Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

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
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