The Historic New Orleans
Collection Quarterly
VOLUME X X XIII
N U M B ER 4
FA L L 2 0 16
P UR CHA SE P OWE R : New Orleans, Shopping Destination
E XHIBITIONS & TOURS
E V ENT C A L ENDA R
All exhibitions are free unless noted
otherwise.
CURRENT
CONCERTS IN THE COURT YARD
The fall concert series features Walter “Wolfman”
Washington and the Roadmasters (September), the
Tumbling Wheels (October), and Colin Lake Band
(November). Admission includes three complimentary
drinks.
Fridays, September 16, October 21,
and November 18, 5:30–8 p.m.
533 Royal Street
$10; free for THNOC members
DIANE GENRE BOOK SIGNING
Diane Genre, a contributor to the new release Re-envisioning Japan: Meiji Fine Art Textiles
(5 Continents Editions, 2016), will talk about her collection of antique Japanese textiles and
sign copies of the book.
Saturday, October 8, 2–4 p.m.
533 Royal Street
Free
CURRENCY COLLEC TING IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Join THNOC Curator/Historian Erin M. Greenwald for a discussion about the history of
currency and currency collecting in Louisiana. Greenwald will speak with collector Randy
Haynie, who has spent more than 50 years amassing one of the largest currency collections
in the state, and longtime dealer Stephen Cohen, of the venerable French Quarter antiques
shop James H. Cohen and Sons. This event is presented in conjunction with the exhibition
Money, Money, Money! Currency Holdings from The Historic New Orleans Collection.
Saturday, October 15, 10 a.m.–noon
Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres Street
Free; for reservations, email [email protected].
PEGGY SCOT T L ABORDE BOOK SIGNING
Join us for an afternoon with WYES-TV personality Peggy Scott Laborde as she signs her
new book, The Fair Grounds through the Lens: Photographs and Memories of Horse Racing
in New Orleans (Pelican, 2016).
Saturday, November 5, 2–4 p.m.
533 Royal Street
Free
MIGNON FAGET TRUNK SHOW AND THNOC MEMBER
APPRECIATION DAY
Just in time for the holiday season, members can take 20 percent off all items available
in The Shop at The Collection, while enjoying a look at special selections from jewelry
designer Mignon Faget. Not a member? You can sign up in the shop.
Saturday, December 10, 9:30 a.m.–4 p.m.
533 Royal Street
GENER AL HOURS
533 Royal Street
Williams Gallery, Louisiana History Galleries,
Shop, and Tours
Tuesday–Saturday, 9:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
Sunday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
400 and 410 Chartres Street
Williams Research Center, Boyd Cruise
Gallery, and Laura Simon Nelson
Galleries
Tuesday–Saturday, 9:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
Money, Money, Money! Currency Holdings
from The Historic New Orleans Collection
Through October 29, 2016
Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres Street
The Seignouret-Brulatour House:
A New Chapter
Through June 2018
533 Royal Street
Themed tours of the Louisiana History
Galleries
First Friday of every month, through 2016
10 and 11 a.m., 2 and 3 p.m.
50¢
PERMANENT
Louisiana History Galleries
533 Royal Street
Tuesday–Saturday, 9:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
Sunday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
The Williams Residence Tour
Architecture and Courtyard Tour
533 Royal Street
Tuesday–Saturday, 10 and 11 a.m., 2 and 3 p.m.
Sunday, 11 a.m., 2 and 3 p.m.
$5 admission; free for THNOC members
Groups of eight or more should call
(504) 598-7145 or visit www.hnoc.org to
make reservations.
Educational tours for school groups are
available free of charge; please contact
Daphne L. Derven, curator of education, at
(504) 598-7154 or [email protected].
UPCOMING
Goods of Every Description: Shopping in
New Orleans, 1825–1925
September 23, 2016–April 9, 2017
Williams Gallery, 533 Royal Street
Clarence John Laughlin and His
Contemporaries: A Picture and a
Thousand Words
November 15, 2016–March 25, 2017
Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres Street
Holiday Home and Courtyard Tour
December 1–30; closed December 24–25
Tuesday–Saturday, 10 and 11 a.m., 2 and 3 p.m.
Sunday, 11 a.m., 2 and 3 p.m.
$5 admission; free for THNOC members
ON THE COVE R
A. B. Griswold & Co. advertisement
from Jewell’s Crescent City Illustrated
New Orleans, 1874
1951.41.23
CONTENTS
O N V I E W/ 2
A new exhibition traces the evolution
of retail in New Orleans.
Off-Site
PROGR A MS/5
Study tours take THNOC members around
the world.
FROM THE DIR ECTOR
In mid-June The Collection was honored to acquire the photographic archive of
Harold F. Baquet, who documented African American life and New Orleans politics
and culture for decades. We are grateful to his widow, Cheron Brylski, for making
possible this landmark accession; Baquet’s large archive, consisting of thousands of
negatives, slides, and photographs, marks our first major collection by an African
American photographer. A preview of the Baquet archive can be found on pages 20–21,
and we look forward to processing the collection and making it available to researchers
as soon as possible.
