Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

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
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