Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

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and publish The Favrot Papers, an extensive collection of historical documents housed at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
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