The summer also provided us with another successful New Orleans Antiques Forum,
which seems to grow in popularity and enthusiasm among participants every year.
In celebration of our golden anniversary, docents continued their series of monthly
themed tours of the Louisiana History Galleries—admission: 50 cents, for 50 years—
and I look forward to seeing what spotlights they shine on our artifacts this fall.
Despite our gains and celebrations over the summer, The Collection suffered a
tremendous loss with the death of Mimi Calhoun, our longtime friend and colleague.
Facilities manager for many years, Mimi saw her work expand as we did, growing
from our first location on Royal Street to include the research center and galleries on
Chartres Street and additional properties in the French Quarter. She was always up to
the challenge, and she served The Collection as steadfastly as she did her many friends
here. — PRISCILLA LAWRENCE
R ESE A RCH/6
A 2015 Woest Fellow focuses on the legal
and financial systems underpinning slavery.
THNOC AT 50 /8
Themed tours of the Louisiana History
Galleries put old artifacts in a new light.
C O M M U N I T Y / 12
On the Job
Staff News
In Memoriam
Become a Member
On the Scene
Focus on Philanthropy
Donors
A C Q U I S I T I O N S / 20 Acquisition Spotlight: The Harold F.
Baquet Archive
Recent Additions
ON V IEW
Retail on the Rise
In Goods of Every Description, THNOC explores the history of
shopping in New Orleans.
A
B
E XHIB ITION
Goods of Every Description: Shopping in
New Orleans, 1825–1925
September 23, 2016–April 9, 2017
Williams Gallery, 533 Royal Street
Free
A. Postcard depicting interior of E. Offner’s
ca. 1910
gift of Charles L. Mackie, 1981.317
B. M. Waldhorn trade card
ca. 1895
56-12-L
C. Baby cup
between 1853 and 1861; coin silver
by Adolphe Himmel (New Orleans)
Hyde & Goodrich, retailer (New Orleans)
1978.175.17
2
The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly
As a major metropolis from the late 18th century to today, New Orleans has always had
a strong tradition of retail activity fueled by international goods and wares. At the center
of a crisscrossing network of global trade routes, the city was a cosmopolitan shopping
destination in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with shopwindows displaying treasures
from around the world. Swaths of textiles, crates of ceramics, parlor suites, elaborate silver
services, and dressed mannequins all provided the burgeoning consumer class with models
of style.
New Orleans’s retail activity was complemented by related industries. In the early 19th
century, several silversmiths and goldsmiths, or orfèvres, practiced in the French Quarter.
Some of these craftsmen made regular trips across the Atlantic to acquire merchandise and
study the latest trends to reproduce for their local customers. European styles and wares
also came to the city through china importers on Chartres and Canal Streets, who filled
their windows with colorful transfer-printed earthenware and sleek porcelain dishes that
had just arrived on ships from New York; Staffordshire, England; and Le Havre, France.
By the mid-19th century, the first blocks of Royal Street were designated “Furniture
Row.” Store after store offered parlor suites, beds, dining sets, carpets, curtains, mirrors,
and miscellaneous “fancy goods” in the latest
Victorian styles, which were largely revivals of
earlier rococo, Gothic, and Elizabethan styles.
Retailers such as Prudent Mallard, William
McCracken, and Henry Siebrecht received
constant shipments of furniture from manufacturers in New York, Boston, Cincinnati, and France
to fill their warehouses. They employed craftsmen
to assemble, upholster, and install new furniture,
curtains, and wallpaper for their customers in the
city and up the river, but very few of their goods
C
were actually made in New Orleans.
After the Civil War, large plate-glass shopwindows along Canal Street were dedicated
to glittering luxuries. Local newspapers reported on the diamond jewelry, marble statues,
regulated clocks, patented pistols, and specialty china and silver services that filled the
best windows. Retailers competed with each other to have the most impressive objects on
view: when one jeweler displayed a miniature fire engine as a prize for a local fair, another
made a true-to-life silver and gold model of the mule-drawn streetcars that traveled up
and down Canal Street. Silver retailers, including Hyde & Goodrich and their successors A. B. Griswold & Co., E. A. Tyler, and M. Schooler, employed craftsmen to handle
custom orders, which they sold alongside the popular silver patterns produced by northern
manufacturers. China emporiums up the street were filled with all types of fancy and plain
ceramics, available to shoppers at any price point.
At the turn of the 20th century, department stores became the anchors of the shopping district on Canal Street. Many of these large stores—with departments dedicated to
women’s clothing, men’s furnishings, toys, stationery, and “bric-a-brac”—got their start as
dry goods stores. Daniel Henry Holmes started his dry goods business on Chartres Street
before moving to Canal Street in 1849, and D. H. Holmes became one of the most popular
department stores in the city. Leon Godchaux began selling dry goods from a peddler’s
cart in the 1840s, and within two decades he had a thriving furnishings store, Godchaux’s,
selling ready-made clothing for men and children. In 1892 Godchaux’s moved into a new
“skyscraper-style” store near the corner of Canal and Chartres Streets and began expanding its merchandise to include women’s clothing and household items. A few years later,
S. J. Shwartz, with help from his father-in-law, Isidore Newman, expanded his dry goods
business into a grand, white building—the Maison Blanche, which was purpose-built to
house an extensive assortment of new goods, laid out in separate departments throughout
the store.
