
(19.7 X 25.4 CM), UNDATED.COURTESY OF THE NEW
ORLEANS JAZZ CLUB.
For fifty years Oscar “Papa” Celestin and his Original Tuxedo Jazz Band played and to some
extent personified Dixieland Jazz in New Orleans.
Celestin’s Dixieland Jazz Band sprang into existence
in 1910 when Papa agreed to lead it. The
band still performs under the leadership of
descendants of Papa’s original Tuxedo band.
While so much jazz had moved on, the Tuxedo
band remained the best source for listening to
Dixieland music.
“Papa” was already playing the cornet in
Napoleonville when Louis Armstrong (q.v.) was
born in 1901. Soon after that he arrived in New
Orleans, taking jobs wherever he could and working
as a longshoreman. A year after cornetist Buddy
Bolden retired from Henry “Red” Allen’s Brass Band,
Celestin was playing occasionally in Bolden’s former
seat. About 1909 Tom Anderson hired him to
play at his Fair Play Saloon in Storyville, from
which, in about 1910, he moved to the new Tuxedo
Dance Hall nearby and quickly became the leader
of its band. Celestin renamed it the Tuxedo Orchestra, leading it at the dance hall on Franklin Street
between Iberville and Bienville and at an increasing number of society engagements around town.
From about 1916 to 1922, Louis Armstrong played often with Celestin’s Tuxedo Orchestra,
playing his last two gigs with the Tuxedo before heading for Chicago. If the first jazz recording
occurred in 1922 or so, Papa cut the first jazz recording in New Orleans in 1925 with Okeh
records. About this time he discovered the classic “When the Saints Go Marching In,” becoming
the first musician to play the old spiritual as a jazz number.
During the 1920s unionization came to Mississippi River boats, requiring musicians to join a
union and present a card to be hired. At that time New Orleans did not have a black musicians
union, only a white one. In response, Celestin in 1926 organized “A. F. L. Local 496 Colored.”
Elected its first president, he enabled the Tuxedo Orchestra to begin steamboat trips upriver to
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98

St. Louis and other points on the important Strekfus Steamboat Line. During 1926 and 1927
Celestin also had two recording sessions with Columbia Records. Within this decade the Tuxedo
added the Tuxedo Brass Band, a marching ensemble of about seven instruments.
Through the Great Depression years of the 1930s the band played occasionally. When Pearl Harbor
shut the band down, “Papa” got a job working in a shipyard. Near the end of World War II he was hit
and run over, his legs badly damaged, leading to two more years out of action. But after World War II
night clubs began to populate Bourbon Street, and it was at the Paddock Lounge at 315 Bourbon that
Celestin re-invigorated Dixieland Jazz in New Orleans. He played there and on the society circuit to
standing room crowds almost until his death.
For further reading/listening, see Robert Homes website https://www.brief-case.org/ devoted to the life and music of
“Papa Celestin.”
A NDREW J ACKSON H IGGINS
(1886-1952)
Andrew Higgins created the largest locally-owned manufacturing business in New Orleans history—Higgins
Industries. At the peak of World War II the company employed over 25,000 workers
in seven plants. More remarkable was the nature of the work force, which included many
women and African-Americans, one of the few such labor pools in America. To create this large and
diverse a company virtually overnight testifies to Higgins’ genius.
Higgins’ genius came in various forms. As did others, he started small, while new ideas occurred
to him from his own imagination and from the world around him. He began his career importing
timber to the United States, then added sawing
and shaping, then manufacturing plywood, finally
boat building. His most successful early boat
was the Eureka flat-bottomed swamp boat, which
was equipped with a tunnel up the middle housing
the shaft and propeller. The first model had
adequate speed, but by constantly modifying the
hull shape Higgins created a truly fast and
maneuverable boat. The more than 20,000 plywood
landing craft or “Higgins Boats” he built
during World War II became the essential tool
that enabled the Allied forces to invade Europe.
Inspired by their employer’s innovative spirit,
Higgins’ loyal employees became a hall mark of
his industries. People hired in the 1920s stayed
on to work for him through the World War II. He
employed every graduate of Delgado Trades
School, a vital resource to his work force, which
prided itself upon its training and discipline.
For all his genius Higgins was never popular in New Orleans. His confidence made him somewhat
overbearing, which did not endear him to society. Wartime spending and wages kept organized labor
at bay, but the end of the war brought the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of
Industrial Organizations struggling to unionize his plants. Unsurprisingly, Higgins resisted, closing
his local plants and putting thousands out of work. During the post-War period, his genius was not
able to find the peacetime products that would sell.
Andrew Jackson Higgins.
JACK AND DAVE MCGUIRE COLLECTION, LOUISIANA
RESEARCH COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
BIOGRAPHIES
99

Less than a decade after the close of World War II, Higgins was dead, leaving an estate of $1,400,000,
a modest sum for the hundreds of millions that passed through his companies. His plant on the
Industrial Canal continued manufacturing boats under the leadership of two of his sons, Frank and
Andrew Higgins, Jr., eventually passing through the hands of successor companies and becoming part
of Equitable Shipbuilding. One remnant of Higgins plants today is the Michoud plant he initially developed
while his landing craft are preserved and displayed at The National WWII Museum.
At the time of Higgins’ death The Times-Picayune editorialized that Higgins’ was “a recognized
triumph over early adversities and late setbacks. He never quit trying…he rendered a great service
to his country in its dire peril; to New Orleans, to thousands of workers…he was colorful, abrupt,
confident, hard-hitting—But measuring his deeds, his spirit, and his general outlook, there isn’t
much controversy to it. He was a valiant of the old days, and honor will be paid him long after his
going….He made his mark, and it is not erasable. There went a man.” 1
1 The Times-Picayune, August 2, 1952.
L EWIS K EMPER W ILLIAMS (1887-1971) AND
L EILA M OORE W ILLIAMS (1901-1966)
Leila Williams.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, THE L.
KEMPER AND LEILA MOORE WILLIAMS FOUNDERS
COLLECTION, 72.135.2A WR.
Lewis Kemper Williams and his wife Leila founded The Historic New Orleans Collection and
contributed to the religious and civic life of New Orleans. The Historic New Orleans Collection,
New Orleans’ most important non-academic
research center, opened in 1966 as a museum and
research library. Active in civic affairs, Kemper
Williams was also the first chairman of the Housing
Authority of New Orleans. In recognition of his service,
in 1937 he received The Times-Picayune’s Loving
Cup and an award from the City of New Orleans for
his distinguished service as Chairman of the
Citizens’ Committee for Public Improvement.
Kemper Williams was the son of the founder of F.
B. Williams Cypress Company, based in Patterson,
Louisiana. He attended Patterson public schools, then
Lawrenceville Preparatory School in New Jersey, graduating
in 1905. He next attended the University of the
South in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he received his
degree in 1908. As cypress lumber neared depletion,
the F. B. Williams Cypress Company turned its attention
to oil and gas investments, changing its name to
Williams, Inc. After World War II, Kemper served as
president of Williams, Inc. from 1949 until his death
in 1971
In 1917, Kemper Williams joined the American effort in World War I, remaining on active or
reserve duty for the U.S. Army from 1917-1945 and attaining the rank of Brigadier General. His
service recalled the motto of The Society of the Cincinnati “Omnia relquit servare rempublicam”—
translated to “he left all to serve the Republic.” In 1921, Williams married Leila Moore whom he
had met the previous year.
During the 1930s the Williams moved to New Orleans and put their wealth to work on behalf
of the city. In 1938, they purchased and restored the two homes on Royal Street where they lived
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
100

and which, in 1966, became The Historic New Orleans Collection. Building on the endowment left
by Kemper and Leila Moore Williams, The Collection has grown to include ten historic buildings
making up two French Quarter campuses. As the museum describes its facilities, “the Royal Street
campus, located at 533 Royal Street, serves as our museum headquarters, housing our main space
for rotating exhibitions, the Williams Gallery; our permanent installation, the Louisiana History
Galleries; and our house museum, the Williams Residence. The Chartres Street campus, located at
400 and 410 Chartres Street, comprises the Williams Research Center, the Boyd Cruise Gallery, the
Laura Simon Nelson Galleries for Louisiana Art, and our on-site vault for collections items.” 1
Kemper and Leila Williams were active in the Episcopal Church throughout their lives, Williams
serving on the Vestry of Christ Church Cathedral for over ten years. He also returned to Sewanee
after graduation, serving as Trustee and Regent and receiving an honorary doctorate in 1935. He
also served as president of the New Orleans Community Chest and the New Orleans Philharmonic
Symphony Society.
—William H. Forman, Jr.
For further reading, see A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, Vol. 11; Glenn R. Conrad, General Editor (Lafayette, LA:
Louisiana Historical Association, 1988)
p. 850; and this author, Christ Church Cathedral: The Third Century Begins (New Orleans, LA: The Historic New Orleans
Collection, 2004) p. 9.
1 Historic New Orleans Collection Web site, retrieved July 26, 2017.
L. Kemper Williams.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, THE L.
KEMPER AND LEILA MOORE WILLIAMS FOUNDERS
COLLECTION, 72.135.2A WR.
C AMILLE L UCIE N ICKERSON
(1888-1982)
Camille Lucie Nickerson moved through life to her own Creole rhythm as a pianist, singer and
music educator. Besides founding a New Orleans African-American music club that is still around a
century later, she was a champion of African-American Creole folk music as a researcher; published
her own arrangements of folk songs; and performed as “The Louisiana Lady” in the United States
and, in Europe, for the U.S. Department of State.
She was born in New Orleans in 1888 to Creoles of color Aurelie Duconge and William Joseph
Nickerson. Her mother died when she was eight, and her father married a music teacher, Julia
Ellen Lewis. Her father, known as Professor Nickerson, was a violinist and a respected music
teacher whose pupils included Jelly Roll Morton and “Sweet Emma” Barrett. Manuel Manetta,
another jazz pianist and music teacher, noted that Camille was “the greatest pianist they had
around here.”
When Professor Nickerson formed the Nickerson Ladies Orchestra, his pianist was Camille,
aged nine, joining her cellist stepmother on stage. Camille’s childhood home was filled with New
Orleans music, and memories. Once, she “beheld my father playing an accompaniment in doublestops
on his violin to a most attractive jolly little tune ‘Suzanne, Belle Femme.’” Although her father
also sang, “the sole performer in this interesting picture was my great-grandmother who, with a
brightly colored tignon tied neatly around her head, made graceful play with a madras handkerchief...
while she danced gaily up and down.” She related this story in her Oberlin College Master’s
thesis on Creole folk music. After receiving a degree in 1916, she taught music with her father.
In February of 1917, Camille Nickerson organized the B Sharp Music Club for her advanced students
to explore “the wider field of present day musical thought and cultivate a finer musical taste.”
By 1921, the club had joined the National Association of Negro Musicians (which Camille would later
serve as president) and admitted male members. The club’s aims were to encourage love and appreciation
of “traditional and original Negro music,” encourage musicians and music education through
BIOGRAPHIES
101

scholarships, and “sponsor such activities as will extend the influence of music as a necessary and
inspiring element in the life of the people.”
Camille Nickerson also studied at Juilliard, and was awarded a Rosenwald research grant. She
ultimately moved to Washington, D.C. and joined the faculty of Howard University, where she
taught until 1962.
—Carolyn G. Kolb
For further reading see Anne Key Simpson, “Camille Lucie Nickerson, ‘The Louisiana Lady,’” Louisiana History: The
Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association Vol. 36, No. 4 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 431-451.
Collins, Peter “Camille Nickerson” knowlouisiana.org Encyclopedia of Louisiana. Ed. David Johnson. Louisiana
Endowment for the Humanities, 8 Aug 2013. Web. 1 Aug 2017.
R ICHARD K OCH (1889-1971) AND
S AMUEL W ILSON, JR . (1911-1993)
Above: Cammie Nickerson.
FROM THE VINING FAMILY PAPERS, AMISTAD
RESEARCH CENTER.
Bottom: Richard Koch.
COURTESY OF KOCH AND WILSON, ARCHITECTS.
Practically everyone in New Orleans who is a preservationist today can trace their civic lineage to
architects Richard Koch or Samuel Wilson, Jr. 1 Informed by enlightened city planning, Koch early on
saw the beauty and utility of the original buildings in the French Quarter when others saw disposable
slums. With partners Charles Rice Armstrong and later Samuel Wilson, Jr., Koch spent decades studying
and restoring New Orleans’ most treasured landmarks. Among public buildings his firm worked on
were Le Petit Théatre, the Pontalba Buildings, the Merieult House (Historic New Orleans Collection),
Gallier House, Beauregard-Keyes house, Hermann-Grima House, and the Cabildo. Outside of New
Orleans, the firm restored Shadows-on-the- Teche,
Oak Alley, Whitney, Evergreen, and Home Place
Plantations, as well as historic buildings in Natchez,
Biloxi, and other southern sites.
Koch graduated from Tulane University in
1910 and spent two years in Paris. Returning to
New Orelans in 1916, he became a partner with
Armstrong (1888-1947) forming the architectural
firm of Armstrong and Koch until 1933. Their
philosophy was to employ adaptive reuse, a practice
that conserved both buildings and the spaces
they occupied. Koch used photography to document
existing conditions and imply what they
could become, demonstrating the necessity for
legal protections for the French Quarter. A campaign
of over ten years finally resulted in a 1936
state constitutional amendment authorizing the
City of New Orleans to create the Vieux Carré
Commission, accomplished by ordinance on
March 3, 1937. The Vieux Carré Commission
tightly regulates construction and destruction in the Quarter, and after Charleston, was the second
such regulatory body in the United States. From 1944 to 1954, Koch served on the Vieux Carré
Commission, establishing design guidelines with every decision.
Koch was a founding member of the Arts and Crafts Club in 1921, president of the local chapter
of the American Institute of Architects in 1930-1931, served on the City Park Improvement
Association from 1930-1940, and was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Delgado Museum
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
102

of Art.1 His architectural work made him the logical candidate to become the director of the Work
Projects Administration Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) in Louisiana, a federal program
designed to employ those in the architectural trades during the Great Depression of the
1930s. In that capacity, he traveled around Louisiana photographing historic buildings, from great
plantation houses to Creole cottages and slave quarters. One of those employed in the project was
Samuel Wilson, Jr., a Tulane School of Architecture graduate who had also spent time in Paris.
In 1955, Wilson became Koch’s partner, creating the well-known firm of Koch and Wilson,
Architects. During the two decades leading the firm after Koch’s death in 1971, Sam Wilson
became the leading figure in New Orleans restoration architecture and colonial scholarship. He
authored almost two hundred books and articles dealing with Louisiana architecture, and taught
Louisiana Architecture at popular Tulane University classes. Wilson co-founded the Louisiana
Landmarks Society and was its first president. He pioneered the “Vieux Carre Survey,” and served
as principal historian for the eight-volume Vieux Carré Demonstration Study. He died in 1993.
1 I wish to acknowledge the valuable assistance of Mr. John Geiser on this profile.
E DITH R OSENWALD S TERN (1895-1980) AND
E DGAR B LOOM S TERN (1886-1959)
As wealthy members of the New Orleans Jewish community, Edgar and Edith Stern could have led
merely comfortable lives— he as a real estate developer and pioneer in television (founding WDSU
in 1948) and she as a Sears heiress doing charity work. But they chose to lead lives of civic and cultural
engagement, both essentially founding schools. Edith co-founded Newcomb Nursery School in
1926 and Metairie Park Country Day School in 1929; Edgar obtained the funding for establishing
Dillard University in 1930. They were political reformers
who cared deeply about social justice. And they shaped
the cultural landscape of the city by their commitment to
the arts and historic preservation.
Edith Rosenwald Stern and Edgar Bloom Stern both
came from families that valued philanthropy and civic
activism. Edgar’s father Maurice Stern, a German Jewish
immigrant who acquired prodigious wealth as a cotton
factor, served on the Orleans Parish School Board as well
on the boards of Touro Infirmary and Temple Sinai. Edith
Stern’s father Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears and
Roebuck in Chicago, supported the construction of 5,000
schools for African-American children in the rural South
through his Julius Rosenwald Fund.
The Sterns believed in human dignity in a city in
which race is always an issue. Concerned about the lack
of housing for returning black veterans after World War
II, Edgar developed Pontchartrain Park, the first African-
American subdivision in the city. He also guided the nascent African-American Dillard University
as board president where he continued to serve for thirty years, earning The Times-Picayune Loving
Cup for his efforts. In 1949, Edith founded the Voters’ Registration League, a women’s good government
group that purged the voting rolls of spurious (dead) voters, and registered African–
American voters. At the same time Edgar served as Chairman of the Mayor’s Advisory Council
under reform mayor de Lesseps Morrison.
Above: Edith Stern.
COURTESY OF LONGUE VUE HOUSE AND GARDENS.
Left: Edgar Stern.
COURTESY OF LONGUE VUE HOUSE AND GARDENS.
BIOGRAPHIES
103

Edith donated a large part of her modern art collection to the New Orleans Museum of Art and
the family foundation eventually added an auditorium annex there. She had modernist views on
education—both Newcomb Nursery and Country Day were founded as “progressive schools” which
sought to educate the whole child without traditional “rote” learning.
Possibly the most noteworthy accomplishment of the next generation was in the 1960s when
Edgar Stern, Jr., committed the Stern Family Fund toward blocking the proposed construction of
a River Front Expressway that would have severed the French Quarter from the Mississippi River.
The largess of the Stern Fund allowed for preservationists to mount a spirited campaign and win
at a time when most cities were bulldozing old buildings in the name of progress.
Edgar Stern died in 1959 and did not live to see Edith honored by both secular and religious
organizations. After receiving the Loving Cup in 1964 she was awarded the Saint Mary’s Dominican
College Medal in 1968; the Hanna G. Solomon Award at the Jewish Community Center in 1972;
and the Benemerenti Medal from the Archdiocese of New Orleans in 1977. Her dedication to
human dignity transcended all groups and faiths.
—Howard Hunter
A LTON
O CHSNER
(1896-1981)
Edward William Alton Ochsner.
DR. ALTON OCHSNER, COURTESY OF OCHSNER HEALTH
SYSTEM ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS.
World renowned thoracic specialist Alton Ochsner was the guiding surgeon among a group of five
physicians who in 1942 founded the Ochsner Clinic, 1 today the world-renowned Ochsner Health
Systems. Later in life, Ochsner would also lead a national movement to educate the public about the
hazards of smoking tobacco. The first Ochsner Clinic opened on Prytania Street near Touro Hospital
with nineteen physicians on staff. 2 At the time, group practice was rare in New Orleans, and somewhat
controversial. Until then doctors had practiced solo, made house calls, or served as hospital physicians
or faculty members of Tulane University Medical School. Famously, the decision to form a joint practice
led some competing doctors to leave bags of forty silver dimes on each founder’s doorstep.
Ochsner Clinic grew rapidly, within fifteen years opening its permanent campus in Jefferson
Parish just beyond the borders of New Orleans. Its practicing hospital was a former army camp
near the Mississippi River levee and Huey P. Long Bridge. At the clinic, Ochsner left management
to others, remaining until his death a voice of reason and cooperation in the medical field. His reputation
as a surgeon by the age of forty-five made him the natural leader of the new clinic, but he
had already achieved some national fame with his work linking tobacco smoking with lung cancer.
Ochsner was a Midwesterner who grew up in South Dakota in a close knit family. He graduated
from the local university and, as his physician cousin A. J. Ochsner recommended, attended
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. After his graduation in 1920, he took a
position in Chicago with his cousin. A. J. Ochsner financed two years of study for him in Europe,
after which Alton joined the University of Wisconsin staff. In 1927, the chairmanship of Tulane
University’s Surgery Department opened up following the retirement of Rudolph Matas (q.v.). A fellow
student from St. Louis recommended Ochsner, who won the resulting appointment.
Dr. Ochsner made his reputation practicing at the fabled Charity Hospital in New Orleans while
also serving as a Tulane Medical School faculty member. There he also researched and wrote. In
cooperation with Dr. Michael DeBakey, already well known and within a decade to be in Houston,
Dr. Ochsner published a startling paper in the journal Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics. This 1939
article concluded, “In our opinion the increase in smoking with the universal custom of inhaling
is probably a responsible factor [for lung cancer], as the inhaled smoke, constantly repeated over
a long period of time, undoubtedly is a source of chronic irritation to the bronchial mucosa.” The
nation’s anti-smoking campaign was born.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
104

By the end of World War II Ochsner Clinic’s success was assured, but the availability of hospital
beds was not. A surplus of veterans’ hospitals after the war enabled the partnership to purchase a
facility facing the Mississippi River known as Camp Plauché. Guided by counsel J. Blanc Monroe,
the steering board decided that a non-profit foundation would develop and operate the hospital.
This enabled the Alton Ochsner Medical Foundation, chartered in 1944, first to operate at Camp
Plauché and then to build its new permanent facility facing Jefferson Highway near Deckbar Avenue.
Over the next twenty years Ochsner Clinic and Hospital solidified its position as the leading
medical center in New Orleans. In time, one of the rules Dr. Ochsner had accepted for the clinic
required his cessation of surgery in 1967 at age seventy. When Medical Director Dr. Merrill Hines
delivered the news, Ochsner protested. A few weeks later he stepped down, putting the Ochsner
Hospital ahead of Ochsner the person. 3
Dr. Ochsner survived his first wife Isabelle by thirteen years and was survived by his second
wife Jane Kellogg Sturdy Ochsner; three sons, Dr. Alton Ochsner, Jr., Dr. John L. Ochsner, and Dr.
Mims G. Ochsner, and a daughter Mrs. John Mann.
1 The five founders were Alton Ochsner (Surgery), Guy Alvin Caldwell (Orthopedics), Edgar Burns (Urology), Francis E.
LeJeune (Ear, Nose and Throat), and Curtis Tyrone (Obstetrics and Gynecology).
2 Alton Ochsner, Michael E. DeBakey, Rudolph Matas (consultant), Mims Gage, Neal Owens (consultant), and Dean
Echols (consultant, Thomas Findley, Samuel B. Nadler, John H. Musser (consultant), Julius Wilson (consultant), Edgar
H. Little, Guy Caldwell, Harry D. Morris, Curtis Tyrone, John C. Weed, Edgar Burns, Willoughby E. Kittredge, Francis
E. LeJeune, Philip J. Bayon.
3 For additional reading see John Wilds. Ochsner’s: An Informal History of the South’s Largest Private Medical Center. Baton
Rouge: LSU Press, 1985.
S IDNEY
B ECHET
(1897-1959)
Sidney Bechet, like Louis Armstrong (q.v.), exploded out of New Orleans’ early twentieth century
working class, both going on to become world figures in music. Innumerable tourists have come to
New Orleans solely to find and be part of what they can see was the most fertile era in American
musical traditions. In 1980, folklorist Alan Lomax spoke to an assemblage of the earliest historians
of recorded jazz at Tulane University. “We represent the first wave of criticism of an American musical
tradition… everybody here can tell stories about how little interest there’s been in learning about
how the first world musical language was invented in its capital here in New Orleans.” 1 Bechet initiated
the language of New Orleans-style collective improvisation. New Orleans bands “created an
atmosphere of sensation in Chicago and New York during World War I, giving Americans outside
of the Crescent City their first sustained taste of jazz, surpassed only by two… New Orleans groups,
King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings…. 2
Bechet’s parents, the father a shoe maker, were both musically oriented and committed to their family.
Before Sidney was six, his siblings had organized a brass band. At a young age, he borrowed a clarinet
and began practicing. He came to the attention of pioneering musicians Lorenzo Tio, Big Eye Louis
Nelson, and George Baquet. Just as Armstrong switched from the cornet to the trumpet, Bechet
switched from the clarinet to the alto-saxophone, on which he became a dominant player wherever he
blew notes. As Martin Williams has pointed out in Jazz Masters of New Orleans, “It is important to
remember... that Bechet was then not just a kid in the opinion of New Orleans players. While still in
his teens, he was acknowledged as one of the best clarinetists in the city—to many the best.” 3
In the summer of 1917 Bechet made the transition from New Orleans to the prosperous fields
of Chicago, recently enriched by thousands of blacks fleeing Southern segregation. He played with
Sidney Bechet.
HOGAN JAZZ ARCHIVES, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
BIOGRAPHIES
105

Lawrence Duhe’s band at the De Luxe Café, with Freddie Keppard’s band at the Dreamland and
with King Oliver.
In 1919, Bechet joined Will Marion Cook’s orchestra for several years touring Europe. Back in
the U.S., Bechet made his recording debut in 1923 with Clarence Williams and during the next
two years he appeared on records backing blues singers. However, from 1925-1929 Bechet was
overseas, traveling as far as Russia.
The next three decades were spent mostly in Europe, with spells of unemployment in the United
States. In 1945, he was briefly reunited with Louis Armstrong at the Jazz Foundation Concert in New
Orleans, and soon after he made several sides for the Blue Note label with another famous New Orleans
trumpeter, Bunk Johnson. 4
1 Bruce Boyd Raeburn, New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2012), 39.
2 Raeburn, 213-4.
3 See also Rhodes Spedale, Jr., A Guide to Jazz in New Orleans (New Orleans: Hope Publications, 1984), 46.
4 For further reading Sidney Bechet’s memoirs Treat It Gentle:An Autobiography and John Chilton, The Wizard of Jazz.
Thanks also to Information from websites of Scott Yanow, http://scottyanow.com/.
W ALTER
H ERBERT
(1898-1975)
Walter Herbert.
NEW ORLEANS OPERA ASSOCIATION ARCHIVES, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, LOYOLA UNIVERSITY.
Classical music conductor and opera impresario
Walter Herbert was the guiding light of the twentieth
century’s New Orleans Opera Association, which
resurrected the local opera after its near demise. He
gave continuity to the staging and structure of opera
during his ten-year management, which tragically
ended in dissension. Even so, the New Orleans
Opera organization as created by Herbert lives on,
though seldom comfortably.
German-born Herbert began his conducting
career in Switzerland in 1925 after studying under
composer Arnold Schonberg in Vienna. A career
with the Volksoper in Vienna during the 1930s
ended when the Germans took over Austria in 1938.
By then Herbert was also acclaimed as a bridge player,
participating and winning the world championship
on Italy’s team. Prior to the coming of World
War II he left Europe and was soon in the United
States. From 1940-1943 he was director of Opera in
English for the San Francisco Opera.
In autumn 1943 the fledgling New Orleans Opera
Association named Herbert its first general director, a
position he retained until 1954. His European background had familiarized him with a rich selection of
works that tended to be overlooked in the French Opera tradition. During Herbert’s tenure he staged
166 performances of thirty-nine operas by twenty-four composers. These included first New Orleans
performances of The Old Maid and the Thief by Gian Carlo Menotti, The Abduction from the Seraglio by
Wolfgang A. Mozart, Petrouchka by Igor Stravinsky, Salome by Richard Strauss, and Der Rosenkavalier by
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
106

Richard Strauss. 1 The N. O. Opera’s performance of The Abduction actually preceded the first Met’s performance.
Herbert also believed in cooperation among opera lovers. He instituted a cooperative agreement
with a fledgling company in Shreveport to share singers, chorus, and sets.
In 1954, the Opera Board dismissed Herbert, an apparent act of shortsightedness that was to benefit
Houston. There he created what has become the great Houston Grand Opera. While in Houston
he also helped Sister of the Blessed Sacrament M. Elise Sisson found Opera/South in Jackson,
Mississippi, a primarily African/American company. He remained in Houston until 1972 when he
departed for and founded the San Diego Opera. He married the Chorus Director Madeleine Beckhard.
Truly, Walter Herbert was a Johnny Appleseed of opera.
1 My thanks to Jack Belsom for sharing notes from his upcoming book on the New Orleans Opera.
A.P. TUREAUD
(1899-1972)
The only African-American practicing attorney in Louisiana for a number of years, Alexander
Pierre Tureaud led the legal challenges that overturned segregation in New Orleans. During his long
career, he represented the NAACP in voting matters; overcame efforts by the state legislature to preserve
school segregation, and generally litigated the cases that brought down local segregation.
A New Orleans Creole, Tureaud fled the city in his youth. He moved to Chicago as a teenager,
working as a laborer in a railyard. In New York he worked briefly as a dishwasher. Moving to
Washington, D.C. he fell into his calling as junior clerk in the library of the United States
Department of Justice. There he was able to enroll in the law school of Howard University,
graduating in 1925. Tureaud returned to New Orleans the following year when the dean of
black politicians, Walter Cohen (q.v.), hired him to work for the Comptroller of Customs at
the Port of New Orleans. Five years later he married Lucille Dejoie (q.v.), equally well connected
in the Creole community.
In 1940, the NAACP in New Orleans summoned the legendary litigator Thurgood
Marshall to represent it in the case Joseph P. McKelpin v. Orleans Parish School Board. African
American teachers from the segregated public school system had filed the suit against the
school board for salaries equal to their white counterparts. At that time Marshall retained
Tureaud as local counsel on the case. On September 1, 1942, the case was settled out of court.
Tureaud resigned his post at the Customs Office and entered private practice. For the next
thirty years, he represented plaintiffs on dozens of significant cases that gradually chipped
away at the institution of segregation in New Orleans and Louisiana. The Louisiana State
University in Baton Rouge was one of his principal targets. In three cases, notably Payne v.
LSU, he forced LSU to admit African-Americans.
From the earliest days the Civil Rights movement had been concerned about the right to
vote. In 1952, Tureaud argued a suit to eliminate local hindrances to voting, a suit brought
by the NAACP known as Edward Hall v. T.J. Nagel, Registrar of Voters. It was a great victory.
The famous case of Brown v. Board of Education in Arkansas led to successor suits. Federal District
Judge J. Skelly Wright, (q.v.) quashed the Legislature’s attempt to preserve segregation by state law
in Earl Benjamin Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board, a suit argued by Tureaud.
Over the decade Tureaud’s many petitions following this decision led directly to the desegregation
of New Orleans Public Schools. Towards the end of the 1950s he became involved in the issue
of segregation in places of public accommodation. The arrest of three students in Baton Rouge
sparked the sit-in movement beginning in 1959. Tureaud and the NAACP developed the case of
Garner v. Louisiana that the U. S. Supreme Court decided in 1961 in favor of the students. The
A.P. Tureaud.
PHOTO OF SHELEEN P. JONES PORTRAIT STATUE, TAKEN BY
CAROLYN KOLB.
BIOGRAPHIES
107

decision went a long way towards legitimizing the sit-in movement. Through the 1960s Tureaud
took on city hall, bringing suits to desegregate the local parks, buses, and airport.
Tureaud retired in 1971 and died in New Orleans two years later. In his honor, London Ave., a
thoroughfare in New Orleans, was renamed A.P. Tureaud Ave. Marie C. Couvent (q.v.) School at
2021 Pauger Street was renamed after him in 1999. His statue by Sheleen Jones was dedicated in
1997 at the A. P. Tureaud Civil Rights Memorial Park. Tureaud’s papers are at the Amistad Research
Center in New Orleans.
L OUIS
A RMSTRONG
(1901-1971)
Louis Armstrong.
JULES CAHN COLLECTION AT THE HISTORIC NEW
ORLEANS COLLECTION, 2000.78.1.1546, USED WITH
PERMISSION OF THE LOUIS ARMSTRONG EDUCATIONAL
FOUNDATION OF NEWARK, NEW JERSEY, EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR JACKIE HARRIS, AND BOARD OF DIRECTORS.
New Orleans always claimed Louis Armstrong, and Armstrong always remained attached to New
Orleans. Never forgetting his roots, Armstrong put his native city into the hearts of people around the
world. The city, in response, re-named its municipal airport after him, along with a local park
where his statue greets visitors.
Armstrong’s upbringing in the city in the first two decades of the twentieth century parallels
the lives of much of its contemporary poor. His father abandoned his mother, whereupon
his mother apparently left him to his grandmother. In time a remarkable city orphanage took
him in, introduced him to music, and generated his storied career. Leaving the “Colored
Waif’s Home” at the age of fourteen, Armstrong went to work hauling coal. When evenings
came, he played the cornet given him at the orphanage, attracting the attention of the local
bar crowd. At the time, these were specifically the denizens of Storyville, the red light district
converted eventually into a local housing project. Legendary cornet player Joe “King” Oliver
took an interest in Louis, providing occasional jobs and pointers on playing. In 1918, Louis
replaced Oliver in the Kid Ory band, the city’s most popular. In the summers Armstrong
began playing Mississippi riverboats, where he met other nationally-famous players and his
hot sound matched the weather.
Making his career in Chicago, “King” Oliver in 1922 summoned Louis to his “Creole Jazz
Band.” Again Louis gradually surpassed Oliver, making his first recording the following year.
In the Chicago of the late Nineteen Twenties, Louis earned his reputation. The illustrated
website biography.com has a succinct audio and verbal description of his achievements there:
From 1925 to 1928, Armstrong made more than 60 records with the “Hot Five” and, later,
the “Hot Seven.” Today, these are generally regarded as the most important and influential recordings
in jazz history; on these records, Armstrong’s virtuoso brilliance helped transform jazz from an
ensemble music to a soloist’s art. His stop-time solos on numbers like Cornet Chop Suey and Potato
Head Blues changed jazz history, featuring daring rhythmic choices, swinging phrasing and incredible
high notes. He also began singing on these recordings, popularizing wordless “scat singing” with his
hugely popular vocal on 1926’s Heebie Jeebies.” 1
During the 1930s Armstrong began performing extensively in Europe, a career cut short by a
swollen lip. After World War II he went back to recording and traveling, to which he added movies
and radio performances. Of Armstrong’s four wives, his first is remembered for persuading him to
leave Oliver and move to the Fletcher Henderson band in New York City. That lasted only a year,
although Armstrong’s music transformed that ensemble. His fourth wife persuaded him to purchase
a home in New York City right after World War II, and that is where Armstrong spent his final
almost three decades. Though Armstrong’s home in Queens New York is a National Historic
Landmark, his roots in New Orleans were the incubation of his career.
1 http://www.biography.com/people/louis-armstrong-9188912.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
108

A LBERT
W. D ENT
(1904-1987)
The administrative and personal qualities of Albert W. Dent made a New Orleans hospital and
university successful in a difficult era for African-Americans in the South. The founding director of
New Orleans’ Flint-Goodridge Hospital, Dent began his work in 1932 as a twenty-seven year old
Morehouse College graduate. He recruited staff from among the city’s thirty-five licensed African-
American physicians who had formerly no hospital or internships through which to practice. 1
While black physicians received training, Dent, supported by philanthropist Edgar B. Stern (q.v.)
as chairman of the hospital board, invited experienced white physicians to head departments temporarily
and share their skills.
In 1936, Dent raised the funds to hold a summer internship for African-American doctors from
across the South. Doctors from Tulane and Charity Hospitals offered an intense two-week course
with classes at Touro, Tulane and Flint-Goodridge. Dent later remarked that it was the first time
African-American doctors had gone into Touro and Tulane Medical Schools. Thanks to these
efforts, by the end of the 1930s African-Americans headed all of the departments at Flint-
Goodridge Hospital. The hospital achieved national accreditation, owing largely to Dent’s effective
leadership. His resonant voice coming from an imposing six-foot frame gave his practical leadership
authority. Dent’s work at newly-founded Flint-Goodridge was so effective that in 1940 he was
recruited as the second president of newly-founded Dillard University. 2
Dent’s contributions to New Orleans were manifold. For the two decades before 1970, at a time
when there were no black city-wide officials, 3 he was the most influential black leader in New
Orleans. He persuaded Mayor deLesseps Morrison to permit blacks to take the civil service examination
in 1945. He then succeeded in persuading the library board to permit blacks into the main
public library. When he joined the board of the New Orleans Boy Scouts he did so on the condition
that all troops drop segregation. In 1960, he received the Silver Beaver Award from the local
Scouting Council for distinguished service to youth. In 1977, Albert Dent received the Times-
Picayune Loving Cup for his achievements at Dillard.
Albert W. Dent.
DENT FAMILY PAPERS, AMISTAD RESEARCH CENTER.
1 Joe M. Richardson, “Albert W. Dent: A Black New Orleans Hospital and University Administrator,” Louisiana History 37
(Summer, 1996): 309-323.
2 Five presidents have succeeded Dr. Dent. Under the sixth president, Dr. Marvalene Hughes, Dillard successfully survived
Katrina and introduced a four college organization. Enrollment today is about 1300.
3 The Times-Picayune, February 13, 1984.
M ARION A BRAMSON (1905-1965)
Marion Pfeifer Abramson made her mark on the civic life of New Orleans as an educator,
activist, and pioneer in public television. She organized the Independent Women’s Organization
and led “get out the vote” drives. She became an active member of the League of Women Voters
and then president of the New Orleans Civic Council.
Born in New York City in 1905, Abramson grew up in New Orleans. She attended Isidore
Newman School and in 1925 graduated from Sophie Newcomb College. She was editor of the
Newcomb/Tulane Hullabaloo student newspaper and ghost-wrote newspaper columns for football
tight end Jerry Dalrymple (“My End of It”— which several times appeared in the Saturday Evening
Post) and Tulane half back Don Zimmerman’s (“Back Talk”).
Marion landed her first employment after college as an assistant to physicians researching the
hematology of pregnant women. She then moved on to tutoring high school students in literature
BIOGRAPHIES
109

Above: Marion Abramson.
COURTESY OF THE FAMILY.
Below: John Minor Wisdom.
COURTESY OF THE WISDOM FAMILY AND HEIRS OF
PHOTOGRAPHER H.J."PAT" PATTERSON.
and languages. With organizational politics calling after World War II, Marion became a member
of the national board of the American Association of University Women and later served as president
of the New Orleans chapter. Though a member of the Independent Women’s Organization for
many years, in 1946 she began a career on the Orleans Parish Democratic Executive Committee.
During the 1950s, Marion began planning for an educational television station for New Orleans.
She brought her project to fruition on October 23, 1957, when National Educational Television
station WYES opened with Abramson as chairperson of the board of directors of the Greater New
Orleans Educational Television Association. WYES-TV signed on the air on April 1, 1957, as the
twelfth educational television station in the nation. In 1970, the station swapped frequency allocations
with another local station, thus becoming Channel 12. In recognition of her educational
services, the Orleans Parish School Board named its large New Orleans East high school for her.
Demolished by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the school reopened in 2007 as Abramson Science and
Technology Charter School.
In 1925, Marion married Louis Abramson Jr. Their only child, Lucie Lee, grew up to follow her
mother in service to the community.
J OHN M INOR W ISDOM
(1905-1999)
John Minor Wisdom, a brilliant and powerful lawyer, Republican, and member of New Orleans
society was one of the two federal judges who carried through the desegregation of New Orleans.
The first was J. Skelly Wright (q.v.) at the District Court, followed by Judge Wisdom at the Federal
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In his early career as a lawyer of the 1950s, Wisdom represented supermarket owner and Public
Service Commissioner John Schwegmann (q.v.) in a case against Louisiana’s price fixing laws.
When the U. S. Supreme Court upheld Schwegmann’s suit, Wisdom came to the attention of
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who appointed him to the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit of
Appeals. 1 His early years on the Fifth Circuit Court saw a steadily increasing caseload that demonstrated
the lamentable pace of school integration and continuing discriminatory jury selection, difficult
voter registration requirements, and universities determined to remain all white. In redressing
these issues, Wisdom claimed that his decisions were a product of the education he received
while on the bench, not of anything he knew before he joined the Court.
Wisdom’s career really began in 1962 when he ruled in favor of James Meredith, an African-American
whom the University of Mississippi had refused to admit. Subsequent decisions invalidated Louisiana’s
voter registration and jury selection laws. In the 1960s Wisdom wrote several decisions forcing school
boards to speed up their desegregation. As a result of the changes during those decades, “the
Constitution is both color-blind and color-conscious,” Judge Wisdom said in a 1987 forum at Tulane
University. “It is color-blind to prevent discrimination, and it is color-conscious to correct past discrimination.”
Like Judge Wright he felt the burden of past discrimination demanded affirmative action.
Born and raised in New Orleans, Wisdom attended Isidore Newman School and Tulane Law
School. His father had participated in the Mechanics Institute riot of 1874 against black political
participation, a century before Wright’s famous decisions. John Minor Wisdom married Bonnie
Mathews, an attractive and intelligent plantation girl and graduate of Newcomb College. The couple
resided in a prominent mansion on First Street in the city’s Garden District. Near the end of
Wisdom’s career President William Clinton awarded Wisdom the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
the country’s highest civilian honor.
1 Obituary John Minor Wisdom in The Times-Picayune, May 16, 1999.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
110

