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The cultural life of New Orleans is a synthesis of contributions by both whites and Blacks. The white American heritage—with its roots in French-speaking Cajun society—is reflected in the business and commercial life of the city, while the immigrant heritage—Irish societies, German Oktoberfests, Italian St. Joseph’s Day altars—adds ethnic colour to urban conformity. The African American heritage is particularly rich. In antebellum days, free persons of colour were musicians, poets, journalists, business entrepreneurs, and landlords. Both Black freemen and slaves were renowned for their craftsmanship in such trades as bricklaying, iron grillwork, and carpentry. The contribution of African American musicians to the birth of jazz out of Black blues and “field hollers” and white dance tunes and hymns is well known.
Facilities for recreation and relaxation in New Orleans are justly famous. New Orleans is often referred to as “the city that care forgot,” and it has always been a town for those seeking a good time. Its residents love music, dancing, and a “Continental Sunday” spent in amusements. The three factors that have contributed to its popularity with tourists are the Old World charm of the Spanish-French architecture in its Vieux Carré (French: “Old Square”), the reckless abandon of its Carnival and Mardi Gras, and its reputation as the birthplace, between the 1880s and World War I, of jazz.
The Vieux Carré, or French Quarter, is a sightseer’s delight. Its Creole architecture, creating the atmosphere of a foreign city, combines native architectural ingenuity with adaptations of French colonial traditions of eastern Canada and West Indian Spanish colonial styles. Typical are one-story cottages opening directly on the sidewalks, with high-pitched roofs and windows reaching to the ground. Another style is the L-shaped two-story dwelling with a side entrance to an inner patio. Also built to the sidewalk, it has a roof that extends out over balconies on both the street and patio sides. Iron grillwork, designs for which were created locally and executed to a high perfection by slave craftsmen, decorates these balconies and also supports the roof. Such houses are built side by side with no openings between them, but the patios offer space for trees, flowers, and fountains and ensure privacy for the occupants.
Central to the Vieux Carré is Jackson Square, facing the Cabildo and the Presbytère (former governmental centres but now part of the Louisiana State Museum) and St. Louis Cathedral. All date from colonial times, but considerable stylistic changes have been made on these buildings since they were erected.
On either side of this square are the Pontalba Buildings, built in 1849–50, while nearby is the historic French Market. Curio and antique collectors throng the many shops on Royal Street. Side streets are lined with art galleries, perfume shops, sidewalk cafés, and tearooms. Bourbon Street is famous for its nightclubs, where music (notably jazz) and risqué floor shows are a specialty. Devotees of jazz may also visit Preservation Hall, where revivals of traditional styles may be heard. The New Orleans Jazz Club established a Jazz Museum and later donated the collection to the Louisiana State Museum system. The jazz collection is displayed in the Old U.S. Mint. Each spring the city puts on the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
Every year during Spring Fiesta there are tours of private homes and patios in the Vieux Carré and also of the spacious Garden District uptown, the elite 19th-century neighbourhood. Boats tour the extensive harbour facilities and the magnificent scenery of nearby waterways. The observation point on the 31st floor of the World Trade Center at the foot of Canal Street offers a panoramic view of the river and city. The world-renowned Creole and spicy Cajun cuisine may be sampled in numerous restaurants, ranging from elegant dining rooms with French menus and waiters to small cafés with checkered tablecloths, serving red beans and rice and crawfish, a local specialty.
Sports share an honoured position with jazz and Carnival activities in New Orleans. The city is the home of the New Orleans Saints, a member of the National Football League, and the New Orleans Pelicans, a member of the National Basketball Association that relocated from Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2002. In 2010 the Saints, who were especially beloved by the people of New Orleans because of the decades they spent as the city’s sole professional sports franchise, won their first Super Bowl—an important symbolic step on the road to recovery from Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans is the site of the Louisiana Superdome, one of the world’s largest sports arenas. In early January the Superdome hosts the Sugar Bowl game, one of the collegiate championship contests in football; in conjunction with the game are competitions in other sports. Horse racing is held at the local Fair Grounds Race Course, while golfers are attracted every year to the Compaq Classic of New Orleans tournament held at one of the local golf clubs. Boating and fishing are popular pastimes on the city’s many waterways. The Southern Yacht Club, on Lake Pontchartrain, is the second oldest in the country. In addition to the lakefront, popular recreation areas include the city’s two largest parks, City and Audubon, the latter of which has one of the country’s finest zoos. The New Orleans Recreation Department operates more than 100 playgrounds and directs organized recreation activities for thousands of youngsters.
Since World War II New Orleans has become an art centre, with many artists and galleries offering original works to collectors. The New Orleans Museum of Art is a public museum with a variety of collections, notably in decorative arts and photography. Live theatre is represented by several community theatre groups. Musical events include operas staged annually by the New Orleans Opera Association, concerts given by the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, performances by the New Orleans Ballet Association, and concerts presented by the New Orleans Jazz Club. Other attractions include the Aquarium of the Americas, one of the top aquariums in the country; the Historic Voodoo Museum; the National WWII Museum; and the Contemporary Arts Center. Tours of the city’s unique aboveground cemeteries are also popular.