At the same time, old furnishings gained value in the antiques stores that were established on Royal Street beginning in 1881. These stores, such as Waldhorn’s, Keil’s, and
Manheim’s, carried on the legacy of shopping established by earlier purveyors. To meet
local demands, they imported antiques from France and the northeast, selling them alongside heirloom pieces that had originally been purchased on the shopping thoroughfares of
old New Orleans. — LYDIA BLACKMORE
E
D. Women’s fashion display window at
D. H. Holmes
1916; gelatin silver print
by Charles L. Franck Photographers
The Charles L. Franck Studio Collection
at The Historic New Orleans Collection,
1979.325.1
E. B. T. Walshe advertisement
1870; lithograph
by Marie Adrien Persac, draftsman;
Benedict Simon, lithographer
1949.1.28
F. Antiques: A Rare Collection from Old
Creole Families
New Orleans: Boudousquie Print, between
1905 and 1910
88-495-RL
D
F
Fall 2016 3
ON V IEW
OFF -SITE
Sharing Jules Cahn’s New Orleans
Our quarterly roundup of holdings that have appeared outside The Collection,
either on loan to other institutions or reproduced in noteworthy media projects.
The Morris Museum of Art in Augusta,
Georgia, borrowed one painting for its exhibition The World of Rolland Golden, on view
through October 30, 2016.
Stills from footage of Mardi Gras Day 1970
1970; 16-millimeter film
by Jules L. Cahn
The Jules Cahn Collection at The Historic New
Orleans Collection, 2000.78.4.17
Elysian Fields—Land of the Gods
2006; acrylic on canvas
by Rolland Golden
acquisition made possible by the Diana Helis
Henry Art Fund of The Helis Foundation; joint
ownership with the New Orleans Museum
of Art, the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Fund,
2008.0109.5
THNOC entered into an agreement with Historic Films for licensing of the Jules Cahn Collection. The films
will be available for documentarians and researchers to view on the Historic Films website, in low-resolution,
watermarked clips. This agreement will allow Cahn’s body of work, which captured on film the street parades,
festivals, Mardi Gras Indians, and other cultural treasures of New Orleans from the 1950s through the mid1990s, to reach an even wider audience.
New Orleans’s Longue Vue House and Gardens features several THNOC artworks in its current show on
silhouettes, Shadow Pictures, on view through October 19, 2016.
New York public television station WNET
reproduced one photograph for an upcoming
re-release of the 2004 documentary series
Slavery and the Making of America.
Negro Washerwoman
ca. 1855; photograph
by George François Mugnier
gift of Allan Phillip Jaffe, 1981.324.1.242
4
The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly
Silhouette of the Robert Young Family of Natchez, Mississippi
1844; cut paper on sepia with watercolor, mounted on fabric
by Auguste Edouart
1983.12
Silhouette of Henry Clay
1844; mixed media
by Auguste Edouart
1951.45.2
PROGR A MS
From the Big Easy to the Far East
THNOC’s study tours have taken history lovers around the world. WRC Director
Alfred E. Lemmon shares a postcard from the most recent trip.
Early one rainy April morning in Tokyo, an adventuresome group from Louisiana,
California, Florida, Maryland, New York, and North Carolina assembled to begin a visit
to the neighboring town of Kamakura. On arrival, the group ventured up the great hill
of Genjiyama for a special visit with antiquarian Yoshihiro Takishita. A visionary preservationist, he has devoted his life to the beauty and craftsmanship of the traditional
agrarian dwelling known as minka. At a time when many were advocating that they
be demolished, he recognized the architectural value of these wooden farmhouses and
went on to rescue and repurpose more than 30 of them. Takishita
graciously served tea, lectured about his work with minka, and
led a tour of the residence, carefully pointing out architectural
features and precious antiques.
Such out-of-the-way activities were nothing new for most of the
Japanese sojourners. Established in 2000, The Collection’s study
tours program has developed a devoted group of participants who
travel to different parts of the world to learn of New Orleans’s
rich international heritage. All the trips are united by the theme of
exploring Louisiana’s origins, from Nova Scotia to Alsace-Lorraine
to the Cahokia Mounds of Missouri. The stage for this extraordinary tour series was set in its inaugural year, when Arnaud
d’Hauterives of France’s l’Académie des Beaux-Arts hosted a
reception for tour participants at l’Institut de France, one of Paris’s
most treasured institutions. The following year, rarely seen drawings and documents of 18th-century New Orleans, held in the
famed Archive of the Indies in Seville, Spain, were displayed especially for the
group. And so the list continues: participants have enjoyed visits to the Treaty Room of
France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Montreal museum and historic site Maison SaintGabriel, homes of Acadian ancestors on Brittany’s Belle-Île, and ancestral homes of New
Orleans notables Andrés Almonester y Roxas, Père Antoine, Bernardo de Gálvez, Andrew
Jackson, and Edward Pakenham. They have been welcomed by the descendants of New
Orleans furniture maker François Seignouret and of Jean-Charles de Pradel, a founding
resident of New Orleans.