C HINK
H ENRY
(1910-1974)
Clarence “Chink” Henry spent his working life on the docks of New Orleans. An African-
American, he was an important mid-twentieth century force in the International Longshoremen’s
Union, with a legacy of pride and community involvement. “Chink” Henry started working on the
docks in 1927 and became president of the African-American Local 1419 in 1954.
The port depended on the longshoremen who stowed or unloaded cargo. Before container ships
and their successors, the local cargo was mainly “break bulk.” Bales of cotton, stalks of bananas,
bags of coffee beans and sugar: muscle power filled ships’ holds and workers’ pockets. New
Orleans longshoremen, from before World War II into the 1970s, were well paid and respected in
their own communities.
After the Civil War, newly freed African-American and white waterfront workers marched
together for higher wages. Although they worked together during 1892 and 1907 actions, for most
of the twentieth century there were two longshoremen union locals, racially divided. Henry’s Local
1419 was larger than the white local. Besides presiding over his membership, Henry oversaw their
community involvement. The I.L.A. Union Hall at 2700 South Claiborne Avenue was built by
Local 1419 at a cost of $500,000. New Orleans architects Laurence and Saunders designed the
building in 1959. The building, now gone, was clad in green marble with white markings and had
an elaborate truss system on its top that resembled the super structure of a cargo ship.
The African-American longshoremen felt a special responsibility to their community. Their
extensive membership boasted both family and friendly ties throughout the city. Henry’s grand
union hall hosted political activities, civil rights organizations (including the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference), and provided a venue for groups unable to find or afford other places in
the city: gay Mardi Gras balls and African-American high school proms were welcomed.
“Chink” Henry died in 1974 after a brief illness. By then he was part of the city’s establishment and
had been the first African-American appointed to what was then called the Domed Stadium
Commission. From his election as president of Local 1419 in 1954, he won every subsequent election
and was serving his Local 1419 at the time of his death. In 1980, U.S. District Court Judge Frederick
J. R. Heebe ordered the merger of the white and black ILA Local unions. He is memorialized by the
“Chink” Henry Truckway, the heavily trafficked truck route behind the flood walls along the
Mississippi River docks.
—Carolyn G. Kolb
Troy (Chink) Henry.
COURTESY OF HIS SON, TROY HENRY.
For further reading see Dave Well and Jim Stodder, “Short History of New Orleans Dockworkers,” Radical America,
January-February, 1976., Philip S. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619-1981. Chicago: Haymarket Books,
2017 edition reprint.
Eric Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics, 1863-1923. New York: Oxford University Press,
1991. The Times-Picayune, May 2, 1974; obituary, May 3, 1974.
New Orleans Item, June 20, 1945.
J. SKELLY W RIGHT
(1911-1988)
United States District Court Judge James Skelly Wright issued the orders that integrated much of New
Orleans, notably the public schools. His reward was opprobrium from a large part of the white community,
but his orders led to the integration of the city’s public institutions. Besides opposing segregation, he
defended consumers, labor unions, and in the case of the Pentagon Papers, freedom of the press.
BIOGRAPHIES
111

J. Skully Wright.
COURTESY OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF THE DISTRICT
OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT.
Judge Wright was born and raised in New Orleans, attending public schools and Loyola
University Law School. After service in World War II, he received an appointment from President
Harry Truman as U.S. Attorney in New Orleans, and the following year as a federal district judge.
He began his career in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana at the
age of thirty-eight, the youngest on the federal bench.
The historic 1954 Brown vs Board of Education case prompted Wright to consider favorably suits
brought by African-American lawyers such as A. P. Tureaud (q.v.) to integrate the city’s public schools.
Although his 1960 decision in favor of integration led to threats on his life, his continuing decisions integrated
LSU and Tulane University, New Orleans City Park, and the Regional Transit Authority System.
Judge Wright broadened the definition of discrimination to include ‘’de facto’’ conditions—segregation
existing largely because of residential patterns. ‘’Racially and socially homogeneous
schools,” he wrote, “damage the minds and spirits of all the children who attend them—the Negro,
the white, the poor and the affluent—and block the attainment of the broader goals of democratic
education, whether the segregation occurs by law or by fact.’’ 1 This principle led to busing students
to achieve integration, a practice with only a limited success. While in Louisiana Judge Wright
struck down more than one hundred laws designed to foster segregation.
In 1961 President John F. Kennedy appointed Wright to the Federal Court of Appeals in
Washington, D.C., a position he held for more than two decades. He died of cancer in Washington
in 1988. 2 In his obituary the New York Times reported that New Orleans-born Skelly Wright had
been considered one of the most liberal judges in the federal court system.
1 New York Times, August 8, 1988.
2 For further reading see James D. Wilson. “A Biographical Sketch: J. Skelly Wright.” Louisiana History 38 (1997): 100.
O WEN B RENNAN (1911-1955)
AND F AMILY
Owen Brennan founded a dynasty of New Orleans restaurateurs who have become central to the
New Orleans food and tourist industry. Shocked at his untimely death in 1955 when Brennan’s Royal
Street restaurant was under interior construction, his siblings and direct and collateral descendants carried
on his name. Today they operate restaurants from City Park to Canal Street and beyond. Owing
in considerable part to the leadership of the Brennan family, dining in New Orleans over the course of
the twentieth century grew into a major segment of the New Orleans economy. The Brennan’s dining
experience became famous not only at their flagship restaurant “Brennan’s” on Royal Street, but also at
Commander’s Palace, where important chefs Paul Prudhomme (q.v.), Emeril Lagasse, and Frank
Brigsten rose to stardom. These innovators built upon the paths cleared by earlier chefs, such as Louis
Boudro, Antoine Alciatore and Elizabeth Begué. In their time New Orleans food and hospitality began
to compete with the city’s industry, the port of New Orleans.
Owen Brennan launched his career as a tavern keeper at the storied Old Absinthe House at Bourbon
and Bienville Streets. There he kept late hours, attracting both locals and travelers with his gregarious
personality and a wise decision to hire the gifted jazz pianist Wally “Fats” Pichon. It was not long before
Brennan—eyeing the sleepy and run-down Vieux Carré Restaurant across the street, had purchased
that establishment. He then hired his eighteen-year-old sister Ella to manage operations while he saw
to hospitality (with historic results). From a decidedly modest start at the Vieux Carré the Brennans
made a profit, soon taking on a larger venue, the former Patio Royale at 417 Bourbon. Along with being
a pioneering restaurant owner, Owen Brennan was also the founding father of the Krewe of Bacchus,
which he began to as early as 1949. With his new Royal Street restaurant under construction in mid
1955, however, he died suddenly at the age of forty.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
112

With her siblings and nephews, Ella Brennan carried on. They invented the idea of “Breakfast
at Brennan’s,” a concept that moved New Orleanians to more ambitious dining at any part of the
day. With breakfast came another concept, the “Eye Opener,” or a mixed drink early in the day.
After a family schism, Ella Brennan in 1974 moved on to Commander’s Palace, leaving her
nephews to operate Brennan’s and eventually making Commander’s the premier uptown restaurant
dedicated to the best of food, cocktails, and service. Cousins Ti Adelaide Martin and Lally Brennan
have carried on the family tradition of innovation, introducing the idea of training their bartenders
in the best techniques of the business. Commander’s Palace thus seized an early role in the crafts
cocktail movement of the twenty-first century. 1 Nephew Ralph Brennan operates three famous
restaurants today while Owen’s brother Dickie and his family have their own popular lines of
restaurants and steakhouses.
1 Elizabeth M. Williams, New Orleans: A Food Biography (New York: Altamira Press, 2013), 110-11; Elizabeth M. Williams
& Chris McMillian, Lift Your Spirits: A Celebratory History of Cocktail Culture in New Orleans (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana
State University Press, 2016), 127-9, 146-7.
M AHALIA
J ACKSON
(1911-1972)
Mahalia Jackson and Louis Armstrong joined the “great migration” from New Orleans in the
1920s, leaving New Orleans’ fertile incubators for the unlimited business opportunities of the burgeoning
city of Chicago. She grew up in the uptown Black Pearl neighborhood on Pitt Street, where
she learned to sing with the choir of the Mt. Moriah Baptist Church. Mahalia left with her great
contralto voice and her Baptist choir heritage, both of which lifted her to stardom in Chicago. But
both Jackson and Armstrong always remembered their New Orleans roots that played an
important role in their stylistic accomplishments. Both helped to identify New Orleans as the
American musical originator.
Almost immediately after arriving in Chicago in 1927 Mahalia was invited to join the Greater
Salem Baptist Church Choir and then the professional Johnson Gospel Singers. Her career solidified
when she formed a professional relationship with gospel composer Thomas A. Dorsey, who
composed “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” known as her signature song. Remarkably she refused
to switch from gospel to any other musical form. “I sing God’s music because it makes me feel
free.” Jackson added, “It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues.”
Mahalia married twice, but neither union was successful. To perform she traveled regularly
beginning in the 1930s. Following World War II she became a national success with the
William Herbert Brewster song “Move On Up a Little Higher.” In the next decade she began
singing in Europe to large enthusiastic crowds.
When the Civil Rights crusade began in the 1950s Mahalia was a major supporter and a close
friend of Dr. Martin Luther King. He and Ralph Abernathy persuaded her to sing at the Montgomery,
Al., bus boycott concert in December 1956. From then on she steadily increased her presence, most
famously at the March on Washington 1963 speech by Dr. King in which he used a phrase, “I have
a dream” suggested by Mahalia. She sang “How I Got Over” and “I Been ‘Buked and I Been Scorned.”
After Mahalia died near the end of January 1972, her remains were brought to New Orleans for
a great funeral at the Convention Center. Mayor Moon Landrieu and Governor John McKeithen
both spoke. The funeral cortege drove uptown past her Mt. Moriah Baptist Church and then to her
grave in Providence Memorial Park in Metairie. At her death Mahalia left a sizeable estate valued
in the millions. New Orleans placed her name on one of the largest public buildings in the city, the
Mahalia Jackson Center of Performing Arts.
Above: Owen Brennan.
COURTESY OF THE COMMANDERS FAMILY
OF RESTAURANTS.
Below: Mahalia Jackson.
JULES CAHN COLLECTION AT THE HISTORIC NEW
ORLEANS COLLECTION, 2000.78.1.1602.
Mahalia Jackson.
JULES CAHN COLLECTION AT THE HISTORIC NEW
ORLEANS COLLECTION, 2000.78.1.1602.
BIOGRAPHIES
113

J ACOB M ORRISON (1905-1974) AND
M ARY M EEK M ORRISON (1911-1999)
Mary Morrison.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, BEQUEST OF
THE ESTATE OF MARY MORRISON, 99-59-L.7.
For four decades, Jacob “Jake” and Mary Morrison were the most outspoken voices supporting
historic preservation in the New Orleans French Quarter. Ironically, neither was born in the city,
Jacob in New Roads, Louisiana, and Mary in Mississippi. Jacob penned the first text of Historic
Preservation Law in 1957, used by preservationists regularly since its publication. In 1938, he
drafted the charter of the Vieux Carré Property Owners, Residents and Associates, Inc. (VCPORA)
and in 1957 the charter for the Friends of the Cabildo, serving as president of both.
Mary Morrison entered politics in 1940, launching a grass-roots women’s campaign supporting
reform candidate Samuel Jones for Louisiana governor. Her
political work in 1946 subsequently led to the formation of
the Independent Women’s Organization, active today. Mary
and Jake settled in an 1829 home at 722 Ursulines Street in
the French Quarter, which they made a virtual center of historic
preservation planning. Mary followed the path set out
by her predecessor Elizabeth Thomas Werlein (1883-1946),
who had led the Louisiana League of Women Voters, founded
the “Quartier Club” to restore old French Quarter houses,
and was instrumental in the founding of the Vieux Carré
Commission. Mary co-founded the Louisiana Council for
the Vieux Carré, served on the Vieux Carré Commission,
and was consistently active in the Vieux Carré Property
Owners, Residents, and Associates. Until her very old age,
Mary Morrison penned countless letters-to-the-editor of the
dominant Times-Picayune supporting preservation causes.
Over the years, the Morrisons led opposition to the demolition of vernacular cottages, the extension
of the Quarter’s commercial zones, and the proliferation of hotels, which displaced local residents.
Appointed to a position as city attorney by his half brother Mayor de Lesseps S. Morrison, Jake became
the lead attorney in a number of landmark preservation cases, including City of New Orleans v.
Pergament 1 in which the Louisiana Supreme Court overturned a lower court finding that the Vieux
Carré Commission did not have jurisdiction over signage. His efforts laid the groundwork for other
landmark cases, especially Succession of Morris G Maher v. City of New Orleans, 2 in which the United
States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit first enunciated the doctrine of the tout ensemble in letting
stand a lower court decision that the Commission had jurisdiction to deny the demolition of an “ordinary”
shotgun on Dumaine Street. 3
In October 1974 the National Trust for Historic Preservation recognized the Morrisons’ advocacy
when it gave them the Louise DuPont Crowinshield Award, the Trust’s highest honor. That
award noted that Mary had been intimately involved for thirty years to maintain the integrity and
unique character of the Vieux Carré and that Jacob had been “in the forefront of many legal battles
to preserve the Vieux Carré and has won most of them.” 4 Jacob Morrison died two months later,
Mary outliving him by twenty-five committed years. Today, the Vieux Carré Commission
Foundation and VCPORA sponsor a biannual lecture series to commemorate their work, known as
the Jacob Haight and Mary Meek Morrison Memorial Lecture Series.
1 5 So.2d 129 (1941).
2 516 F.2d 1051. A third notable case was City of New Orleans v. Impastato in which the court agreed with the city’s
position that the Commission had jurisdiction over sides and courtyards, in this case, the courtyard of the Napoleon
House Bar).
3 222 So.2d 608 (1969).
4 Times Picayune, 3 222 So.2d 608 (1969).
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
114

A RCHBISHOP P HILIP M. HANNAN
(1913-2011)
Archbishop Philip M. Hannan served New Orleans from the aftermath of Hurricane Betsy in
1965 through Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He spent the first twenty-three years as Archbishop of
New Orleans, and the second twenty-three years until his death in service to his church and community.
Hannon oversaw and led the local Catholic Charities organization to its position as the
largest non-governmental charity in the city. In one year, his Social Apostolate program provided
over 20,000,000 pounds of free food to the poor. Under his leadership the archdiocesan newspaper
Clarion Herald became more widely read and a staple for diocese-wide news. He founded the
local Catholic public television station WLAE. He recruited Pope John Paul II to visit New
Orleans. He provided for thousands of Vietnamese refugees to settle in New Orleans in the aftermath
of the Vietnam War. He helped to found the influential parish Our Lady of Vietnam in the
eastern part of the city. He increased the scope and prestige of the local Catholic diocesan seminary,
which at this writing is training 140 men to be Catholic priests for the world-wide Church.
Hannan grew up in Depression-era Washington, D. C. Instead of going to West Point where he
was intended, he joined the seminary. He then spent three years in Rome as a seminarian.
Returning to Washington, he received his doctorate in canon law from the Catholic University of
America. When the United States entered World War II he joined and eventually became a chaplain
with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne division and parachuted into Germany. After the war he went
back to Washington, serving in various positions in the hierarchy. While there he befriended a new
Congressman, John F. Kennedy. This friendship added to Hannan’s reputation in Catholic circles.
During the 1960s the Archdiocese of Washington sent Hannan to the Second Vatican Council
where he served as press officer. Towards the end of the Council the Vatican chose him for the
newly-available position as Archbishop of New Orleans. Hannan plunged into the relatively smaller
community with all the aplomb and energy of the wide world he had experienced. He had been
in Rome at the rise of Fascism and knew Communism to be just another variety of dictatorship.
He thus shared the sentiments of Pope John Paul II, who chose to visit New Orleans in 1987 just
before Hannan’s retirement at the age of 75. After retirement, Hannan did not disappear but instead
devoted himself to his favorite programs and charities in the New Orleans area. When Katrina hit
in 2005 he was on duty at a Catholic television station. His hope was in the Word and in charity.
Hannan died in 2011 to the widespread regret of New Orleans. His body lay in state at St. Louis
Cathedral, where thousands visited to pay their last respects. He is buried in the church along with
the city’s most important benefactors.
Archbishop Phillip M.Hannan.
PHOTO BY FRANK H. METHE, III, CLARION HERALD.
H ALE
B OGGS(1914-1972) AND
L INDY B OGGS (1916-2013)
For forty-four years Hale and Lindy Claiborne Boggs successively represented New Orleans in
the United States House of Representatives. Hale Boggs served continuously from 1946 until his
untimely death in an airplane crash in Alaska twenty-seven years later. Lindy Boggs then won the
seat and served an additional eighteen years. Hale had all the qualities of the best elected officials—
love of fellow man, intelligence, lack of pretense, and that boundless energy characteristic of the
best politicians. Lindy reflected many of these qualities and added a dignity to the post that led
finally to her appointment as the United States Ambassador to the Holy See.
Both born during World War I, Hale and Lindy married in 1938. Two years later he entered
Congress for a single term, leaving to serve in the Navy during the Second World War. In 1946, he
won re-election to the position he held until his death. Though both lived in New Orleans at various
BIOGRAPHIES
115

Top: Lindy Boggs.
LOUISIANA IMAGE COLLECTION, LOUISIANA RESEARCH
COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
Above: Hale Boggs.
LOUISIANA IMAGE COLLECTION, LOUISIANA RESEARCH
COLLECTION, TULANE UNIVERSITY.
times, their occupation kept the Boggs family in Washington D. C. where they vigorously represented
New Orleans. At the time of his death, Hale had become Majority Leader of the House of
Representatives and was in line to be Speaker.
Boggs’ long career reached its pinnacle during the vibrant 1960s, beginning in 1956 with his efforts
to create the nation’s Interstate Highway program. In 1965, he opposed his region in supporting the
historic Voting Rights Act and three years later he pushed the Open Housing Act of 1968. In 1965,
when the National Football League was considering expansion, it sought an anti-trust exemption to
merge with the American Football League. Boggs secured the anti-trust exemption for the league, after
which New Orleans received its subsequent expansion team, the New Orleans Saints. In 1969, when
local and federal officials and business interests were pursuing a riverfront expressway across the
French Quarter, Boggs became one of the handful of officials who were willing to change their own
and the administration’s minds, leading to the cancellation of federal funds for the expressway.
Succeeding her husband after his death in 1972, Lindy Boggs responded knowingly to Lady Bird
Johnson’s remark that the task would be more difficult because she did not have a wife! However, she
too rose to the top of Democratic Party ranks. The first women elected to the House from Louisiana,
Lindy was also the first to chair the Democratic National Convention, a founder of the Congressional
Women’s Caucus, and finally the only woman to have a room in the Capitol named for her. One of
Lindy’s first concerns upon her election was releasing funds that President Richard Nixon had
impounded to continue rebuilding Poydras Street, along with other urban renewal projects in New
Orleans. 1 She spearheaded the creation of the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge in New Orleans
East, a vast tract of fresh and brackish marshes that was home to a number of native Louisiana animals,
birds, and plants. When Interstate 10 was planned, however, developers secured interchanges in
Eastern New Orleans in order to develop it with houses and apartments. Environmentalists succeeded
in changing that decision and the 23,000 acre Bayou Sauvage Wildlife Refuge became the largest such
refuge within an American city. Lindy subsequently sponsored the Jean Lafitte National Historic Park,
preserving a large swath of West Bank marsh and bayou. (In a curious twist the Park was subsequently
redefined to include the historic French Quarter.) Public preservation went hand in hand with private
preservation through the National Flood Insurance Program, for which Lindy was the spokesperson in
the House. Also important for the long term viability of New Orleans are the Caernarvon and Davis
Pond Freshwater Diversion Structures, which were the state’s first efforts to stem the tide of coastal erosion
by introducing nutrient-rich freshwater into the marshes.
In addition to her practical achievements in a world then dominated by men, Lindy Boggs is
remembered for her gracious demeanor and gentle, generous spirit. Those who basked in the glow
of being addressed “darling” were many—in fact, they included most of the people she knew.
1 Lindy Boggs, Washington Through a Purple Veil: Memoirs of a Southern Woman (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company,
1994), 282-83.
A LDEN
J. LABORDE
(1915-2014)
The co-founder of Ocean Drilling & Exploration Company (ODECO) and Tidewater Marine,
Alden J. Laborde developed the infrastructure that enabled the nation’s off-shore oil industry. That
industry created thousands of new jobs and many new skyscrapers for New Orleans. For two
decades, his firms led the industry in offshore innovation.
Laborde’s innovations evolved to accommodate ever increasing drilling depths in the Gulf of
Mexico. His bottom-sitting submersible drilling rigs worked best in waters up to forty feet; while
jack-up rigs worked best in waters of seventy-five to three hundred feet of depth. For even deeper
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
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water the industry drilled from floating anchored ships. As costs increased to accommodate new
developments ODECO, which had been private, was forced to go public for additional funds. By
1970 the authoritative Oil & Gas Journal called ODECO “one of the off-shore-drilling giants.” 1
During the 1960s Laborde designed the Ocean-Driller, the first column-stabilized semi-submersible
drilling rig. It actually floated in deep water, kept in position by anchors, its deck supported
by hollow columns that extended into the sea and offered stability to the drilling deck and vessel.
ODECO also built Thunder Horse, at one time the world’s largest semi-submersible drilling and production
platform, for BP [British Petroleum] in 2008. It displaced 130,000 tons of water, a number
that by a familiar comparison, far exceeds the 90,000 tons of Cunard’s ocean liner Queen Victoria.
Tidewater Marine originated in a meeting of industry representatives that Alden Laborde called in
June 1954 to meet ODECO’s shortage of supply vessels. The meeting included engineers, contractors,
the owner of Alexander shipyards, and a representative of Murphy [Oil] Corporation. Each agreed to
put up $10,000 to build a new type of supply boat with a forward pilot house and long, open rear deck.
Laborde and the Murphy Corporation immediately recognized a conflict of interest between
ODECO and Tidewater. Alden dropped out of Tidewater, allowing Laborde’s younger brother John
to run the new enterprise. Taking over as Tidewater’s first president, John Laborde led the company
to become within the next decade the largest supply company to the world-wide oil industry.
Alexander Shipyards, Inc. constructed its first three boats, Ebb Tide, Rip Tide, and Gulf Tide, 2 and
over succeeding decades many more followed. Among the largest were the Mammoth Tide and the
Goliath Tide, each 218’ in length with four engines pushing two props. For their size they made the
respectable speed of 13.5 knots.
In 1993, ODECO Drilling became Diamond Offshore Drilling, Inc. Alden retired and lived quietly
until his death in 2014. His younger brother John Laborde still participates in New Orleans activities.
Alden J. "Doc" Laborde.
COURTESY OF THE LABORDE FAMILY AND
OVERBOARD HOLDINGS.
1 Oil & Gas Journal, May 4, 1970, p. 107.
2 On line shipyard data base by Tim Colton.
N ASH
R OBERTS
(1918-2010)
Nash Roberts was New Orleans’ first celebrity television weatherman. In an age before computer-generated
graphics and models, his meteorological predictions proved true with such regularity
that his audiences trusted him. Roberts’ low key personality eschewed weather hype, endearing him
to the people. Before the use of satellites, he cannily predicted cold fronts, thunderstorms, sunshine,
hazy afternoons, and of course, hurricanes. His predicting triumphs came with hurricanes Audry
(1957), Betsy (1965) and Camille (1969). It was not until Hurricane Katrina, his last experience and
one long after his retirement, that a storm forced Nash and his wife Lydia to leave New Orleans.
Nash became a weatherman out in the Pacific during World War II. It was then that the Navy
recruited him to fly with other crewmen into the eye of hurricanes. They gathered information
about moisture, pressure, and winds—a new undertaking, requiring a steady hand and nerves.
Somehow, Nash came out of the war knowing that meteorology was to be his business. A short
teaching stint at Loyola led to the opening of a private forecasting business for the Gulf of Mexico,
the explosion of oil and gas drilling in the Gulf demanding good predictions. Nash developed his
private consulting business for the industry.
Nash’s first tools in the business of reporting the weather were a grease pen and marker board. It
was just after 1951, when he went to work for the new WDSU TV as the first weatherman in the
South, that these simple instruments became known. Countless little television screens depicted the
Nash marker at work drawing great arcs with little carrots on them, indicating lines between high and
BIOGRAPHIES
117

Nash Roberts.
COURTESY OF WWL-TV.
low air pressure. During hurricane seasons, New
Orleanians huddled about these twelve to fifteen-inch
inch screens to hang on Roberts’ every word. At the
time, his principal technology was the precision
barometer, although the National Weather Service’s
use of radar and computers was in sight.
After years at WDSU, Roberts joined WVUE where
personable and outspoken meteorologist Bob Breck
would later replace him. Nash concluded his career at
WWL with his final triumph, a 1998 prediction that
Hurricane Georges would hit to the east of New
Orleans when all the scientific instruments predicted
the west. “As long as Roberts and his Magic Markers
are exclusive to WWL,” The Times-Picayune wrote
after Georges, “Channel 4 will remain the only place
to get an answer to the first hurricane-related question
asked by anyone who’s lived in New Orleans for any
length of time: ‘What’s Nash say?’” Despite the decades that have passed since his on-air warnings,
Nash remains a local icon. His television appearances have been absent since 1998, so long that his
successor Breck has also retired, yet Nash has not been forgotten. As Breck noted, “I think Nash
wasn’t afraid to fail. He trusted his instincts and he just followed his gut. I think that’s what people
remember him for.” 1
1 Obituary by Stephanie Stokes in Times-Picayune, December 20, 2010.
M URIEL B ULTMAN F RANCIS
(1919-1986)
Muriel Bultman Francis, connoisseur and patron of music and the arts, generously supported
the musical and contemporary art scene and the New Orleans Museum of Art. The daughter of
Fred Bultman, the last of the Bultman Funeral home family to operate that family institution, Mrs.
Francis purchased her first work of art at the age of eighteen, At that time she astutely bought
Claude Monet’s “Chrysanthemums” and an Odilon Redon painting, both for $2,400. A graduate of
the Academy of the Sacred Heart and a keen student, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the
University of Alabama and studied at the Sorbonne. After World War II she moved to New York
City where she had her own New York agency, which represented classical music performers.
Among her clients were violinist Yehudi Menuhin and opera stars Lily Pons, Rise Stevens, Ezio
Pinza, Leonard Warren and Marguerite Piazza.
The death of her father in 1964 brought Muriel back to New Orleans where she immediately
plunged into the art world. For years her father had served as president of the New Orleans Opera
Association and she soon joined that board. Because the opera needed an orchestra, Francis joined
the board of the New Orleans Philharmonic Orchestra and became its president. The Philharmonic
continued to serve as the fount for members of the New Orleans Opera Orchestra.
Art did not stop with music as Francis became an promotor of the Contemporary Arts Center
and a supporter of Dashiki Theatre, an early black theatre troupe. When the struggling Tennessee
Williams was looking for a place to stay she put him up at her mansion on Louisiana Avenue, a
venue memorialized in Suddenly Last Summer. On the political side she was president of the New
Orleans chapter of the American-Israeli Cultural Foundation and on the social side she was
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118

treasurer of the New Orleans Spring Fiesta. Muriel also played a role in having nationally prominent
architect Edward Durrell Stone design the new ITM building in New Orleans.
Over the years, Francis most notably patronized the New Orleans Museum of Art. Upon her death
she donated substantially all of her works collected over decades to the museum. These included Cubist
works by Braques and Picasso, Surrealist paintings by Joan Miro, and Impressionist paintings and drawings
by Bonnard, Magritte, Redon, Giacometti and Degas. Just before her death the museum saluted
Muriel with the exhibit “Art Seldom Seen,” memorialized in a volume Profiles of a Connoisseur: The
Collection of Muriel Bultman Francis.
From beautiful art to beautiful clothes is not a big leap. When she died in 1986, Muriel Francis had
collected designer originals including a dress Christian Dior made himself and a gown by Yves St.
Laurent. 1 Married twice, she left no direct descendants.
1 The Times-Picayune, May 2 and May 11, 1986; The Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA), May 2, 1986.
A LLISON “BIG C HIEF T OOTIE” MONTANA
(1922-2005)
Allison “Big Chief Tootie” Montana brought respect to a raucous New Orleans folk custom
known as Mardi Gras Indian masking. Under his influence the “Indian” tradition acquired a new
legitimacy and popularity. It ranks today as one of the most distinctive customs of New Orleans.
Many African-American New Orleanians have a significant percentage of Native American
blood, dating back to eighteenth century relations between the races. Towards the end of the nineteenth
century, this subset of the African-American community organized into tribes or neighborhoods.
The tribes then sought fame by competing with rivals, occasionally lapsing into serious
injury or death.
Tootie’s father Alfred Montana had introduced him as a young age to the “Indians” and made his
first costumes and crowns. His great grandfather Becate Batiste was one of the earliest Indian
maskers. Early on Tootie became disgusted with the fighting between tribes that essentially reflected
nothing but a desire for prominence. With brilliant
insight, he saw that prominence could reside in
the costume instead of in physical superiority. Thus
he became a spokesman for a new form of competition,
a competition that would be judged on the
sewing expertise, beauty, elegance, and extravagance
of the costume.
By World War II Tootie was Big Chief of the
Yellow Creole Pocahontas tribe, and after the war he
also organized The Monogram Hunters, who selected
him as Big Chief. With taste, daring, and energy,
he introduced extravagant color, ostrich feathers,
and exquisitely designed beadwork to old-fashioned
Indian attire. He challenged the other Indian tribes
to do a better job, a challenge that led to months of
work for the ambitious members of his Yellow
Creole Pocahontas tribe and then the wider Indian
community. By the 1970s the Mardi Gras Indians
had become a tourist attraction, a distinction that
had been part of Tootie’s program. By 1987 the
Above: Muriel Bultman Francis.
COURTESY OF THE ACADEMY OF THE SACRED HEART.
Bottom: Allison 'Big Chief Tootie" Montana.
PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL P. SMITH ©THE HISTORIC NEW
ORLEANS COLLECTION.
BIOGRAPHIES
119

National Endowment for the Arts had selected him Master Traditional Artist in the Folk
Art Program.
Yet, Tootie and subsequent Big Chiefs never let the Indians become showcased objects of tourist
gawking. The various Indian tribes continued to parade on Mardi Gras day on meandering random
routes. They continue to follow a Spyboy who looks for suitable opportunities to show off the
tribe. The Spyboy then reports to the Flagboy who relays the information to the Chief, who then
decides to continue either left, right, or straight.
Professionally, Montana was a master lather and plasterer and member of a select community of
Creoles in the building trades. His proudest assignment was plastering the vast, uninterrupted interior
of the city’s first convention center on Poydras Street known as the Rivergate. He was saddened
when the building was demolished for a gambling casino. Tootie and and his wife Joyce made their
home on North Villere Street a center of non-stop sewing, designing, and visiting. As he aged,
Tootie named their son Darryl Montana to succeed his father as Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas.
Tootie died in 2005 while making an impassioned statement in the New Orleans City Council
chambers about police mistreatment of the city’s Mardi Gras Indians.
J EROME
G OLDMAN
(1924-2013)
Jerome Goldman.
COURTESY OF THE GOLDMAN FAMILY.
Maritime inventor Jerome Goldman’s innovations enhanced the port of New Orleans and permanently
influenced international trade. During the 1950s he developed the “all-hatch” concept
for freight ship design, a technique that led to the container ship. As Captain James
McNamara described Goldman’s two principal accomplishments, “The first… resulted in the
“all-hatch” design, which was embodied in Delta Line’s Del Rio-class vessels in 1960, and
later adopted in both American and European cargo ships. The technique of virtually opening
up the entire weather deck with hatchways has since been applied to today’s containership.”
1 The second was the Goldman-designed LASH (lighter aboard ship) vessel pioneered
by New Orleans-based Central Gulf Lines, headed by Niels W. and Erik F. Johnsen. In 1967,
they ordered the first LASH ship Acadia Forest, designed to facilitate the use of substantial
ships at river ports accessible to barge fleets, reducing loading and unloading times and permitting
access to shallower draft river ports.
A native of Illinois, Goldman graduated from the University of Michigan’s School of Naval
Architecture and Marine Engineering. He moved to New Orleans in 1944 to work for Andrew
Higgins (q.v.) Shipbuilding. Goldman soon formed his firm of Goldman and Friede through
which he accomplished his principal designs. In the 1950s he worked on the first jack-up rigs
and later on submersible and semisubmersible rigs. Going beyond maritime innovation,
Goldman also designed and built New Orleans’ high-rise Chevron office building. A second
development, the residential tower One River Place, became his home.
Goldman’s inventions soon made him a philanthropist for such institutions as the
University of Michigan, the University of New Orleans’ School of Naval Architecture, the
National World War II Museum, Temple Sinai, and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.
The four principal American Engineering Societies, Mechanical, Electrical, Naval, and Automotive
awarded him their prized national Elmer A. Sperry Award for distinguished contributions to transportation.
His universities of Michigan and New Orleans awarded him honorary doctorates and he
was later inducted into the Offshore Pioneers Hall of Fame. Goldman died in 2013 at the age of
89, leaving a wife and two daughters and seven grandchildren.
1 Captain James McNamara “Where Have the Barge Carriers Gone?” in American Shipper, May 2015.
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120

C OSIMO
M ATASSA
(1926-2014)
Recording mastermind Cosimo Matassa enabled the earliest and the best of the New Orleans
sound in R&B, rock, and soul. His engineering skills played an essential role in Fats Domino’s “The
Fat Man” on Imperial in 1950; in Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti,” and for the hits of Ray Charles, Lee
Dorsey, Dr. John, Smiley Lewis and others, especially the Allen Toussaint-Ernie K-Doe superhit
“Mother-In-Law.” In Matassa’s crowded Rampart Street studio, Dave Bartholomew produced “The
Fat Man” and played an important role in Rhythm and Blues thereafter. Later Allen Toussaint (q.v.)
became one of Matassa’ s regular producers and composers.
In the world of 1950s music, producing a hit recording called both for product and for distribution.
Successful record labels, notably “Imperial” and “Specialty” from the West coast, along with
“Ace,” “Minit,” and “Instant” labels had a comfortable step on New Orleans. While Matassa dominated
the local scene, his Chicago and Memphis competitors were well along in the business. Benefitting
from Matassa’s leadership, the New Orleans sound competed with solid drumming, heavy guitar and
bass, heavy piano, light horns and a strong vocal lead. And local genius did not hurt.
Matassa’s earliest and most famous studio, J&M Recording, was located on Rampart Street and is
now one of eleven historic rock and roll landmarks nationwide. In 1956, he moved to Governor
Nichols Street with the Cosimo Recording Studio. One of the first successes recorded there was Shirley
and Lee’s “Let the Good Times Roll” (Aladdin).
The lure of distribution eventually led Matassa into that speculative field through his Dover
Records, which distributed Art Neville’s “Tell It Like It is” and Robert Parker’s “Barefootin”. The business
collapsed in 1968, leading to the closing of Cosimo Recording Studio. Although he kept working
for twenty years, Matassa never regained his dominant position in the business. In his last decade he
received recognition for his lifetime of work including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement in Music
Business Award in 2007, and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.
Born into an Italian French Quarter family who operated a grocery, Matassa at eighteen years
gave up thoughts of either college or the food business. Instead, he opened his first recording studio
behind his parent’s Rampart Street business. As all things go around, after retiring from music
in his eighties he briefly took over the Matassa grocery before his death in 2014.
Cosimo Matassa.
SYNDEY BYRD, COSIMO MATASSA, PHOTOGRAPH 8" X 10"
1967. COURTESY OF THE LOUISIANA STATE USEUM.
For further reading: see John Broven who authored the first book on New Orleans R&B, Walking to New Orleans, in
1974. The book is still in print in the United States as Rhythm & Blues in New Orleans (Pelican Publishing).
E RNEST
N. MORIAL
(1929-1989)
Ernest Nathan Morial’s career was filled with “firsts,” during a period of New Orleans history
that some call its “Second Reconstruction.” He was elected in 1967, the first black member of the
Louisiana House of Representatives since Reconstruction. Subsequently, he became the first black
Juvenile Court Judge and the first black Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge. In 1977, with near
universal black support and the support of a fifth of the city’s white population, he was elected the
first black mayor of New Orleans. As the city’s fifty-seventh mayor, Morial presided over a period
of rapid growth for the city prior to the “Oil Bust” of 1986. He was an effective administrator who
had no qualms about upbraiding the legislative branch and possessed a decisive, confident personality
that critics described as arrogant and pugnacious.
Born in New Orleans on October 9, 1929, to Walter Etienne Morial and Leonie Moore, Morial
belonged to the second generation born during the period of Jim Crow. Like his mentor,
BIOGRAPHIES
121

