Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

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
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