In addition to touring Takishita’s minka, the Japan group explored the 1,200-year-old
Yakushiji monastery in Nara with New Orleans native Azby Brown, an architect and
designer who highlighted recent restoration work. In Matsue, where writer Lafcadio Hearn
lived, the group dined with the city’s mayor, Masataka Matsuura, and visited with Hearn’s
great-grandson Bon Koizumi, who poignantly spoke of his forebear’s life in Japan and
New Orleans. Throughout the journey, participants found links between New Orleans
and Japan, from broad interests such as botany, seafood, and craftsmanship to surprisingly specific connections, such as the concept of lagniappe. Both the Japanese and New
Orleanians have a word meaning “a little something extra”—in Japan, it’s the French term
plus alpha—knowledge of which was lagniappe itself for the group. — ALFRED E. LEMMON
S TUDY TO UR S
For information about upcoming
regional and international trips, visit
www.hnoc.org/programs/tours.html.
Left to right: Raymond Rathlé, Alfred E.
Lemmon, Mike Sullivan, E. Alexandra Stafford,
Susannah Morrison, Karen Sullivan, Bryant
Blevins, Wendy Hall, Priscilla Lawrence, Betsie
Gambel, Edwin Beckman, Thomas Jayne, Azby
Brown, Barbara Beckman, Catherine Whitney,
Rick Ellis, Julie Jardine, Drew Jardine, Whitney
Steve, Linda Sarpy, John Sarpy, John H.
Lawrence, Courtney-Anne Sarpy, and Lou
Hoffman. Not pictured: Bonnie and John Boyd
and Nemo Glassman.
Fall 2016 5
R ESE A RCH
One Thread in the Web of Slavery
Joshua Rothman, one of THNOC’s 2015 Woest Fellows, examines the legal and
financial transactions undergirding the institution of slavery.
Joshua Rothman
6
The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly
Unique among states before the Civil War, Louisiana required every legal sale and
purchase of an enslaved person to be recorded by a notary. That provision enables
researchers today to understand Louisiana’s markets in enslaved people with a richness
and depth impossible to attain elsewhere. On a broad scale, the notarial records also reveal
the extent to which slavery remained a profoundly multinational and multicultural institution long after the transatlantic slave trade closed. In fact, as I found during my research
at The Historic New Orleans Collection, sometimes that complexity can be found within
a single document and a single transaction.
On December 7, 1830, Isaac Franklin welcomed Francisco de Lizardi into his office,
in a rented house on the corner of Esplanade and Frenchmen Streets in Faubourg
Marigny. The two men talked business, came to an agreement, and then walked to the
Chartres Street office of notary Hugues Pedesclaux. There, they completed and registered
the sale of an enslaved man named Andrew. Franklin, a native of Tennessee and one of
the most prominent slave traders in the South, had purchased Andrew just three weeks
earlier, along with 74 other people, from an itinerant Maryland trader named John Brown
Johnson. Now Franklin sold Andrew to Lizardi for $650 cash. Lizardi, meanwhile,
was making the purchase not
on his own behalf but rather
as a representative of the com­mission merchant firm in which
he was a partner, named in
Pedesclaux’s notarial act as
“Lizzardi y Hermanos.” The
Lizardi brothers—Francisco,
Miguel, and Manuel—were significant players in trans­atlantic
banking and trade. Of Spanish
descent and originally from
Cuba, the Lizardi brothers had
offices in Havana, London,
Paris, and New Orleans by 1830,
and they would soon buy the
Merieult House, the French
Quarter property that now
anchors The Historic New
Orleans Collection’s Royal Street
campus.
It is unknown what Francisco
de Lizardi did with Andrew
A
after he purchased him. Perhaps
B
he used him as a personal servant or had him work at one of the numerous properties the firm owned in the city. Lizardi and his brothers were also proprietors of several
sugar plantations in the parishes, and he may have sent Andrew to labor on one of them.
Lizardi may have simply been acting as a middleman, making a purchase for a planter or
an industrialist whom the firm served as a business agent.
There was nothing unusual about the transaction between Franklin and Lizardi. The
sale of Andrew was just one of tens of thousands conducted in New Orleans in the 19th
century. Nevertheless, what stands out is how brilliantly the notarial act recording the
sale—a copy of which can be found in THNOC’s Slavery in Louisiana Collection (MSS
44)—encapsulates the global, cultural, and financial reach of New Orleans and the slave
trade before the Civil War. Here was a man of African descent brought to New Orleans
by an Anglo trader from Maryland. There, he was purchased by a second Anglo trader
from Tennessee, who in turn sold that man to a partner in a merchant firm that had
offices and business interests strewn across the Atlantic world. That partner had a Basque
surname, and a notary recorded the name of his firm in Spanish. The notary was himself
a Creole and often wrote his notarial acts in French.