Dutch Morial.
LOUISIANA DIVISION/ CITY ARCHIVES, NEW ORLEANS
PUBLIC LIBRARY, MAYOR ERNEST N. MORIAL PHOTOGRAPH
COLLECTION #1200.
A. P. Tureaud (q.v.), he early recognized the crippling effect of segregation and drew inspiration
from the colored Creole activists of the nineteenth century. Early in life, he was given the nickname
“Dutch” for his resemblance to the character on cans of “Dutch Boy” paint. Reared in the
Faubourg Marigny, he attended the nearly century-old Holy Redeemer School before graduating
from the city’s first black high school, McDonogh No. 35, then Xavier University of Louisiana.
With two other black candidates he was successful in gaining admission to the Louisiana State
University Law School in 1951. In February 1954, Morial became its first black graduate.
After service in the Korean Conflict, Morial returned to New Orleans and began to practice
law under the mentorship of A. P. Tureaud. He served as general counsel for the Standard Life
Insurance Company, also serving as National Advocate and National Editor for the Knights of
Peter Claver and from 1962 to 1965 as president of the New Orleans N.A.A.C.P. Shortly afterwards
the prestigious Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity chose him as its General President.
Morial’s confidence as mayor came to the fore during a calculated strike of the city’s sanitation
workers and police during the 1979 Carnival season. He enlisted the support of Carnival organizations
who cancelled Mardi Gras rather than acquiesce to the demands of the police union. Soon
he introduced quotas for hiring minority city contractors. His administration increased significantly
the number of female city officials and brought the percentage of black city employees to more
than 50%, reflective of the city’s population. Morial oversaw the development of Canal Place, the
renovation of the Jax Brewery Building, and the creation of what is now the Regional Business Park.
He believed in the potential for riverfront development and during his second term welcomed the
1984 World’s Fair. While a memorable event for the city with world-class exhibitions and attractions,
the fair was an economic failure of the sort that foreshadowed the 1986 Oil Bust. It would
nevertheless lead to an explosion of renewal in the New Orleans Warehouse District.
Morial maintained his popularity and political clout despite his aggressive and sometimes ruthless
manner. Many citizens regard him as the best mayor of twentieth century New Orleans. His career was
a testament to the heights attainable for people of color in the city after the pall of Jim Crow was
removed. Together with his wife, Sybil Haydel Morial, an influential first lady and professional woman
in her own right, Morial had five children, including Marc H. Morial, who served as the city’s fiftyninth
mayor from 1994 to 2002. Ernest Nathan Morial died unexpectedly on December 24, 1989.
—Jari Honora
S TEPHEN
E. AMBROSE
(1936-2002)
Stephen Ambrose drew upon his scholarly authority as a professor and author at the University of
New Orleans and love for his adopted city to lead the creation of the National D-Day Museum (now
the National WWII Museum). Dr. Ambrose’ 1970 biography of President Dwight D. Eisenhower had
evolved into a concern for the citizen soldier and the home front workers who
crafted the industrial might that played a pivotal role in America’s victory in World War II. One
of the outstanding examples of home front effort took place in New Orleans with the establishment of
the Andrew Higgins (q.v.) boat works. Higgins had designed and constructed the thousands of landing
craft that enabled troops to get ashore at Normandy on D-Day in the face of withering enemy fire.
Ambrose grew up in the Midwest and studied under Huey Long biographer T. Harry Williams
at LSU. Under William B. Hesseltine at the University of Wisconsin, he received his Ph.D in 1963.
His more than forty books and articles on Eisenhower, World War II, Richard Nixon and the Pacific
Railroad have been best-sellers. Most notable were Band of Brothers, Citizen Soldiers, and Undaunted
Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and The Opening of the American West, which remained
on a best-seller list for more than two years.
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Ambrose’s idea for a local D-Day Museum originated in
his collection of soldier’s reminiscences of their experiences
during World War II. During the mid-1990s Ambrose
donated $500,000 to launch a museum to tell and illustrate
their stories. Opening its first facility to local fanfare in
2000, it has since then tripled in size, with a comparable
impact on New Orleans tourism. The National WWII
Museum today ranks as one of the most popular destinations
in the United States. For his participation Ambrose
received numerous awards, notably the National
Humanities Medal in 1998.
Though his energy produced vast quantities of written
words, it was Ambrose’ willingness to “put his money where
his dream was” that left the largest impact on New Orleans.
The museum he founded has spread to three squares in the
New Orleans Central Business District, and is now erecting
a hotel to facilitate visitors from across the world.
Stephen E. Ambrose.
UNIVERSITY OF NEW ORLEANS ARCHIVES, SPECIAL
COLLECTIONS, EARL K. LONG LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF
NEW ORLEANS.
A LLEN
T OUSSAINT
(1937-2015)
Perhaps in no other church is the distinctive New Orleans custom of assembling a food and statue-laden
St. Joseph’s Day altar more important to the congregation than it is at St. Joseph’s Church
on Tulane Avenue. There, on a quiet St. Joseph’s Day afternoon in 2015, visitors focused their
attention on the altar, admiring its color and inspiration and receiving special blessings from the
designated deacon. Few probably noticed the piano quietly sitting part way down the aisle. Soon,
a handsome figure entered, strode down the aisle, noticed the piano and, as if drawn to a fire, sat
down to play “Amazing Grace.” Allen Toussaint had come to honor St. Joseph.
The composer of “Java,” “Mother-in-Law,” “I Like It Like That,” “Fortune Teller,” “Ride Your
Pony,” “Get Out of My Life, Woman,” “Working in the Coal Mine,” “Everything I Do Gonna Be
Funky,” “Here Come the Girls,” “Yes We Can Can,” “Play Something Sweet,” “Southern Nights,”
and the all-time classic “Mother-in Law” was there to the enduring joy of New Orleanians visiting
the St. Joseph’s Altar.
Born in 1938 into the soon-to-be famous Neville family, Toussaint grew up in Gert Town near
Xavier University. He was still a teenager in 1957 when he began playing with composer and rock
and roll pioneer Dave Bartholomew and pianist Fats Domino. An early influence on his piano style
was the inimitable Henry Roeland Byrd, better known as Professor Longhair, whose melodious, offbeat
upper keyboard swells and currents would sooner or later emerge in Toussaint’s playing.
Toussaint’s first hit album, in 1958, included the much-recorded “Java,” leading in the following
years to writing and producing for Minit Records. Toussaint now entered a period of great fertility,
exemplified by the brilliant lyrics of “Mother-in-Law,” a hit which singer Ernie “K” Doe would build
around his career. After a stint in the army in 1965 Toussaint launched his own record label, Sansu.
More successes followed, notably “Working in the Coal Mine,” where he used as backup the Meters,
including Art Neville on keyboards. Toussaint went national during the 1970s, accompanying his
vocals on the keyboard, and using his studio Sea-Saint, and singing himself, culminating in
“Southern Nights.”
During the 1970s Toussaint wrote and produced records for Malcolm “Mac” Rebennack (“Dr.
John,” In the Right Place) and the New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian tribe the Wild Tchoupitoulas,
BIOGRAPHIES
123

Top: Allen Toussaint.
PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL P. SMITH ©THE HISTORIC NEW
ORLEANS COLLECTION, 2007.0103.4.750.
Below: Oretha Castle Haley.
LOUISIANA WEEKLY COLLECTION, AMISTAD RESEARCH
CENTER.
led by “Big Chief Jolly” (George Landry). He worked
with his nephews Art and Cyril Neville of The
Meters and Charles and Aaron of the Neville
Brothers. He began collaborating with national figures
Glen Campbell, Paul McCartney, and The
Pointer Sisters. He served as musical director of the
New York run of Stagerlee. By 1984 author Rhodes
Spedale, Jr., could write, “For someone self-taught,
he has risen to the top of his chosen field. There is
no better success story; for his is an artistic as well as
commercially successful career.” 1
Hurricane Katrina drove Toussaint from New
Orleans to New York for five years, but he returned
to continue, mainly as a performer in demand
around the globe. He died unexpectedly in 2015,
shortly after a performance in Madrid, Spain.
Shocked New Orleanians paid their respects by the
thousands, whether in person or at home reflecting
on the brilliance, character, kindness, and creativity of one of their own.
Rhodes Spedale, Jr. A Guide to Jazz in New Orleans. (New Orleans: Hope Publications, 1984), 269.
O RETHA C ASTLE H ALEY
(1939-1987)
At the age of twenty Oretha Castle Haley participated in the first sit-ins at New Orleans Canal
Street stores. She had graduated from Joseph S. Clark High School in New Orleans, and was
attending Southern University of New Orleans. Equally important, she was a member of Mount
Zion Baptist Church led by civil rights leader the Reverend A. L. Davis. 1 Haley was attacking segregation
of public accommodations for a cause that went back to the efforts of Louis Charles
Roudanez (q.v.) a century earlier.
The picketing of lunch counters across eastern America seems to have begun in late 1959. With
their prominence and popular lunch counters, Woolworth and other five-and dime stores were favorite
national targets, the response in Boston, Princeton, and elsewhere being predictably hostile. The first
blow in New Orleans came on September 17, 1960, when college students Haley, Rudy Lombard,
Cecil Carter, Jr., and Sidney Goldfinch, Jr. were arrested at McCrory’s lunch counter. 2 They were convicted
of trespass and other “crimes” thus generating the 1963 decision by the U. S. Supreme Court in
Lombard, et al v. Louisiana that disallowed state and city efforts to maintain segregation in places of
public accommodation. Shortly after this initiative Haley helped found the local chapter of the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
Haley rose rapidly in the ranks of CORE, first as a recruiter in Louisiana cities, before becoming
a state coordinator. Back in New Orleans she took on City Hall, specifically the New Orleans
Recreation Department, that notable achievement of Mayor deLesseps Morrison (q.v.). It practiced
the segregation that she helped to end. Haley then moved into electoral politics, becoming a leader
of the Black Organization for Leadership Development (BOLD) in 1970, and working in the political
campaigns of former legislator Dorothy Mae Taylor. She then went to work as Deputy Director of
Charity Hospital, where one of her achievements was helping to establish the New Orleans Sickle
Cell Anemia Foundation. She married another civil rights leader Richard Haley and had four sons.
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Black activist Bill Rouselle said about her life “she was the flame that never stopped burning.”
In 1989, the city of New Orleans honored her memory and work in the Louisiana Civil Rights
movement by renaming Dryades Street, the site of many a civil rights demonstration, Oretha Castle
Haley Boulevard. In 2017 the National Main Street Center named it a Great American Main Street.
1 Letter from Michael Haley, Castle’s eldest son, to William Reeves, July 1, 2017.
2 The Times-Picayune, September 21, 1960.
P AUL
P RUDHOMME
(1940 TO 2015)
Paul Prudhomme‘s great culinary imagination and talent for seasoning drove him to prominence
as Louisiana’s first international “celebrity” chef. With the encouragement of Commander’s Palace
proprietor Ella Brennan, Paul reinvented several traditional Creole dishes and conceived of “blackened
redfish,” the dish that would later make him nationally famous. As Ella Brennan has noted,
the dish “became so popular nationwide that fishing restrictions were implemented to preserve the
species.” 1 After making his name at Commanders, Prudhomme left the restaurant to lead a wave
of New Orleans cooking across the country and the world. He built on the work of earlier families
such as the Brennans (q.v.) and the Alciatores
(q.v.), who had created a consensus in New
Orleans that its food was different and delicious.
Born in 1940 in Opelousas, Louisiana,
Prudhomme grew up in an Acadian family, the
youngest of thirteen. He learned Cajun cooking from
his family, but he and his wife Kay quickly acquired
and popularized the taste for Creole as well as
Acadian cooking. In 1979, Paul and his wife opened
their restaurant on Chartres Street that became K-
Paul’s. The following year Prudhomme became a
Chevalier of the Ordre National du Mérite Agricole in
honor of his work with Cajun and Creole cuisines. He
eventually published eleven cookbooks and cheerfully
accepted media appearances around the world. His
most famous book, Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana
Kitchen came out in 1984 and is still in print. The
result was that Louisiana-themed restaurants sprang
up around the world, from Tokyo, to London, Cape
Cod, and elsewhere. In 1983, Prudhomme increased
his impact on New Orleans by opening a seasoning
business, “Magic Seasoning Blends,” now found in supermarkets nationwide. Cajun Magic Seasonings
may be its core, but Prudhomme’s company makes seasonings for many other companies. 2
In Prudhomme’s obituary The New York Times observed that the new popularity of New Orleans
cooking was part of a new nationwide emphasis on regional cooking across the country. As the
ambassador of Louisiana cooking, Prudhomme “rode the wave to become one of the first American
superstar chefs.”
Paul Prudhome.
COURTESY OF CHEF PAUL PRUDHOMME'S MAGIC
SEASONING BLENDS.
1 Ella Brennan and T. Adelaide Martin, Miss Ella of Commanders Palance (New Orleans, 2016), p. 127.
2 Elizabeth M. Williams, New Orleans: A Food Biography (Altamira, New York, 2013), 118-119.
BIOGRAPHIES
125

A
Abernathy, Ralph, 113
Abramson, Louis, Jr., 109-110
Adams, Kate, 96
Aime, Valcour, 89
Alciatore family, 69, 76, 112
Alcus, S. T., 81
Allen, Henry, 98
Alliquot, Jeanne Marie, 47
Almonester y Rojas, Andres 15, 38-40
Ambrose, 122-123
Anderson, Tom, 98
Armstrong, Charles Rice, 102
Armstrong, Louis, 98
Arthur, Stanley Clisby, 33
B
Babin, Marie Genevieve, 12
Baldwin, Albert, 80
Baquet, George, 105
Barrett, Sweet Emma, 101
Barthelemy, Pedro, 29
Bartholomew, Dave, 121
Batiste, Becate, 119
Beauregard, P. G. T., 48, 75, 102
Beckhard, Madeleine, 107
Begue, Elizabeth, 68, 80
Bienville, Jean Baptiste, 11
Blount, Rick, 76
Boggs, 115-116
Bolden, Buddy, 98
Bonne, Julie, 23
Bonnecase, Leon 29
Bordenave, Louise 94
Bore, Etienne, 23, 39, 43
Bossier, Francoise, 83
Boudro, Antoine, 112
Bouligny, Athemise, 80
Breck, Bob, 118
Brennan, 112
Brewster, William Herbert, 113
Brigsten, Frank, 112
Brion, Julie, 23
Brown, James, 24
Bultman, Muriel, 118
Burel, Achille, 24
Butler, Benjamin, 35, 67, 75
Byrd, Henry Roeland, 123
Byron, Lord, 33
INDEX
C
Cable, George W., 8, 82, 83
Caffery, Jefferson, 18
Caldwell, James, 37
Campbell, Glen, 124
Carleton, Henry, 24-25
Carondelet, 19-20
Carter, Cecil, 124
Charles III, 17
Charles, Josephine, 47
Chateau, Joseph, 28-29
Chauvin Brothers, 14
Cheval,Pablo, 29
Chickasaws, 11
Chitimacha, 14
Chopin, Kate, 96
Claiborne, William, 18-19, 26
Clapp, Parson, 28, 35-36
Cohen, 84, 91, 107
Cohn, Isidore, 93
Cole, Catherine, 85, 88
Colvis, Julien, 44-45
Constant, Sterline, 76
Cook, Will Marion, 106
Courcelle, Myrtille, 29
Couvent, Marie C., 21
Crozat, Helene M., 91
D
Dalrymple, Jerry, 109
D’Antoni, Salvador, 89
Darby, Francois, 29
Darcantel, Marguerite, 41
Dargo, George, 19, 26-27
Davis, A. L., 124
Davis, Wm. C., 33
de Armas, 37-39, 51, 61
de la Houssaye, Sidonie, 83
de La Rond, Louise, 38, 40
De Murelle, Zenon, 90
de Peters, Mlle, 24
DeBakey, Michael, 104-105
Debergue, Rosa, 93
Dejoie, 5, 83
Delgado, Isaac, 30, 82
Demarest, Louis George, 17
Demazelliere family, 93
Derbigny, Pierre, 24
Desdunes, Aristide, 85
Destrehan, Jean Baptiste, 23, 38
Diana, Marie Francoise, 22
Diaz, Cecile, 47
Dibert, Mrs. John, 94
Diettel, Albert, 80
Dior, Christian, 119
Dix, Dorothy, 85
Dolliole, 28-29
Dominique, Toby, 29
Domino, Fats, 121, 123
Dorsey, Lee, 121
Dorsey, Thomas A., 113
Douglas, Frederick, 75
Dow, Dr. Robert, 22
Doyle, Alexander, 48
Dr. John, 10, 121
Dreyfous, 86
Duchesne, PSCJ, Rosa Philippine, 13
Duconge, Aurelie, 101
Duhart, Adolphe, 21
Duhe, Laurence, 106
Dumas, Francis, 45, 75
Dumas, Joseph, 45
Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 87, 96
Dunn, 78
Dupard, Charles, 29
Dupart, Victor, 93
Dusuau, Catherine, 28
Dusuau, Rosalie, 46
Dutreuil, Louis, 68, 79
E
Easton, Warren, 84
Edmunds, E. J., 21
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 110, 122
Esnoul, Jacques, 12
F
Farrell, Margot C., 92
Favort, 7, 10, 20-21, 53, 59
Field, Charles and Flora, 88
Fils, Francois, 29
Finley, Carlos Juan, 93
Fontaine, Jean-Baptiste LeSueur, 19
Fortier, Alcee, 87, 89-90
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
126

Foster, Governor, 18, 88
Foucher, 23-24, 46
Foy, Florville, 29
Francois, 64
Freret, James, 20-21
Freyss, Julie, 76
Fusille, Francoise, 42
G
Galvez, Bernardo de, 16-17, 20, 53
Gaudin, Julie, 47
Gayarre, Charles, 11, 43, 87, 96
Gilmer, Elizabeth Meriwether, 85
Goldfinch, Sidney, Jr., 124
Good Shepherd Sisters, 41
Grau, Shirley Ann, 83
Griffin, Rhoda Maria, 80
Gwinn, Joseph Marr, 84
H
Hachard, Marie Madelleine, 13
Haley, Oretha Castle, 83, 124
Haughery, Margaret, 30, 48
Hays, Will, 91
Hearn, Lafcadio, 83, 93
Hebert, Sister St. Francoise Xavier, 13
Hecht, Rudolph, 89
Heebe, Frederick J. R., 111
Henderson, Fletcher, 108
Henry, Catherine, 41
Hesseltine, William B., 122
Higgins, Andrew, 65, 99
Hines, Merrill, 105
Holbrook, A. M., 86
Holmes, D. H., Jr., 73-74
Howard, Henry, 80
I
Ingraham, Joseph Holt, 33
Isaacs, Mark, 81
J
Jackson, Andrew, 20, 30-32
Jackson, Mahlia, 113
Jahncke, Ernest Lee, 97
Jesuits, 11, 13, 41
John Paul II, Pope, 115
Johnsen, Erik F., 120
Johnson, Bunk, 106
Johnson, Lady Bird, 116
Jones, Mary Ann, 34, 55
Jones, Sam, 114
K
Kaufman, Caroline, 86
K-Doe, Ernie, 121
Keifer, Rebecca, 81
Kellogg, William Pitt, 78
Kennedy, John F., 112, 115
Keppard, Freddie, 106
Kerrison, Eliza Maria, 74
King, Grace, 11, 43-44, 85-87, 89, 96
King, Martin Luther, 113
Kursheedt, Gershon, 28
L
Laborde, 116-117
Laffite, Jean, 25-26, 31-33
Lafon, Barthelemy, 23, 25-26
Lafon, Thomy, 23, 26, 46, 58, 60, 82
Lagasse, Emeril, 112
Landrieu, Moon, 113
Landry, George, 124
Lanusse, Armand, 21
LaRoche, Elizabeth, 15
Laronde, Genevieve, 28
Latour, Arsene La Carriere, 30
Laveau, Charles, 41
Laveau, Marie [Glapion], 23, 41-42
Lee, Robert E., 48
Leeser, Rabbi Isaac, 28
Legendre, Phlomene Glapion, 42
Lewis, Julia Ellen, 101
Lewis, Smiley, 121
Lincoln, Abraham, 75
Liszt, Franz, 79
Little Richard, 121
Little Sisters of the Poor, 46
Livaudais, 12, 20, 54, 59-60
Livingston, Edward, 24, 26, 38
Livingstone, Dr. David, 21
Lomax, Alan, 105
Lombard, Rudy, 124
Long, Huey, 94, 122
Lord, Samuel, 73
Louis, Jean, 41
M
Madison, James, 18, 32
Maenhaut, Constantine, 21
Maine, Sir Henry, 24
Mandeville, Eulalie, 42
Mandeville, Paul, 29
Mann, Horace, 43
Marigny, Bernard, 38, 55-56, 62
Marigny, Pierre Philippe de, 15, 54
Marshall, Thurgood, 107
Martin, Fontaine, 80-81
Martin, Francois-Xavier, 27
Martin, Ti Adelaide, 113
Matas, Rudolph, 92-93, 105
Mathews, Bonnie, 110
Mathieu, Agnes, 93
McCartney, Paul, 124
McCloskey, 74
McDermott, Thomas, 82
McDonogh, John, 27, 29-30, 35, 82, 122
McKeithen, John, 19, 113
McNamara, James, 120
McShane, Andrew J., 96
Meredith, James, 110
Miles, A. B., 94
Milliken, Mrs. Richard, 94
Miro, Joan, 119
Monet, Claude, 118
Monroe, J. Blanc, 97, 105
Montana, 71, 119-120
Moore, Joseph, 96
Moore, Leonie, 121
Morales, Juan Ventura, 34, 62
Moreau, Manuel, 29
Morial, 121-122
Morrison, de Lesseps, 103, 109
Morrison, Jacob and Mary, 49, 103, 114
Morton, Jelly Roll, 78, 101
Moss, Washington Irving, 89
N
Natchez Tribe, 13
Neckere, Leo Raymonde de, 41
Nelson, Alice Dunbar, 87, 92, 96-97
Neville, 123-124
Newman, Isidore, 81-82
Newman, J. T., 92
Nicholson, Eliza, 48, 85-86
Nickerson, Camille, 101
Nixon, Richard, 116, 122
Noble, Jordan, 96
O
Ochsner, A. J., 104-105
Oger, Madeline, 42
Oliver, King, 105-106, 108
INDEX
127

O’Reilly, Alexandro, 13, 15, 40
Ory, Kid, 108
P
Packard, Stephen B., 78
Pakenham, Edward, 31
Paris, Jacques, 42
Parker, Robert, 121
Parks, Rosa, 93
Patterson, Daniel, 32
Pauger, Adrien de, 11
Penrose, Boies, 91
Peters, Samuel J., 37, 42-43
Philippe, August, 29
Piazza, Marguerite, 118
Picasso, Pablo, 119
Pichon, Wally, 112
Pilié, 34-35, 57, 60, 67
Pinchback, P. B. S., 91
Pinza, Ezio, 118
Plessy, Homer, 75, 85, 93-94
Pointer Sisters, 124
Pons, Lily, 118
Pontalba, Micaela Almonester de, 38-40
Pope Benedict XVI, 47
Porteous, Laura L., 91
Pouilly, Jacques de, 14, 41
Poydras, Julien, 18-19
Pride, Charles, 74
Prudhomme, Paul, 112, 125
Questy, Joann, 21
Quincy, Josiah, 18
Q
R
Ray, Charles, 121
Rebenack, Malcolm (Mac), 123
Redon, Odilon, 118
Reed, Alan C., 21
Reeves, S., 38
Rey, Louis Barthelemy, 29
Rillieux, Norbert, 45-46, 75
Rillieux, Pierre, 29
Ripley, Eliza, 36
Rivers, Pearl, 86
Robb, James, 37, 63, 73
Rochemore, Louis, 15
Rochon, Rosette, 42
Roman, Desiree, 90
Roman, Marguerite, 90
Rome, Josephine, 37
Rosenwald, Julius, 103
Roudanez, Louis Charles, 75, 124
Rouselle, Bill, 125
Rush, Benjamin, 22
S
Salvaggio, John, 94-95
Sarpy, Mme Delord, 23
Schwartz, Simon,81
Schwegmann, 110
Sedella, Antonio de, 32, 41
Shaw, John A., 43
Shirley and Lee, 121
Silly, Marianne Angelique Murthe de, 43
Sisson, Sister M. Elise, 107
Sister Regis, OC, 48
Sisters of Charity, 41, 48
Sisters of Notre Dame, 41
Sisters of the Holy Family, 46-47
Slocomb, Cuthbert H., 80
Souchon, Edmond, 92
Spedale, Rhodes, 106, 124
St. Laurent, Yves, 119
St. Maxent, 15-16, 54, 56, 64
St. Mery, Moreau de, 24
Stanley, Henry Morton, 21
Starr, S. Frederick, 6, 78-79
Stern, 97, 103-104, 109
Stevens, Rise, 118
Stone, Edward Durrell, 119
T
Tanesse, Jacques, 34, 60
Taylor, Dorothy Mae, 124
Taylor, George Washington, 73
Taylor, William, 29
Tio, Lorenzo, 105
Tomas, Balderic, 22-23
Touro, Judah, 27-28, 30, 36, 77, 87, 92,
104, 109
Toussaint, Allen, 121, 123-124
Toussaint, Helene, 42
Tranchepain, Marie de Saint Augustin, 13
Trevigne, Paul, 21, 75
Trudeau, Charles Leveau, 41
Truman, Harry, 112
Tureaud, A. P., 107-108, 112, 122
Turpin, Mary 13
U
Ulloa, 15, 17
Unzaga, Luis de, 15-16
Ursuline Nuns, 14, 39, 49, 52
V
Vaccaro, 68, 89
Vivant, Constance, 46
W
Walker, Clementine, 85
Walker, James T., 74
Warmouth, Henry Clay, 75, 78
Warren, Leonard, 118
Washington, Booker T., 83, 91
Weil, Emile, 81
White, Edward Douglas, 90
Williams, Clarence, 106
Williams, Martin, 105
Williams, T. Harry, 122
Williams, Tennessee, 118
Wilson, Samuel, Jr., 36, 40, 102-103,
105, 112
Wood, Albert Baldwin, 72, 81, 97-98
Wright, J. Skelly, 107, 110-112
Y
Yiannopoulous, A. N., 27
Z
Zimmerman, Don, 109
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
128

Ursuline Convent.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
INDEX
129

NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
130

SHARING THE HERITAGE
Historic profiles of businesses,
organizations, and families that have
contributed to the development and
continued growth of New Orleans
Quality of Life ...........................................132
The Marketplace.........................................170
Building a Greater New Orleans....................198
The city of New Orleans, and the Mississippi River Lake Pontchartrain in distance. Currier & Ives
lithograph, c. 1885.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
SHARING THE HERITAGE
131

A mural dedicated to Carter G, Woodson,
the founder of the Association for the Study
of African American Life and History
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
132

QUALITY OF LIFE
Healthcare providers, foundations, universities,
and other institutions that contribute to the
quality of life in New Orleans
Patrick F. Taylor Foundation ........................................................134
Xavier University of Louisiana .....................................................140
Archbishop Shaw High School .......................................................142
Southern University at New Orleans ..............................................144
Brother Martin High School..........................................................146
Delgado Community College .........................................................148
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center
School of Medicine.................................................................150
Mount Carmel Academy ...............................................................152
St. Mary’s Dominican High School .................................................154
Tulane University .......................................................................156
New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau ..................................158
Academy of the Sacred Heart ........................................................160
Cabrini High School ....................................................................161
CrescentCare .............................................................................162
St. Mary’s Academy.....................................................................163
Ursuline Academy of New Orleans.................................................164
Ochsner Baptist ..........................................................................165
Stuart Hall School for Boys ..........................................................166
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary .....................................167
Metairie Park Country Day School ................................................168
Dillard University ......................................................................169
QUALITY OF LIFE
133

PATRICK F.
TAYLOR
FOUNDATION
The way I want to be remembered is by the young
people of this nation and my ties to them. I tell them
that, like me, they can dream. I talk about hard
work, integrity, and guts. I demand that of them and
they respond.
—Patrick F. Taylor
Bottom: Patrick F. Taylor and John
Mecom, Sr.
The story of the Patrick F. Taylor
Foundation began with a remarkable young
man, his tenacity and his love of learning.
Born in Beaumont, Texas, in 1937, to a family
of modest means, Taylor’s independence
and quest for knowledge manifested itself at
a young age. Despite leaving home at sixteen,
Taylor won a full academic scholarship to The
Kinkaid School in Houston, one of the most
prestigious private preparatory schools in
the country.
Following up on that, he went to Louisiana
State University in 1955 because of its strong
petroleum engineering program, and, because
tuition was less than $100. With finances being
a major concern, he graduated in three and
one-half years with a degree from the difficult
petroleum engineering program. Once again
demonstrating his penchant for learning and
hard work, Taylor joined the United States
Marine Corps PLC Officer Training Program
during his sophomore year at LSU. His
completion of the senior course was sidelined
due to a heart condition—but his lifelong loyalty
to the Marines, and to all branches of the
United States Armed Forces was unstinting.
Armed with his petroleum engineering
degree, Taylor went to work for famed Texas
oil-man, John Mecom, Sr., up to 1966, when he
formed his own company—eventually partnering
with Mecom again in 1974, to form the successful
Circle Bar Drilling Company. In 1979,
Taylor Energy Company was formed, based
in New Orleans. It would go on to become
the only individually owned company to
explore for, and produce, oil and natural
gas in federal offshore waters in the Gulf of
Mexico—up until the time of Taylor’s death
in 2004.
As Taylor’s wife, Phyllis, remarked years
later, he “was born to be an oil-man.” But,
important as it was to his biography, oil
was just the beginning of the Patrick F.
Taylor story, and it is at this point that
Taylor’s drive and his love of learning
again took center stage.
The term “visionary” has been much
bandied about over recent years, but it is
no exaggeration to state that Taylor was
indeed a visionary leader. Any number of
people over the years have decried the difficulties
that economically disadvantaged
students face in acquiring a higher education.
Taylor was one of the very few who
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
134

was able to expand his own individual vision
into ongoing, sustainable programs to address
those problems.
Taylor’s ideas began to take tangible form in
the early 1980s, when he pledged to send 183
underprivileged and underachieving Middle
Schoolers—lovingly called “Taylor’s Kids”—to
college, provided they studied hard, kept up a
“B” average, and stayed out of trouble. This
promise to a group of inner city New Orleans
students was kept–and then some. What
became known as the “Taylor Plan” resulted in
an ambitious project to ensure that all
Louisiana schoolchildren had the opportunity
to work toward a higher education. What set
the plan apart was its structuring of rigorous
standards for academic performance, coupled
with the chance for students to qualify for
state-funded tuition programs allowing them
to attend university and/or community and
technical colleges. Uniquely, the plan stressed
graduation, rather than enrollment, and with
these strict guidelines and criteria for successful
completion in place, Taylor embarked on a
determined battle with the state legislature to
enact his vision into law. And he prevailed.
This signal achievement was known as the
Tuition Assistance Program of 1989. By 1997,
this had been expanded to include all students
regardless of income (a true merit-based program)
under the banner of the Tuition
Opportunity Program for Students (TOPS). By
the time of Taylor’s passing in 2004, what had
started out as an individual local commitment
had been enacted, with various modifications,
by over twenty additional states. In recognition
of Taylor’s dedication, the Louisiana legislature
renamed TOPS as the Taylor Opportunity
Program for Students.
Since 1985, the Patrick F. Taylor Foundation
has been carrying out and expanding Taylor’s
early and ongoing engagement with higher
education. Originally founded by Phyllis and
Patrick Taylor as the charitable arm of the
Taylor Energy Company, the Foundation has
continued the commitment in a myriad of
ways—from encouraging the enactment of
Taylor Plan programs in additional states across
the U.S.; through individual scholarship programs;
scholarships targeted to specific
schools; and financial assistance to historical
and cultural centers, as well as to law enforcement
and armed forces programs and other
worthy civic organizations.
One of the longtime core projects of the
Foundation has been the provision of individual
scholarships and grants to two-year and fouryear
Louisiana undergraduate institutions and
high school students who meet certain financial
and academic criteria. These scholarships are
administered directly by the Foundation.
Another category of scholarships involves
specific institutions of learning. These are typically
administered by the individual schools
QUALITY OF LIFE
135

Top: Patrick and Phyllis Taylor attend
streetcar dedication.
themselves. Examples of this commitment
by the Foundation are numerous, and
include such schools as Louisiana State
University for Engineering, Chemistry,
Geology and Geophysics, Loyola University,
Xavier University, Louisiana Tech University,
LSU School of Medicine for Primary Care, The
Kinkaid School, Cabrini High School, Patrick
F. Taylor Science & Technology Academy, and
many others.
Together, the vast array of scholarship
opportunities provided by the Patrick F.
Taylor Foundation stands testament to Taylor’s
dedication to education and, while this remains
its core mission, its work extends well beyond
the classroom. Representative of the wide-ranging
work of the Foundation are the following
programs and initiatives: the Patrick F. Taylor
Science & Technology Academy; Patrick F.
Taylor Hall at Louisiana State University;
Patrick F. Taylor Campus at Kingsley House;
Taylor Scholars Awards Program; Object Project
at the Smithsonian; and the United States
Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots program.
The Patrick F. Taylor Science & Technology
Academy is a public school in Jefferson
Parish, named in honor of Taylor, and with
close ties to the Foundation, though not
administered by it. The Foundation awards
college scholarships to Academy students
yearly based on academic and financial criteria.
The school models the most rigorous college
preparatory settings, offering challenging
“STEAM”-oriented courses (in science, technology,
engineering, art and mathematics.)
Designed to foster higher order thinking, the
school maintains a very low teacher-to-student
ratio, which not only allows more oneon-one
instruction, but also fosters the long
term relationships that nurture student career
goals and planning, as well as internships and
work-related experience.
Patrick F. Taylor Science & Technology
Academy stresses project-based learning as a
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
136

way for its students to acquire real-world
twenty-first century skills. This approach
encourages collaborative learning, and is
based on a system of school-wide learning
outcomes (SWLO) in which the entire school
community—students, parents, and teachers—are
fully committed to the school’s culture
and curriculum. Shared governance
enhances student responsibility and leadership,
and creates an environment in which
personal professional conduct is expected.
The concepts employed by the school takes
Taylor’s ideas of education into the present
and prepares for the future.
With this challenging approach, it is no
wonder the Academy has been the recipient
of countless awards and accolades, as one of
the top secondary schools both locally and
nationally. One of the “crown jewels” of the
Academy is the Phyllis M. Taylor Fab Lab.
The Fab Lab is a “state-of-the-art digital
design and fabrication facility” based on
applied learning concepts developed by
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It
was the first of its kind in Louisiana, and
allows students the ability to combine
experimentation and innovative technology.
They can literally design and create
their dream ideas, and gain the critical
skills involved in actually building
working prototypes. The Fab Lab
provides students with such resources
as 3D printers, vinyl cutters, hand
tools, extensive computer design software
and an Epilogue laser
cutter/engraver.
Funded through a gift from the
Foundation, the Fab Lab perfectly
exemplifies the original vision of
Taylor’s love of learning given practical
application through hard work.
Another recent example of the
Taylors’ support of higher education
was the personal donation of $15 million
made by Phyllis M. Taylor from
the estate of Taylor to the LSU College
of Engineering. It assisted in the
ambitious $110 million renovation
and expansion of Patrick. F. Taylor
Hall, including a new Chemical
Engineering Annex. How fitting that
the building where Taylor received his education
and then, after his death, was named for
him by the LSU Board of Supervisors, honoring
his contributions to education, would
receive financial support from his estate. The
largest private donation in the history of the
College of Engineering, Mrs. Taylor’s gift was
a key part of the public/private partnership,
which will benefit LSU engineering students
with expanded teaching and laboratory space,
QUALITY OF LIFE
137

as well as student collaboration
space, classroom seating and faculty/staff
offices. After its completion,
Patrick F. Taylor Hall will be
the largest academic building in
the State of Louisiana, and one of
the largest free-standing college of
engineering edifices in the country.
Construction of the Patrick F.
Taylor Campus at Kingsley House,
in New Orleans’ Lower Garden
District, was completed in October
2016. It exemplifies the wide range
of civic projects outside the classroom
that the Patrick F. Taylor
Foundation has supported over the
years. It was Taylor who worked behind the
scenes to secure the land where the building
now stands. This 24,000 square foot facility is
home to a Head Start program and an adult
day care facility and allows Kingsley House
the ability to serve an additional 100 children
and 100 senior citizens. Founded in 1896,
Kingsley House provides a variety of services
to over 2,000 children, seniors and medically
disabled adults. Culminating over fifteen
years of efforts by local leaders and citizens,
the expansion of Kingsley House is the largest
since its inception. In addition to providing
classrooms for about 100 children with
growth and developmental needs, it will also
allow a number of medically fragile adults and
seniors to continue to live in their homes and
communities for as long as possible.
Since its inception, a mission of the Patrick F. Taylor
Foundation has been to encourage young people to
excel in the classroom. The Taylor Scholars Awards
Program was created to provide motivation and
incentive to achieve the goal.
—Phyllis M. Taylor
Chairman and President
Patrick F. Taylor Foundation
Recognizing that learning does not stop in
the classroom, in 1996, Taylor conceived the
concept of the Taylor Scholars Awards
Program. Basically, it rewards hard work in
the classroom. By so doing, all Louisiana students
in grades seventh through twelfth who
qualify are eligible to receive free one-year
memberships to the New Orleans Museum of
Art and Audubon Nature Institute attractions–the
Audubon Zoo, Audubon Aquarium
of the Americas and Audubon Butterfly
Garden and Insectarium.
The program has been so successful that
in the 2016-2017 school year, more than
211,000 students had taken part—an increase
of more than 6,000 participants over the prior
year. Special “Family Free Days” on selected
dates have extended these invaluable learning
experiences to an even wider public, as Taylor
Scholars may bring parents or guardian, plus
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138

two family members or friends, at
no cost.
The Object Project at the
Smithsonian, which debuted in
2015, is yet another example of the
Foundation’s conviction that learning
is a lifelong experience, and that it
can be pursued in a wide variety of
ways. It mimics the vast array of
interests Taylor had in his life. He
was an early skydiver, did rodeo in
college, ran power boat races, and
hunted in Africa and other countries.
At his ranch in Mississippi, he
developed a state-of-the-art cattle
operation, which included “on-the-ranch”
embryo transfer and the breeding of various
exotic animals.
The project was launched when the
Foundation donated $7.5 million—located
in the Smithsonian National Museum of
American History, in its renovated west wing,
now dubbed the Innovation Wing. A true
hands-on exhibit, the Patrick F. Taylor
Foundation Object Project features “everyday
things that changed everything.” Over 250 different
objects—everything from appliances,
clothing, toys, games—invite the public to discover
living history in a fun, interactive manner.
Educational in the best sense, the Object
Project invites participants to observe and
think about the many ways in which innovation
has been connected to society and its
ever-changing needs over time.
Harking back to Taylor’s days in the United
States Marine Corps PLC Officer Training
Program, and his subsequent unwavering
support for the United States Armed Forces, the
Taylors have worked for over thirty years in
support of the United States Marine Corps
Reserve Toys for Tots program. As part of
this program, Christmas cards and Toys for
Tots ornaments are sent to their colleagues
in the community, letting them know a
donation has been made in their behalf to
Toys for Tots and encouraging them to
donate unwrapped toys to the program.
These are collected at the Foundation building,
and then picked up and distributed by
the Marines throughout the community, to
less fortunate children of all ages.
In surveying the legacy of Patrick F. Taylor,
and the Foundation, which Taylor and his
wife started over thirty years ago, the magnitude
of its achievement is remarkable. The
sheer scope of their involvement in the betterment
of their community becomes extremely
difficult to quantify. It is instructive to note
that, in addition to the numerous programs
discussed above, the Foundation has also
worked with or helped to support such vital
civic projects as the Riverfront Streetcar
Project, United Way for the Greater New
Orleans Area “Success By 6” early education
program, WRBH radio, the Louisiana
Endowment for the Humanities, the New
Orleans Jazz Market, Water Innovation:
Reducing Hypoxia, Restoring Our Water, the
National World War II Museum, and the
Greater New Orleans Foundation.
The legacy of Taylor truly serves as an
enduring reminder of the power of education
and continues to have a significant impact
through the work of the Foundation.
Above: Patrick and Phyllis Taylor, United
States Marine Corps Reserve Toys for
Tots Program.
QUALITY OF LIFE
139