The New Orleans Carnival season begins annually on January 6 and culminates in Mardi Gras, the “Fat Tuesday” before Ash Wednesday. The two weeks before Mardi Gras are filled with parades, both day and night, climaxing on Mardi Gras with the Rex parade. The first parading Carnival group (called a “krewe”) was the Mystick Krewe of Comus, which appeared in 1857, though celebrations by masked participants date to the 1820s. The krewe of Rex came into existence in 1872. In 1992 the city council began requiring all krewes to be racially integrated; as a result, several krewes stopped parading and held only private balls. The Presbytère has an exhibit devoted to Mardi Gras.
In the latter half of the 19th century there were about a half-dozen leading newspapers, including one in French. Through a process of gradual consolidation, New Orleans now has only one major daily, the Times-Picayune. The city also has weekly newspapers, trade publications, college journals, and regional magazines of considerable circulation. Competitive journalism is kept alive among the city’s television and radio stations.
History of New Orleans
Foundation and early settlement
The decision to found New Orleans, or Nouvelle-Orléans, was made in Paris in 1717 by John Law’s Company of the West, which had taken control of Louisiana that year. The colony’s new proprietors envisioned New Orleans (named for the French regent, Philippe II, duc d’Orléans) as a “port of deposit,” or transshipment centre, for future trade from upriver in the Mississippi River valley. Jean-Baptiste le Moyne de Bienville, the man who suggested the site, was entrusted with the actual foundation of the city. Clearing of underbrush for the new city probably began in March 1718. The engineers charged with this task met with problems arising from uncooperative convict labour, a shortage of supplies, two severe hurricanes (in 1721 and 1722), and the unpleasant physical conditions of mosquito-infested swamps as they set up the first crude dwellings covered with bark and reeds. An engineer, Adrien de Pauger, drafted the first plan for the town, encompassing what is now the Vieux Carré and consisting of 66 squares forming a parallelogram.
The first residents were a colourful mixture of Canadian backwoodsmen, company craftsmen and troops, convicts, slaves, prostitutes, and indigents. In a census taken in November 1721, New Orleans had a population of 470 people: 277 whites and 172 Black and 21 Indian slaves. In 1722 New Orleans was designated the capital of Louisiana, and in 1731 the city returned to the control of the French crown. More respectable colonists began to arrive, but growth continued to be precarious. The main economic staples grown in the vicinity of New Orleans were tobacco and indigo for export and rice and vegetables for local consumption. Naval stores were also exported. French ships, however, were reluctant to call at New Orleans to pick up such cargo because its value did not match its bulk.
In 1762 France, ready to part with its unprofitable port, secretly agreed to cede Louisiana to Spain, and, by the Treaty of Paris (1763), Spain received New Orleans and the Louisiana Territory west of the Mississippi. After a brief rebellion—which was sternly suppressed—the inhabitants of New Orleans enjoyed peace and a growing prosperity under Spanish law, while trade arose with the British colonies in spite of Spanish restrictions. At the same time, English-speaking colonists were moving west to settle along the tributaries of the Mississippi. In the decade of the American Revolution, these “Kaintucks,” as they were called, began floating their cargoes downriver to New Orleans; several times Spanish officials suspended the right of deposit of American goods at New Orleans in response to the boisterous conduct of American frontiersmen along the city’s upper levee.
In 1800 Louisiana was secretly returned to Napoleon’s France, and by 1803 the French emperor had negotiated its sale to the United States. The ceremonies transferring Louisiana to France and later to the United States took place in New Orleans’s Cabildo and main square, the Place d’Armes (now Jackson Square), in the winter of 1803.
The growth of the city
The early 19th century
New Orleans’s population in 1803 was approximately 8,000, consisting of 4,000 whites and 2,700 enslaved and about 1,300 free persons of colour. Its prosperity was reflected in its 1803 exports, which had a value approaching $2 million and were bound mainly for American ports. In 1805, when it was incorporated as a municipality, New Orleans took on an identity separate from that of Louisiana’s territorial government. As the city expanded out of its original limits, one of the first new tracts of land to be added was the Faubourg Sainte Marie, a suburb lying on the uptown side of the Vieux Carré and separated from it by a broad “commons” (now Canal Street, New Orleans’s main street). The Faubourg Sainte Marie became the “American section” in the early 19th century and the hub of most business activities. Other faubourgs (outskirts, or suburbs) were laid out above and below the two nuclear settlements and across the river and were finally absorbed into the city by the 1870s.
During the War of 1812, New Orleans was threatened by a British invasion force, which approached the city from the Gulf of Mexico. General Andrew Jackson, with an army of frontiersmen and local volunteers, won a smashing victory on January 8, 1815, saving the city, though, unknown to him, the war already had been concluded.
The next 40 years constituted the golden age of New Orleans as a great cotton port. The first steamboat to reach the city, in 1812, was appropriately called the New Orleans. Mississippi River steamboats increased to 400 by 1840, and local commerce skyrocketed in value, reaching $54 million by 1835. By 1840 the city was rated the fourth port in the world; after the 1840s canals and railroads diverted produce eastward to New York City.
German and Irish immigrants arrived in New Orleans in large numbers in the 1840s. By 1850 the city’s total population had swelled to 116,375. New Orleans, however, had not learned to cope with the health hazards of its mushrooming growth: drinking water came from the river or cisterns; no sewerage system existed; drainage was deficient; and flooding was common after heavy rains. The results were sporadic outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever, the worst of which was the yellow fever epidemic of 1853, accounting for more than 8,000 deaths.