The domestic slave trade is often viewed as a phenomenon contained by the boundaries of the United States, one that sprung up to replace the importations from Africa
during the colonial and early national periods. In truth, slavery remained an institution
that transcended national borders. Andrew, like many other enslaved individuals, was
entangled in webs of economic production and trade that continued to stretch around the
world. — JOSHUA ROTHMAN
A. Isaac Franklin
1844 or 1845; oil on canvas
by Washington Bogart Cooper
courtesy of Belmont Mansion, Nashville,
Tennessee
B. Act of sale of Andrew, aged 25, by Isaac
Franklin of Sumner County, Tennessee, to
Lizzardi y Hermanos of New Orleans
December 7, 1830
60-26-L.28
Fall 2016 7
T H NOC AT 50
Variations on a Theme
In February docents introduced monthly themed tours of the Louisiana History
Galleries, to continue throughout THNOC’s 50th-anniversary year. It is only
fitting that The Collection’s longest-running, permanent exhibition should anchor
so many different narratives, showcasing the myriad ways that THNOC connects
visitors to lessons from the past.
FE B RUARY
Carnival Time
In addition to popular Carnival ephemera such as Rex
ducal decorations and ball invitations, this festive tour
also spotlighted Mardi Gras practices predating the mid19th-century formation of krewes. Marc-Antoine Caillot’s
memoir describes a masquerade held the eve of Fat Tuesday
1730 on the banks of Bayou St. John, an opportunity for
the young clerk to dress as a “shepherdess in white . . .
with plenty of beauty marks.” Less indulgent of local
pleasure seeking was William Charles Cole Claiborne, first
American governor of Louisiana, whose miniature portrait
hangs in the History Galleries. Claiborne despaired over
New Orleanians’ relentless pursuit of dancing, particularly
during Carnival. As he lamented in a letter to Secretary of
State James Madison, “The public Ball room has been the
theatre of all the disorders.”
MAR CH
Louisiana Lexicon
Banquette. Neutral ground. Tchoupitoulas. New Orleanians love their special vocabulary,
which can serve as a passport to fascinating aspects of local history. Take, for instance,
“batture.” This term, for alluvial land on the river side of a levee, became the subject of a
hot-button issue following the Louisiana Purchase, when aspects of Louisiana’s civil law
began to conflict with US common law. In 1807 attorney Edward Livingston claimed
a portion of the batture as his private property, but federal officials, including President
Thomas Jefferson, argued that new land formed by river deposits belonged to the US
government. Multiple batture-rights cases wound through the legal system, going to the
Supreme Court multiple times, until a compromise was reached in 1820.
Examen des droits des États-Unis et des prétentions de Mr. Edouard Livingston sur la batture en face du
faubourg Ste. Marie [Consideration of the rights of the United States and claims of Mr. Edward Livingston
concerning the shore in front of the St. Mary suburb]
by Jean Baptiste Simon Thierry
New Orleans: Thierry and Co., 1808
gift of Ralph M. Pons, 76-1065-RL.1
8
The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly
William Charles Cole Claiborne
ca. 1805; oil on ivory
by Ambroise Duval
gift of Mrs. Alfred Grima and Omer Villere
Claiborne, 1975.142
Ball invitation, Krewe of Rex
1875; color lithograph
1960.14.70
APRIL
Playing Tricks
In the spirit of April Fool’s Day, docents challenged visitors to a game of “Fact or Fiction”
about items in the History Galleries. For example, is the German rifle on display called a
rattegewehr, used for pest control in the 19th century? No. Was the Baroness de Pontalba,
builder of the Pontalba Apartments flanking Jackson Square, shot in the chest and hand
by her father-in-law in an attempt to kill her and release her fortune? Yes.
Zimmerstutzen rifle
1850s; tiger maple, steel
by Jean-Baptiste Revol (New Orleans)
2007.0079
Ursuline Convent refectory table
between 1734 and 1753; walnut, cypress,
tulip poplar
manufactured in New Orleans
courtesy of Robert Edward Judice, EL3.1990
MAY
Women’s Work
May’s tour complemented the exhibition Voices of Progress: Twenty Women Who Changed
New Orleans, and while the show focused mostly on women of the 19th and early 20th
centuries, docents in the History Galleries brought the discussion back to the earliest days
of Louisiana. The first Ursuline nuns arrived in the colony in 1727, and they provided a
spiritual and physical home for girls and young women. The long refectory table in the
History Galleries, among the earliest documented pieces of Louisiana-made furniture, has
long drawers that can be opened from either side. This ease of access served the Ursulines
and their wards as they dined, studied, worked, and reflected around the table.
JUNE
Sound and Rhythm
Talking about New Orleans music in a single tour
is a steep task: from Native American drumming
to the French Opera House to Jelly Roll Morton
to Mahalia Jackson, the centuries are full of people
making and loving music in Louisiana. Louis
Moreau Gottschalk, the composer and virtuoso
pianist, was the first American composer to incorporate African-derived rhythms into his work,
most famously in his Bamboula: Danse des Nègres.