XAVIER
UNIVERSITY OF
LOUISIANA
Top: Xavier University of Louisiana's
campus
Below: Since its inception in 1925 by St.
Katharine Drexel and the Sisters of the
Blessed Sacrament, Xavier University of
Louisiana’s fundamental vision stands upon
the education of students who would become
agents of change in society, government and
the church.
Founded in 1925, Xavier University
of Louisiana is a private, coeducational
liberal arts college located in New
Orleans. Among its many other historic
aspects, Xavier is also the only historically
black Roman Catholic institution
of higher learning in the United States.
Since its inception, Xavier has been
closely linked to historic figures, events
and issues of major significance to both
the state and the nation. Its origins go
back to the work of Saint Katherine
Drexel, and her efforts in helping to expand
educational opportunities to minority students,
which resulted in the founding of a
high school in 1915, on the site previously
occupied by Southern University. This began
a process, which culminated in the establishment
of a College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
in 1925, and the opening of the College of
Pharmacy two years later.
In 1929, construction began on a new
campus for Xavier University of Louisiana,
which has remained its home to this day.
Anchored by its iconic U-shaped Gothic
Revival Main Building, Convent and Library
and its Administration Building, both of
which are designated landmarks, Xavier has
grown as its mission has expanded in the
ensuing years.
Xavier’s link to significant contemporary
issues has been an ongoing theme over the
years, especially in light of its designation as an
Historically Black College and University. In
1961, when the civil rights activists known as
the Freedom Riders were denied lodging in the
city, due to fear of reprisals, then-Dean of Men
Norman C. Francis gained the approval of the
University president to allow the group to stay
for a short time in one of the dorms. Dr. Francis
would go on to make history himself by serving
for forty-seven years as Xavier’s president from
1968 to 2015, which at the time of his retirement,
was the longest tenure of any college president
in the United States, and as a recipient of
the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006.
Xavier again brushed up against history in
1987, when Pope John Paul II addressed the
presidents of all the country’s Catholic colleges,
speaking from the university courtyard.
In 2010, President Obama addressed the
nation from Xavier’s campus, on the fifth
anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The university’s
response to Katrina was nothing less
than historic itself. Because of its location, the
school suffered extensive damage from the
flooding to almost every structure on the campus–some
of which remained submerged for a
substantial time. Despite such severe disruption,
through the determined efforts of dedicated
staff, faculty and students, including
rescue by boats of those stranded on campus,
students were able to return to the university
in January of 2006.
Today, Xavier University of Louisiana is recognized
nationally as a highly-ranked liberal arts
institution. Its College of Arts & Sciences offers
courses of study in the following Academic
Divisions: Biological and Public Health Sciences;
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140

Business; Education and Counseling; Fine Arts
and Humanities; Mathematical and Physical
Sciences; and Social and Behavioral Sciences.
The College of Pharmacy is comprised of divisions
in Basic Pharmaceutical Sciences and
Clinical and Administrative Sciences.
Xavier has earned a well-deserved reputation
as a “STEM” oriented school. Its graduates excel
in the sciences, technology, engineering and
mathematics. Although the school does not
offer an engineering degree, it partners with
several top engineering institutions, enabling its
graduates to obtain dual degrees in the field.
Xavier has distinguished itself for education in
the sciences and pre-med having been cited for
being the top producer of African-American
medical doctors in the United States.
Xavier’s College of Pharmacy, one of only
two in Louisiana, is highly-ranked in graduating
African-Americans with degrees in
Pharm.D. In 2006, the College of Pharmacy
was the recipient of a $17.5 million donation
from the nation of Qatar, to assist in hurricane
recovery and towards the opening of the new
Qatar Pharmacy Pavilion.
Xavier University of Louisiana provides its
students with limitless opportunities for educational
and personal growth. Everything
from studying abroad and professional development
to a wide array of programs and activities
encouraging leadership and community
service. Although Xavier is a Catholic university,
it reflects a highly diverse population,
and it has always welcomed qualified students
of every race and creed; about one fourth of
its students are not African-American, and
approximately three-fourths are not Catholic.
Its location in New Orleans presents a myriad
of cultural and social interests, which enrich
the educational experience of its students.
Xavier has distinguished itself in numerous
rankings of colleges and universities in the
United States garnering accolades as one of the
best schools in the nation in many categories.
Recently, The Princeton Review rated Xavier
among the 382 best colleges and universities in
the United States based on several criteria of
academic quality. It was deemed the “best
value” among southern regional colleges and
universities by U.S. News Media Group.
Students interviewed were proud of the
school’s “close-knit, family” atmosphere; of the
availability and caring of their professors; and
of the motivation and hard work of their peers.
When surveyed by the Wall Street Journal about
how well they felt they were being prepared for
their careers, Xavier’s students responded with
the highest rating of any school in the south
and the top nationwide. In the words of one
student, “Xavier has the tools to help everyone
get to where they want to be.”
Xavier University of Louisiana has been
making history since its inception more than
ninety years ago, and its remarkable success
over the years assures that its legacy of academic
excellence will cultivate students who
are prepared to lead and build a more just and
humane society.
Above: Xavier University of Louisiana
students pledge to value humanism as the
core of healthcare and scientific excellence,
as they take professional oaths during their
White Coat ceremony.
Below: Xavier University volunteers serve
communities in Hurricane Harvey relief
efforts
QUALITY OF LIFE
141

ARCHBISHOP
SHAW HIGH
SCHOOL
Top: Raymond Cooke, Rudolph Koteba
SDB, and Father Edward Liptak SDB in
front of the Hope Haven Institute, where the
Salesians were invited in New Orleans.
Founded in 1962, Archbishop Shaw High
School is the only boys’ Catholic school on
the West Bank of Jefferson Parish. Named in
honor of Archbishop John Shaw, who led the
Archdiocese of New Orleans from 1918 to
1934. It is owned by the Archdiocese and
operated and administered by the Salesians of
St. John Bosco.
Located in Marrero, Louisiana, Archbishop
Shaw High School’s mission is “to provide a
program that furthers the college preparatory
education of its students in a manner consistent
with the doctrines of Catholic education.”
Stemming from the Salesians’ mission to serve
the poor and the young, the school follows St.
John Bosco’s Preventive System of Education,
which emphasizes the tenets of Reason,
Religion, Loving Kindness, and Active Presence.
The school traces its origins back to Hope
Haven Institute, which was founded as an
orphanage and foster home for boys–administered
for many years by the Salesians of St.
John Bosco. In 1962, Archbishop Joseph
Rummel dedicated a new high school for the
West Bank and Archbishop Shaw High School
was built on the same seventy-acre plot of
land that had been occupied by Hope Haven.
Under the leadership of its founding principal,
the Reverend Paul Avallone, SDB and
his successors, Shaw grew steadily from its
original small complex, expanding enrollment
to meet the needs of the growing West Bank
population. Although it has experienced
many changes over the course of its fifty-sixyear
history, the school has always remained
committed to developing the total person:
spiritual, intellectual, social, moral, emotional,
and physical.
Over the years, Shaw has responded to the
needs of its community and today its campus
consists of four academic buildings and five
sports facilities (football, soccer, baseball,
wrestling and swimming.) Its learning environment
is enhanced through current technology,
such as Smart Boards in classrooms
and Chromebooks for student use. Further
changes and additions are planned, in keeping
with Shaw’s mission of providing its students
with the highest quality education.
All of Shaw’s students are required to take
a course of studies that meets the entry
requirements of four-year Louisiana institutions
of higher learning and its students may
qualify for honors, advanced placement, and
dual enrollment courses in most disciplines.
The school enrolls all-boys classes in grades
eighth through twelfth, is approved by the
Louisiana State Department of Education and
accredited by AdvancedEd. Shaw’s focus on
academic achievement is underscored by the
school’s high college acceptance rate of ninety-eight
percent with the remaining two percent
joining the Armed Forces.
Archbishop Shaw High School fosters an
environment in which students develop academic
and personal skills as they prepare for
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college or life after high school.
With its small average class size,
Shaw encourages communication
among students, parents
and staff so that the student is
not just a number but valued as
a person.
Consistent with its mission of
developing the whole person,
Shaw provides its students not
only a well-rounded college
preparatory education, but participation
in “a faith community
that provides witness to each other and the
world and prepares our young people for life,
leadership, and service in the Church and
society.” Shaw’s students take part in programs
to develop their leadership, social skills
and spiritual relationships. Its various clubs,
sports and other activities provide the students
many opportunities to serve others, and
to learn how to work toward a common goal.
Shaw’s faculty and administration help students
develop their skills in real world settings,
preparing them to become leaders in
their communities.
Archbishop Shaw High School is dedicated
to providing a family environment for its
community. Through the work of the
Salesians, this is achieved by focusing on four
components: a Home that welcomes; a
Church that evangelizes; a School that educates
for life; and a Playground where people
meet and make friends.
The story of Archbishop Shaw High
School–what it is today and what it aspires to
be in the future–is perhaps best told through
the words of its students. In their impressions,
certain key words consistently appear:
family, faith, support, challenging,
and community.
Some representative quotes
from students:
• “We are brothers, a family, and a
parish; we look after each other
and celebrate the Mass as one.”
• “It’s very family oriented; everyone
knows each other.”
• “The classes are very challenging,
push me to study and
learn more.”
• “I love how we always want to gather as a
family and how we always try to look out
for one another.”
• “Shaw has given me an opportunity to practice
my faith and allowed me to reflect...”
• “I like to help my other students in peer
tutoring, and I enjoy helping them reach
their goals.”
• “Shaw has helped me understand the societal
link between interacting in a school
and within a larger community.”
• “We are so blessed to have the community
of priests and brothers and their example.”
Finally, perfectly summing up Shaw’s longstanding
commitment to developing the
whole person, “Aside from a great education,
Shaw is about faith, becoming a real man, and
how to handle different situations.”
Since its inception more than fifty-eight
years ago, Archbishop Shaw High School has
experienced many changes and met many
challenges, but through the constancy of its
commitment to its core values and the ongoing
efforts of its dedicated community, the
school has continued to succeed, and is
poised for an even brighter future.
Top: Captains from various sports make a
commitment to leadership in the school and
in the community as they show the new
branding of Archbishop Shaw on their
letterman’s jacket.
QUALITY OF LIFE
143

SOUTHERN
UNIVERSITY AT
NEW ORLEANS
The chancellors of Southern University at
New Orleans (from left to right):
Dr. Emmett W. Bashful, 1959-1987;
Dolores Spikes, 1987-1988; Robert Gex,
1989-1997; Gerald Peoples, 1997-1999;
Joseph Bouie, Jr., 2000-2002;
Press Robinson, 2002-2005; Victor Ukpolo,
2006-2016; and Lisa Mims-Devezin,
2017-present.
Southern University at New Orleans
(SUNO) is the only public historically black
college and university in New Orleans. Part of
the Southern University System, SUNO was
founded in 1956 as a branch of Southern
University and Agricultural & Mechanical
College in Baton Rouge.
From its modest beginnings—with a single
building, 158 students and 15 faculty members—SUNO
has grown to become a major
institution of higher learning. It now encompasses
three campuses and 300 faculty and
staff members. Since its inception, the school
has faced numerous challenges and has
emerged stronger every time. Resilience and
overcoming adversity have been underlying
themes throughout its history.
Established as an open community of
learners, SUNO’s stated mission is “to empower
and promote the upward mobility of
diverse populations of traditional and nontraditional
students through quality academic
programs and service to achieve excellence in
higher education.”
Over the years, SUNO’s history has been
inextricably linked to that of the community it
serves. The early years saw rapid growth, and
by 1964, enrollment had risen to 1,300. That
same year, a lawsuit was filed, which resulted
in SUNO being opened to all individuals
regardless of race or color. In 1975,
management of SUNO was transferred from
the Louisiana State Board of Education to a
newly created Board of Supervisors of
Southern University. SUNO was designated as
a campus of the Southern University System,
thus creating parity with the other Southern
campuses. The following years also brought
expansion of SUNO’s academic programs. The
School of Social Work emerged as one of the
most acclaimed programs in the south under
the guidance of its first dean, Millie McClelland
Charles; the school’s Criminal Justice program
was lauded for its innovative work; and
SUNO’s science programs excelled–increasing
the number and quality of minority students
enrolling in and completing its courses.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and their
aftermath, ushered in a new period of
challenges for the University in 2005.
SUNO’s original Park Campus was
inundated, causing such devastation that the
school had to relocate its classes to its sister
campus in Baton Rouge for the 2005 fall
semester. The University returned to New
Orleans in February 2006, and operated out
of FEMA trailers until 2014.
Despite all the disruption, the SUNO
community responded with it characteristic
resilience. In the face of dire predictions
about a drastically reduced student base post-
Katrina, enrollment soared—faster than any
other four-year institution at that time—and
SUNO moved back to its original Park
Campus. In the ensuing years, the University
experienced a remarkable period of
reconstruction. SUNO built its first-ever
student housing complex, along with a new
Information Technology Center, a new
building for the College of Business and
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144

Public Administration, and a new Small
Business Incubator. Renovations to the
University Center, Leonard S. Washington
Memorial Library and the first floor of the
Emmett W. Bashful Administration Building
were completed in 2014.
Today, SUNO maintains a 100 percent
success rate in state-mandated accreditation,
being accredited by the Southern Association
of Colleges and Schools-Commission of
Colleges (SACSCOC) and the following
program-specific accrediting agencies:
Council on Social Work Education (CSWE),
Association to Advance Collegiate Schools
of Business (AACSB) International, National
Council for Accreditation of Teacher
Education (NCATE), Commission of
Accreditation for Health Informatics and
Information Management Education
(CAHIM), and American Association of
Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS).
SUNO awards Associates, Bachelors and
Masters Degrees in the fields of study spread
across four Academic Colleges and a School
of Graduate Studies:
• College of Arts and Sciences offers courses
in Biology, Forensic Science, English,
History, Psychology, Addictive Behavior
Counseling and Prevention, Criminal
Justice, Health Information Management,
Mathematics, and General Studies.
• College of Business and Public
Administration offers courses in Public
Administration, Business Administration
and Computer Information Systems.
• College of Education and Human
Development offers courses in Child
Development & Family Studies and
Educational Studies, with Post-
Baccalaureate Certificate in Early Childhood
Education and Elementary Education.
• School of Social Work offers courses in
Social Work disciplines.
• School of Graduate Studies offers Masters
Degrees in Museum Studies, Criminal
Justice, Computer Information Systems,
and Social Work.
Undergirding these academic courses and
programs is a dedicated faculty, administration
and staff that has helped to steer SUNO successfully
through the challenges it has faced and
overcome. As Chancellor Lisa Mims-Devezin,
Ph.D. has stated, “The faculty bring a wealth and
breadth of knowledge to the fundamental principles
of teaching at all levels. The departments
have designed curricula that are in-depth,
knowledge-based and unproblematic for the
diverse learners that we serve.”
The January 2018 dedication of a new
building for the Millie M. Charles School of
Social Work perfectly illustrates the recent
renaissance of Southern University at New
Orleans. The new building–along with three
others either planned or underway for the
Natural Sciences, Education, and Arts,
Humanities and Social Sciences—is a
testament to the school’s ongoing commitment
to provide the highest quality education to its
students and symbolizes the bright future for
which the school is poised.
QUALITY OF LIFE
145

BROTHER
MARTIN HIGH
SCHOOL
Below: St. Aloysius, 1869 to 1969.
Bottom: Cor Jesu High School, 1954
to 1969.
New Orleans’ colonial history as a French
and Spanish settlement resulted in a strong
Catholic tradition. Many late nineteenth and
early twentieth century European immigrants,
such as the Irish and Italians, were Catholic.
The large number of Catholic parishioners
prompted the need for parochial schools midway
through the nineteenth century.
It was just after the end of the Civil War
that four Brothers of the Sacred Heart moved
into the upstairs of what was once the Spanish
officers’ quarters in the Colonial Period at the
corner of Barracks and Chartres Streets in the
French Quarter. The Brothers converted the
house into a school, opening St. Aloysius
College in 1869. While it served the families
living in the French Quarter and the
Faubourg Marigny, it quickly outgrew the
facility when the immigrants began arriving in
the 1880s. In 1892, the Ursuline Sisters
decided to move their girls’ school from the
edge of the French Quarter to uptown New
Orleans. Needing more space for their
expanding student body, the Brothers of the
Sacred Heart bought the Ursulines’ building
on the corner of Esplanade Avenue and North
Rampart Street. Over the next thirty years, as
enrollment continued to increase, the
Brothers purchased adjacent lots on the same
block to expand the school to accommodate
150 high school boys. Eventually, an intervention
by the city of New Orleans enabled the
Brothers to erect an entirely new building
with construction of a new St. Aloysius starting
in 1924. In 1925, the former building was
demolished. The Brothers then began construction
of a larger building that was the
equal of any educational institution in the
city. This new building, which faced
Esplanade Avenue and was completed in the
summer of 1925, allowed the fifty-six-yearold
school to increase its student body considerably
over the next fifteen years until it
was the largest private school in the city and
one of the largest in the south. The student
body continued to grow until the school
boasted over 800 students.
Faced once again with the need to expand
further, the provincial council voted in the fall
of 1967 to merge St. Aloysius with its sister
Brothers of the Sacred Heart school, Cor Jesu,
in the Gentilly section of the city at 4401
Elysian Fields Avenue. The Brothers named
the merged school Brother Martin High
School in honor of Brother Martin Hernandez,
S.C., who had been principal of St. Aloysius
from 1934 through 1949 when he became
provincial of the Brothers and then president
of Cor Jesu for one year. The Cor Jesu facilities
were expanded during the 1968-1969
school year to accommodate the additional
students coming from St. Aloysius. That
school year was special at Esplanade and
Rampart. Not only was it the final year of St.
Aloysius High School, but it also marked the
100th anniversary of the school.
Today, Brother Martin High School, located
at 4401 Elysian Fields Avenue, remains a private,
all-boys Catholic college-preparatory
high school owned and operated by the
Brothers of the Sacred Heart, an international
religious community headquartered in Rome
and founded in Lyon, France, in 1821.
Accommodating students from eighth to
twelfth grade, Brother Martin is committed
to a holistic approach to education. Along
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146

with its college-preparatory curriculum,
Brother Martin focuses on religious values,
academic excellence, personal attention, and
friendly discipline.
The sprawling campus features the original
Cor Jesu classroom wing, the oldest building
on the current campus, built in 1954; the
Robert M. Conlin Gymnasium; and the Tom
and Gayle Benson Mall. Additional facilities
include the Thomas F. and Elaine P. Ridgley
Fine Arts and Athletic Center, E. A. Farley
Field, the Roland H. & Macy Paton Meyer
Science and Mathematics Building, the Tom
and Gayle Benson Field, and the James B.
Branton Chapel.
Brother Martin admits prospective students
without discrimination of race, color, sexual
orientation, national and ethnic origin.
Admission is based upon students’ priority of
choice in choosing Brother Martin, their overall
elementary school record, recommendation
of elementary school principals, and personal
interviews.
Brother Martin is fully accredited by the
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
It provides a college preparatory curriculum
designed to develop skills and create options
for higher education. Seven counselors serve
the student body. The Advanced Placement
and honors programs allow students to earn
Advanced Placement credits in English, computer,
history, math, and the sciences. ACT
and PSAT test preparation is presented weekly
for all students. Students who participate in
dual enrollment with LSU in Advanced Math
Honors and Pre-Calculus earn college credit.
The governing body of Brother Martin is the
Board of Directors, responsible for setting
school policy and regulations and hiring the
school president and principal. The administration
consists of a president, who is head of the
school and directs the school’s development
and capital campaign. The principal is responsible
for day-to-day operations and is assisted
by the assistant principal for student services,
the dean of students, the academic assistant
principal, and the director of admissions.
Brother Martin also boasts a variety of programs
in athletics and extracurricular activities,
such as basketball, baseball, bowling,
cross country, football, golf, soccer, swimming,
tennis, track & field, wrestling, lacrosse,
NJROTC, Key Club, and Student Ministry.
Brother Martin High School is permeated
with the long tradition of the Brothers of
the Sacred Heart and their lay partners in mission
and is committed to educating young
men for life.
Above: Brother Martin High School, 1969
to present.
Below: Brother Martin Students.
QUALITY OF LIFE
147

DELGADO
COMMUNITY
COLLEGE
Top: The faculty and staff assembled on the
front steps of Isaac Delgado Hall at the
Delgado City Park Campus, c. 1950.
Below: Brochure describing courses
of study—all free—and the location
of the Isaac Delgado Central Trades
School, c. 1930.
Since its inception in 1921, the story
of Delgado Community College has
been inextricably linked with that of
New Orleans—the community which
has sustained it, and which it has served.
Through changing times, societal needs,
and economic circumstances, the college
has responded—emerging as Louisiana’s
oldest and largest community college.
Like many great stories, Delgado’s
began with the visionary actions of a
dedicated civic leader. Isaac Delgado, a
Jamaican immigrant who made his fortune
as a sugar grower, and went on to
become a successful businessman and philanthropist,
foresaw the need for a school to train
young men in the manual trades. This resulted
in his bequest to the City of New Orleans,
of funds which brought about the construction
of Delgado Central Trades School, a landmark
structure that still anchors the college’s
original fifty-seven-acre campus adjacent to
New Orleans City Park.
The school opened in September 1921 and
provided a wide range of vocational training
to an initial enrollment of 1,300 young men.
The school thrived in its early years, but in an
all-too-common predicament of educational
institutions, it struggled with underfunding in
the years leading up to the Great Depression.
The onset of World War II created the need
for skilled technicians and workers, however,
and the school experienced a brief period
of resurgence.
Delgado’s role in the war effort was notable
with Higgins Industries, the famous shipbuilders,
operating a huge facility right next
door to the college’s City Park Campus where,
with the help of its students, faculty, and
graduates, dubbed “Delgado Men,” thousands
of landing craft and PT boats essential to winning
the war were built.
During the post-war years, Delgado again
had to face the issue of financial instability.
Dealing with this issue, among many others,
Director Marvin E. Thames also recognized
the need to redefine its mission. This new
direction began with a Tulane University
study in 1956-1957, which proposed that the
school be reconstituted as a junior college
technical institute. The school was renamed
Delgado Trades and Technical Institute to better
reflect its new purpose.
The transition continued during these
pivotal years. The Institute awarded its first
degrees in 1960, and as its role and scope
in the community evolved, its name was
changed twice (to Isaac Delgado College and
Delgado Vocational-Technical Junior College).
It gained approval as a model multi-campus
comprehensive community/junior college,
with Dr. Thames as founding president. In
1970, control of the college was transferred
from the city to the state, under the auspices
of the Louisiana State Board of Education.
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Accreditation from the Southern Association
of Colleges and Schools followed the next
year, and in 1980, Delgado Community
College became its official and current name.
Today, Delgado Community College is a
major institution of higher education in the
state of Louisiana, serving a diverse population
across the metropolitan New Orleans
area. With campuses and learning sites
arrayed from the original City Park Campus
outward to the East and West Bank of New
Orleans and neighboring Jefferson Parish,
some 20,000 students enroll each semester.
Delgado has forged its central role in the
community by continually adapting to a
changing society—from its early work in the
training of manual workers right up to its current
mission to prepare students for careers in
more than 100 different programs of study—
from technology, science, math, business, arts,
and humanities, to health sciences. The college
has maintained a focus on the highdemand
occupations and technologies of the
world economy and has worked to reflect the
pulse of its community, by offering flexibility
to its students and by providing highly trained
and skilled workers to business and industry.
The college offers two-year associate degrees
or certifications, as well as awards for technical
training and on-the-job internships in its
many areas of study and helps prepare about a
third of its students to transfer into four-year
programs. Its affordability, accessibility, and
small class size all attest to Delgado’s commitment
to the community it serves.
With such a record of accomplishment and
the remarkable scope of its current programs,
Delgado is poised to meet the challenges of
the future. As a member of the Louisiana
Community and Technical College System,
Delgado is an active participant in the state’s
“Our Louisiana 2020” initiative. This bold
plan has outlined six comprehensive goals to
ensure that Louisiana’s workforce is able to
thrive and succeed in the emerging economy
of the years ahead.
“Our Louisiana 2020” is indeed an ambitious
undertaking. It essentially seeks to double
the outcomes or results in the key areas of
number of graduates; annual earnings of graduates;
number of students served; and amount
of private support. Additionally, it seeks to
quadruple the number of partnerships with
business and industry, as well as the number
of student transfers to four-year institutions.
Now, nearly 100 years after Isaac Delgado’s
vision became reality, the story of Delgado
Community College has become the best kind
of legend—one of a forward-thinking founder;
diverse members of the community working
together; many obstacles overcome; growth and
adaptation to change over the years; and dedicated
leaders, faculty, and staff building on the
efforts of the past to assure a successful future.
To learn more about Delgado Community
College, visit us at www.dcc.edu.
Above: A fine arts class at the Delgado West
Bank Campus in Algiers, 2009. The West
Bank Campus opened in 1967.
Below: Delgado Charity School of Nursing
graduates at their R.N. pinning ceremony,
2014. The school offers programs for
registered and practical nurses.
QUALITY OF LIFE
149

LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY HEALTH
SCIENCES CENTER SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Charity Hospital, c. 1939.
It was at the insistence of Dr. Arthur
Vidrine, Sr., superintendent of Charity
Hospital, who prompted former Governor
Huey P. Long to build a medical school in
New Orleans as a branch of Louisiana State
University (LSU)–Baton Rouge. Vidrine, it
seems, was about as political as the governor
was at that time. Even as early as 1866, talk
included building a School of Medicine at
the Louisiana State Seminary and Military
Academy in Alexandria combined with the
School of Civil Engineering and award a
dual degree of engineer and physician.
They advertised for faculty to teach
medicine, surgery, geology, chemistry, and
mineralogy, even hired two doctors.
However, no students applied, and the
idea was soon scrapped. But, Long did not
give up. On January 3, 1931, Louisiana State
University Board of Supervisors and the
Charity Hospital governing board were
called to Long’s suite in the Roosevelt Hotel
in New Orleans. Long, still in his pajamas,
conducted the short meeting in which
he proposed a School of Medicine in
New Orleans and Vidrine would assume
the lead as dean and superintendent. With
little discussion, the governor’s proposals
were adopted and the school was born.
Now, all he needed to do was find a site,
and the Charity board obligingly donated
land on Tulane Avenue. He handled financing
easily, with the Baton Rouge campus selling
some land to the State Highway Department
and the proceeds would fund construction.
The fact that the Baton Rouge campus
did not want to sell the land, and the
Highway Department did not want to
acquire it were minor details. After all,
Long had won. He had his school, a dean,
the site and funding!
The newspaper accused Long of stealing
money from the Highway Trust Fund and
he retorted that he “had stolen two million”
and encouraged the paper to publish what
it wished. More backlash was felt when
news of the school’s approval was published.
Some felt Tulane was being threatened and
the “Spite School” theory was born, believing
that Long wanted to avenge himself against
Esmond Phelps, a prominent attorney and
the president of Tulane’s board, who had
in 1929 tried to have Long impeached.
Another theory involved Charles C. Bass,
DDS, MD, dean of the Tulane Medical
School, being upset by the perceived threat,
because Long had been denied an honorary
doctorate from the Law School. It was well
known that Long was ruthless, dictatorial,
and power-hungry, but there is no evidence
to support a “Spite School” theory. Instead,
he contended, his wanting the school was
out of love of LSU and concern for the
health of the poor.
The LSU School of Medicine officially
opened October 1, 1931. Dedication was
postponed until May 1932 to coincide
with the AMA convention being held in
New Orleans. At that time, the school was
showcased to the many visiting dignitaries.
The school would later become the
Louisiana State University Health Sciences
Center School of Medicine–New Orleans
(LSUHSC-NO).
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
150

In the fall of 1931, a freshman class and a
transfer class of junior students crowded into
the un-airconditioned and still-unfinished
building at 1542 Tulane Avenue. When it
opened its doors, though, it changed the
face of medicine in Louisiana forever.
The school began to grow and thrive,
offering degrees in various medical disciplines.
WWII set the college back a bit
with decreasing professors and students,
who had volunteered to serve their country.
The college even gave special credit to those
who served in a medical capacity, awarding
degrees when they returned after fulfilling
their obligations as doctors.
LSUHSC–NO suffered dramatically with
lowered occupancy at two teaching hospitals
in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
LSUHSC–NO went fifteen months without
the use of either facility and was forced
to restore clinical services, initially in tents
and a vacant shopping center, then the
renovated “Interim LSU Hospital.” Efforts
to restore the Charity Hospital building
failed when it was declared more than fifty
percent damaged.
Today, the Louisiana State University
School of Medicine–New Orleans trains
physicians and scientists in numerous
healthcare disciplines, in a state-of-the-art
new hospital, University Medical Center,
where the Level I trauma center continues
to serve the community and region. The
Medical School strives for excellence in
medical education, research, and service.
The administration and staff believe diversity
and inclusion are essential components of
excellence in all its missions.
It offers healthcare training, teaching the
next generation of physicians, and is a
proponent of research, fostering team science
collaboration across disciplines, spanning
the continuum from basic to clinical
translational science, and promoting the
discovery and application of new scientific
and clinical knowledge. As importantly, it
emphasizes its ongoing commitment to
the improvement of the health status of
patients/citizens of Louisiana.
The LSU School of Medicine trains seventy
percent of the state’s physicians, so there is
a good chance that someone in your family
has been served by a LSU physician.
LSUHSC is in downtown New Orleans,
with branch campuses in Baton Rouge and
Lafayette, Louisiana.
University Medical Center–New Orleans,
opened in August 2015, is a public-private
partnership with the state of Louisiana and
LCMC Health.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF NBBJ.
QUALITY OF LIFE
151

MOUNT CARMEL
ACADEMY
Above: Mount Carmel Academy was
chartered in 1896 by the State of Louisiana
at its location on Governor Nicholls Street.
Top: In 1926 the Sisters of Our Lady of
Mount Carmel built a four-story building in
the newly developing Lakeview area of
New Orleans, which provided a residence
for the Sisters and housed a day and
boarding school, a novitiate, and a Catholic
Normal School to train teachers.
New Orleans need look no
further than the Sisters of Mount
Carmel for a school for young
girls emphasizing a life of faith.
Mount Carmel’s spiritual goal for
their students is “growing in
friendship with God, experiencing
God’s love, pondering the
mystery and wonder of life, and
searching for meaning.”
Prayer is at the heart of
the Carmelite spirit. The Sisters’
faithfulness to God and their
willingness to respond to the
needs of the times permeate
the history of the Congregation
of Our Lady of Mount Carmel,
and continue to bless and shape
the lives of generations of young
women. The Sisters live and teach
their mission and truth.
The Sisters of Mount Carmel came to
New Orleans on November 2, 1833. Mount
Carmel Academy, founded by the Sisters
of Mount Carmel, was incorporated into
New Orleans Parish in 1858 and the State
of Louisiana in 1896.
The first community of the Sisters of Our
Lady of Mount Carmel originated in Tours,
France, in 1824. Julie Thèrése Chevrel joined
the community in 1825. The education of
young girls was at the core of the Sisters’
mission. The young community endured
adversity and was plagued by financial crisis
and religious persecution spawned by
France’s July Revolution of 1830. Mother
St. Paul Bazir, a community co-foundress,
predicted that Thèrése would cross the sea
and the community would survive in a new
country. She was right. Thérèse became
the Superior of the community in 1828 at
twenty-two, when Mother St. Paul died.
During those turbulent times, she responded
faithfully to God’s call. She was ready to
immigrate to the United States to fulfill the
need for education and ministry in south
Louisiana. She and Augustin Clerc arrived
from France on November 2, 1833. Their
journey laid the cornerstone for the
Congregation of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
in the United States, with a commitment to
Catholic education.
The bishop invited the Sisters to administer
a free school for young ladies of color in
New Orleans. Upon their arrival, though,
Sisters Thérèse and Clerc were sent to
Plattenville along Bayou Lafourche to re-open
a school. Then in 1838, they were needed in
New Orleans and returned to the city to
assume administration of the St. Claude Street
School from the Ursuline Sisters. They opened
a boarding and day school on Governor
Nicholls Street in 1840, the forerunner of
present-day Mount Carmel. In 1869, Carmelite
Sisters took over the orphanage at Royal and
Piety Streets, which grew into a major facility
for Civil War orphans, yellow fever victims and
victims of abuse and poverty. The orphanage
operated until 1919, when it was sold due
to repairs needed from a major hurricane.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
152

Perhaps the most influential individual
who brought Mount Carmel Academy into
the twentieth century was Mother Clare
Coady. Mother Clare instituted professional
training for teachers and accredited high
school programs. She believed the Sisters
should be properly educated and trained to
teach students properly. Clearly focused, she
expected nothing less than excellence.
During the turmoil of WWI, Mother Clare
had a vision for a new motherhouse and
school and chose the Lakeview area in the
1920s. Six years later, the order built a
four-story building, providing a residence for
the Sisters and housed a day and boarding
school, a novitiate, and a Catholic Normal
School to train teachers. The Motherhouse
remains home for the nuns today and
houses the Cub Corner, the school child
development program.
Under the direction of Sister Camille Anne
Campbell, who became principal in 1980,
and later president, the school continued to
grow, with several buildings erected for a
classroom, a fine arts building, as well as a
new Chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
They were named for Mother Clare and
Mother Thèrése. There have only been four
principals at Mount Carmel Academy: Sister
Mary Angela Duplantis, Sister Mary Grace
Danos, Sister Camille Anne Campbell and
Beth Ann Simno, current principal.
Today, Mount Carmel Academy continues
the mission of Sister Thérèse, Sister Clare,
and the Carmelite Sisters who devoted
their lives to educating young women in
New Orleans. On December 12, 2016, the
Most Reverend Archbishop Gregory Aymond
blessed and dedicated the Phyllis M. Taylor
Maker Lab, the newest addition (a laboratory)
to its state-of-the-art school.
The enrollment was sixteen students in the
1926-1927 school year. It continued to grow
under the nuns’ direction and at the end of
the 2004-2005 school year, it had grown
to 1,245 students when enrollment was
stabilized. Class sizes remain in the range of
fifteen to eighteen.
The Mission of Mount Carmel Academy
is the same today as it was at the school’s
founding, to provide young women the
opportunity to develop their God-given
talents through academic excellence and cocurricular
programs, as well as to empower
them to develop zeal for their faith with a
commitment to prayer and service.
The Academy’s business plan is founded
in the value of spiritual growth for each of
her students, faculty, staff, and parents. The
school remains faithful to the teaching of
the Catholic Church and continues to remain
on the frontlines of educational change to
graduate young ladies who will promote a
just and peaceful world relying on the grace
of God.
Top: Sister Mary Angela Duplantis
(principal from 1926-1955) with a student
in 1945-1946.
Above: Radio Broadcast with Sister Augusta
Marie Cousson, 1947-1948.
QUALITY OF LIFE
153

ST. MARY’S
DOMINICAN
HIGH SCHOOL
Above: St. Mary’s Dominican High School
students in a 1930 biology class with
teacher Sister M. Reginald Warner, O.P.
Although the school’s early curriculum
stressed the humanities and fine arts,
it also included science and math.
Below: “Seniors of the Circle S,” Class of
1965, in Western attire with boots and hats,
celebrate their presentation at the Rally Day
competition. For generations, Rally Day has
been one of the most memorable experiences
of each school year and the paramount
spirit event at St. Mary’s Dominican High
School. Each class competes against the
other grade levels in a contest of creativity
and spirit.
St. Mary’s Dominican High School owes
its origin to the forward-looking spirit of
Saint Dominic de Guzman, a young man
who began the Dominican Order in the
thirteenth century. His followers immediately
dedicated themselves to preaching Jesus,
the Word, Veritas.
Permanent Dominican life began in
Louisiana with the arrival of seven Dominican
Sisters from St. Mary’s Convent-Cabra, Dublin,
Ireland in November 5, 1860. Mother Mary
John Flanagan, Mother Mary Magdalen
O’Farrell, Sister Mary Hyacinth McQuillan,
Sister Mary Brigid Smith, Sister Mary Osanna
Cahill, Sister Mary Xavier Gaynor, and Sister
Mary Ursula O’Reilly (the foundresses of St.
Mary’s Congregation in New Orleans) came at
the request of the Reverend Jeremiah
Moynihan, pastor of St. John the Baptist
Church in New Orleans, to teach the children
of the Irish immigrants. These Dominican
women, educated in humanities and fine arts,
opened St. John the Baptist School for girls
on December 3, 1860, with a recorded attendance
of 200 students, which operated in correlation
with the Christian Brothers’ school for
boys in that parish.
The seven Dominican women who came to
New Orleans in 1860 were not only venturing
into a new horizon—they carried a heritage.
They, like their founder St. Dominic, possessed
the intellect, the perception, and the
leadership qualities to be missionaries and
educators. They, too, were a joyous group
eager to share the Gospel message with the
New Orleans community.
By 1861 the New Orleans Female Dominican
Academy was chartered under Louisiana
State law as an “Institute for literary, scientific,
religious, and charitable purposes.” The
Dominican Sisters bought at auction the
St. Charles Institute in Greenville (also called
Madame Mace’s Academy.) Act of Sale was on
January 5, 1865. April 17, 1865, was the day
students remained at the Academy on Dryades
Street (Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard) and
the boarding students were transferred to
the Academy in Greenville. Although the early
curriculum stressed humanities and fine arts,
it also included science and math.
In 1881, permission was received from the
Archbishop to build a new academy on the
property at Greenville and the cornerstone
was laid in 1882. Later the suburban village
of Greenville was incorporated into the City
of New Orleans.
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154

Early history points to Sister Mary
Dominic O’Brien, serving as administrator
of St. Mary’s Dominican Academy from
1882 until her death in 1900, as having
considerable impact on the quality of its
educational programs. Mother Mary de Ricci
Hutchinson (former student and colleague
of Sister O’Brien) was Sister O’Brien’s
successor. The two are credited for
many “firsts” in women’s education in
New Orleans:
• 1895—The first Catholic Winter School
established;
• 1908—Pedagogy classes incorporated
into the Academy curriculum; and
• 1910—Eleven Academy graduates received
Bachelor of Arts degrees.
In 1900, Mother Mary de Ricci, assistant
to the Prioress, called a preliminary meeting
of all former pupils of Dominican Academy
for establishing an Alumnae Association.
By January 1901 there was a well-organized
association, which selected St. Catherine of
Siena as its Patroness. Also of note, under
the leadership of Mother Mary de Ricci,
the first American-born Prioress, St. Mary’s
Dominican College was established midsummer
of 1910.
Until 1913, there were two New Orleans
Female Dominican Academies; one on
Dryades Street and the other on St. Charles
Avenue. By 1914, the Dryades program
closed and merged with St. Charles
Avenue campus and changed its name to
St. Mary’s Dominican High School. In
September 1927, St. Mary’s Dominican High
school was accredited by the Southern
Association of Colleges and Secondary
Schools. It has consistently maintained
accreditation through the present day. In
1963, St. Mary’s Dominican High School
was relocated to the Walmsley Avenue
campus. Consequently, after 100 years, the
boarding school closed in 1965. In 1993,
with the addition of eighth grade, a fiveyear
program of studies was established.
St. Mary’s Dominican High School commenced
its sesquicentennial celebration in
2010. In 2014, the STREAM—Science,
Technology, Religion, Engineering, Arts
and Math—initiative was implemented to
continue Dominican’s unique role in the
formation of students who are believing
thinkers and thinking believers.
The transmission of the Dominican
Charism—To Praise, To Bless, To Preach—is
rooted in the motto, Veritas. Dominican is
a place of foundations, where students learn
to integrate prayer and study, community
and service, joy and zest for life. This
heritage, brought to New Orleans with the
Sisters from Cabra, has been sustained in
the educational program and continues
through succeeding generations of the
Dominican family.
St. Mary’s Dominican High School, sponsored
since 2009 by the Dominican Sisters
of Peace, continues to preach the Gospel
through Dominican Catholic education and
remains a legacy through generations leading
to an eternity of Truth.
Top: Greenville Hall is the backdrop
for a photograph of the 1921 visit from
Éamon de Valera, President of Ireland, with
St. Mary’s Dominican High School students,
administration and faculty. St. Mary’s
Dominican High School traces its roots to
1860 when seven Dominican Sisters from
St. Mary’s Convent-Cabra in Dublin,
Ireland, arrived in New Orleans to teach
the children of Irish immigrants.
Above: Before May graduation ceremonies,
St. Mary’s Dominican High School Class of
2016 gathers in front of the Gayle and Tom
Benson Science and Technology Complex.
Dedicated in April of that year, the complex
incorporates form and function with details
reflecting the school’s rich legacy and its
Irish roots.
QUALITY OF LIFE
155