Gottschalk, whose childhood Rampart Street house
overlooked the weekly dances at Congo Square,
based the theme on the Afro-Creole tune “Quand
patate la cuite,” and the catchy syncopated rhythm,
as well as his flair for showmanship, made him a
huge celebrity.
Louis Moreau Gottschalk
1873; painted plaster
by Achille Perelli
1979.144.5
Louis Armstrong’s 50 Hot Choruses
for Cornet
Chicago: Melrose Bros. Music Company, 1927
acquisition made possible by the Clarisse
Claiborne Grima Fund, 92-48-L.10
Fall 2016 9
T H NOC AT 50
JULY
War and Peace
The Battle of New Orleans and the Louisiana Purchase are among the major milestones covered
in the History Galleries, but July’s tour, focusing on battles and treaties, also spotlighted lesserknown conflicts and resolutions. After the American Revolution, farming, particularly in the
Ohio Valley, expanded considerably and begat the need for US access to the Spanish-held port
of New Orleans for both domestic and international trade. Pinckney’s Treaty (1795), also known
as the Treaty of San Lorenzo, granted American merchants and traders the right to move goods
through the port, a privilege officially outlawed but commonly flouted by smugglers and privateers in the preceding decades.
Real cedula de S.M. y señores del consejo . . . . (Pinckney’s Treaty)
Madrid: La Imprenta Real, [1796]
83-197-RL
AU GUS T
Dinner Is Served
In early August THNOC’s New Orleans Antiques Forum
focused on the legacy of dining in the South, and docents found
plenty of food cues to work with in the History Galleries. The
painting French Market and Red Store symbolizes an important
transition in the colony, from the early days of hardship and nearstarvation to a time of greater abundance that could establish and
support a formal central market. In the mid-19th century, dining
out grew in popularity, with hotels and early restaurants such as
Antoine’s offering a fine-dining experience. An 1848 menu for
the St. Charles Hotel features familiar items such as shrimp in
addition to such forgotten delicacies as “calf ’s head, brain sauce.”
Restaurants were almost exclusively the province of men until
the early 20th century, when public dining rooms began opening
their doors to women.
French Market and Red Store
between 1841 and 1844; oil on canvas
by Louis Dominique Grandjean Develle
1948.1
Topographical and Drainage Map of New Orleans and
Surroundings
1878; lithograph with watercolor
by Thomas Sydenham Hardee, draftsman
00.34 a,b
SEP TEMB ER
Geographical Risks and Rewards
New Orleans’s location was selected for its high ground and access to the Mississippi
River and the Gulf of Mexico, but flooding, tropical disease, and drainage all provided major challenges to the city’s development. This 19th-century map shows an
expanding New Orleans and the infrastructure that made it possible. The Carondelet
and New Basin Canals expanded shipping access for trade, and the map shows the
locations of early drainage structures.
10 The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly
O C TO B ER
Danse Macabre
The French Quarter is full of stories of the supernatural, but Louisiana history offers
plenty of non-spectral frights. The yellow fever epidemic of the 19th century, which killed
more than 40,000 people in New Orleans between 1810 and 1900, was only one of many
diseases that beset Louisianans through poor sanitation and lack of public health information. Mourners memorialized the dead through rituals, such as stopping clocks and
covering mirrors in a deceased person’s home, or by creating remembrance objects known
as immortelles.
St. Cyr and Lacoste family immortelle
ca. 1836; human hair, paint on ivory, wood
1958.84
Betsy
1837; oil on canvas
by François Joseph Fleischbein
1985.212
NOVEMB ER
Free People of Color
Unlike British colonies, Louisiana under the French and Spanish granted property and
legal rights to a growing nonwhite populace. In 1830 gens de couleur libres (free people
of color) formed over a third of the city’s population, though they faced more stringent
regulations and discrimination in the decades prior to the Civil War. Starting in the late
18th century sumptuary laws required women of color to cover their heads with wraps, or
tignons, as seen in the History Galleries portrait of a free woman of color known as Betsy.
DECEMB ER
Holiday Season
TO UR S
Themed tours of the Louisiana
History Galleries
Holidays in New Orleans go beyond Christmas,
Hanukkah, and New Year’s, to include the annual
Sugar Bowl game and the start of Carnival on
January 6. From the early to mid-19th century, the
anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, known as
the Eighth of January, was as big a national holiday
as Independence Day. Balls and parties in celebration of the “Glorious Eighth” added to many people’s
packed holiday social calendars, but observance of the
anniversary dropped off after the Civil War.
First Friday of every month,
through 2016
10 and 11 a.m., 2 and 3 p.m.
50¢
In addition to the special themed
tours, docents are offering a reduced
admission fee for the Williams
Residence and Architecture and
Courtyard Tours—50¢, in celebration
of 50 years.
Sugar Bowl promotional brochure
1935; offset lithograph
by Mid-Winter Sports Association
gift of the Sugar Bowl, 2007.0208.9
Fall 2016 11
COMMUNIT Y
ON THE JO B
Maclyn Le Bourgeois Hickey
POSITION: Coordinator for curatorial conservation, on staff since 1987
ASSIGNMENT: Research the work of painter William Aiken Walker, whose work makes up
THNOC’s Monroe-Green Collection
A. Horses at Pasture
between 1880 and 1892; oil on canvas
by William Aiken Walker
The Monroe-Green Collection, 1997.130.28
B. Louisiana Cabin Scene
between 1878 and 1920; oil on board
by William Aiken Walker
The Monroe-Green Collection, 1997.130.13
C. Male Cotton Picker
between 1878 and 1920; oil on board
by William Aiken Walker
The Monroe-Green Collection, 1997.130.6
Since my earliest days at The Collection,
working in the curatorial department, I
have enjoyed learning about artwork in
our permanent holdings. As coordinator
of curatorial conservation I arrange for
artwork and other objects to be conserved,
and I also research and write about art
that is on exhibition. Recently I explored
the life and career of artist William Aiken
Walker, whose works are on display outside
the WRC Reading Room. Walker painted
images of sharecroppers in cotton fields,
revealing an affection for his memories
of a romanticized Old South that is also
evident in his landscapes and still lifes. Born
in 1839, the youngest child of a well-todo Charleston cotton factor, Walker was
educated at home and studied art, music,
and modern languages. Before the Civil
War, Charleston was a cultural center in the
South, with European paintings on display
A
12 The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly
in city buildings and homes. Sociable and
well dressed, Walker was a raconteur who
enjoyed fine dining, wrote poetry, and
played the piano.
After the bombing of Fort Sumter in
Charleston Harbor, Walker enlisted in the
Confederate Army but was discharged after
brief service. After the war, Walker traveled
and lived in various southern cities, painting and visiting friends; he also camped,
hunted, and fished in the wilderness.
Walker visited Europe in 1870, and
though little is known of his travels, he
may have visited various academies and
artists’ ateliers in France and Germany.
European art had a subtle influence on
Walker: his skillfully executed Horses at
Pasture shows similarities to the work of
John Frederick Herring, a well-known
English painter of horses, and his still
lifes, such as Still Life with Cheese, Bottle of
Wine and Mice, show a Dutch or German
derivation. An avid fisherman and hunter,
he painted nature mortes, depicting dead
game, and drew sketches of southern
Florida, where he enjoyed fishing.
During and after Reconstruction Walker
lived intermittently in New Orleans, where
he was active in the local art scene and
exhibited his work frequently. He reportedly set up an easel on Dumaine and
Royal Streets, where he painted images
of sharecroppers in assembly-line fashion.
He would divide his board into several
smaller rectangular spaces, paint a strip of
blue sky in each, then a brown foreground
with cotton plants and their fluffy white
bounty. Then he would superimpose a
figure over the cotton plants. He cut up
S TAFF NE WS
New Staff
Matthew Carlin, Peggy Giorgio,
Suzanne Grimmer, Catherine
Kinabrew, Lacey Poche, and Suzanne
Stone, volunteers.
Publications
Erin M. Greenwald, curator and
historian, published the book MarcAntoine Caillot and the French Company
of the Indies in Louisiana: Trade in the
French Atlantic World (Louisiana State
University Press, 2016).
In May, Library Processor Kevin T.
Harrell presented the paper “Challenges
and Promise: How the Digital Surrey
Calendar Can Benefit the Ethnohistorian” at the annual conference of the
Society of Southwest Archivists.
B
the boards, selling the paintings at affordable prices. Similarly, during the 1884
World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial
Exposition, Walker is believed to have set up
his easel in Exposition Park (now Audubon
Park), selling his paintings of sharecroppers
as souvenirs. Other scenes were painted on
copper plates and wooden palettes; many
depicted iconic sights such as steamboats at
the levee and expansive cotton fields filled
with workers. These romanticized images
of the South held appeal beyond Louisiana;
many of his tourist clients were from
the North.
Walker’s smaller canvases typically show
a single foreground figure, posed frontally,
of a sharecropper, often standing in a cotton
field. Their faces are deeply lined, and their
clothing is ragged and colorful, with bright
patches. They wear hats or tignons; some
smoke corncob pipes, sit astride horses,
or carry bags of cotton slung over their
shoulders. With such similar stance, dress,
and placement, as well as titles such as Male
Itinerant and Female Cotton Picker, the
figures appear as stereotypes rather than
individuals. His bucolic sharecropper cabin
scenes also share similar compositions,
with a dirt lawn in the foreground, a cabin
placed frontally at midground, and figures
and farm equipment scattered about.
In the Community
Reference Assistance Robert Ticknor
joined the programs committee for the
Louisiana Historical Association.
Amanda McFillen, associate director
of museum programs, joined the board
of the Louisiana Landmarks Society.