TULANE
UNIVERSITY
Top:Tulane University’s shield, with
overlapping “TU,” has been the symbol of
Tulane since the 1800s.
Bottom: Tulane's commencement ceremonies
are an experience unlike any other. The
Unified Ceremony brings together all
Tulane grads, from undergraduate to
graduate and professional students to
celebrate their day, which includes the
procession of graduates and faculty, keynote
address, and the conferral of degrees. After
the Unified Ceremony, graduates proceed to
their school's individual ceremony, where
they walk across the stage and have their
picture taken.
Service has always been the core
mission of Tulane University—Non sibi
sed suis “not for one’s self, but for one’s
own.” It is fitting, then, the college that
would one day become Tulane was
founded by seven young doctors fighting
cholera, yellow fever and small pox
epidemics rampant in nineteenth century
New Orleans.
Since its origin as the Medical
College of Louisiana in 1834, Tulane
has grown into one of the most well-respected
research universities in the country, offering
degrees in architecture, business, law, liberal
arts, medicine, professional advancement,
public health and tropical medicine, social
work and science and engineering. Also, harking
back to its founding credo, Tulane is
renowned as the first private research university
in the nation to make community engagement
a requirement for graduation.
As a member of the Association of American
Universities—a select group of the sixty-two
leading research universities in the United
States and Canada—Tulane offers “preeminent
programs of graduate and professional education
and scholarly research.” The Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
has recognized Tulane as a university with
“very high research activity” and has included
it in a prestigious category occupied by only
two percent of universities nationwide.
Tulane’s journey to the university it is
today has been long and filled with significant
milestones. In 1847, by act of the state legislature,
the Medical College of Louisiana
became a comprehensive public university,
the University of Louisiana. After closing
during the Civil War years, the university
was subsequently transformed into Tulane
University of Louisiana as a result of the
donation of more than $1 million in land,
cash and securities by Paul Tulane, a wealthy
merchant from Princeton, New Jersey. Then,
in 1884, Tulane was constituted in its present
form as a private, nonsectarian university.
Over the ensuing years, Tulane steadily
moved forward on its path to becoming a
renowned university. In 1885, the university
established a graduate division, which became
the Graduate School in 1925. The year 1886
saw the creation of the H. Sophie Newcomb
Memorial College, Tulane’s coordinate college
for women. In 1894, the College of Technology
was introduced and later became the
School of Engineering. That same year the
campus moved to its Uptown location on
St. Charles Avenue.
As the university expanded, Tulane continued
to add new programs and strengthen
existing ones. The School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine, originally formed in 1912,
would eventually become the School of Public
Health and Tropical Medicine. Established in
1914, the College of Commerce would
become the highly ranked A.B. Freeman
School of Business. Also notable, the first
School of Social Work in the Deep South was
formed at Tulane in 1927. The School of
Architecture became a separate entity in 1950
after originally being a department in the
School of Engineering. Tulane’s division of
continuing education—originally known as
University College—continues to operate as
the School of Professional Advancement.
Lastly, Tulane’s Health Sciences campus, in the
central business district of downtown New
Orleans, has experienced extensive growth
and innovation in recent years after the opening
of Tulane Medical Center, a 300-bed teaching
hospital and ambulatory clinic, in 1967.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
156

Today, Tulane offers endless educational
opportunities to more than 13,500 full-time
undergraduate and graduate/professional students
while providing a singular cultural experience
found nowhere else in the world. Its
highly diverse student population comes from
all across the U.S. (most students come from
more than 300 miles away) and represents
forty-eight countries worldwide. Students
enjoy, among other things: an extremely low
teacher-to student ratio, more than 250 clubs
and organizations, seventeen Division I athletics
varsity sports, club and intramural sports, a
myriad of cultural and social experiences and
numerous opportunities in community service.
Befitting its reputation for academic excellence,
Tulane remains highly selective in its
admissions criteria. Its students work toward
degrees in more than eighty different majors.
Tulane’s twelve libraries—including Howard-
Tilton Memorial Library and those of its professional
schools—make up a research network
ranked among the top in the nation.
Programs are offered at its Uptown Campus
(architecture, business, professional advancement,
law, liberal arts, science and engineering
and more), its Downtown Campus (social
work, medicine and public health and tropical
medicine), the Riverfront Campus
(ByWater Institute), and numerous satellite
campuses, academic and research institutes
and locations in more than forty countries.
Before Hurricane Katrina struck New
Orleans in 2005, only the Civil War had impeded
Tulane’s steady progress. The storm’s devastation
was so great, Tulane was forced to
cancel the fall semester of classes in fall 2005.
Undeterred, the university responded. Tulane
announced a bold renewal plan, resulting in the
return of ninety-three percent of all students for
the spring semester of 2006. Then in 2007 the
university’s incoming freshman class of 1,400
comprised the largest one-year increase in firstyear
students in the university’s history.
In 2010, Tulane began its “Tulane Empowers”
campaign–an ambitious project to build
resources that would help people build a better
world. Now more than twelve years after
Katrina, the university is still fully engaged in
improving the lives of others. In the 2016-2017
academic year, under the leadership of President
Mike Fitts, Tulane students logged more than
780,000 hours of civic service in New Orleans.
In 2017, the university launched its most
ambitious fundraising campaign to date. With
a goal of raising $1.3 billion, “Only the
Audacious” will transform Tulane. It will boost
the university’s pioneering research, increase
the diversity of the student body, help recruit
and retain the world’s best faculty and create a
learning and teaching environment that
emphasizes innovation and civic engagement.
Since its inception more than 184 years
ago, Tulane University has had a remarkable
impact on improving its community, as well
as the world at large and it is only getting
started. The Tulane community will continuously
pursue innovative ways to improve the
human condition by addressing global problems
of dramatic proportion, and in doing so
Tulane will forever maintain its core mission:
“Non sibi, sed suis.”
To learn more about Tulane University,
please visit www.tulane.edu.
Below: The Victory Bell was cast in 1825
for the Leche family. It was donated to
Tulane by Richard W. Leche, who was
governor of Louisiana in 1936-1939. On
April 1, 2011, the bell was dedicated to the
memory of the late Tulane alumnus Bobby
Boudreau (1951, 1953). The bell is
inscribed with: "This Victory Bell celebrates
the spirit of Bobby Boudreau, whose 'ROLL
WAVE' will forever sound across campus."
In 2011, a new tradition started with firstyear
students rubbing the bell for luck after
the Convocation Ceremony.
QUALITY OF LIFE
157

NEW ORLEANS
CONVENTION
AND VISITORS
BUREAU
J. Stephen Perry.
All Convention and Visitors Bureaus
(CVBs) are charged with encouraging out-oftowners
to select them as a site for conferences,
as well as promoting fun things to do
while visiting. New Orleans CVB excels in
both areas.
The success is based on the excellent marketing
of New Orleans and the activities, sites,
entertainment and restaurants it has to offer.
While the staff is assigned different aspects of
promoting the Big Easy, the achievement is
largely due to the direction of President and
CEO J. Stephen Perry. Thanks to Perry, the
New Orleans CVB is continually ranked as
one of the top five CVBs in America, and has
won multiple national awards for excellence
in sales, marketing, public relations, branding,
customer service and corporate relations.
The New Orleans CVB is one of the largest
economic development corporations in
Louisiana, closing nearly $2 billion dollars
per year in executed sales; and carries
responsibility for brand management, marketing
and sales valued at $6 to $8 billion dollars
in visitor spending annually. Perry also manages
offices in other American cities and
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
158

five foreign countries–a huge responsibility
for anyone!
His work is admired by other CVBs and his
techniques emulated, especially for his work
following Hurricane Katrina in rebuilding
tourism; and becoming a frequent guest on a
host of national media outlets. He was also
featured on the cover and in leading articles
industry trade publications. During the BP oil
spill 2010, his efforts made New Orleans the
number one destination in the country for
REVPAR growth (a measure of hotel industry
success); and, in 2012, the city led the continental
United States in REVPAR growth.
Perry served for several years as a board
member, and a one-year term as chairman of
the board for Destinations International, formally
Destinations Marketing Association
International (DMAI), the international governing
body of convention and visitor bureaus,
dedicated to improving the effectiveness of
2,800 professionals from nearly 650 destination
marketing organizations in thirty countries.
The Obama administration chose him as
one of two urban destination CEOs to serve
on the first twenty-nine-person U. S. Travel
and Tourism Advisory Board; and advise the
U. S. Department of Commerce secretary and
the White House staff on all key matters relating
to national travel and tourism policy. He
completed three terms under two administrations.
He also served on the U. S. Travel and
Tourism Advisory Board under the Bush
Administration and Secretary of Commerce
Carlos Gutierrez. Through his service with
DMAI, U. S. Travel Association, and the U. S.
Travel and Tourism Advisory Board, New
Orleans has enjoyed unprecedented representation
in national travel and tourism matters.
He not only has helped to shape national travel
policy, but has advanced the cause of New
Orleans, its assets, attractiveness, value as a
destination, and as a center of best practices.
Via his participation on these major panels,
the New Orleans brand is front and center in
American tourism.
In 2011, Governor Bobby Jindal appointed
Perry to the Louisiana State University Board
of Supervisors that oversees the LSU System
in the development of academic and professional
programs of instruction, research, and
public service, management of two medical
schools, and the LSU Law Center, the
Agriculture Center, and Health Sciences
Center. In addition, he serves on the board for
the Audubon Nature Institute and the New
Orleans Museum of Art.
Saying that Perry wears many hats is a mild
reference for all he does (and has done) to put
New Orleans on the map of top destinations
for history, meetings, cultural activities, education,
travel, dining, and more!
On the government side, Perry served as
Chief of Staff to the Honorable M. J. Foster,
Governor, from his election in 1995 until
August 2002. There, he was responsible for
direct management oversight of all state
departments and agencies. All cabinet secretaries
and heads of agencies reported directly
to him and ultimately, the governor. He was
the lead architect of public policy for the
Foster administration and drove the design
and implementation of many far-reaching policy
and management reforms.
His loyalty to the state has been emphasized
throughout his career. He served as
Higher Education Advisor to the governor,
and was recognized in the legislature as a
fierce advocate for the needs of higher education
and the agenda of Louisiana State
University. Perry was a leader in the recruitment
of Chancellor Mark Emmert (now president
of the N.C.A.A.), the establishment of
the Flagship Agenda, and led the governor’s
efforts on multiple faculty pay raise, targeted
investments in Centers of Excellence, funding
previously unfunded mandates, exempting
higher education mid-year budget cuts, growing
higher education funding considerably,
and providing a high level of investment to
LSU and high education in the capital outlay
and building process. In addition, he led a
successful effort to invest over $100 million in
deferred maintenance and new technology
infrastructure for all universities.
Perry holds B. A. degrees in history from
LSU, studied twice in the Soviet Union,
received a M. A. in anthropology from LSU,
and completed the Senior Executives Program
in State and Local Government sponsored by
the Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University.
QUALITY OF LIFE
159

ACADEMY OF
THE SACRED
HEART
Above: Mater Campus is located at 4301 St.
Charles Avenue.
Top: Rosary Campus located at 4521 St.
Charles Avenue.
Bottom: The cupola, located on the main
campus, was restored in 1996 with lighting.
The Academy of the Sacred
Heart’s roots trace back to post-
Revolutionary Paris, where in
1799, twenty-year-old Madeleine
Sophie Barat and several companions
founded Les Religieuses
du Sacré Coeur. Equipped with
a classical education from her
Jesuit brother, Mother Barat dedicated
herself and her community
to the education of young
girls, believing that a solid faith
foundation would enable women
to create positive social change
in their homes and in the tumultuous world
in which they lived.
In 1804, former Visitation religious Rose
Philippine Duchesne and Mother Barat agreed
to merge their small communities. Mothers
Barat and Duchesne became lifelong friends,
their frequent correspondence becoming a
basis of growth for both themselves and the
congregation, as well as documentation of
their extraordinary lives. Following requests
from Bishop William DuBourg of New
Orleans, Mother Barat in 1818 consented to
send Mother Duchesne and four companions
to America. Arriving in New Orleans in May
that year, they sojourned briefly with the
Ursuline congregation before moving up the
Mississippi to the St. Louis area. After fifty
years of pursuing missionary work in the
Mississippi Valley, some nuns returned to
New Orleans to establish their first Academy
there. Mater Admirabilis (Mother Most
Admirable) opened in the French Quarter in
1867 to educate the French Creole population,
accommodating both day and boarding
students, with a free school for those who
could not afford tuition.
As the city’s population migrated uptown,
the religious followed, purchasing in 1887 a
Greek Revival suburban villa on St. Charles
Avenue. The new foundation, named “The
Rosary,” opened that year to accommodate
both boarders and day pupils. The mansion
served the Academy for thirteen years, but
proved inadequate for a growing student population.
In 1900, architects Diboll and Owen
designed a two-story core replacement, to
which in 1906, the present enclosing wings
were added, followed in 1913 with a third
floor. Post World War II additions included a
gymnasium, a primary school and a preschool.
A math and science wing was opened in 1998.
In 2005, a second campus (Mater) opened on
St. Charles for the lower grades. A new gym
and fine Arts Center opened in 2011.
Today, the Academy is recognized as a premier
independent school educating young
women from age one through high school and
is an historical landmark. Its mission is to
educate students to a personal and active faith
in God, a deep-respect for intellectual values
social awareness, which impels to action and
personal growth in an atmosphere of wise
freedom. The school employs over 124 faculty/staff
and administration members, as
enrollment continues to increase, currently
standing at 760 students.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
160

Built on a foundation infused with the
burning faith of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini,
Cabrini High School not only bears the name
of a saint, but every student that passes
through its doors is a living extension of
her legacy.
And what a legacy it is! Born in Italy in
1850 and lured to America by her life’s purpose,
St. Cabrini holds the distinction of
being the first naturalized American citizen to
be canonized by the Catholic Church. Though
she died in 1917, she received her saintly designation
from Pope Pius XII in 1946 in recognition
of a life of serving others.
Mother Cabrini was especially drawn to
helping young women and in 1880 became
the first woman to establish a missionary
order of women—the Missionary Sisters of
the Sacred Heart of Jesus—to assist her. She
and her new sisters set sail for America in
1889 to provide support to Italian immigrants
and, in so doing, established a host of schools,
clinics and orphanages throughout the country
along the way. They opened their first
orphanage in New Orleans on St. Phillip
Street in 1892.
When this orphanage was filled to capacity,
Mother Cabrini acquired a second plot of
land on Esplanade Avenue where a new threestory
orphanage was constructed in 1905.
There, she and the sisters served as mothers
and teachers to hundreds of young women.
In the 1950s, as the need for the orphanage
dwindled, the sisters recruited Sister Aloysius
Almerico, MSC, to restructure the orphanage
into an all-girls Catholic high school founded
on the Cabrinian philosophy that an
education should be of both a young
woman’s mind and heart.
They named it Cabrini High School
and the only school in the New
Orleans area to have a future Saint live,
work and pray on its grounds opened
its doors in 1959. Like the orphanage
that came before, its population grew
so quickly that additions were soon
necessary. The Moss Street complex
was added in 1965 and the repurposed
orphanage building, which still contains
both the chapel and bedroom
where Mother Cabrini once lived and
prayed, is now called the Esplanade Building.
“Our campus is holy ground blessed by
Mother Cabrini’s presence and we make it our
prime mission to develop women who reflect
her great legacy,” said Principal and Alumna
Yvonne Hrapmann.
Serving approximately 500 girls in grades
eight through twelve, Cabrini differentiates
itself by its small class sizes with individualized
attention from a highly-credentialed and
experienced staff. The school offers honors,
advanced placement, and dual enrollment
classes as well as advanced technology, outstanding
athletics, and an engaged student life
accentuated with a strong spirit of service. The
school is still sponsored and governed by the
Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
For more information, call 504-482-1193
or visit www.cabrinihigh.com.
CABRINI HIGH
SCHOOL
Top: Cabrini High School, established 1959.
Bottom: St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, also
known as Mother Cabrini, founded the
Missonary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of
Jesus.
QUALITY OF LIFE
161

CRESCENTCARE
Left: NO/AIDS Walk in 1992.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF GEORGE LONG
AND PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT.
Right: NO/AIDS Walk in 2016.
NO/AIDS Task Force, now known as
CrescentCare, was founded July 1, 1983, in
response to the increasing number of persons
with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)
and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
(AIDS.) At the time, there were neither
designated treatment facilities nor medical
options for those who had been exposed.
Founders William Ruel Morrison, Thomas
H. Norman, and Robert J. Kremitzki, Jr.,
started the organization with a single phone
hotline from a living room. The hotline was a
lifeline for many with abject fear about the
diseases in the early days. In the late 1980s,
Jeffrey Campbell became executive director.
The agency and its support grew as it educated
the community. “Local drag shows at
night spots were instrumental to fundraising
and awareness. As revenue grew, NO/AIDS
expanded services to include case management;
Food For Friends, a home-delivered
meals program; HIV and sexually transmitted
disease (STD) testing; street outreach; and
legal services, among others. The Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation became one of
NO/AIDS Task Force’s first large-scale
sponsors. NO/AIDS has been involved with
Charity Hospital and Project Lazarus
throughout its growth. It is one of the oldest
AIDS service organizations in the nation,
and, in 1993, President Clinton proclaimed
it the third oldest in the nation.
In 1991, NO/AIDS became a Ryan Whitefunded
organization, expanding its capacity
to serve those affected. By 2013, it became
a Federally-Qualified Health Center and
rebranded as CrescentCare. CEO Noel
Twilbeck oversaw the transition/growth to
include care for those not infected by the
virus, too. The change was made possible in
part by the Affordable Care Act. At that
time, the organization opened a primary care
clinic with a dental clinic as the flagship
CrescentCare Health and Wellness Center.
In keeping with its mission statement,
CrescentCare offers health and wellness services
to the community, advocates empowerment
safeguards the rights and dignity of
individuals, and provides for an enlightened
public. It offers primary medical care, dental
care, medical and non-medical case management,
pediatrics, women’s health services,
nutritional counseling, peer support, legal
services, and an abundance of other medical
and social services.
CrescentCare serves over 5,000 primary
care patients, and has more than 700 dental
visits per year. It offers medical and nonmedical
case management for more than
3,000 individuals, provides legal assistance
for over 1,200, and serves hundreds of
individuals via the food bank. Over 8,000
HIV tests are given annually.
With the flagship CCHWC at 3308 Tulane
Avenue, CrescentCare now includes seven
sites and over 300 employees. Plans are underway
to build a new facility at 1631 Elysian
Fields Avenue, absorbing two clinical sites and
two project sites. The facilities will more than
double the capacity of the agency to see clients
in an area that is presently underserved.
CrescentCare will expand services to reach
any New Orleanian in need of healthcare,
regardless of income or insurance status.
Additional information is available at
www.crescentcare.org.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
162

A quality education is imperative to youth
seeking a career that will provide stability,
growth, and security for them in today’s high
tech and competitive world. Students in the
New Orleans area need to look no further than
St. Mary’s Academy (SMA), a private Catholic
college preparatory, co-educational elementary
and middle/high school for young women.
The school’s family-oriented atmosphere,
promotes educating the whole person. Students
learn Christian values, and are taught to think
critically, give service, and act responsibly.
SMA opened on Chartres Street under the
leadership of Mother Josephine Charles of
Sisters of the Holy Family in 1867. It is committed
to the three-fold purpose of Catholic
education: message, community, and service.
It moved to the historic Quadroom Ballroom
in 1881 at 717 Orleans Avenue and became
St. Mary’s Academy, the first secondary
Catholic school for girls of color in the city.
Mother Magdalene Alpaugh was principal.
When enrollment declined in the 1920s
due to competitive schools, it was Mother
Elizabeth’s task to rebuild the SMA. She
appointed a new faculty of certified sisters,
adopted the state course of studies, renovated,
and added curricula. Within three years,
enrollment doubled and St. Mary’s ranked
first in the state.
In 1947, Sister Esperance Collins led
the school to enter the Southern Association
of Schools and Colleges. Progress continued
through principals—Sisters Rosetta Butler,
Reginal Carter and Helena James. Under the
leadership of Sister Mary Demetria Williams,
the school moved to the Chef Menteur
property in 1965 where the Holy Family
Motherhouse was built.
In 2002-2003, Sister Greta Jupiter was
named president and a new type of leadership
began.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina dropped a
devastating blow, putting the school under
seven-feet of water, leaving the campus
uninhabitable. They held classes on the Xavier
Preparatory School campus until receiving a
generous gift from the Archdiocese, and
moved to the former St. James Major School.
There, curriculum was expanded to offer
Pre-K-4 through fifth grade. At that time, the
elementary and middle schools became coeducational,
while the high school continued
its legacy as an all-girls private school.
In the fall of 2007, St. Mary’s returned to the
Chef Menteur Highway campus. Modular
building housed students in Pre-K-3 through
twelfth grade while rebuilding the permanent
middle/high school campus. Under the new
president, Sister Clare of Assisi Pierre, students
moved into the school’s state-of-the-art campus
featuring thirty-one classrooms, computer,
physics, biology, chemistry, and language labs
with rooms for the chorus, band, fine arts, student
union, library, and a gymnasium.
In 2014, St. Mary’s ushered in a new era
opening its doors to its Male Academy, serving
boys in grades five through seven.
The faculty and staff are committed to
ensuring that each boy reaches his full potential
and is equipped with the skills to be
successful in high school and beyond.
Now, 150 years later, St. Mary’s Academy
is celebrating its sesquicentennial with events
that commemorate the school’s rich legacy.
ST. MARY’S ACADEMY
Clockwise, starting from the top, left:
The original academy located at
717 Orleans Avenue, 1881-1964.
The academy located at 6901 Chef Menteur
Highway, 1965-2005.
The new school campus located at
6905 Chef Menteur Highway.
QUALITY OF LIFE
163

URSULINE ACADEMY OF NEW ORLEANS
Above: Ursuline Academy at its present
location on State Street in Uptown
New Orleans.
Below: Middle school students in
orchestra class.
Right: High school students working in the
technology lab using a MakerBot 3D printer.
Ursuline Academy of New Orleans holds
the distinction for many “firsts” in its city,
as well as in the United States. It is both the
oldest, continuously-operating school for girls,
and the oldest Catholic school in the United
States, founded by the Sisters of the Order of
Saint Ursula in 1727. Convinced the education
of women was essential to the development
of a civilized, spiritual and just society, the
Ursuline Sisters influenced culture and learning
in New Orleans by providing exceptional
education, which included offering the first
classes for female African-American slaves, free
women of color, and Native Americans. In the
region, Ursuline provided the first center of
social welfare in the Mississippi Valley, first
boarding school in Louisiana, and the first
school of music in New Orleans.
Building on her history, the Ursuline
Academy of today provides a nurturing environment
for the learning and development of
the whole person, based on a sound foundation
of values drawn from the vision and
philosophy of Saint Angela Merici, founder of
the Ursuline Order in Brescia, Italy, in 1535.
Ursuline Academy is dedicated to the moral,
spiritual, intellectual and social growth of
each individual and these values are validated
by her educational approach.
Ursuline Academy is one of three academies
sponsored by the Ursuline Sisters of
the Roman Union, Central Province; and is
a member of Ursuline Education Network
(UEN), a collaborative effort of the Ursuline
congregations formed to carry their educational
tradition into a new millennium.
The mission of Ursuline Academy of New
Orleans strives to foster spiritual formation,
academic excellence, and a life-long commitment
to Serviam, Latin for “I will serve.” In
a diverse community with an inspiring
heritage, Ursuline Academy educates girls in
a Reggio Emilia-inspired early childhood
program through a challenging college-prep
secondary program (twelfth grade.)
The future looks bright for Ursuline
Academy, as a strategic plan has been implemented
to help sustain a viable enrollment,
which will support programs, current faculty
structure, and continue the diversity of students.
Ursuline Academy is also in the process of
developing a campus master plan that will
enhance the students’ experiences while
providing a logical approach to maintenance
and capital improvements. It further hopes
to develop global experiences to infuse the
Ursuline charisma into student, parent, board
of trustees, and faculty programs. In addition,
Ursuline is working to share their story
through targeted, consistent messaging with
the community, so they can communicate the
value and excellence of the Ursuline experience.
Through these key initiatives, it is always
of importance to impart the Ursuline values
through excellent academic programs set in
context of the students’ emotional, physical,
cognitive, and spiritual development.
Since 1912, Ursuline Academy has remained
at its current location at 2635 State Street.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
164

Through many years and name changes,
one thing has remained the same—Ochsner
Baptist and its dedicated staff have cared for
the heart of New Orleans.
Established by the Southern Baptist
Convention in 1926 as Southern Baptist
Hospital and located in the city’s center,
Ochsner Baptist—a campus of Ochsner
Medical Center—has provided quality healthcare
to generations of families for nearly
a century. It is a hospital with a legacy
of top-notch staff, community involvement
and civic leadership, as well as many
medical firsts.
In fact, the region’s first balloon angioplasty
was performed by hospital cardiologists
during the 1970s and, in 1992, a new musclesparing
microsurgical breast reconstruction
procedure was pioneered by a plastic surgeon
on staff.
“Our goal at Ochsner Baptist is to continuously
reach out to the community we serve
and to become the model of what a twentyfirst
century healthcare system should be,”
said Dawn Anuszkiewicz, CEO, Ochsner
Baptist, adding that it is the people who make
the hospital truly special.
Ochsner Baptist’s more than 1,300 employees
and 700 physicians serving in more
than 58 specialties—many of whom have
served and practiced at the hospital for
decades—are like family. This could not have
been more evident than during and after
Hurricane Katrina.
“Changing our city and our lives forever,
the people of Ochsner Baptist and from
every Ochsner location practiced incredible
courage that has carried us forward,” said
Anuszkiewicz of the facility, which closed
temporarily due to Katrina’s devastating
floods, but soon re-opened as a part of the
Ochsner Health System in 2006.
“Working tirelessly to care for anyone who
needed it—first responders, the military, stranded
residents—the team at Ochsner Baptist
demonstrated phenomenal teamwork during an
unthinkable situation,” she continued.
Over the past twelve years, the facility has
invested more than $200 million to transform
and become the Gulf South’s premier women’s
center and destination of choice for elective
care including surgical and interventional
services. Today, Ochsner Baptist features all
private in-patient rooms, an expanded intensive
care unit, state-of-the-art operating
rooms, two cardiac catheterization labs, and
an ultramodern imaging center and laser
vision center. In 2013, they relocated women’s
services and invested $45 million to create
the unique Women’s Pavilion; and, in 2017,
they expanded their third floor inpatient unit
by twenty-nine private patient rooms for surgical
and antepartum patients.
Since opening The Women’s Pavilion,
patients have access to the most advanced
care for women specialty services including:
general gynecological care, labor and delivery,
maternal fetal medicine, specialized pelvic
floor care, women’s wellness and survivorship
and gynecologic robotic surgery.
The Perkin Alternative Birthing Center
located within the Women’s Pavilion is
staffed by Certified Nurse Midwives who
provide mothers with a natural, holistic
birth experience in a home-like environment
with comfortable beds and birthing tubs. It
is the first hospital-based alternative birthing
center in the region. Ochsner Baptist’s
fifty-four-bed, Level III Regional Neonatal
Intensive Care Unit—the highest level designation
awarded by the state of Louisiana–
cares for the tiniest patients, and most recently,
the hospital began developing the state’s
very first human milk bank.
Ochsner Baptist is also home to a
health center with physician offices specializing
in primary care, urology, orthopedics,
back and spine services, reconstructive plastic
surgery, pediatrics, pain management and
much more, with additional clinics in Mid-
City and Old Metairie that offer same-day and
next-day appointments for primary care and
women’s services.
Ochsner Baptist continues to achieve
celebratory milestones, from delivering more
than 10,000 babies and achieving the prestigious
Baby-Friendly birth facility designation,
to being nationally-recognized for quality
excellence by U.S. News and World Report,
Healthgrades, Truven Health Analytics and
Leapfrog. For more information, visit
www.ochsner.org/baptist.
OCHSNER
BAPTIST
Ochsner Health System.
STEPHEN LEGENDRE, PHOTOGRAPHER.
QUALITY OF LIFE
165

STUART HALL
SCHOOL FOR
BOYS
What began as one man’s dream more than
thirty years ago has resulted in a unique
school for boys in New Orleans. Founding
headmaster, William Gallop spent twelve
years as head of the Academy of the Sacred
Heart and was inspired by the writings of
Mother Janet Erskine Stuart, a Religious of the
Sacred Heart. Mother Stuart wrote extensively
of a philosophy of education espousing qualities
of faith, scholarship, leadership, and
honor, which Gallop selected as cornerstones
of the new school. Her belief that “education
is formation, not just information” became
central to the School’s mission.
Gallop’s vision took shape with the lease
of classroom space at the Church of the
Annunciation on Claiborne Avenue. The
doors of the Stuart Hall School for Boys
opened for the 1984-1985 school year with
sixty-three students in PK4, kindergarten, and
first grade. In April 1988, a more expansive
campus became available at the Carrollton
Presbyterian Church and School. A twentyyear
lease was signed, and in August 1988
the School welcomed PK3 through fifth grade.
With Gallop’s departure, the School was
entrusted to its second headmaster, Mr. Kevin
Avin in 1997. In June 1998, Stuart Hall was
accredited by the Independent School
Association of the Southwest (ISAS.)
By 2004, in response to growing enrollment,
the Whelan Early Childhood Center was
constructed. A year later, the multipurpose
building became the new home for the middle
school with a gymnasium on the second floor.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the
metropolitan area, flooding the ground floors
of the three main buildings. Once again, Stuart
Hall showed its resiliency; the community
worked tirelessly, gutting, scrubbing, and
refurbishing damaged buildings. Lead by Avin,
Principal Dr. Cissy LaForge, and Development
Director Erin Beech, the School sought and
received federal, private, foundation, corporate,
and insurance proceeds to rebuild the
campus. Just 69 days after Katrina, Stuart Hall
welcomed back 60 percent of the student
body and 90 percent of the faculty.
The remaining buildings were purchased
from Carrollton Presbyterian Church in
2013, affording the opportunity for Stuart
Hall to convert the Van Vrancken Chapel to
Catholic. Devotional gifts, such as the Stations
of the Cross and the evocative blue hyacinths
of Mother Stuart now adorn the sacred
space where the Holy Eucharist resides in
the tabernacle.
Green space has always been a priority for
the School. With the purchase of the adjoining
property, and the completion of the
Benson Leadership Field, the boys are enjoying
the upgraded and expanded campus.
In a poignant moment, young men from
the first graduating classes have begun to
bring their young sons to experience the formation
and education they received; thereby,
passing the School’s mission to the next generation:
Stuart Hall–A place where Good Boys
Become Great Men.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
166

New Orleans has long been a faith-based
community. With other cultures migrating to
the city, so did their faith traditions. Baptists
began moving to the city and starting churches
in the early 1800s. At the turn of the twentieth
century, Baptists leaders decided to start a
ministry school to support these churches and
help expand the Baptist cause in New Orleans.
In 1917, seventeen hundred faithful
Baptists gathered in New Orleans for the
Southern Baptist Convention meeting, and
voted to establish the Baptist Bible Institute
(BBI), later known as New Orleans Seminary.
The first organizational meeting followed on
July 10th, laying the groundwork for the institution.
It adopted its current name in 1946.
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary
(NOBTS) is owned and supported by the
Southern Baptist Convention. Its mission is to
equip leaders to fulfill the Great Commission
and the Great Commandments through the
local church and its ministries.
P. I. Lipsey of Mississippi was a key figure in
establishing the school. He repeatedly encouraged
the Southern Baptist Convention to start a
Bible institute in New Orleans. Later, he became
chairman of the (BBI/NOBTS.) Dr. Byron
Hoover DeMent became the first president.
The school moved quickly to open with the
first day of classes held on October 1, 1918,
despite the fact classes suspended for more
than a month in 1918 due to a Spanish
influenza epidemic in the city. The first commencement
exercises were held May 30, 1919.
By the end of the first year of classes, 118
students were enrolled at BBI and the school
grew rapidly during the past century. By 1956,
enrollment exceeded 1,000 students, 2,000 by
1991, and 3,000 in 2001. Today,
enrollment is more than 3,800 with
approximately 1,300 attending the
main campus. Approximately 450
study online. NOBTS faculty totals
seventy with 200 staff members.
The remaining students attend
one of the twenty extension centers
in Alabama, Florida, Georgia,
Louisiana, and Mississippi.
New Orleans Baptist Theological
Seminary offers associate, baccalaureate,
masters and doctoral degrees
in biblical studies, theology, pastoral ministry,
church history, Christian education, counseling
and music. Most of the seminary’s graduates
serve as pastors or ministers in local churches
or serve as missionaries.
The seminary is located at 3939 Gentilly
Boulevard. The original location of the seminary
was 1220 Washington Avenue in the
Garden District from 1918-1953. BBI purchased
the Washington Avenue campus from
Sophie Newcomb College after Newcomb
moved to the Tulane University campus.
As NOBTS celebrates 100 years of ministry
in 2017-2018, it is launching the Second
Century Initiative, a $50 million fundraising
campaign to ensure its financial health and to
continue its mission of equipping pastors, ministers,
and counselors for local church ministry.
NEW ORLEANS
BAPTIST
THEOLOGICAL
SEMINARY
Top: Students from New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary (known as Baptist
Bible Institute at the time) gather by a bus
in front of the school’s original Washington
Avenue campus in the 1920s. Buses like this
one carried students to locations throughout
the city to preach the Bible and participate
in ministry activities.
Below: Students walk through the Chapel
Quad on the current New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary campus in Gentilly.
With the enrollment growing, NOBTS sold
its Washington and Avenue campus in the
1950s and constructed to a new, seventyfive-acre
campus designed by noted
Louisiana architect A. Hays Town.
QUALITY OF LIFE
167

METAIRIE PARK
COUNTRY DAY
SCHOOL
NOTABLE NEW ORLEA-
NIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
While the year 1929 was hardly propitious
for starting a school, Edith Stern and fifteen
families were committed to the idea that New
Orleans needed a school that was child-centered
based on what was called the new progressive
model. Daughter of philanthropist
Julius Rosenwald, and a prodigious civic
activist in her own right, Edith Stern envisioned
a nonprofit private school that would
serve as a laboratory for the public sector.
With this as the underlying mission it seems
perfectly fitting that Stern would choose Ralph
Boothby, a Vermont native as the founding
headmaster. Boothby graduated from Harvard
in 1912 with a degree in classics but he rejected
the traditional educational practice of rote
learning, opting for Plutarch’s dictum “The
mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be
kindled.” Inspired by the philosophy of John
Dewey as well as by the new pedagogy, Boothby
was eager to make Country Day a school that
served as a “laboratory and demonstration
station for promoting general educational
advancement in the community and beyond.”
What was this new education? When
Country Day opened its door to fifty-six students
in grades one through six in 1929, the
stated aims were to provide:
• Education to meet the needs of the individual
child;
• Teach the skills necessary to adapt to a
rapidly changing world;
• Emphasize cooperation rather than
competition;
• Integrate shop, weaving, dance, music and
play into the curriculum; and
• Prepare girls and boys for college.
The school did not give grades and instead
of individual subjects, the academic disciplines
were combined into “units of work.” Students
also took a battery of standardized tests as this
was considered an effective way to measure
growth as well as determine the appropriate
rigor for the individual student. By 1940, aspiring
teachers from all over the state came to the
campus to study the new education.
Yet from its inception the school never
wavered from developing an academic program
that would gain a student’s admission to the most
selective colleges. The exigencies of college
admission also fueled the rise of both Advanced
Placement courses and academic honor societies.
Nevertheless, even with roughly 730
students, the visions of Stern and Boothby live
on. Lower School continues the practice of
multi-age classrooms in K-1-2 and 3-4 with
instruction geared toward the individual child;
technology has effected new pedagogies in project-based
learning and creative design; and the
school is still committed to the proposition that
one size does not fit all when it comes to educating
young people for the future. The visual and
performing arts are still essential to the school
and even with a no-cut policy, athletic teams
have won over fifty state championships in both
girls and boys sports. Moreover the school still
encourages its students to take a challenging
academic schedule, compete in multi-season
sports and participate in the fall Shakespeare
and the spring musical performances. The
notion of learning through a myriad of experiences
is the essence of a Country Day education.

Dillard University is a private, historically
black liberal arts college in New Orleans. In
keeping with its motto Ex Fide, Fortis–
“Strength Through Faith”–Dillard is affiliated
with the United Methodist Church and the
United Church of Christ.
Founded in 1935, with roots extending
back to 1869, Dillard sits on its fifty-five-acre
campus in the Gentilly neighborhood of New
Orleans–anchored by Neoclassical architecture
and accentuated by the double-tree-lined
“Avenue of the Oaks.”
Since its inception, the school has been
inextricably linked with the history of its
community. Indeed, both of its predecessor
institutions were founded in the aftermath of
the Civil War, in large part to address the need
to educate and assist newly emancipated
African Americans in New Orleans as well as
a significant population of Free People of
Color across the region.
In 1869, Straight University and Union
Normal School were founded with the support
of the Missionary Association of the
Congregational Church–now the United
Church of Christ–and the Freedman’s Aid
Society of the United Methodist Church. They
were ultimately renamed Straight College and
New Orleans University, respectively.
Dillard University became a reality in 1935,
with the merger of Straight College and New
Orleans University. Flint Goodridge Hospital
was the signature achievement of the merger.
Named in honor of James H. Dillard, the
school was founded with the mission of implementing
“a coeducational, interracial school,
serving a predominantly African American
student body adhering to Christian principles
and values.” Another notable accolade,
Dillard is the first University in the
state of Louisiana to have an accredited
Nursing Program.
Dillard has emerged today as a
highly-regarded institution. Its students
work towards degrees in twenty-one academic
majors including: Film, Physics,
Business Administration, Nursing, Public
Health, Humanities, and Social Sciences.
The Dillard University Ray Charles
Program in African American Material
Culture is the first and only program at a
historically black university and an American
university that celebrates, preserves and
researches the influences of culture, cuisine,
traditions and the South; and a robust Pre-
Law program with a competitive and ranked
mock trial team.
Dillard is accredited by the Southern
Association of Colleges and Schools; designated
among Historically Black Colleges and
Universities; a founding member of the
United Negro College Fund; and a premier
undergraduate research center.
As it approaches its 150th year of operation
in 2019, the University has been cited by U.S.
News & World Report as the eleventh ranked
HBCU and by Washington Monthly for being in
the top twenty percent (49 out of 240) national
liberal arts universities in the United States.
Dillard University’s ongoing commitment to
academic excellence continues, and it is
poised for an even brighter future.
DILLARD
UNIVERSITY
Top: Garret Morris celebrating as he
receives his diploma.
Below: Students studying in the dorm.
QUALITY OF LIFE
169

Open air french Market, New Orleans.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
170

THE MARKETPLACE
Retail and commercial establishments
offer the people of New Orleans an impressive
variety of choices
Aunt Sally’s Pralines ...................................................................172
Metairie Bank ............................................................................174
Pan-American Life Insurance........................................................176
Gotham Lofts .............................................................................178
Parkway Bakery & Tavern............................................................180
Hancock Whitney........................................................................182
Port of New Orleans....................................................................184
PJ’s Coffee of New Orleans ...........................................................186
Hotel Storyville ..........................................................................188
Neal Auction Company ................................................................189
Royal Sonesta New Orleans ..........................................................190
Compucast Web, Inc./Experience New Orleans .................................191
KPMG LLP ................................................................................192
Jones Walker LLP........................................................................193
Mandina’s Restaurant ..................................................................194
Liberty Bank and Trust ................................................................195
Meyer The Hatter .......................................................................196
The Kearney Companies, Inc. .......................................................197
THE MARKETPLACE
171

AUNT SALLY’S
PRALINES
Top: Diane and Pierre Bagur.
Bottom: Iola “Baby Doll” Thomas.
Sweet pralines bubbling in an old copper
pot. The click-clack of a horse drawn carriage
on a cobblestone street. Jazz drifting from an
ancient doorway. The rich taste of gumbo.
The first bite of a hot, fresh beignet. The smell
of sweet pralines still warm from the kitchen.
These are the sights, sounds and flavors that
make up New Orleans. These are what the
founders of Aunt Sally’s Pralines wanted to
share with the world.
Aunt Sally’s was founded in the tightly-knit
French Creole community of New Orleans in
the early 1900s. In 1935, newlyweds Pierre
and Diane Bagur opened the first Aunt Sally’s
Praline Shop in a commercial strip of the
French Quarter known as the French Market.
They sold handmade pralines, along with a
collection of retail merchandise representing
New Orleans’ culture and Creole traditions.
Over several decades the family opened more
stores, created new recipes, and modernized
their production facilities, evolving into an
iconic New Orleans brand. In addition to
retail stores, Aunt Sally’s developed successful
mail order, Internet, and wholesale channels,
while maintaining family ownership and a
solid commitment to the City of New Orleans.
Today, as New Orleans celebrates its 300th
anniversary, Aunt Sally’s headquarters is located
just blocks from the Mississippi River and
the Louisiana Superdome. Every day the
sweet scent of pralines bubbling in copper
pots permeates neighborhood, as the St.
Charles streetcar rumbles by, art lovers shop
the finest galleries in New Orleans, and locals
and tourists alike drink and dine in popular
neighborhood eateries.
Aunt Sally’s flagship store is still located at
810 Decatur Street, welcoming hundreds of
people daily from around the world. At the
stores and online, Aunt Sally’s sells New
Orleans gifts and souvenirs, including excellent
cookbooks, specialty foods, housewares,
and local art. But the heart and soul of Aunt
Sally’s is the praline, made in two varieties.
The Creole Praline is made every day, using
the original family recipe, cooked and poured
entirely by hand, with no preservatives. It is a
thin, slightly crisp candy with a perfectly balanced
nutty sweetness, made in original and
chocolate flavors.
The Creamy Praline follows a recipe invented
by Aunt Sally’s in 2000, and it is a thicker,
fudge-like candy in five flavors. While the delicate
Creole candy is best enjoyed within two
weeks of being made, the Creamy varieties
have an eight-month shelf life.
All of Aunt Sally’s pralines are certified
Kosher and one hundred percent gluten free
and delicious!
The vision, history, and tradition of the
Bagur family are an American success story.
What a young couple started over eighty years
ago in the French Quarter, is now a multi-million-dollar
business, delivering the highest
quality and most-recognized brand of pralines
to customers around the world.
The exact history of how the Praline came
to be is unknown, but we do know that in the
1600s, French Chef Clement Lassagne created
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
172

a candy made of sugar and almonds. Chef
Lassagne made candy for the French Marshall
and Diplomat Cesar du Plessis-Praslin, and he
named it in his honor a Praline. As French
emigrants arrived in New Orleans in the
1700s, they brought their family recipes along,
and modified them to embrace local ingredients.
Local sugarcane replaced the European
sugar beets, pecans replaced almonds, and in
the early days of our nation both French
Creole and African American cooks created
new, American versions of the confectionary.
The recipes were closely guarded and passed
down from generation to generation in many
families, including the Bagurs.
As early as the 1800s, pralines were part of
the New Orleans culinary scene, sold in the
French Quarter by street vendors known as
vendeuses. They were enterprising women who
made and sold goods during the pre- and post-
Civil War economy for extra income to support
their families. When the Bagurs opened their
first praline shop in 1935, they selected a name
for the business that reflected qualities and
characteristics which they admired. The Bagurs
chose the name “Aunt Sally’s”, not for a specific
person, but rather as homage to vendeuses, the
hard-working African American women of their
era. The name is meant to represent the
American entrepreneurial spirit, and to honor
the expertise needed to prepare mouthwatering
Creole recipes such as pralines.
Aunt Sally’s pralines are created from a
short list of quality ingredients, starring
Louisiana pecans, cane sugar, milk, and butter.
They are cooked over open flame in large,
bowl-shaped copper pots that conduct heat
most evenly; and the temperature at various
stages of the process must be exact for the
praline to be perfect. The cook stirs the hot
liquid for approximately thirty minutes, and
when the mixture is the right temperature,
vanilla and other flavors are appropriately
added to each recipe. Cooks stir the pots vigorously
in order to incorporate the proper
amount of air as the candy cooks. When the
moment is right, they pull the pots off the
stove and hand pour the pralines onto parchment
paper, which sits on either cool marble
slabs or a stainless steel table.
Which is the correct pronunciation of
these delicate crispy, creamy treats: Prah-leens
or Pray-leens? Recipes vary from creamy-tochewy-to-everything
in between, and pralines
are now known throughout the South from
Dallas to D.C. And not a lot of words get pronounced
the same way in Dallas and D.C!
Even if you cannot get to New Orleans, Aunt
Sally’s delicious pralines are available at
auntsallys.com anytime you feel the urge to
satisfy your sweet tooth with a taste of
southern hospitality. As to the correct pronunciation,
in New Orleans we never say
“pray-leen,” but you can say whatever you
want as long as you say “Aunt Sally’s” first!
Below: Robin McClendon.
THE MARKETPLACE
173

METAIRIE BANK
Top: Founding members of Metairie Bank in
front of the first location for its grand
opening in 1947.
Below: Employees celebrating Metairie
Bank’s seventieth Anniversary at the Main
Office on Metairie Road.
Metairie Bank’s beginnings say a lot about
its history and its success over the years. From
its inception, Metairie Bank has been all about
community, and meeting the needs of
Metairie’s residents. In fact, the bank was born
in the early years after World War II, when a
group of local visionaries realized the need for
the growing community to be self-sufficient.
Prominent civic leaders from the Metairie
Road Business Association banded together to
form the first bank on the East Bank of
Jefferson Parish. The honor roll of early
founders and board members reads like a
“Who’s Who” of iconic area business leaders
Ortte, Doerr, Perlis, Pailet and Elmer. With a
foundation this rock solid, Metairie Bank was
poised for the growth and success to come.
Originally founded in 1947 as Metairie
Savings Bank and Trust with four employees,
the bank would go on to become the oldest
and largest commercial bank headquartered
on the East Bank, with seven locations there
and two more on the Northshore.
Early on the bank went about the challenges
of meeting the financial needs of a growing
Metairie, helping to finance a surging housing
sector and an expanding local business base.
The bank even had to face its own internal challenge,
when the original branch was devastated
by a fire in 1950. Undaunted, the bank
reopened for business as usual the next day.
Staying true to its original commitment of
“enriching its communities as a rock-solid
institution, while providing essential services
in a community bank atmosphere,” the bank
thrived, and expanded, experiencing a steady
succession of branch openings in 1952, 1953
and 1956.
The bank was growing. But it was not only
about adding more physical locations.
Through its board members and employees,
the bank was extending its roots deeper into
the community, forging personal relationships
with its customers, keeping an ear to the
ground, listening, and understanding its customers’
traditions, values and dreams.
The Metairie Bank story is one of steady,
stable growth—fueled by a deep commitment
to, and knowledge of, the people it serves.
In 1970, in keeping with its contemporary
mission, the bank was renamed “Metairie
Bank and Trust Company.” Today, under that
same name, the bank’s main offices stand at
3344 Metairie Road. In 2016, while other
banks were downsizing, Metairie Bank grew,
opening two new locations on Clearview
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
174

Parkway in Metairie and South Tyler Street in
Covington. The Clearview location was the
first branch opened in Jefferson Parish in thirty
years and the first Metairie Bank on the
lakeside of Veterans Boulevard. The South
Tyler branch added a second location to
Metairie Bank’s presence in West St. Tammany
Parish. It joined their Mandeville Branch,
which was opened in 2007 in response to a
large relocation of their customer base after
Hurricane Katrina.
Again, responding to the growing financial
needs of its customers and enlarging its arsenal
of services, Metairie Bank established MB
Insurance Agency, LLC, in 2006, and MB
Investment Services in 2015.
Throughout all these years of growth and
change, one thing has remained constant–
Metairie Bank’s commitment to the local community.
In a variety of ways, Metairie Bank
employees are invested in the Metairie area.
From presenting financial seminars and
forums, to working in local schools to educate
about the importance of financial literacy;
from sponsoring and donating to local charities;
and from volunteering in a myriad of
local events, sporting events and other activities,
Metairie Bank and its people live in and
help to sustain their communities. Enriching
its communities is more than a slogan for
Metairie Bank.
“The Bank of Personal Service” has always
been a theme that defines Metairie Bank. And
more recently, in today’s era of high speed
technology and communications, “We
Connect with You” has become its mantra.
Starting with the launch of metairiebank.com
in 2000, the first website of any local bank in
the area, it has worked to keep its customers
in the forefront of the most cutting-edge
banking conveniences. From the advent of
online banking in 2001, up through the
advances of mobile banking in 2017 (such as
mobile deposit, Bill Pay and People Pay) and
into recent mobile payment apps like Apple
Pay—with many more to come—Metairie
Bank continues to fulfill its commitment to
top-notch service and convenience.
While focusing on the future, Metairie
Bank retains its ties to its traditional roots, by
offering the full range of financial services,
including the best in business banking; consumer
and business lending; money management;
insurance; retirement and financial
planning; and more. Though providing their
expertise to very large and substantial firms of
many kinds, Metairie Bank has always recognized
that small businesses constitute the
backbone of the local economy. In the words
of CEO and President Ron Samford, Jr., working
with entrepreneurs and small businesses
is “right in our wheelhouse.”
After such a colorful history stretching
over seventy years, being sustained by the
people it has served, living through major
economic and natural upheavals and emerging
even more solid than before, it is reassuring
to finally note that Metairie Bank on
Metairie Road in Metairie, Louisiana, is still
standing strong. As Samford notes, “That’s
pretty cool.”
Above: Metairie Bank employees
participating in a local fundraising walk for
the American Diabetes Association in 2015.
Below: Ribbon cutting for South Tyler
location opened in 2016 in Covington,
Louisiana.
THE MARKETPLACE
175

PAN-AMERICAN
LIFE
INSURANCE
GROUP
Pan-American Life Insurance Company, the
flagship company of what is now Pan-American
Life Insurance Group (PALIG), was founded in
New Orleans in 1911. The Group’s headquarters
is still there after 100 years.
New Orleans native Crawford Ellis,
worked for United Fruit Company in the early
1900s, transporting goods between the
Crescent City and Central America. He knew
there was a need for quality insurance services
in the region. Together with Edward
Simmons, Marion Souchon and Eugene
McGivney, Ellis founded Pan-American Life,
because they intended it to be “a company for
the Americas” with a mandate to meet the
insurance needs of those in Latin America and
the United States.
The newly-created Pan-American Life
established its first offices on St. Charles
Avenue in the Whitney building. It was not
long before the business expanded beyond
Louisiana and the United States.
In 1912, Pan-American Life opened its first
international operation in Panama, and
expanded into seven other countries while
growing its footprint in the United States to
include nine southern states.
By the end of the 1920s, Pan-American Life
had multiplied the number of people it insured
ten-fold, increased its assets to $8.6 million,
and generated sales of nearly $4 million per
year with a net gain of over $1.1 million.
This growth helped to anchor Pan-American
Life during World War I. While many
companies suffered financially during the war
years, Pan-American Life achieved nearly
twenty percent compounded annual growth,
solidifying the company’s financial strength.
While the United States continued to
encounter economic difficulties with the
stock market crash and Great Depression,
conservative investment strategies and a high
degree of liquidity allowed Pan-American Life
to weather the storm and continue meeting its
obligations. The company diversified into
health and accident insurance and continued
to expand its geographic growth in the U.S.
and abroad.
In 1951, Pan-American Life employed 290
people, had 750 agents, and served 125,000
insureds across the Americas. By the end of
World War II, the company had outgrown its
rented space on St. Charles Avenue and
directors looked for new headquarters. In
1949, Pan-American Life purchased a city
block on Canal Street from the Catholic
Sisters of Charity. Ground was broken and
construction of a new home office began. It
was completed in little over a year and the
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
176

company took occupancy in early 1952. The
new building was described by reporters as an
“architectural gem.” The building had six
floors with over 100,000 square feet of space.
The structure incorporated New Orleans
elements of galleries, balconies, a landscaped
interior courtyard, and muted colors. The
national architectural community responded
with rave reviews, saying the building will
“rank with the best in the record of
architecture in our time….”
In the 1970s, Pan-American Life
experienced one of its most successful
decades in its history led by President G.
Frank Purvis. Purvis, the first Louisiana-born
president of the company, began his career at
Pan-American Life in 1949. His presidency
laid a solid groundwork for expansion in the
1980s. It was during Purvis’ tenure as
Chairman of the Board, where he remained
until 2008, that he committed $50 million to
building the new home office on the corner of
Poydras Street and St. Charles Avenue where
Pan-American Life continues to operate today.
By the 1980s, it was no longer a single
company selling insurance in the Americas.
Instead it had nine subsidiaries connected
with its international business.
Pan-American Life continued to do well for
much of the 1980s and ’90s, but by the early
2000s, the company’s leadership felt it was
time for a new strategic direction. They
recruited José S. Suquet to join the
organization as chief executive officer. Under
his leadership, the company has more than
doubled its size through consistent organic
growth, strategic mergers and acquisitions.
In August 2005, Suquet led Pan-American
Life through the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina, swiftly establishing an emergency
plan, which later became an industry case
study in disaster recovery.
Suquet’s international industry experience
guided his strategy to restructure the Group’s
operations and focus on core areas of growth
opportunity in life, accident and health
insurance, while also stabilizing operations and
implementing a comprehensive enterprise risk
management program.
In the last five years, Pan-American Life has
expanded geographically, thanks to the 2012
acquisition of select MetLife Alico/Algico assets
in the Caribbean; and through the 2015 merger
with Mutual Trust Life Insurance Company.
Today, PALIG employs more than 1,750
people in 22 different countries and is known
for best in class in life, accident, and health
insurance solutions.
The year 2016 was an especially important
year for Pan-American Life, as they achieved
record revenues and strong earnings growth.
For the first time in its history, PALIG saw
revenues and total premiums exceed $1
billion. Further underscoring the financial
strength were $72.1 million in GAAP pre-tax
operating earnings and net income of $48.9
million. The Group’s total assets grew to
$5.6 billion while its total equity increased to
$933 million.
Those impressive results reflect more than
a decade of strategic planning, excellent
execution and an unwavering commitment
to delivering peace of mind to millions of
policyholders across the Americas. Throughout
its history, Pan-American Life has proven
that it is a strong, steady, and stable partner
for the people—families, businesses and communities—it
serves.
Opposite, top: Pan-American Life’s founders
celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the
company’s founding.
Opposite, bottom: Pan-American Life’s
offices on Canal Street, 1952.
Above: The Pan-American Life Insurance
offices on Poydras Street, c. 1982.
Below: Pan-American Life celebrated its
centennial in 2011.
THE MARKETPLACE
177

GOTHAM LOFTS
Though it was definitely in need of some
TLC, Con Demmas saw a future for the New
Orleans city block located in the heart of the
Warehouse District and bordered by Andrew
Higgins Drive, South Peters Street, John
Churchill Chase and Poe Street. He saw so
much promise, in fact, he bought the entire
block in 1981.
From the start, Demmas dreamed of breathing
life back into a bit of New Orleans history;
to offer visitors a glimpse of an era long ago,
while also enjoying modern conveniences. He
did not want to just repurpose old buildings;
he wanted to join the past and the present for
a useful and unique experience unlike no
other in the city. To do so, he enlisted the help
of his son, George Demmas, in 1996.
The result? Generations Hall, one of the
city’s most unique and versatile special event
venues, and Gotham Lofts, a newly renovated
and reimagined twenty-five-room, long
term/extended stay facility, which has catered
to business professionals and the movie
industry since initially opening as Jelly Roll
Executive Suites in 2004. Both businesses are
operated by parent organization, Venture
International, LLC.
Located side-by-side, the buildings that
now host Generations Hall and Gotham Lofts
were first constructed almost two centuries
ago in 1821. The Orleans Sugar Refinery
operated in the buildings for their first sixtyfive
years of existence. In the late 1800s,
what is now Generations Hall was converted
for cotton storage, and today’s Gotham Lofts
served as storage for the pumping equipment
of Albert Baldwin Wood, the inventor and
engineer credited with developing New
Orleans’ first water pumping system.
In 1984—not long after the senior Demmas
acquired the deeds for the property—the
block was completely transformed into an
Italian Village for the 1984 Louisiana World
Exposition and World Fair, which ran from
May until November. Following the fair, a
portion of the property was operated as a successful
night club called City Lights before it
finally—under the tutelage of the father and
son duo—underwent an extensive renovation
and grand reopening as Generations Hall and
Metro Night Club.
“After my first ten years in financial
planning, my father’s enthusiasm and vision for
this property was so contagious that I
was excited to join him in the mid-1990s,”
George recalled, adding that he has also continued
his financial planning business. “We fully
renovated and opened Generations first in
1997 and followed with what is now Gotham
Lofts in 2004. Dad passed away in May 2014,
but, without a doubt, it was his passion, zeal,
and insight that made all of this possible.”
Adorned with artwork depicting the rich
history of New Orleans jazz, Generations Hall
and the Metropolitan Night Club is the quintessential
French Quarter-style facility with
over 36,000 square feet of function space. The
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
178

facility has three spacious rooms, each one
features a timeless New Orleans atmosphere,
seven high-volume service bars, three full sets
of restrooms, customizable amenities, multiple
VIP sections and modern technology that
creates an environment where the party never
has to end! The rooms can be rented separately
or together and provide the perfect setting
for everything from an intimate gathering, a
banquet, luncheon or wedding to a major corporate
event or concert.
Formerly known as Jelly Roll Suites, the
newly revitalized Gotham Lofts consists of
four stories of boutique lofts, twenty-five in
all, each characterized with aspirational architecture—from
original exposed brick to
wood beams and barn doors. Just as with
Generations Hall, Venture International has
been careful to preserve the building’s historic
nature, while updating and modernizing the
space to meet the needs and desires of individuals,
business and movie industry professionals
in search of a quiet, quaint and private
facility to call home while in New Orleans.
But Generations Hall and Gotham Lofts are
not the only sites located on the city block
originally purchased by Con to be revived.
While in the courtyard awaiting the load-in
for a big Jazz Fest event in 1998, George
recalls the New Orleans Fire Department driving
up with hook and ladder to inspect the
roof and condition of the abandoned building
across the street from Generations Hall. The
building did not pass inspection.
“They told us we had to take it down,”
George said. “But, no one, most especially
my father, wanted to see the property abandoned;
and—after a very successful Jazz Fest
weekend of events—he and Lester Kabbacoff,
then owner of the Hilton Riverside Hotel,
partnered to build the Hilton Garden Inn
where the once condemned building stood.
My father’s vision for this New Orleans city
block was coming to fruition.”
Gotham Lofts and Generations Hall still to
honor Con’s vision by continuing to improve
both businesses while also giving back to the
community. In fact, Generations probably
hosts more charitable events and fundraisers
than any other venue in the city, and the company
has even organized its own nonprofit
fundraiser as part of a group effort to help the
victims of catastrophic events such as the hurricanes
and other natural disasters, which
brought devastation to Texas, Los Angeles,
Puerto Rico and Florida in 2017.
For more information on Generations Hall
and/or Gotham Lofts, please visit www.generationshall.com
or www.gothamloftsnola.com.
THE MARKETPLACE
179

PARKWAY
BAKERY &
TAVERN
Top: The exterior of the Parkway Bakery
& Tavern.
Below: Henry Timothy, Sr., serving Sadie.
Parkway Bakery. Parkway Bakery &
Tavern. Parkway for PoorBoys. Or just,
Parkway. There have been several ways to
characterize it over the years, but one title
endures—it is the oldest family owned Poor
Boy shop in New Orleans.
Today, Parkway Bakery & Tavern still stands
on its original location. It all started out back in
1911, under the ownership of German baker
Charles Goering and was known as Parkway
Bakery. In 1922, Henry Timothy, Sr. purchased
the business. A few years later, primarily still a
bakery, (although a thriving one) supplying
bread to most of the mid-city’s restaurants,
Parkway began to offer a tasty new sandwich,
called the Poor Boy by its creators, the Martin
brothers, who came up with the idea as a way
to feed striking streetcar workers.
Over the intervening years, the business
flourished, and in the 1960s, Timothy turned
it over to his sons—two colorful and bluntspoken
characters in their own right. The year
1978 brought flooding, which knocked out
the bakery’s large ovens and forced a temporary
closing. The Timothy brothers reopened,
but shifted away from the bakery business,
towards Poor Boys and the restaurant and tavern
that Parkway is today.
In 1988, the closing of American Can
Company struck Parkway’s fortunes a heavy
blow, leading to its ultimate closure in 1993.
But it is here that the story of Parkway Bakery
& Tavern becomes the best kind of legend—
one with a colorful early history, an iconic
product, obstacles overcome, then rebirth
into a brighter present and future.
Enter current owner, Jay Nix. Parkway sits
idle and in disrepair—a New Orleans midcity
landmark down on her luck, but poised
for an exciting reversal of fortune. Nix purchases
the building in 1995, having no real
idea of what to do with it. A period of germination
ensues, neighbors suggest that he
reopen Parkway, but he has no experience
running a restaurant. Time passes, though,
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
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and a seed is planted in his mind. With an
extensive background in real estate, especially
renovations, Nix envisions what can be done
with the business by restoring and updating
it, while retaining its authentic character.
With an ace up his sleeve, he takes the
plunge, and the Parkway reopens for business,
after its long hiatus, in 2003. An old
family recipe for cooking roast beef is his
“secret weapon,” and it proves to be an immediate
success, quickly reestablishing its bond
with the old neighborhood, while also attracting
a new clientele. So it was off to the races
for the venerable Parkway, in its most recent
reincarnation...or was it?
So soon on the heels of its triumphant
rebirth, Hurricane Katrina struck—forcing
another closure. However, overcoming adversity
seems to be in Parkway’s DNA. Nix’s
nephew, Justin Kennedy, had been a student
at UNO, learning the business while working
part-time. He quit school to pitch in and help
with the reopening, which was accomplished
in only a couple of months. Since that reopening
in December 2005, Justin has stayed on at
Parkway, adding his ideas and energy, rising to
general manager and head chef. Attuned to
his customers’ tastes, Justin oversees the varied
menu-preparing dishes from scratch with
only the freshest ingredients. For example,
slow-cooking over 1,000 pounds of beef, to
go along with fifty gallons of gravy, each week.
Proudly serving up the favorites—roast beef,
shrimp and hot sausage Poor Boys—Justin
has also created classic new takes on the iconic
Poor Boy tradition.
Another key ingredient of the restaurant’s
success was added in 2006, when Eileen Nix
(Justin’s mother and the sister of Jay Nix)
came on board. She has been ably taking care
of running the “back office” as well as handling
taxes, payroll, etc.
It has all added up to a recipe that still
works today. Indeed, Parkway serves an average
of over 1,000 customers daily. Poor
Boys—in all their mouth-watering manifestations—are
what it is all about. But the varied
menu is geared to satisfy anyone’s taste, offering
seafood from oysters, shrimp and catfish
to gumbo; chicken and beef dishes, and even
a vegetarian fare. With memorable desserts
such as classic bread pudding and butter rum
cake to name but a few the tavern offers a full
bar menu as well. Naturally, it is a great venue
for events and celebrations of all kinds.
Parkway Bakery & Tavern has always been
committed to its community. From taking
part in all sorts of neighborhood and city
events, to supporting charities and worthwhile
civic causes, such as participating with
donations to the Al Copeland Foundation’s
fight against cancer through its Thanksgiving
Poor Boy promotion, to its efforts to help in
the repair of a fellow Poor Boy shop.
Parkway has been the recipient of many
awards and accolades in recent years, including
features on numerous television shows
and rave reviews in print articles. But it is the
esteem of its community of which Parkway is
proudest. Its walls are adorned with memorabilia
from many of its longtime customers,
emblematic of the laughter and friendship,
which it has fostered among its patrons.
Jay, Justin and Eileen with their loyal staff
have successfully created a destination in New
Orleans—a total experience that has become
much more than just a place to eat and drink.
Parkway Bakery & Tavern is located at
538 Hagan Avenue. For more information,
call 504-482-3047, or visit them on the
Internet, www.parkwaypoorboys.com.
Top: Enjoying a sndwich at Parkway Bakery
& Tavern’s location at 538 Hagan Avenue
in New Orleans.
Below: A shrimp Poor Boy.
THE MARKETPLACE
181

HANCOCK
WHITNEY
Since the bank’s late 1800s origins,
Hancock Whitney has served the Greater New
Orleans and Mississippi Gulf Coast regions
with pride and commitment. The 2011 merger
of Hancock Bank of Gulfport, Mississippi,
and Whitney Bank of New Orleans solidified
a lasting relationship that began in the days
when Hancock and Whitney first opened
their doors.
When Whitney Bank opened in New
Orleans in 1883, its founders, including
Whitney President James T. Hayden, saw a
need for a strong banking institution to serve
the Civil War-torn city. New Orleans received
heavy investments in lumber, produce and
other trades, sparking growth across the
entire Gulf South region. Just 65 miles east,
Hancock County, Mississippi, was also
changing rapidly. New Orleans cotton broker
and Hancock County resident Peter Hellwege
recognized the regional prosperity as an
opportunity to provide the Mississippi Coast
with a strong bank to help people manage and
grow their hard-earned money.
Hancock Bank opened in 1899 in Bay Saint
Louis, a Mississippi Coast town New Orleanians
have visited for generations. Hellwege, who was
committed to expanding the business
relationship between New Orleans and the
Mississippi Coast, commuted daily to New
Orleans by train from his home in Waveland,
Mississippi. After Hellwege led the founding of
another bank—the Bank of Orleans—in 1904,
he served concurrently as president of both
Hancock Bank and the Bank of Orleans.
When Hellwege died at his Waveland
home in 1907, Eugene Roberts, also one
of the Hancock Bank founders and cashier of
both banks, accepted the presidency of
both institutions. Hellwege’s son, Peter E.
Hellwege, became vice president of both
Hancock and Bank of Orleans. Tragedy
struck, however, shortly after Peter E.
Hellwege accepted those positions. While on
the train he rode daily between his Mississippi
home and New Orleans, he was killed when
he slipped and fell beneath the train’s wheels
as it passed Prieur Street on Elysian Fields.
During World War I, the Bank of Orleans fell
into a period of financial instability brought on
by wartime recession. The board of directors,
assuring the safety of Bank of Orleans depositors,
sold the bank to a strong and healthy
Whitney Bank in 1918. Eugene Roberts stepped
down as Hancock’s president and became a vice
president at Whitney Bank to assist with the
merger. Horatio S. Weston, the wealthy owner of
Weston Lumber Company—then the world’s
largest timber mill—in Logtown, Mississippi,
became President of Hancock Bank. Weston had
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
182

hired Leo W. Seal, Sr., as his sawmill cashier and
brought Seal over to Hancock Bank as cashier.
Seal would later be named the bank’s president
after Weston’s death in 1931.
Throughout Seal’s 32-year tenure as
Hancock’s president, Hancock and Whitney
leaders remained connected, supportive
peers. When the Great Depression rocked the
country and cast the financial industry into
turmoil, the presidents of both banks were
committed to seeing their businesses and
home markets succeed, despite formidable
uncertainty. At the height of the crisis in
1935, Seal and Whitney President John D.
O’Keefe, who by then had become social
friends as well as banking contemporaries,
vowed their institutions would always assist
each other in times of hardship.
Seal and O’Keefe sealed their partnership
with a handshake, but neither man would
foresee the enduring significance of that
Depression-era pledge. While hundreds of
other banks were forced to close their doors,
the promise kept by Seal, O’Keefe and
O’Keefe’s successor, Keehn W. Berry, ensured
that Hancock and Whitney would move safely
through the Depression, withstand the century’s
toughest challenges and sustain the
strength and stability that ultimately brought
the two banks together with the 2011 merger.
The Hancock Whitney of 2018 has consistently
rated as one of America’s strongest, safest
banks for more than 28 years in a row and
remains deeply committed to its New Orleans
and Gulf Coast roots. Assets for Hancock
Whitney Corporation, the bank’s parent
company, currently surpass $27 billion. The
bank boasts more than 200 financial centers
and has been listed twice among Forbes’
“100 Most Trustworthy Companies” and “Top
20 Banks.” After Hurricane Katrina in 2005,
Hancock Whitney was a pivotal force in
regional recovery and rebuilding and continues
to thrive as a trusted resource for business and
elected leaders and a catalyst for economic
opportunity in Greater New Orleans and across
the Gulf Coast. Plans underway to transform
the Central Business District’s One Shell Square
tower into the Hancock Whitney Center will
bring many of the bank’s 1,400 Greater New
Orleans associates to a new regional headquarters
in Louisiana’s tallest building.
Much like their predecessors of a century
earlier, senior executives John M. Hairston,
Joseph S. Exnicios, Michael M. Achary, and D.
Shane Loper steered the bank through economic
recessions and transformational mergers. The
friendship and commitment between the two
grand old banks began with a commitment to
depositors in 1918. They promised to aid each
other in 1935 and will celebrate the hundredth
anniversary of the Whitney merger with Bank
of Orleans on May 25, 2018, by formally combining
the two brands into Hancock Whitney.
As Hancock Whitney continues to grow,
4,000 associates in six states will honor their
founders’ vision and that 1935 handshake by
carrying on the bank’s mission, purpose, and
core values to help even more people and
businesses around New Orleans, the Gulf
Coast, the Gulf South and the Nation achieve
their financial goals and dreams.
Opposite, top: Successful New Orleans
businessmen Peter Hellwege (left) and
Eugene H. Roberts as well as Hellwege’s
son, Peter E. Hellwege, were among
founders and early leaders of both Hancock
County Bank (est. 1899) and the Bank of
Orleans (est. 1904). The elder Hellwege led
the founding of the Bank of Orleans, and he
and Roberts each served simultaneous terms
as presidents of Hancock County Bank and
the Bank of Orleans. The junior Hellwege
was a vice president at Hancock and Bank
of Orleans until 1908. After Roberts led the
decision to sell the Bank of Orleans to
Whitney Bank in 1918, he became a
Whitney vice president and remained a
highly respected New Orleans banker until
his death in 1923.
Opposite, bottom: Hancock County,
Mississipppi, native Leo W. Seal, Sr. (left) and
New Orleanian John D. O’Keefe became
presidents of Hancock County Bank and
Whitney Bank, respectively, as America
spiraled into the economic abyss of the Great
Depression. While hundreds of other local
banks failed, each executive endeavored to
keep his bank open as a safe place for people
to keep their money. Their astute leadership
and friendship built on the early connections
between Hellwege and Roberts and secured a
mutually supportive hundred-year alliance
that ensured Hancock Whitney would keep
each other strong for clients and communities
when economic uncertainty arose.
Top: For 135 years, Whitney Bank operated
from headquarters along Gravier Street
and, later, St. Charles Avenue. Today, a
landmark complex of historic buildings
features the iconic Whitney Bank clock
(left), which debuted in 1926 and still
echoes its familiar carillon across the city’s
Central Business District. In 2018 Hancock
Whitney will move its main New Orleans
offices to the Hancock Whitney Center at
701 Poydras Street (right)—another
soaring site in the New Orleans skyline, the
city’s first skyscraper, and the tallest
building in Louisiana.
THE MARKETPLACE
183

PORT OF
NEW ORLEANS
Above: Port of New Orleans,
Poydras Street, 1907.
Below: Port of New Orleans, stacked cargo
of wind power components.
Bottom, right: Port of New Orleans,
MSC Judith.
The City of New Orleans was founded on a
bend of the Mighty Mississippi River that was
ideally situated for early trade and transportation
300 years ago.
In the seventeenth century,
Britons were invested in the production
and commercialization of
tea. Once tea was introduced in the
“new world,” it became imperative
that the commodity become available
here. The Britons relied on the
sea as a way to ship goods to ports
along coastal areas. Thanks to Jean
Baptist Le Moyne de Bienville, who
in 1718 founded New Orleans, it
became possible to begin a trade agreement.
Quite possibly, southern states began shipping
rice and indigo to other countries using
the trade-friendly location of New Orleans, a
French colony of Louisiana, which shaped the
future of the United States.
The economic role of commerce along the
riverfront drove the region’s growth; and
today, the city and the Port of New Orleans
(Port NOLA) co-exist as a cultural center and
a gateway for global commerce.
Today, Port NOLA is a deep-draft multipurpose
port at the center of the world’s busiest
port system—Louisiana’s Lower Mississippi
River. It is connected via 14,500 miles of
waterways, six Class I railroads and interstate
highways to transport goods of all types in
and out of the nation’s heartland and Canada.
With New Orleans being a world-class tourist
destination, the port is also home to a thriving
cruise industry hosting more than one million
cruise passengers annually.
As a primary economic driver in the New
Orleans region, Port NOLA supports various
businesses and creates thousands of jobs. In
fact, port-related industries statewide account
for one in five jobs in Louisiana. The average
salary at the thirty-nine companies on Port
NOLA property is $63,000 a year, thirty-seven
percent higher than the local average salary. In
fiscal years 2016 and 2017, the port spent over
$2.2 million on purchases with women-owned
businesses and more than $3.5 million on purchases
with minority-owned businesses.
Port NOLA is a leading port for incoming
and outgoing cargo. On the export side, manufacturers
and producers from the American
Midwest and Canada rely on Port NOLA as a
key link in the supply chain to deliver anything
from chemicals to agricultural products
to the world.
Supported by Louisiana’s booming petrochemical
industry, chemicals such as PVC
resin are the number one export of Port
NOLA. They are shipped throughout the
world to become anything from auto parts to
milk jugs. Frozen poultry produced in the
South is shipped to international markets
through the port’s state-of-the-art refrigerated
cargo facility that can blast-freeze poultry to
minus twenty-five degrees.
Shippers rely on the port to import and
deliver goods to manufacturers and consumers
in the U.S. and Canada. The number
one import is steel, which is shipped inland to
become buildings, cars and household items.
Port NOLA is also the number one U.S. port
for imported natural rubber, which travels
upriver to various tire manufacturers.
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184

Historically, the port has been a leading
U.S. hub for imported coffee and is home to
the world’s largest coffee processing facility,
J.M. Smucker Coffee Silo Operations. All of
Folgers coffee, a subsidiary of Smuckers,
comes through the port and is roasted at a
large coffee roasting plant in New Orleans
East. In fact, enough coffee is imported annually
at Port NOLA to fill 20 billion cups.
Port NOLA continues to solidify its reputation
as America’s most intermodal port, meaning
it has various containers for freight that
can be transloaded from one mode of transportation
to another during shipment without
being unpacked. The year 2016 marked the
second time in a row that Port NOLA saw
growth by topping more than a half million
twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) handled
at its container terminal. A TEU is equal to a
standard twenty-foot container and carries
many of the items we use every day from
clothing to electronics.
In 2017, Port NOLA took a major step in
enhancing its global competitiveness by planning
to acquire the New Orleans Public Belt
Railroad (NOPB) from the City of New
Orleans. The NOPB is a switching railroad
with the primary mission of serving Port
NOLA and local industries.
In 2017, Port NOLA broke the million-passenger
milestone for the fourth year in a row,
handling a record 1,150,172 passenger movements
at its two state-of-the-art cruise terminals.
With a growing demand for cruises from
the Big Easy, cruise lines responded by deploying
newer and larger ships to New Orleans.
Carnival and Norwegian Cruise Lines sail to
Caribbean destinations and Royal Caribbean
Cruise Line will return in December 2018.
Port NOLA also owns industrial real estate
with over 1,000 acres of properties that lease
under long- and short-term agreements. Most
of the properties are on or near the Inner
Harbor-Navigation Canal (Industrial Canal)
with convenient access to the interstate highway
system, waterways and the Public Belt.
Appointed by the governor, a seven-member
board of commissioners sets policies and
regulates river traffic and commerce for the
port. In 2017, the board appointed Brandy D.
Christian president and chief executive officer.
Port NOLA’s opportunities for continued
growth are great with a strategic master plan
that will lay out a vision for the next twenty
years. The master plan will include a roadmap
for growth, including recommendations for
capital investments, operational changes,
policies and strategic initiatives.
Planning for growth goes hand-in-hand
with environmental sustainability for the
port. In 2015, Port NOLA became the eighth
U.S. port to receive Green Marine certification,
North America’s largest voluntary
environmental program for the maritime
industry. As Port NOLA looks to the future, it
will with an emphasis on continuous
improvement and leadership on air emissions
and community impact.
The port’s high cranes and stacks of containers
reach into the sky, visible from New Orleans’
Uptown residences and businesses. With many
opportunities and a roadmap for smart growth,
the City of New Orleans and its port will continue
to thrive together, side-by-side.
Top, right: America’s most intermodal port.
Above: Port NOLA has two state-of-the-art
cruise ship terminals.
THE MARKETPLACE
185

PJ’S COFFEE OF
NEW ORLEANS
Top: Signature purple cups of PJ’s.
Below: Founder Phyllis Jordan.
PJ’s Coffee of New Orleans began as a humble,
Uptown coffee shop on Maple Street in
the Carrollton neighborhood of New Orleans
focused on high quality Arabica coffee.
Founded in 1978 by Phyllis Jordan, PJ’s
quickly became a New Orleans institution
and a legendary brand for not only local coffee
drinkers but also fans of New Orleans
from around the world.
When Phyllis first started the company in
1978, the business was named “PJ’s Coffee
and Tea Co.” Phyllis’ second location opened
in Tulane University’s Pocket Park in 1988,
with the first PJ’s franchise opening in
Mandeville in 1989, while company owned
locations spread across the greater New
Orleans area. During this period, the business
developed a loyal following on the Gulf Coast,
while expanding to other markets including
Southern California.
The success of PJ’s Coffee is in part due to
its commitment to high quality coffee (using
only the top one percent of Arabica coffee
beans) and its small batch roasting techniques.
Coffee has long been a major import
for the city of New Orleans, and its café culture
has always been a major part of life in the
city. PJ’s saw an advantage in having some of
the world’s finest coffees being brought in
through the Port of New Orleans, and they
began experimenting with particular beans
from Central and South America. With coffee
being the world’s largest commodity other
than oil, PJ’s found a large and loyal fan base
in New Orleans that continues to support the
long history of coffee drinking in the city,
whether it is blended with chicory or served
over ice in the hot summer months.
PJ’s grew from a small coffee shop with a
local following to a dynamic company with
franchises from Colorado to Texas to Virginia
and all the way to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Roastmaster Felton Jones and his team regularly
travel to meet with international farmers
and cooperatives, directly importing the finest
Arabica coffees from Honduras, Sumatra,
Ethiopia and many other countries. They are
particularly proud of their direct trade partnership
with Finca Terrerito in the Copan region
of Honduras. This “farm to cup” method of
producing coffee guarantees a superior cup of
coffee for customers while providing a fair
price to local farmers for their green coffee.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
186

The company boasts fourteen distinct single
origin coffees, which are processed and roasted
at their roasting headquarters in the
Marigny. Residents walking in the neighborhood
or in nearby Crescent Park have long
appreciated the delicious smell of coffee roasting
during business hours. Today, PJ’s
Corporate French Quarter Coffee Shop is an
institution for visitors and locals alike, while
their Freret Street and the original location on
Maple Street serves the city’s many college students
from Tulane and Loyola Universities.
PJ’s was sold to Raving Brands in 2001,
briefly moving its headquarters to Atlanta. It
was brought back to New Orleans in 2008
when the company was purchased by New
Orleans Roast, LLC, a subsidiary of Ballard
Brands of Covington, Louisiana. Ballard
Brands, owned by three brothers who
grew up in New Orleans; Paul, Steven, and
Scott Ballard, is a privately held international
hospitality company. PJ’s Coffee itself has
nearly 100 physical locations, though it
offers wholesale beans to even more restaurants
and hotels. Roastmaster Jones created
special blends for some of the city’s most
famous establishments, including the Hotel
Monteleone, the Roosevelt Hotel, Windsor
Court and the Royal Sonesta. Wholesale distribution
is a major component of their sales
and gourmet coffee lovers can purchase bags
of fresh coffee at Rouses and most other New
Orleans grocery stores.
While hot cups of roasted coffee are popular
at all PJ’s locations, their famous iced
and frozen coffees are equally popular. Phyllis
developed an extraction technique for their
Original Cold Brew iced coffee that PJ’s
continues to use today, creating a smooth
and less acidic coffee, which is also used in
their famous Granitas. Besides coffee based
drinks, light foods including pastries are
available at their coffee shop locations, welcoming
customers to stay a while in their
comfortable seating.
PJ’s franchises all over the country
serve as cultural ambassadors for New
Orleans, giving customers a glimpse into our
culture and history. Their commitment to the
New Orleans area can be seen
from its locally inspired blended
and flavored coffees to its
community engagement with
nonprofits including Habitat
for Humanity. While PJ’s has
global ambition and has
expanded nationally at a rapid
pace, they bring their love of
New Orleans everywhere they
go. At PJ’s, it is about being
rooted–staying true to the soul
of New Orleans; and it is about
hospitality–treating each guest
like a neighbor, because they
are one.
Above: The Ballard brothers (from left to
right) Paul, Steven, and Scott.
Below: PJ's second location in Tulane
University's Pocket Park, circa 1988.
THE MARKETPLACE
187

HOTEL
STORYVILLE
Beautiful views of Hotel Storyville, located
at 1261 Esplanade Avenue.
Could there possibly be a more perfect
name for a great place to stay in New Orleans?
Surely, Barbara Ann Locklear would concur.
After all, she became a prominent part of the
story over fifteen years ago, when she moved to
New Orleans from St. Thomas in the Virgin
Islands. With an extensive background in graphic
arts, she met a very interesting elderly couple
who happened to own the Hotel Storyville, and
began doing some work for them.
Unable to travel together, due to the demands
of running the hotel, they asked Barbara to
“babysit” while they were away. And one thing
led to another—as they usually will in good stories—resulting
in Barbara becoming the hotel’s
new owner. Serendipity struck again, when
Barbara was able to translate her love of the
island ambience into the hotel’s complete renovation
and its cool and relaxing tropical decor.
An island of quiet charm amidst the highenergy
that is New Orleans! This is Hotel
Storyville today. Only a couple of blocks from
the edge of the excitement of the French
Quarter and Bourbon Street, the hotel is perfectly
situated to provide what Barbara aptly
describes as “the best of both worlds.”
After a stimulating day of sightseeing,
shopping, or doing business, the hotel’s guests
can retire to their tropical retreat to relax
under the gazebos in the lush garden, sample
the Mermaid Lounge or the Tiki Bar, or enjoy
a drink while people watching from the porch
or the upstairs balcony—while “morning”
people may ease into the day while perusing
the newspaper over coffee or planning their
next foray into the heart of the city.
A restful stay is assured in the hotel’s colorful
ocean-themed accommodations. Ranging
from efficiencies to two-bedroom suites, the
hotel provides a wide choice of the luxurious
amenities you would expect, including king
and queen beds; kitchenettes; dining areas;
living rooms; sleeper sofas; and, of course, free
Wi-Fi and flat screen televisions.
Because of its charming locale, Hotel
Storyville has also become a coveted venue for
many local events, such as weddings, receptions,
reunions, corporate events, and crawfish
boils. With its lush garden capable of
seating over 300 guests, and the availability of
a full event staff, the hotel is poised to make
entertainment dreams come true.
As countless testimonials from satisfied guests
recount, Barbara’s vision of a tropical retreat in
the heart of New Orleans has come to fruition
in the Hotel Storyville—a true jewel in one of
the world’s unique cities. For more information
visit www.hotelstoryville.net.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
188

Founded in 1983 by Neal Alford and John R.
Neal, Neal Auction Company is the oldest auction
house in New Orleans. The firm is credited
with pioneering the market for Southern artists,
and is widely considered the country’s leading
auctioneer of Southern regional material.
It all starts with knowledge. Over the course
of his forty-plus years as an appraiser and auctioneer,
Alford has cultivated an expertise in
fine arts and antiques. Today, this expertise
extends throughout Neal Auction Company’s
highly experienced professional staff, who are
known for their integrity and personal service.
Because of this tradition and the trust
which it instills, Neal Auction Company has
been able to sustain long term relationships
with leading regional and national museums
and corporations, trust and estate lawyers,
executors, private collectors, and individuals
within the trade—all of whom have come to
rely on the firm’s professional presentation
and sale of valued objects.
A few of the company’s notable recent consignments
illustrate its well-earned reputation:
the Bayou Bend Collection, Crystal
Bridges Museum of American Art, Dallas
Museum of Art, High Museum of Art,
Mississippi Museum of Art, Montgomery
Museum of Art, Morris Museum of Art, and
the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and closer
to home, the New Orleans Museum of Art,
Hermann-Grima and Gallier Houses,
Louisiana Landmarks Society, and the Paul
and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum.
Every two months, Neal Auction Company
schedules auctions at their historic galleries on
Magazine and Carondelet Streets. These sales
consist of fine art and antiques drawn from all
over the U.S. It is here that the firm’s expertise,
knowledge and research capabilities are joined
with its unsurpassed marketing and presentation
of objects of value. Each sale is highlighted
by a carefully curated, intelligent, and descriptive
full-color catalogue and the company’s
expert marketing campaign targets both national
and international audiences. All this assures the
highest prices are realized for the objects sold
under the auspices of Neal Auction Company.
The November 2017 Louisiana Purchase
Auction is illustrative of Neal’s wide-ranging
scope of interest and activities. The event
drew from such diverse areas as eighteenth
and nineteenth century American, English,
Continental, and Asian sources, including
antique furniture, paintings, sculptures, decorative
arts, and historical material. It featured
notable Louisiana paintings, early Louisiana
furniture, Spanish Colonial Art, and Asian
items, including a Chinese bronze figure of
Amitayus, which sold for the world-record
price of $783,000.
Indeed, with such remarkable achievements
over the years, Neal Auction House has
firmly marked out its place among “Notable
New Orleanians.”
NEAL AUCTION
COMPANY
Top: Jacques Guillaume Lucien Amans
(1801-1888), “Portrait of Jeanne Roman,”
o/c, 30 x 24 1/4 in. Sold for $197,175.
Below: Regency Gilt Bronze and Cut Crystal
Chandelier, c. 1820, attr. John Blades, dia.
38 in. Sold for $107,550.
THE MARKETPLACE
189

ROYAL SONESTA
NEW ORLEANS
The Royal Sonesta New Orleans’ Desire
marquis sign has turned the corner of
Bienville and Bourbon Streets into one
of the most photographed corners in the
French Quarter.
Royal Sonesta New Orleans is more than
just a hotel. It is the bricks and mortar
embodiment of the town it calls home.
Jazzed up, newly reimagined and endearingly
engrained in the heart of the French Quarter, this
AAA Four Diamond rated gem invites the heartbeat
of New Orleans indoors and is often referred
to as having the “Big Easy all under one roof.”
New Orleans’ Royal Sonesta is a true hub
of authentic jazz, delectable cuisine, and
vibrant night life. All of which is woven into a
memorable architectural design, which combines
timeless elegance with southern refinement
reminiscent of the hotel’s rich heritage.
Although opened in September 1969, the
hotel’s legacy began almost 250 years earlier
when French map-maker, Adrien de Pauger,
designed the streets of New Orleans, including
the French Quarter and the future hotel
site which, through the decades, has hosted
everything from stables and a brewery to
beautiful homes.
In fact, the latter is actually what inspired
renowned architects, Richard Koch and Samuel
Wilson, Jr., to design the hotel’s façade to look
like a typical row of 1800s houses. Original
and updated design features include gabled
windows, an elegant marbled lobby, tranquil
fountains and sparkling chandeliers finished
with rich color schemes, linens accented with
fresh flowers and wrought-iron balconies, all of
which come together to create an atmosphere
representative of the hotel’s strong European
influence and innate Southern charm; a perfect
blend of past and present.
Décor follows suit with many special touches
such as gas lantern-lit spaces reminiscent of
a mid-1800s French Quarter carriageway. The
vast array of memorabilia, reminiscent of past
Mardi Gras festivals as well as legendary establishments
of years gone by such as the hotel’s
former jazz club, Economy Hall, where Fats
Domino and Louis Prima often performed.
The hotel’s guest quarters include 483 refurbished
and well-appointed guestrooms, including
thirty-six spacious suites, complimented by
a lush tropical courtyard, beautifully landscaped
outdoor pool, state-of-the-art fitness
center, more than 20,000 square feet of meeting
and event space, and a variety of award-winning
dining and entertainment venues featuring
locally-inspired menus and music.
Under the expert guidance of renowned
Chefs John Folse and Rick Tramonto, Restaurant
R’evolution, presents imaginative reinterpretations
of classic Creole and Cajun cuisine, while
Bar R’evolution features chef-driven seasonal
cocktails and wine offerings from around the
world. Le Booze serves the finest bourbons and
whiskeys on Bourbon Street and PJ’s Coffee Café
offers an array of specialty coffee drinks brewed
with a favorite locally roasted coffee.
Another must-visit is the hotel’s famed
Desire Oyster Bar. Named after the Pulitzer
Prize-winning play “Streetcar Named Desire.”
Desire not only features a raw oyster bar
where expert shuckers prepare fresh Gulf oysters
a variety of ways, but its lighted marquis
sign has turned the corner of Bienville and
Bourbon Streets into one of the most photographed
corners in the French Quarter.
Royal Sonesta New Orleans has been a
mecca of music since local jazz great “Sweet
Emma” Barrett first cut the ribbon during the
hotel’s grand opening.
Today, the hotel is proud to bring New
Orleans’ jazz to life nightly at the hotel’s
famed nightclub, The Jazz Playhouse. To kick
off Mardi Gras weekend the hotel hosts the
annual “Greasing of the Poles.” An event
which originated in 1970 as a practical means
to deter overzealous festival-goers from shimmying
up to the coveted balcony space. This
event has become a much anticipated starstudded
and music-filled event held each year
on the Friday before Fat Tuesday.
For more information about the Royal
Sonesta New Orleans, please visit them on the
Internet at www.sonesta.com/royalneworleans.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
190

Fourth-generation New Orleans native
Judy Weitz was disappointed at the way her
beloved city was portrayed to the world. She
cringed every time mainstream media
reduced Mardi Gras to snippets and clips of
people boozing, brawling and bead-catching
along Bourbon Street.
“Partying on Bourbon Street is absolutely a
part of Mardi Gras, but it’s just a small part;
just as New Orleans is more than one block in
the French Quarter,” said Judy, owner and
CEO of Compucast Web, Inc., and Experience
New Orleans. “To those of us who live here,
Mardi Gras is a family celebration with kids
catching stuffed animals at larger-than-life
parades and elegantly-dressed grown-ups
attending balls just as their parents and
grandparents did. I wanted the world to see
the real Mardi Gras and was determined to do
something about it.”
That something turned out to be the catalyst
of a new business for Judy and her tech-savvy
husband, who had spent the early 1990s building
and customizing computers. Although
Marc Weitz called it a hobby, his innovative
computer works not only won many industry
awards, but was also featured in national magazines
such as Fortune. This “hobby” combined
with their love of New Orleans was the origin
of their family business.
Compucast Web/Experience New Orleans
was founded in 1994 and soon unveiled its
first website, ExperienceNewOrleans.com, a
site which continues to showcase New Orleans’
unique culture, architecture, jazz music,
world-famous restaurants and attractions. Well
ahead of its time, the site captivated millions of
Internet surfers from the start, including a local
Mardi Gras Krewe, who asked its creators to
live stream Mardi Gras in 1995.
Though never before done, the Weitzs
accepted the challenge.
“The fact is, even before webcast was a
word, we were computer-casting Mardi Gras,”
said Judy. “As a result, we were finally able to
show another side of Mardi Gras and also
scored our company’s name and some new
clients—clients such as a hotel manager who
asked us to promote his hotel online in
exchange for a Mardi Gras bathroom pass. We
couldn’t turn that down!”
Today, Compucast/Experience New Orleans
is one of New Orleans’ leading hospitality
marketing and web design firms, featuring
local businesses through both active social
media channels and popular websites–from
the original www.ExperienceNewOrleans.com
to www.MardiGrasNewOrleans.com and
www.WeddingsinNewOrleans.com.
A Google Partner and TripAdvisor Premium
Partner, the company is also the creator of the
robust CompuRez system. An Internet booking
engine providing digital marketing for New
Orleans properties, CompuRez was developed
for smaller hotels to allow them to compete
with larger chains at a time when only corporate
hotels could take online reservations.
Word-of-mouth advertising, personal
service and commitment to excellence are
the keys to the company’s growth as well
as the many accolades garnered by the company–awards
such as the Small Business
Association’s “Small Business Champion of
the Year” and Judy’s designation as one of the
nation’s top five women business owners
awarded by the National Association of
Women Business Owners and honoring the
company’s work keeping New Orleans online
after Hurricane Katrina.
As for the future, Judy promises to continue
serving New Orleans by staying on top of
the industry, providing digital marketing and
web design and development services as well
as keeping the company’s many popular websites
alive and representative of the city so
adored by herself and her staff of highly-experienced
and New Orleans-loving employees.
For more, visit www.compucast.com.
COMPUCAST
WEB, INC./
EXPERIENCE
NEW ORLEANS
Owner and CEO Judy Weitz.
THE MARKETPLACE
191

KPMG LLP
In 1909, the New Orleans office of
Marwick, Mitchell & Co. opened in the historical
Hibernia Bank building. From those
beginnings, KPMG has served as a trusted
advisor to individuals, businesses, and government
in the City of New Orleans and surrounding
region. The New Orleans office was
the eighth KPMG office to open in the United
States under the firm’s founding name of
Marwick, Mitchell & Co. Since then, KPMG
has transformed not only in name, but in
how they serve an ever-changing city. The
firm has continuously looked for opportunities
to expand and grow to best serve their
clients and their community. Almost 110
years later, KPMG remains committed to
being a vital part of the New Orleans area.
KPMG serves a broad range of companies
in the New Orleans area, including large
international public companies and some of
the area’s most prestigious private companies.
KPMG provides audit, tax and advisory services
to help organizations not only meet regulatory
compliance obligations, but to
improve their performance and achieve their
vision in today’s dynamic and challenging
environments. Their focus in delivering
along industry lines allows their disciplines
to work together to address client issues and
industry-specific needs.
Their industry focus is part of who they
are at KPMG. It plays a huge role in telling
the KPMG story. Their commitment to industry
reflects their brand promise to work
shoulder-to-shoulder with their clients, proving
that they understand their businesses and
recognize the challenges their clients face. It
also reinforces the passion felt by their partners
and professionals who fully align themselves
with their specific sectors.
KPMG also values investment and volunteerism
in their respective community.
Corporate citizenship is a natural extension
of who they are. As they work to ensure their
clients’ success, they are also passionate
about improving their local communities and
society at large.
They believe that education is the key to
unlocking everyone’s potential. Education
does not just help us pursue a successful life,
it helps lift societies. Their signature lifelong
learning initiative is KPMG’s Family for
Literacy (KFFL) program. Established in
2008, KFFL combats childhood illiteracy by
providing new books to children from lowincome
families in partnership with First
Book, an award-winning nonprofit social
enterprise. Since 2008, they have donated
over three million new books to children in
need across the United States.
Their partners and professionals take
action and fuel their passion for the greater
good in various ways and through many nonprofit
organizations engaged in the overall
goal to improve life in New Orleans. KPMG is
proud of their professionals, their clients, and
to share part of the rich history of our city.
Their commitment to quality and community
will continue to provide momentum for participation
in the future of New Orleans.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
192

In May 1937, Joseph Merrick Jones, Sr.
opened his law office in the heart of New
Orleans, just four years after founding the
Canal Barge Company. Little did he know that
the firm he started with Tulane Law School
graduates, William B. Dreux and A. J.
Waechter, would grow to be one of the largest
law firms in the United States.
During those early years, a number of
prominent attorneys joined the firm, including
Burt Flanders, sparking a firm name
change to Jones, Flanders & Waechter. When
Waechter accepted a commission in the Naval
Reserve as World War II was heating up, J.
Mort (Jack) Walker, Jr., a graduate of Tulane’s
School of Engineering and Loyola’s University
School of Law, joined as an associate. In 1944,
Walker gained partnership and the firm’s
name was again updated, to Jones, Flanders,
Waechter & Walker.
After the attack at Pearl Harbor, Dreux, a
native Frenchman, left for Officers’ Training
School and became a paratrooper, dropping
behind the German lines in France. Waechter
returned to the firm in 1946, and Dreux followed
the next year.
In 1948, Edward B. Poitevent of Tulane Law
School joined the firm as an associate. He had
worked as an attorney for Sun Oil Company
until leaving for Naval Officers’ Training. He
returned to Sun Oil upon discharge for a short
period, and later joined the firm as a partner.
Dreux also became a partner for a period of
time, during which the firm was known as
Jones, Walker, Waechter, Dreux & Poitevent.
After Dreux’s departure, George Denégre, who
had become associated with the firm in 1949,
became a partner and the name was changed to
Jones, Walker, Waechter, Poitevent & Denégre.
In 1958, the firm was still in its original
location in the National Bank of
Commerce Building. That year, Ernest
Carrére joined the firm and his name was
added to the firm’s formal name: Jones,
Walker, Waechter, Poitevent, Carrére &
Denégre. It remained as such for fifty
years, until the name was shortened to
Jones Walker LLP.
More than eighty years after its founding
and following the arrival of numerous
law partners and associates, the firm has
continued to maintain its legacy of commitment
to the community and clients, regionally,
nationally, and internationally. Today, Jones
Walker is a full-service law firm with strength
representing companies and individuals in the
energy and environmental, financial services,
maritime, health, and real estate and development
sectors, with highly regarded litigation
and transactional practices, including in areas
such as corporate/securities, mergers and
acquisitions, tax, and private equity.
Jones Walker and its attorneys are strong
supporters of New Orleans’ economic, civic,
and cultural communities. The firm played a
key role in bringing the NBA franchise, the
New Orleans Hornets (now Pelicans), to the
city and several of its partners have served as
Rex King of Carnival and as president of the
Louisiana State Bar Association.
The firm’s New Orleans office is now
located in the Place St. Charles Building.
Jones Walker also has offices in Atlanta,
Georgia; Baton Rouge and Lafayette,
Louisiana; Birmingham and Mobile, Alabama;
Houston and The Woodlands, Texas; Jackson,
Mississippi; Miami and Tallahassee, Florida;
New York, New York; Phoenix, Arizona; and
Washington, D.C.
JONES WALKER
LLP
PHOTOS BY RICHARD SEXTON.
THE MARKETPLACE
193

MANDINA’S
RESTAURANT
The owner and fourth generation of
Mandina’s Restaurant in the heart of New
Orleans’ Canal Street area, believes in treating
her customers as the generations before her
did. “Mandina’s started out as a grocery store
in 1898 owned by my great grandfather. Then,
it became a pool hall that sold sandwiches. My
great uncles, Anthony and Frank who lived
with their families above and adjacent to the
business, turned it into today’s favorite neighborhood
Italian and seafood restaurant that
serves well Cajun and Creole cuisine, as well,”
says proprietor Cindy Mandina.
Entrepreneur Sebastian Mandina (great
grandfather) came from Palermo, Italy, hoping
to prosper off the farmlands of Southern
Louisiana. Upon arrival, he saw the need for a
store in the largely residential mid-city area.
His young sons grew up in the family business
throughout the early 1900s after it became a
restaurant. Frank’s wife, Hilda, managed the
dining room while her husband, Anthony,
tended bar.
When WWII broke out, Frank and
Anthony served their country while Hilda ran
the restaurant. Their son, Anthony (Cindy’s
father) “was born and raised upstairs,” she
adds. “He grew up working in the restaurant
while attending St. Aloysius High School and
Loyola College. When he married, he worked
as bartender while pursuing other interests
including light bulb sales and life insurance.
When my grandfather had a heart attack in
1972, my father started working fulltime with
my grandmother, ‘Miss Hilda’.”
Before Cindy was ten-years old, she had
been lured by the fast-paced restaurant industry.
She and a friend began bussing tables
while attending Loyola at night. She helped
with salads, answered the telephone, and prepared
to-go orders. “I was only twenty-four or
twenty-five, but I loved the business. I was
hooked even though learning the family business
was hard.”
She persevered and it was not long until
Mandina’s was exploding. “Mid-City was upand-coming
because the streetcar was once
again clattering down the street. Mid-City
pre-Katrina was growing in popularity.
Mandina’s had flood damage due to Katrina,
and some thought it wouldn’t come back.”
Cindy insisted on reinvesting.
Today, it has the “Miss Hilda Old
Fashioned” look, but with a classier interior.
“I want to bring it back to the way it looked in
1930s.” She adds, “Don’t be mistaken by the
facelift. The food, the atmosphere and the
employees are the same as they were before
the hurricane.” Even the ambiance and willingness
to please customers are the same. If
someone wants a substitution, Cindy and her
staff are ready to accommodate. “If they want
something different than what is listed on the
menu,” she says, “Sure! We’ll take care of you.
You’ve been coming here for twenty years.
That’s what we’re all about.” Some things
never change, and Cindy likes it that way.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
194

Liberty Bank and Trust Company was founded
in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1972. Alden J.
McDonald, Jr. was selected by Board Chairman,
Dr. Norman C. Francis, to be the bank’s first
president. Since then Liberty has grown to be
the third largest African-American owned banking
institution in the United States. One of
Liberty’s strengths has been its ability to keep up
with the needs of the community. Liberty Bank
has been a pillar in the revitalization of many
urban neighborhoods throughout America.
As one of the first and now the only African-
American owned commercial bank in Louisiana,
Liberty was founded to provide economic opportunity
to a community largely lacking in financial
services and resources. Under McDonald’s stewardship,
Liberty has grown from an initial asset
base of $2 million to more than $625 million in
assets. Liberty realizes consistent profitability and
enjoys national recognition for its leadership.
From its humble beginnings in a trailer in
a vacant lot, today Liberty has operations in
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas,
Kansas, Illinois, Missouri, and Michigan. It
qualifies as a Community Development
Financial Institution and has been awarded
more than $140 million in New Market Tax
Credits. The funds have provided key financial
resources in the redevelopment of New
Orleans and Southeast Louisiana since the
flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina.
In the aftermath of Katrina, McDonald
aggressively led rebuilding efforts for the bank
and the entire New Orleans region. His remarkable
demonstration of resilience and innovative
hard work has made Liberty one of the go-to
banks for the FDIC when financial institutions
throughout the country are struggling.
McDonald is nationally recognized as a passionate
advocate and innovative catalyst in the
movement of minority businesses into the
mainstream economy. At the age of twentynine,
he took the reins of Liberty Bank and he
is now the longest-tenured African-American
financial executive in the country. He was recognized
as one of the most dynamic African-
American business leaders in Fortune magazine
and he has been celebrated on numerous occasions
in Black Enterprise magazine.
Liberty Bank and Trust Company is a fullservice
financial institution, which provides
personal and business checking account services,
savings instruments, mortgage services,
lending for a vast array of needs, electronic
services, card services, and cash management.
Its mission is to provide cost-effective delivery
of high quality, innovative, customer-driven
financial products and services to diverse
markets with a focus on disadvantaged minority
communities who have traditionally been
underserved. Concurrent with Liberty Bank
and Trust Company’s mission, it strives to
maintain the company’s status as a catalyst for
economic and community development while
generating fair returns to shareholders and
being an excellent corporate citizen.
LIBERTY BANK
AND TRUST
COMPANY
Left: Board Chairman, Dr. Norman C.
Francis.
Right: President Alden J. McDonald, Jr.
THE MARKETPLACE
195

MEYER THE
HATTER
Bottom: From left to right; Paul Meyer, Big
Sam of Big Sam’s Funky Nation, third
generation Sam Meyer, and fourth
generation Michael Meyer.
Meyer The Hatter deserves a “tip of the
hat” as it celebrates its 124th year in 2018.
The family-owned New Orleans business
spanning five generations provides men and
women with the finest in hats of all styles and
colors from the world’s leading headwear
manufacturers. Meyer The Hatter was founded
in 1894 by Sam H. Meyer, who had
worked in a hat store on St. Charles Street in
Downtown New Orleans. As a boy of fourteen,
he delivered hats on foot to customers
throughout the city, as well as stock keeping
and brushing the hats. Later on, he was promoted
to sales and developed a dream of
owning his own hat store.
At thirty-two, he opened Meyer’s Hat Box at
116 St. Charles Street. The name was later
changed to Meyer The Hatter. The store started
small, carrying Stetson hats and neck ties, and
prospered. Sam’s son, Andrew, began helping
his father in the store during the 1920s. Meyer
The Hatter survived The Great Depression, and
later moved to 136 St. Charles Street.
Andrew’s oldest son, Sam II, was drafted in
1943 into the Army Air Corps and served in the
370th Fighter Group of the 9th Air Force during
World War II. He was stationed on air fields
in England, France, Belgium and Germany.
After the war, Sam II returned to New
Orleans and began working in the hat store in
1946. His younger brother, William, joined him
a year later. The third generation brothers
became the store’s co-owners in the mid-1960s.
Many famous customers have shopped at
Meyer The Hatter over the years, including
movie stars, musicians, and other celebrities
such as Aaron Neville, Cyril Neville, Fats
Domino, Dr. John, Kermit Ruffins, Jimmy
Buffett, Elvis Costello, Eric Clapton, Tom
Petty, Susan Sarandon, Laurence Fishburne,
Kevin Spacey, Reggie Jackson, Tennessee
Williams, James Taylor, Neil Patrick Harris,
Matthew McConaughey, Hugh Laurie, Yannick
Noah, Sylvester Stallone, and Regis Philbin.
Today, Meyer The Hatter is located at 120
St. Charles Avenue where it has earned the title
of The South’s Largest Hat Store, selling quality
hats and caps for men and women from Bailey,
Dobbs, Kangol, Mayser, Selentino, Stetson, and
many other hat brands. Fourth generation
owner Paul Meyer, his wife Pascale,
their sons Cedric and Christopher, his
brother Michael, and his parents
Sam and Marcelle are all active in the
business. Meyer The Hatter also sells
their hats through their website,
www.meyerthehatter.com, to people
from across the country and around the
world. Fifth generation brothers,
Cedric and Christopher, plan to continue
the Meyer family tradition of providing
personal service and great hats to all
of Meyer The Hatter’s loyal customers
for years to come.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
196

The Kearney Family has been involved
in the Port of New Orleans since 1882,
when William James Kearney became
Superintendent of his Grandfather’s stevedoring
company. He later incorporated the
company, calling it the New Orleans
Stevedoring Company, Inc. and becoming its
president in 1892.
Upon the death of Kearney in 1943, his
son, William J. Kearney Jr., became president.
He formed an affiliate company, Neeb-
Kearney & Company, which offered customers
the additional services of barge and
railcar, loading and unloading. The company
was formed initially to handle the unloading
of railcars of ammunition for World War II at
the Port of Embarkation in New Orleans. The
ammunition was then loaded into ships by
New Orleans Stevedoring Company, Inc. and
subsequently shipped overseas to supply the
war effort.
Following World War II, New Orleans
Stevedoring was sold in 1956, but services
offered by Neeb-Kearney & Company
continued. In 1971, Michael W. Kearney
became president of Neeb-Kearney and the
company diversified into trucking and warehousing
services, primarily, targeted to the
coffee industry.
Neeb-Kearney was sold in 1996 and The
Kearney Companies, Inc. was formed, with
Michael Wermuth Kearney, as owner and
president. The Kearney Companies, Inc. is a
third party logistics company, offering a wide
range of services to the maritime industry.
Those services include customs brokerage,
import/export forwarding, trucking, warehousing,
railcar loading and unloading and
foreign trade zone operations. The company
operates over 1,000,000 square feet of space.
In 2013, David W. Kearney was appointed
president of The Kearney Companies. He follows
in his Great-Grandfather’s footsteps, and
represents the fourth generation of Kearney’s
in the Port of New Orleans. David’s strong
logistics’ background position the company
well for the future.
Charles E. Wermuth, David’s Great, Great-
Grandfather was a railroad statistician, who
became one of the first Certified Public
Accountants in the State of Louisiana in 1918.
So, one can say that a logistics’ DNA has been
passed on in the Kearney Family.
A lot has changed since 1882 to 2018, but
it is still about customer service, moving cargo
from the origin point to the destination point,
efficiently, at the lowest possible cost.
THE KEARNEY
COMPANIES,
INC.
Bottom: Workers unloading a ship in 1960.
PHOTO COURTESY OF PORT OF NEW ORLEANS ARCHIVES.
THE MARKETPLACE
197

Canal Street.
COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
198

BUILDING A GREATER NEW ORLEANS
Service providers, real estate developers, utilities,
construction companies, and manufacturers
provide the economic foundation of the city
Joseph C. Canizaro .....................................................................200
Ed. Smith’s Stencil Works, Ltd. .....................................................206
Roubion Construction Co., LLC .....................................................208
Laitram, LLC .............................................................................210
Fromherz Engineers, Inc ..............................................................212
Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans........................................213
Gardner Realtors ........................................................................214
Eustis Engineering, L.L.C.............................................................215
BUILDING A GREATER NEW ORLEANS
199

JOSEPH C.
CANIZARO
Top: Canizaro overlooking construction
of the Crowne Plaza from his office in
the Lykes Center.
Below: Crowne Plaza New Orleans, 1984.
By any measure, the story of Joseph C.
Canizaro and his notable role in the development
of contemporary New Orleans exemplifies
the concept of strategic thinking. He has
brought this visionary approach to bear in
three significant areas: real estate, finance,
and community service. Each of which has
significantly enhanced the quality of life in his
adopted hometown.
Canizaro is perhaps best known as president
and CEO of Columbus Properties, LP,
which has helped to shape the face of the city,
through several iconic development/construction
projects. He has also played a key role in
the city’s financial sector through his leadership
of First Bank and Trust, as well as
Corporate Capital, L.L.C. Canizaro’s work on
civic initiatives and community projects is
well-documented. He has been involved in
virtually every significant effort since he
arrived in the city.
Canizaro came to New Orleans in 1964,
from Biloxi, where his father, a surgeon,
instilled in him the values of hard work and
planning ahead. With a self-professed “numbers
brain,” he founded Joseph C. Canizaro
Interests, now known as Columbus
Properties, LP, in 1966. The company, still
headquartered in New Orleans, has over
10,000,000 square feet of development completed,
including high-rise office buildings,
luxury hotels, mixed-use developments, business
and industrial centers and residential
housing across the Southeast and Southwest.
The most visible of Columbus Properties’
projects over the years are the office buildings
it has developed. Drawing on a half-century
of experience, the company has learned the
lessons of the past and combined that expertise
with its ongoing creativity and attention to
detail, in the development of office buildings
which “maximize technology, design, usage,
efficiency and comfort.” Columbus has pioneered
techniques that have streamlined the
development process, which has resulted in
the completion of high quality buildings in
significantly reduced timeframes, thus creating
the most cost-effective modern solutions
for its customers, clients and owners. This
lengthy track record of success has earned the
firm its reputation for integrity and leadership
in the real estate industry.
The New Orleans skyline is replete with
examples starting with Canal Place, the $500
million mixed-use development completed in
1979. Located on 23 acres near the French
Quarter, Canal Place consists of a 32-story
office building and 250,000 square feet of
retail shopping area, including Saks Fifth
Avenue and the 500 room Westin Hotel.
Its location speaks to Canizaro’s vision of
bridging the worlds of tourism and commerce
at a nexus within one of the world’s most scenic
locales. It also highlights one of the civic
and leadership traits for which he has become
known—consensus building. In shepherding
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
200

such a complex project to completion,
Canizaro had to reckon with many competing
interests, not least of which were
the concerns of preservationist groups
about a development bordering on the
Historic French Quarter. Only by bringing
all interested parties together and
seeking common ground, could a massive
civic project of this kind be successfully
realized.
Canizaro was the first developer to recognize
the potential of the Poydras Street
corridor for a generation of new office
buildings, shopping centers and hotels. It
houses three Canizaro developments: 400
Poydras/Texaco Center, Lykes Center and
the LL&E Tower. Completed in 1984,
400 Poydras/Texaco is a thirty-two-story
office tower that originally housed the
regional headquarters of Texaco, USA.
The Lykes Center is a twenty-two-story
office building that housed Lykes Bros.
Steamship Company. It now is home to a leading
hotel. The LL&E Tower, which is now First
Bank and Trust Tower, completed in 1987
with its thirty-six stories, remains one of the
most stunningly designed buildings in the city.
Further examples, among others too
numerous to discuss in detail, of the diverse
projects Columbus Properties has brought to
fruition over the years are the First Bank
Center in Metairie (formerly known as the
Galleria); the Information Technology Center
Office Complex (consisting of four 5-story
office buildings and parking garage) at the
University of New Orleans Research and
Technology Park; the American Tower in
Shreveport; and the Crowne Plaza Hotel in
New Orleans, which was a joint venture
between the Holiday Corporation and Joseph
C. Canizaro Interests.
Tradition is a new master-planned community
of 4,800 acres on the Mississippi Gulf
Coast, just north of Biloxi and Gulfport, which
demonstrates the scope of Canizaro and the
firm’s vision and interests. Ambitiously was
designed as “a sustainable new community
Top: LL&E Tower, 1987.
Bottom: LL&E Tower entrance with
sculptures by Enrique Alferez.
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201

Above: Texaco Center 1984.
Top: Canizaro with architect August “Augie”
Perez, III.
Below: U.S. Navy Information Technology
Center at the University of New
Orleans, 1998
with employment, residences, schools and
recreational amenities centered on health and
wellness, education, culture and the environment.”
Tradition lies adjacent to the largest
national park in Mississippi, and in close proximity
to the area’s white sand beaches. It provides
a small town feel, centered on neighborhood
parks, walking trails, a beautiful lake,
and a neighborhood YMCA and pool. With a
focus on education for all ages, Tradition is
home to William Carey University, Mississippi
Gulf Coast Community College, St. Patrick
Catholic High School, and excellent public
schools. In addition to a wide array of housing
and lifestyle choices, Tradition is easily accessible
to other area communities.
From the start, Tradition was planned to be
a community emphasizing education, sustainability,
healthy lifestyle and high quality of life.
Nowhere is this more evident than in its selection
as the home of the National Diabetes &
Obesity Research Institute, a state-of-the-art
research facility, which is a key component of
Tradition’s 150 acre Learning Medical City.
Diabetes and obesity currently represent a
growing epidemic in the United States with
more than 100 million Americans having diabetes
or pre-diabetes. To address this alarming
trend that the National Diabetes & Obesity
Research Institute was founded. Affiliated with
the world-famous Cleveland Clinic’s
Endocrinology & Metabolism Institute, its
underlying goal is to find a cure for diabetes. In
furtherance of this goal, the Institute is focused
on the following areas: to conduct and share
groundbreaking clinical trials and research; to
reduce diabetes incidence nationally through
education, treatment and prevention; and to
address healthcare disparities in underserved
populations. Canizaro serves on the Institute’s
Board of Directors as secretary-treasurer.
In addition to real estate development,
Canizaro’s impact on the community has also
extended to the financial sector. In 1991, he
recognized opportunity where others had
seen trouble, purchasing First Bank and Trust,
the successor to First City Bank of New
Orleans, which had failed during the real
estate crisis of the early 1990s. Subsequently,
Canizaro bought Peoples Bank in Amite,
Louisiana, and First Bank and Trust of
Mississippi (the successor to Central Bank for
Savings, in Winona, Mississippi) merging
them with First Bank and Trust.
Today, First Bank and Trust is a $950 million
commercial bank, which offers consumer,
mortgage, and commercial loans, as well as
deposit services, to a wide range of customers
across the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf
Coast. Further diversifying his financial offerings,
Canizaro formed FBT Investments, Inc.,
a full service securities brokerage firm in 1999.
Then, FBT Advisors, Inc., was formed in 2000,
serving as a securities advisory firm complementing
the products and services of First
Trust Corporation, the bank holding company.
In 1998, Canizaro founded Corporate
Capital, L.L.C., a venture capital firm focused on
investing in traditional American businesses such
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
202

as healthcare, food processing, manufacturers
and fabricators, transportation, oil and gas, etc.,
which have often been overlooked in favor of the
new economy and tech-oriented companies.
Some of its major investments have included
Innovus, Inc., and Columbus Data Services (sold
in 2015), currently the largest ATM processor in
the United States, servicing more than 93,000
ATM locations throughout the country and providing
gateway services, debit card processing
and credit card processing services.
Again returning to the ongoing theme of
strategic planning, Canizaro has brought this
approach not only to his endeavors in real
estate development and finance, but also to
his extensive involvement in significant community
issues and concerns.
A prime example is his work with the
Urban Land Institute, one of the most prestigious
organizations of its kind in the world.
The Urban Land Institute is a professional
organization, founded in 1936, with more
than 40,000 members worldwide, and dedicated
to “improving the quality of real estate
development and its impact on
the environment.” A Trustee
and former Chairman of the
Institute, Canizaro’s commitment
to such crucial issues has
distinguished his service to his
industry and has been further
recognized through his work
on the Harvard University
Graduate School of Design’s
Advisory Committee on Real
Estate Development.
Closer to home, Canizaro
was the founder and former cochairman,
in 2000, of the
Committee for a Better New Orleans, a group
of more than 140 community business and
civic leaders seeking to build consensus in
identifying the critical issues and opportunities
facing the city and from this, forging a plan for
the betterment of the future of New Orleans.
He has been a member of the Business Council
of New Orleans and the Tulane University
President’s Council.
Faith, family, and hard work have been the
touchstones of Canizaro’s life. As he has stated,
“Business is not just about how much money
you can make. It’s about making a positive
impact on your community and country.”
One of the ways he has practiced this is
through his work on behalf of Legatus, the association
of practicing Catholic CEOs, the international
organization started by Tom Monaghan,
founder of the Domino’s Pizza chain. Canizaro
founded the local chapter of Legatus, and has
been active in its projects having served as a former
president locally, and also as a director of
the national organization. In a similar vein,
Canizaro has served the Archbishop of New
Top: Canal Place Westin entrance.
Below: Tradition Learning Medical City
aerial view, Biloxi 2017.
BUILDING A GREATER NEW ORLEANS
203

Top: Joseph C. Canizaro.
Bottom: Lykes Center, 1972
Orleans as a member of the Archdiocese Finance
Council and as Chair of Notre Dame Seminary’s
Priestly Formation Campaign. He is also a
Trustee Emeritus on the Board of Ave Maria
University in Naples, Florida, where he formerly
served as Chairman of its Finance Committee.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina’s devastation
called forth the determination of the entire
community in response, and Canizaro dedicated
his efforts wholeheartedly to the massive
rebuilding effort. Working across political aisles
to forge solutions to the city’s pressing needs, he
conferred with Karl Rove for President Bush
extensively, and played a key role in forming the
advisory panel to create a “blueprint” for the
future of New Orleans, seeking to find ultimate
positive outcomes for the destruction and displacement
that had occurred.
Over the years, if there has been a civic
organization working for the benefit of the
community, chances are that Canizaro has
been actively involved with it and most often
in a key leadership role.
Giving back to his community has always
been a core precept for Canizaro, as is evidenced
by his work across a broad range of
civic groups, including the New Orleans
Chamber of Commerce, where he served as a
Board member and chaired the Economic
Development Council. An ongoing concern
for the economic well-being of the city has
fueled his efforts on behalf of the Poydras
Street Task Force, the Community Resource
Partnership, and the French Market
Corporation, to name but a few. Canizaro has
also served on the Housing Authority of New
Orleans as Chairman of Strategic Planning.
Working to enhance New Orleans’ quality
of life has long been a priority of Canizaro’s.
He has been active with such cultural organizations
as the Louisiana Council for the
Performing Arts, the New Orleans Ballet, the
New Orleans Opera, and the New Orleans
Philharmonic Symphony.
In addition to his aforementioned membership
on Tulane’s President’s Council, Canizaro
was also the former Chairman of the Tulane
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
204

Medical Center’s Development Committee,
and was an advisory member of the Tulane
University Business School Council. He was a
member of the University of New Orleans
College of Business Administration’s Business
Council, and served on the Xavier University
President’s Council.
As result of his wide-ranging community
involvement over the years, Canizaro has
been the recipient of a diverse array of honors
and awards, which include the Mayor’s Medal
of Honor; membership in the Junior
Achievement Business Hall of Fame; the
National Outstanding Achievers Award from
the American Academy of Achievement; the
National Italian American of the Year Award;
and the Louisiana Italian American Sports
Hall of Fame Award.
As a lifelong man of faith, Canizaro has
been recognized on numerous occasions for
his service to the Church. He was awarded the
Order of St. Louis Medallion and the Southern
Dominicans’ St. Martin de Porres Award, and
was named an Honorary Doctor of Humane
Letters from Our Lady of Holy Cross College
in 2003. In addition, Canizaro received the
Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Papal Honor, and
sponsored the Pope John Paul II Chair of
Roman Catholic Thomistic Studies at the
Pontifical University of St. Thomas in Rome.
He was a recipient in 2000 of the Knights of
St. Gregory Papal Honor, and was commissioned
to the highest rank of Councilor of St.
Dominic, and is a member of the advisory
board of the Angelicum University, Rome. In
2015, Archbishop Gregory Aymond presented
him the Good Shepherd Award for his leadership
with Notre Dame Seminary.
In recent years, Canizaro has been able to
devote more of his time to philanthropy, and to
one of his abiding interests—his art collection.
Although a noted collector of the Old Masters,
Canizaro draws real inspiration from his extensive
collection of religious art, which he calls “a
further journey of my faith.” His office includes
large oil paintings, sculptures, and an
acclaimed collection of hand-blown glass
vases. At his home, which has been featured on
the cover of Architectural Digest magazine,
other rare pieces of religious art can be found
including a painting by the Renaissance Italian
Artist Sandro Botticelli.
An interesting anecdote from early in his
career as a developer helps to sum up the scope
of Canizaro’s remarkable achievements. He
recalls touring the World Trade Center during
its construction and visualizing how Poydras
and Canal Streets almost converged at the
Mississippi River at New Orleans. His successful
completion of Canal Place at Canal Street
and the Mississippi, along with the buildings
along Poydras, marked the realization of his
dream for the city through the twenty-first century.
So the Canizaro story comes full circle: a
unique vision translated into reality through
planning, hard work and faith.
Top: Canal Place.
Below: Canal Place Phase I, 1979.
BUILDING A GREATER NEW ORLEANS
205

Above: Ed. Smith’s Stencil Works,
427 Natchez Street, c. 1890.
Ed is second from the left.
ED. SMITH’S STENCIL WORKS, LTD.
Bottom, left: Ed. Smith’s Stencil Works,
427 Natchez Street, c. 1910.
Bottom, right: Ed. Smith’s Stencil Works,
426 Camp Street, May 1930.
An enterprising young man of twentythree,
Edward Smith came to New Orleans
around 1865 to start a business that would
bring him fortune and set him on a career
for life. Known as a carpetbagger from
Baltimore, Maryland, he sought that fortune
in the South where reconstruction after the
Civil War was well underway. His unique
business was founded two years later at 427
Natchez Street near Magazine Street during
the Reconstruction Era in New Orleans.
Ed was a gaunt man with a beard that
reached below his sternum, hardly fitting the
profile of the Yankee swank. Upon arriving in
New Orleans, he was soon enamored with
the beauty and excitement of the port city,
and promptly fell in love with his future wife,
Julia, a New Orleans native. Before the war,
Ed was a “turner” by trade, a now-antiquated
job title for someone who used special tools
to make shapes out of wood or metal. Having
found his home in the Crescent City, the
industrious young man established himself
in an obscure specialty: manufacturing log
hammers for cypress timber. Companies
ordered their logos or brands to be put on the
tips of heavy iron hammers that were struck
onto the end of each log to identify their
property. The timber business boomed on
the Mississippi’s west bank where cypress
trees still stood in thick groves and toppled
by the thousands. It was an oddly profitable
line of work for Smith, as timber was constantly
being shipped from New Orleans to
help rebuild the war-torn cities throughout
the South.
Ed soon began manufacturing other products
such as stencils, stamps, and seals—
practical but overlooked items which no one
else in town was making at the time. His
stencils were often simple and utilitarian:
large letters to brand a ship’s hull, or crisp
scripts for the sides of soda crates. His company
was responsible for many of the markings
identifying shipments leaving the U.S.
from the Port of New Orleans to destinations
all over the world. But Ed’s shop also made
by hand brass and copper stencils of breathtaking
craft and intricacy. Several of these
antiques hang in the shop today: Hercules
tackling the Nemean lion, the U.S. Capitol,
and an enormous restored copper stencil
made in 1930 for the shop’s own storefront.
Ed. Smith’s stayed a family business
through a circuitous pathway of inheritors
for over 140 years in downtown New Orleans.
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206

In 1922, Ed. Smith’s moved from Natchez
Street to 426 Camp Street, and later occupied
the former Picayune Building at 326 Camp
Street between Gravier and Poydras Street
when the latter was widened in the 1960s. In
2008, it was bought by Michael Rowan, an
employee who had been with the company
for more than twenty years, and who remains
the sole owner. The business was then moved
to 4315 Bienville Street in the heart of Mid-
City, nestled between Carrollton Avenue and
the celebrated cemeteries. It occupies the old
Mid-City Post Office building, which was
built in 1959 and served as the postal station
for the Mid-City area until 1998. When
renovating the building, Rowan insisted the
hallmark and familiar features of the old
post office be kept—from the shiny terrazzo
flooring to the characteristic brick façade,
to the thirty-five foot flagpole that stands
in front of the building. He even rescued
the original set of eight-and-a-half-foot-tall
cypress display cabinets from the Camp
Street location, which he had fully restored
and now greet customers as they walk into
the shop today. Other relics on display
include antique tools and instruments (the
ones that are not still being used in the shop),
old-fashioned stamps and stencils, and
even the very delivery cart that was used by
Ed Smith in the early days downtown to
peddle his wares to local customers.
The shop still bears Ed Smith’s name and
makes stencils, but is now outfitted with the
latest high-tech sign-making equipment. It
also still relies on tried and true methods,
sometimes using techniques, machinery and
dies dating back to the turn of the century.
The business is the exclusive manufacturer
of the star and crescent badges worn by
New Orleans police officers, and makes most
of the official seals of New Orleans’ notary
publics, attorneys, engineers and architects.
The company that bears his name also
arranges the forging of the bronze historic
markers that appear in nearly every line of
sight in the French Quarter.
Retaining the original name has brought
much business, recognition and growth to
the company. “It was the right thing to do,”
says Rowan. “People are already familiar with
the name and associate it with longevity,
quality and experience.” Indeed, the owner,
general manager, and production manager
have been with Ed. Smith’s for a combined
total of almost sixty years.
Half as old as the City of New Orleans
itself, Ed. Smith’s Stencil Works, Ltd., remains
a manufacturer and installer of custom
signs, stencils, stamps, seals and many other
products, and thanks to the company’s
extensive knowledge and experience, it is
able to offer customers personalized signage
solutions for almost any need. There is no
typical Ed. Smith’s customer as the company
works with all types of industries and
sectors, large and small, public and private,
with both businesses and individuals.
Today, the 150-year-old business has fifteen
employees and over 3,500 active customer
accounts, including the oil and gas industry,
marketing and advertising firms, government
contractors, restaurants, the movie industry,
lawyers, churches, the tourism industry,
stadiums and sports venues, casinos and
fairgrounds, festivals and events, parks,
museums, offshore and maritime industries
and Mardi Gras krewes. You name it, and
Ed. Smith’s Stencil Works can do it!
Above: Ed. Smith’s Stencil Works,
326 Camp Street, October 1972.
Below: Ed. Smith’s Stencil Works’
current location, 4315 Bienville Street.
BUILDING A GREATER NEW ORLEANS
207

ROUBION
CONSTRUCTION
CO., LLC
Vintage image of house being moved with
rollers and donkeys.
Roubion Construction Co., LLC, and the
City of New Orleans are both celebrating
momentous milestones in 2018. Roubion
Construction has been a part of New Orleans
growth and development for half the city’s
history—150 years—and remains the leading
shoring and elevation firm in the region.
Roubion Construction is still owned and operated
by descendants of the original founder.
Founded in 1868, the company has survived
world wars, disastrous storms, and
severe economic disruptions by utilizing the
latest in technological innovation and providing
its customers with services second to
none. We have come a long way from using
donkeys to pull carts, wood logs for beams
and bolsters to move a structure, or horsedrawn
carts, steel wheels, and hand turned
screw jacks. Today, with a hydraulic jacking
system, one man can raise a house four feet
in minutes. When hand turned screw jacks
were used, the same lift previously took
15 to 25 men ten hours. There is still a
lot of manual labor needed in completing
and stabilizing the elevation process, but the
elevation process today is fully mechanized.
The company’s services have sometimes
gone well beyond the ordinary. Family members
still tell the story of how Great-Uncle
Joe’s knowledge and expertise were called
upon to assist another company with moving
Charity Hospital’s female ward, a five story
brick building. This building was moved on
steel spools greater than a half city block,
fully intact, in 1935. The hospital then sat for
over a year without electricity or plumbing.
When it became apparent that Governor
Huey Long’s plans for the structure were not
feasible, as the story was told, the structure
was quietly rolled back to its original location
“in the dark of night.”
Dennis Roubion worked on his first house
leveling job with his Uncle Joe at age twelve
and became sole owner of the current
company in 1980. He has seen, diagnosed,
and repaired many foundation failures. He
earned his BA degree in business administration
from Loyola University and has done
graduate work in construction, business and
engineering. Roubion Construction holds
a State of Louisiana license in: building
construction; highway, street and bridge
construction; rigging, house moving, wrecking
and dismantling. Roubion Construction
also holds a license for elevation and
construction in the State of New Jersey.
Roubion is bonded, and qualified to elevate
homes anywhere in the nation.
Roubion Construction is a member of
the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce, the
International Association of Structural Movers
(IASM), the Texas Association of Structural
Movers (TASM), and the Better Business Bureau.
From the pick and shovel days of less
than a century ago to the technological
marvels of today, Roubion has always utilized
the latest, most up-to-date equipment. The
company had one of the first unified
hydraulic systems in the late 1970s and
Dennis learned to operate the equipment by
rigging his own home. Roubion Construction
can raise a structure a few inches or add
a full new story to a home. By elevating the
house eight feet or more, the owner has the
option of adding additional living space or a
drive-in garage. Roubion uses a special steel
beam construction to carry the weight and
create enough space for vehicles.
The below sea-level location and the unstable
soil conditions of the region surrounding
New Orleans present unique construction
challenges for both business and residential
structures. As experts on foundations, Roubion
provides house leveling services and foundation
repair throughout the New Orleans
metropolitan area.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
208

With generations of expertise, Roubion is
uniquely qualified to care for any home or
business foundation. The company uses a
hydraulic jacking system to elevate both
slab and pier houses, ensuring the house
is level.
Other Roubion services include house
shoring/leveling, new foundation/foundation
repair, concrete pilings, steel beam placement,
and sill or joist replacement. Roubion
provides turn-key solutions, including all
utility needs, making the transition as convenient
as possible. The company’s mitigation
specialists handle all necessary paperwork.
Roubion has provided commercial construction,
shoring, elevation, foundation, and
renovation expertise for many well-known
structures, including the Rosa Keller
Library, the U.S. Mint Building, New Orleans
Charity Hospital female ward building,
Helen Cox School, Sophie B. Wright School,
Oak Alley Plantation, and Jean Lafitte
Art Gallery. Roubion has also provided
its services for many hundreds of homes in
the area.
Roubion Construction and/or Roubion Roads
and Streets Division have performed road and
infrastructure work at: the Lakefront Airport
Runway for Atlantic Airlines, Armstrong Airport
Runway for Atlantic Airlines, Oretha Castle
Haley Boulevard, and Costco Infrastructure
Improvement-Road repair and reconstruction.
Dennis’ sons, Dennis, Jr., and Justin, each
started working job sites during summers
throughout high school and while attending
LSU. Dennis, Justin and Lydia Roubion are
the current owners and operate the home
elevation/shoring business. They hold all the
state licenses needed to continue with the
operation offering high quality workmanship.
Under their guidance, the company
has now expanded and opened up Roubion
Roads and Streets Division.
“We’re here to stay and will proudly stand
behind our work for generations to come,”
Dennis says.
Roubion Construction is located at 824
Dakin Street in Jefferson, Louisiana, and on
the Internet at www.roubionconstruction.com
or www.roubionshoring.com.
Top, left: Before house is raised.
Left: Midway during the house elavation.
Above: House elevation completed.
BUILDING A GREATER NEW ORLEANS
209

LAITRAM, LLC
Above: Founders of the Peelers Company—
Fernand, J. M., and Emile Lapeyre, 1949.
Below: Laitram’s first building on
619 South Peters in the New Orleans
Warehouse District, 1954-1974.
As a teen, J. M. Lapeyre spent summers
working in his father’s shrimp processing plant
near Houma, Louisiana. In the early 1940s,
shrimp worldwide were peeled by hand. J. M.’s
father, Emile, realizing his son’s fascination with
how things worked (combined with the
frustration and constant problems associated
with hand peeling), challenged his son to make
a machine that would peel shrimp. J. M.
accepted the challenge and found
inspiration while in the unlikeliest of
places: church.
“I got my original idea, believe it or
not, in church,” J. M. said in a 1982
television interview. “When I was
supposed to be praying, I was
thinking about how to get the shrimp
out of the shell because my father had
said, ‘If you want to make a lot of
money, invent a shrimp-peeling
machine.’ And I thought, why not
squeeze them out of the shell? And so,
when I got down to the plant the next
time, I began to step just to the side of
the shrimp with my rubber boots to
see if I could in fact squeeze the shell from the
meat. And…it worked!”
To test his theory, young J. M. brought
shrimp home from the plant and began running
them through the rubber rollers of his mother’s
hand-turned washing machine, yielding even
more encouraging results. After convincing his
father that he had successfully peeled shrimp
mechanically, the question became: How to
proceed with a project to develop a practical
machine, one that would be a real commercial
solution to the biggest problem facing the
processing industry?
As J. M. was only sixteen and still in high
school, Emile contacted his brother (J. M.’s
uncle Fernand) to assist in constructing a
prototype machine incorporating J. M.’s
theory and design idea.
A year later, on July 25, 1944, a patent
application was filed for the first automatic
shrimp peeling machine and was awarded
October 28, 1947. Peelers, Inc., was
founded two years later, (now Laitram
Machinery) to manufacture and lease the
first automatic shrimp-peeling machine,
the Model “A” Peeler, which would peel up
to 1,000 pounds of shrimp in one hour.
Over the next seven years, J. M. invented the
cleaner, deveiner, and grader and these machines
were all added to enhance and expand the
performance of the Model “A” peeling line. Not
satisfied with only local success along the Gulf
Coast, J. M. began to think globally. In 1958, he
moved his family to Denmark (and later
Switzerland) where he designed a machine to
peel the much smaller cold-water shrimp species
of Northern Europe, Iceland and Greenland. In
1963, Peelers’ name was changed to The Laitram
Corporation (J. M.’s middle name “Martial”
spelled backwards), and the pioneering spirit of
those early days remained as the company
continued to grow. By 1974, Laitram had
outgrown its cramped quarters and the
congestion of the New Orleans Warehouse
District and moved to its newly constructed
campus in Harahan, Louisiana, where it has
continued to expand and is headquartered today.
J. M.’s business career began in 1943, when
he had the original concept of the present-day
shrimp peeling machine. From that day until his
death on May 1, 1989, he worked for the
company his ideas had created. Although he
held many roles throughout the years, he was
uniquely productive and happy with his job as
inventor and product designer. The challenge of
coming up with simple solutions to complex
problems inspired J. M. throughout his life, and
he was ultimately awarded 190 U.S. patents. Jay
Lapeyre, J. M.’s eldest son, joined Laitram in
1979. Leaving the inventing up to his father, he
kept his focus on growing the business and in
1987 established the Laitram Business
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
210

Philosophy, which emphasizes continuous
improvement through innovation and
investment in its employees.
Today, Laitram, L.L.C. is a privately held
manufacturer of diversified products founded
on the inventions of J. M. It has four operating
divisions: Laitram Machinery, Intralox, Lapeyre
Stair, and Laitram Machine Shop. The
company continues to innovate, and generates
more U.S. patents than any other company or
university headquartered in Louisiana.
Laitram Machinery has been in business
nearly seventy years and has pioneered highperformance
shrimp processing equipment,
steam cookers, blanchers, pasteurizers, and
graders for processors worldwide.
J. M.’s shrimp peeler spawned Laitram’s
largest division, Intralox, in 1971. Shrimp were
moved from the peelers by way of metal
conveyor belts, which required frequent
maintenance and replacement due to
deterioration from salt water. After pitching his
idea of plastic conveyor belts to the major metal
and rubber conveyor belt companies to no avail,
J. M. invented the first all-plastic, modular
conveyor belt. Today, Intralox manufactures the
world’s most innovative and complete line of
modular plastic belting and related products,
and produces world leading conveying
technologies for package handling and sorting,
and for highly sanitary food processing.
Lapeyre Stair was founded in 1981 to manufacture
the alternating-tread stair, a safer alternative
to steep stairways and ladders and has
expanded to include, customized, conventional,
precision fabricated industrial stairs. The
Laitram Machine Shop provides high-value
machining and related services to the Laitram
divisions and select outside customers.
Over its history, Laitram has developed
a worldwide reputation for ethical and
responsible business practices, and delivering
exceptional customer value and service. With
over 2,200 employees worldwide (1,200
on the Harahan campus), the growth and
sustained success is the result of a focus on
continuous improvement, a core belief in the
potential of people, and a commitment to
treating employees, customers, and suppliers
with honesty, fairness, and respect.
Top, left: J. M. Lapeyre in 1985 pictured
with his “Lapeyre Stair.”
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MICHAEL F. SUSTENDAL.
Top, right: Intralox headquarters in
Harahan, Louisiana—our largest division.
Left: Jay Lapeyre, president of Laitram, LLC.
BUILDING A GREATER NEW ORLEANS
211

FROMHERZ
ENGINEERS,
INC.
Top: Notre Dame Seminary, 1923.
Constructed by Joseph Fromherz.
Below: Cold-formed steel framed home in
New Orleans’ Garden District.
Fromherz Engineers, Inc., has proven success
and diversity in engineering for more than a
century and a half. It is believed to be the only
family-owned, multifaceted engineering firm in
the nation with that longevity still owned by
descendants of the founder.
Fromherz’s roots can be traced to the carpentry
shop of Ferdinand Reusch, founded in
1867. Joseph Fromherz, an early apprentice
for Reusch, helped transform the carpentry
shop to a master building firm that included
design as well as construction. Fromherz had
taught mathematics during the Civil War, and
his skills in the mathematical field were just
what Reusch needed to further his own business.
Fromherz became his business partner.
It was not long after that Fromherz married
Ellen, Reusch’s daughter, and established his
own business. Fromherz’s sons, Alvin and
Fabian, carried on the business bloodline
after their father died. Today, Frank II (fifth
generation) is president of the firm, which
continues to practice civil, structural, and
environmental engineering.
Fromherz’s skills are evident in many
well-known homes, businesses, and highways;
the Houma Tunnel and Notre Dame
Seminary, among others. In addition to local
clients, ingenuity has always been a mainstay
of the Fromherz firm. The company has
spear-headed many innovations in construction
and architectural technology. This
included Joseph’s use of deep-driven piles
to counteract the instability of New Orleans’
soggy soil, which helped to change the
city’s skyline. Alvin was among the first to
remove piling to investigate tip damage from
over-driving.
Fromherz Engineers stays up-to-date with
engineering technology. In addition to
designs utilizing traditional building materials,
such as steel, concrete, and timber, the
company is proficient with new products
and new applications for conventional products.
In recent years, multistoried residences
have been designed that use structural
insulated panels for both the vertical and
horizontal structural systems. In addition to
being highly energy-efficient, these structures
are significantly lighter than those constructed
from conventional materials, and this
provides additional savings in the cost of
foundations. The company is currently providing
innovative designs using cold-formed
steel framing to create walls and trusses in
unique applications.
The success of Fromherz Engineers, Inc. is
simple: It thrives on patience, perseverance,
and perspiration. “Our past is one of merit
and our future is one of promise,” says Frank.
“Based on our historical success, combined
with the latest technology, the future shines
brighter than ever,” he concludes.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
212

New Orleans was settled by the French in
1718 on high ground next to the Mississippi
River. The city expanded toward Lake
Pontchartrain as settlers moved into surrounding
low-lying areas. Flooding was common,
either from heavy rain or from the river
and the lake overflowing their banks.
Water for drinking or washing was collected
in large cypress cisterns, which stored
rain water from roof tops or taken from
the river and kept in large earthenware jars.
There were no purification or sterilization
procedures. Despite its proximity to the
Mississippi, the city burned in 1788 and
again in 1794, in part because it had no
municipal water supply to fight fires. New
Orleans also lacked any formal method to dispose
of sewage. Human waste went into openpit
privies, while household waste was
dumped in open gutters. These unsanitary
conditions gave rise to typhoid fever, yellow
fever, cholera, and other diseases
that regularly decimated
the population.
City leaders soon realized
that to continue growing, New
Orleans must be kept drained
and dry, supplied with water for
drinking and fire protection;
and equipped with a sanitary
sewerage system. Planning for
the three systems began in
1893. The Sewerage & Water
Board of New Orleans (S&WB)
was authorized in 1899 by
the Louisiana Legislature to
furnish, construct, operate, and
maintain a water treatment and distribution
system and a sanitary sewerage system.
Engineer A. Baldwin Wood, a graduate from
Tulane University, was hired in 1899 to try
and improve the flood prone city’s drainage.
Inventions of the “flapgates” and other
hydraulic machines—which included his
efficient low-maintenance, high volume
pumps—allowed large areas of swampland to
be drained and developed. The S&WB took
over management of the city’s drainage system
in 1903. Mayor Martin Behrman declared in
1914 that the city’s water, sewerage and
drainage systems were “enduring monuments
to the courage, determination and infinite
resourcefulness” of New Orleanians to not
just grow, but thrive.
As New Orleans grew so did S&WB’s
mission. Fresh water is now pumped from
the Mississippi. The S&WB filters and purifies
it before sending it throughout the city.
Wastewater is treated through a gravity collection
system and returned safely to the environment.
Those innovations have all ended
the threat of many water-borne diseases. To
safeguard the city from flooding, S&WB
designed and constructed one of the largest
drainage system on the planet. This system
helped drain the city after Hurricane Katrina
and the failure of the federal levees.
The S&WB is the backbone of New
Orleans because without it, New Orleans simply
could not exist. For more information on
the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans,
please visit www.swbno.org.
SEWERAGE &
WATER BOARD
OF NEW
ORLEANS
Top: Cresent Box water meter design has
been used by the Sewerage & Water Board
since 1922.
Bottom: A Sewerage & Water Board of New
Orleans water treatment plant.
BUILDING A GREATER NEW ORLEANS
213

GARDNER
REALTORS
Top: "It all simmers down to love. Love of
people, love of your business, love of your
family, you know, just love,"- Gertrude
Gardner, Founder.
Below: From left to right: President Glenn
Gardner; Vice President of Corporate
Services Sharon Gardner; Vice President of
Marketing & Public Relations Crystal
Gardner-Phillips; Vice President of
Operations Chip Gardner.
A notable year in history was 1943. The tide
was beginning to turn in World War II, the worst
of the Great Depression had begun to pass, and
many women had begun to enter the workforce.
Gertrude Gardner envisioned the coming need
for housing as the war was winding down and
decided to start her own real estate company.
Right from the start, she had some innovative
ideas that marked her as ahead of her time.
She located her office in a residential neighborhood
instead of the downtown business district.
She reached out to a core of talented
friends and family–creating early success. This
was further enhanced when Gertrude’s husband,
Warren, a former banker, brought his
financial expertise to the growing firm. Their
only son, Glenn, added his creative vision and
was promoted to president shortly before his
untimely death at the age of thirty-nine.
Always independent and willing to take a
risk, Gertrude grounded her business on the
Golden Rule, eventually becoming the first
woman to found a citywide real estate firm.
Her vision and her drive culminated over seventy-five
years later in the fourth generation
company that bears her name. From that original
Uptown office on Maple Street, Gertrude
Gardner Realtors–now known as Gardner
Realtors–has grown to 24 locations, more than
800 sales associates and 70 staff members.
Gertrude’s story is one of many “firsts.” She
was the first female president of what is now
the New Orleans Metropolitan Association of
Realtors, Realtor of the Year in 1977, and
affectionately known as the “Grande Dame” of
Real Estate, she has long been remembered as
a mentor and inspiration to other women.
In 1979, Gertrude appointed as president
her grandson, Glenn M. Gardner, Jr. who kept
growing the regional company while Gertrude
continued to inspire the Gardner team as
Chairman of the Board, until her death in
1998, at the age of ninety-six.
At her passing in 1998, Gertrude had successfully
laid the foundation, which would
keep the firm among the top one percent of
real estate companies worldwide. But most
central to the ongoing strength of Gardner
Realtors has been the dedication and commitment
of her succeeding family members.
It is an arrangement that has sustained the
firm’s success as the core principles and foundations
of the third generation have been kept
cutting-edge by technological and social
media savvy of the fourth.
Though times have changed, the core
principles of Gardner Realtors have remained
constant–a commitment to excelent service
guided by adherence to the Golden Rule–best
exemplified by the firm’s support of important
community endeavors, particularly its work
with the New Orleans Mission to help end
homelessness in the area.
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
214

Ensuring its clients build on a firm foundation
is the foundation of Eustis Engineering
L.L.C., the oldest geotechnical firm in southeastern
Louisiana and the third oldest to continually
operate in America.
Established while geotechnical engineering
was still a fledgling discipline, the company
was brought to life by J. Bres Eustis, who not
only earned degrees from Tulane and Harvard
Universities, but who also had the remarkable
opportunity to work alongside Dr. Karl
Terzaghi, a famous civil engineer and geologist
dubbed the “Father of Soil Mechanics.”
Eustis aided Terzaghi in his studies of
Charity Hospital after the 20-story building
began to sink into its weak foundation. Those
studies not only verified Terzaghi’s theory of
soil consolidation settlement, but also shaped
the basis for many geotechnical engineering
analyses still used today as well as inspired
Eustis to form his own business.
Eustis Engineering opened its doors in
Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1946. Its founder
quickly set out to locate scales for the soil
laboratory, a search which led him to
Charlie Bragg, a salesman whom he would
soon call friend and business partner. Bragg
managed the marketing for the company
while Eustis, a chemical and civil engineer,
handled the engineering.
Soon after their 1947 union, however,
the duo realized they would need to relocate
if the company was going to grow. One
of nine children born and raised in Uptown
New Orleans, Eustis naturally gravitated
home, opening an office on Airline Highway. In
1966 the firm moved to 3011 28 th Street in
Metairie, the company’s current headquarters.
In the years since, the firm has also added
four branch offices in Lafayette, Baton Rouge,
and Lake Charles, Louisiana, as well as
Gulfport, Mississippi. Services include geotechnical
exploration, soil mechanics laboratory
tests, geotechnical engineering design,
engineering during construction, geotechnical
instrumentation and monitoring, specified
testing on deep foundations, and construction
quality control and materials testing services.
Eustis Engineering has worked on more than
24,000 projects since its inception with its geotechnical
designs responsible for 23 of the 25
tallest buildings dotting the New Orleans skyline
along with landmarks such as the
Superdome, Sports Arena, Aquarium of the
Americas, and Harrah’s New Orleans.
Other projects include the New Orleans
Lakefront and Louis Armstrong New Orleans
International Airports as well as Interstate 10,
the Crescent City Connection, Lake
Pontchartrain Causeway Bridge, and many
industrial plants along the Mississippi River
Corridor. The company also performed geotechnical
work for the 1984 World’s Fair and
was an integral part of the Gulf Coast’s reconstruction
after Hurricane Katrina to include
the award-winning Inner Harbor Navigation
Canal Storm Surge Barrier project.
The firm has had just six presidents over
the years: J. Bres Eustis, Jack Roach, Gerry
Bragg, Lloyd Held, Bill Gwyn, and its current
president, Randy Eustis, son of the founder.
For more information, please visit them on
the Internet at www.eustiseng.com.
EUSTIS
ENGINEERING
L.L.C.
Top: J. Bres Eustis receives an Order of St.
Louis IX medallion from Archbishop Philip
Hannan on May 29, 1974. The award
honors laypeople who have contributed their
time and talent to the church. Eustis
Engineering performed pro bono work for
archdiocese projects to build retirement
facilities in the greater New Orleans area.
Bottom: Eustis Engineering began its
geotechnical work for the Superdome project
in 1967 with the Dome being constructed in
1972. New Orleans Mayor Vic Schiro, top,
drapes an arm around J. Bres Eustis, fourth
from left, and Maurice “Moon” Landrieu,
fifth from right. Over the years, Eustis
Engineering has worked on fifteen projects
at the Dome.
BUILDING A GREATER NEW ORLEANS
215

SPONSORS
Academy of the Sacred Heart ............................................................................................................................................................160
Archbishop Shaw High School ..........................................................................................................................................................142
Aunt Sally’s Pralines ..........................................................................................................................................................................172
Brother Martin High School ..............................................................................................................................................................146
Cabrini High School .........................................................................................................................................................................161
Joseph C. Canizaro ...........................................................................................................................................................................200
Compucast Web, Inc./Experience New Orleans.................................................................................................................................191
CrescentCare.....................................................................................................................................................................................162
Delgado Community College ............................................................................................................................................................148
Dillard University..............................................................................................................................................................................169
Ed. Smith’s Stencil Works, Ltd. .........................................................................................................................................................206
Eustis Engineering, L.L.C..................................................................................................................................................................215
Fromherz Engineers, Inc ...................................................................................................................................................................212
Gardner Realtors ...............................................................................................................................................................................214
Gotham Lofts....................................................................................................................................................................................178
Hancock Whitney .............................................................................................................................................................................182
Hotel Storyville.................................................................................................................................................................................188
Jones Walker LLP..............................................................................................................................................................................193
The Kearney Companies, Inc. ...........................................................................................................................................................197
KPMG LLP........................................................................................................................................................................................192
Laitram, LLC.....................................................................................................................................................................................210
Liberty Bank and Trust......................................................................................................................................................................195
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine ..............................................................................................150
Mandina’s Restaurant ........................................................................................................................................................................194
Metairie Bank....................................................................................................................................................................................174
Metairie Park Country Day School ....................................................................................................................................................168
Meyer The Hatter..............................................................................................................................................................................196
Mount Carmel Academy ...................................................................................................................................................................152
Neal Auction Company.....................................................................................................................................................................189
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary .......................................................................................................................................167
New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau...................................................................................................................................158
Ochsner Baptist ................................................................................................................................................................................165
Pan-American Life Insurance.............................................................................................................................................................176
Parkway Bakery & Tavern.................................................................................................................................................................180
Patrick F. Taylor Foundation .............................................................................................................................................................134
PJ’s Coffee of New Orleans ................................................................................................................................................................186
Port of New Orleans .........................................................................................................................................................................184
Roubion Construction Co., LLC........................................................................................................................................................208
Royal Sonesta New Orleans...............................................................................................................................................................190
Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans .........................................................................................................................................213
Southern University at New Orleans .................................................................................................................................................144
St. Mary’s Academy ...........................................................................................................................................................................163
St. Mary’s Dominican High School ....................................................................................................................................................154
Stuart Hall School for Boys ...............................................................................................................................................................166
Tulane University ..............................................................................................................................................................................156
Ursuline Academy of New Orleans....................................................................................................................................................164
Xavier University of Louisiana...........................................................................................................................................................140
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
216

About the Author
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
W ILLIAM
D. REEVES
William Dale Reeves was born in New Orleans in 1941. He received a B.A. from Williams
College, and a Ph. D. from Tulane University in 1968. He worked for eight years in a real estate
investment trust and as president of an insurance company. Since 1990 he has been a full-time
contract historian. His books include De La Barre: Life of a French Creole Family in Louisiana (1980);
Historic City Park: New Orleans (1992); Westwego: From Cheniere to Canal (1996); Manresa on the
Mississippi: For the Greater Glory of God (1996); Paths to Distinction: Dr. James White, Governor E. D.
White and Chief Justice Edward Douglass White of Louisiana (1999); Historic Louisiana: An Illustrated
History (2003); From Tally-Ho to Forest Home: The History of Two Louisiana Plantations (2005); Le
Pavillon Hotel: A Century of Triumph (2008); Hotel Monteleone (2011); His publications include an
article on the Public Works Administration in the Journal of American History (1973); “A
Transitional Plantation House in Louisiana Architecture” in Arris, the Journal of the Southeast Chapter
of the Society of Architectural Historians VIII (1997); and “Two Hundred Years of Maritime New
Orleans: An Overview” in Tulane Maritime Law Journal (Winter 2010).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
217

For more information about the following publications or about publishing your own book, please call
HPNbooks at 800-749-9790 or visit www.hpnbooks.com.
Albemarle & Charlottesville:
An Illustrated History of the First 150 Years
Bakersfield: It’s the People, And a Whole Lot More
Black Gold: The Story of Texas Oil & Gas
Black Gold in California
Carter County, Oklahoma: Then and Now
Cheyenne: A Sesquicentennial History
Coastal Visions: Images of Galveston County
Davis County: On the Move
Fort Myers - City of Palms: A Contemporary Portrait
Garland: A Contemporary History
Historic Abilene: An Illustrated History
Historic Alamance County: An Illustrated History
Historic Albany: City & County
Historic Albuquerque: An Illustrated History
Historic Alexandria: An Illustrated History
Historic Amarillo: An Illustrated History
Historic Anchorage: An Illustrated History
Historic Austin: An Illustrated History
Historic Baldwin County: A Bicentennial History
Historic Baton Rouge: An Illustrated History
Historic Beaufort County: An Illustrated History
Historic Beaumont: An Illustrated History
Historic Bexar County: An Illustrated History
Historic Birmingham: An Illustrated History
Historic Brazoria County: An Illustrated History
Historic Brownsville: An Illustrated History
Historic Charlotte:
An Illustrated History of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County
Historic Chautauqua County: An Illustrated History
Historic Cheyenne: A History of the Magic City
Historic Clayton County: An Illustrated History
Historic Comal County: An Illustrated History
Historic Corpus Christi: An Illustrated History
Historic DeKalb County: An Illustrated History
Historic Denton County: An Illustrated History
Historic Edmond: An Illustrated History
Historic El Paso: An Illustrated History
Historic Erie County: An Illustrated History
Historic Fayette County: An Illustrated History
Historic Fairbanks: An Illustrated History
Historic Gainesville & Hall County: An Illustrated History
Historic Gregg County: An Illustrated History
Historic Hampton Roads: Where America Began
Historic Hancock County: An Illustrated History
Historic Henry County: An Illustrated History
Historic Hood County: An Illustrated History
Historic Houston: An Illustrated History
Historic Hunt County: An Illustrated History
Historic Illinois: An Illustrated History
Historic Kern County:
An Illustrated History of Bakersfield and Kern County
Historic Lafayette:
An Illustrated History of Lafayette & Lafayette Parish
Historic Laredo:
An Illustrated History of Laredo & Webb County
Historic Lee County: The Story of Fort Myers & Lee County
Historic Louisiana: An Illustrated History
Historic Mansfield: A Bicentennial History
Historic Midland: An Illustrated History
Historic Mobile:
An Illustrated History of the Mobile Bay Region
Historic Montgomery County:
An Illustrated History of Montgomery County, Texas
Historic Ocala: The Story of Ocala & Marion County
Historic Oklahoma: An Illustrated History
Historic Oklahoma County: An Illustrated History
Historic Omaha:
An Illustrated History of Omaha and Douglas County
Historic Orange County: An Illustrated History
Historic Osceola County: An Illustrated History
Historic Ouachita Parish: An Illustrated History
Historic Paris and Lamar County: An Illustrated History
Historic Pasadena: An Illustrated History
Historic Passaic County: An Illustrated History
Historic Pennsylvania An Illustrated History
Historic Philadelphia: An Illustrated History
Historic Prescott:
An Illustrated History of Prescott & Yavapai County
Historic Richardson: An Illustrated History
Historic Rio Grande Valley: An Illustrated History
Historic Rogers County: An Illustrated History
Historic San Marcos: An Illustrated History
Historic Santa Barbara: An Illustrated History
Historic Santa Maria Valley
Historic Scottsdale: A Life from the Land
Historic Shelby County: An Illustrated History
Historic Shreveport-Bossier:
An Illustrated History of Shreveport & Bossier City
Historic South Carolina: An Illustrated History
Historic Smith County: An Illustrated History
Historic Temple: An Illustrated History
Historic Texarkana: An Illustrated History
Historic Texas: An Illustrated History
Historic Victoria: An Illustrated History
Historic Tulsa: An Illustrated History
Historic Wake County: An Illustrated History
Historic Warren County: An Illustrated History
Historic Williamson County: An Illustrated History
Historic Wilmington & The Lower Cape Fear:
An Illustrated History
Historic York County: An Illustrated History
Iron, Wood & Water: An Illustrated History of Lake Oswego
Jefferson Parish: Rich Heritage, Promising Future
More Than a River: Decatur-Morgan County
Loudoun County, Virginia:
Preserving Tradition, Embracing Innovation
Miami’s Historic Neighborhoods: A History of Community
Old Orange County Courthouse: A Centennial History
Plano: An Illustrated Chronicle
The New Frontier:
A Contemporary History of Fort Worth & Tarrant County
Rich With Opportunity:
Images of Beaumont and Jefferson County
Salt Lake City: Livability in the 21st Century
San Antonio, City Exceptional
The San Gabriel Valley: A 21st Century Portrait
Southwest Louisiana: A Treasure Revealed
The Spirit of Collin County
Terrebonne Parish: Stories of the Good Earth
Tyler: A Natural Beauty
Utah Valley: Heart of Utah
Valley Places, Valley Faces
Water, Rails & Oil: Historic Mid & South Jefferson County
NOTABLE NEW ORLEANIANS: A Tricentennial Tribute
218

LEADERSHIP SPONSORS
COLUMBUS
PROPERTIES, L.P.
ISBN: 978-1-944891-43-5
Historical Publishing Network