Mark Cave, senior curator and oral
historian, was elected president of the
International Oral History Association
at the organization’s recent conference. Like other artists of his time, Walker
expressed a gentle vision of sharecropper
life, one that softened the emotional and
physical toll of a lifetime of hard, daily agricultural labor. His placid figures are sturdy,
strong, and colorfully dressed; they stand in
cotton fields where the sky is bright and the
harvest plentiful. In all, Walker strived to
capture the peaceful and predictable South
that existed in his memory, of contented
workers, beautiful landscapes, and abundance. — MACLYN LE BOURGEOIS HICKEY
The Historic New Orleans
Collection Quarterly
VOLUME X X XIII
N U M B ER 1
W I N T E R 2 0 16
Shop online at www.hnoc.org/shop
R IPPLE E FFE C T S: Louisiana Watercolors
Honors
The Historic New Orleans Collection
Quarterly received a 2016 design award
from the American Alliance of Museums.
The magazine is designed by Alison
Cody Design and edited by Molly Reid.
C
Fall 2016 13
COMMUNIT Y
IN MEMORIAM
Mimi Calhoun
Mimi Calhoun first came to The Collection
as a volunteer filling in a few shifts for a
friend, and over the following three decades
she became irreplaceable. Facilities manager
until earlier this year, when she quietly
retired to attend to her health, Calhoun was
an indomitable spirit beloved by friends and
colleagues as a caring, eminently capable
person. She passed away July 14, 2016, at
the age of 77.
“Mimi was incredibly energetic and
active, and she graciously took on every
new project that came under her purview,”
said Executive Director Priscilla Lawrence.
“She was fun, she was funny, she was kind,
she was caring—just the most wonderful
person. I feel very privileged to have been
able to work with her for so long.”
Calhoun, a New Orleans native who
graduated from Newcomb College,
began her formal employment with The
Collection as a docent, but her efficiency
and eagerness soon moved her into other
positions. In the mid-1990s she served as
assistant to Jon Kukla, then executive director of THNOC, and in her role as facilities
manager she found a perfect vehicle for
her moxie. “The longer she was here, her
job got bigger and bigger, and she was just
14 The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly
incredibly gracious about it,” Lawrence said.
“She attended workshops and trainings and
learned all about HVAC systems and how
they’re supposed to work in museums. She
built a support system of contractors who
would come to us before anyone else. She
was highly respected by them.”
Calhoun’s southern manners and
indomitable fortitude proved a powerful
combination. “Diminutive and feisty, Mimi
was a little dynamo, a force to be reckoned
with, and her energy and drive will be
missed here at THNOC,” said Carol O.
Bartels, director of technology and a longtime friend and colleague. “She took her
job seriously but not herself, always downplaying her role in matters and the force
that she was. Nobody could fuss and fight
like Mimi to protect and defend THNOC.”
Calhoun with Lynn Adams, 1988
In her uniform of pressed button-downs,
smart flats, and chic pencil skirts, “she
had a wonderful sense of style,” recalled
Alfred E. Lemmon, director of the Williams
Research Center. “She always managed to
get things done, not only for her work at The
Collection but in the community. She was
always taking care of people, so gracious, and
she was very, very dear to me.”
Development Coordinator Coaina Delbert
recalled the dogged persistence with which
Calhoun attempted to help her through
the tribulations of post-Katrina rebuilding.
Though Calhoun was two decades Delbert’s
senior, “she could run circles around me,”
she said. “I had lost everything [in the flood],
and Mimi helped me through the whole
process. I was having trouble with Road
Home, and one day she took me down to a
title company on Bienville Street to try to
solve the issue. She was determined to fix this
for me. ‘You’re gonna get back home again,’
she’d say.”
Calhoun lost her husband of 56 years,
John Worthing Calhoun, in 2015. She
is survived by her three children—John
Worthing Calhoun III, Catherine Clann
Calhoun, and Susan Calhoun Waggoner—
and four grandchildren. — MOLLY REID
Sunday jazz brunch at Arnaud’s Restaurant caps off the 2016 New Orleans Antiques Forum.
MEMBERSHIP LEVEL S
Founder Individual $35
Founder Family
$65 Full membership benefits
Family memberships are for one or two
adults and any children under 18 all
residing in a single household, or for
one member and a guest.
Merieult Society
$100
Full membership benefits plus:
• a special gift
Mahalia Society
$250
Full membership benefits plus:
• a special gift
• private, guided tours (by appointment)
Become a Member
B ENEFIT S OF MEMB ER SHIP
All members of The Collection enjoy the following benefits for one full year:
• complimentary admission to all permanent tours and rotating exhibitions
• special invitations to events, trips, receptions, and exhibition previews
• complimentary admission to the Concerts in the Courtyard series
• a 10 percent discount at The Shop at The Collection
• a subscription to The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly
HOW TO JO IN
Visit www.hnoc.org and click the Support Us link or complete the enclosed envelope and return
it with your gift.
Jackson Society
$500
Full membership benefits plus:
• a special gift
• private, guided tours (by appointment)
• free admission to all evening lectures
Laussat Society
$1,000
Full membership benefits plus:
• a special gift
• private, guided tours (by appointment)
• free admission to all evening lectures
• invitation to annual gala
Bienville Circle
$5,000
Full membership benefits plus:
• a special gift
• private, guided tours (by appointment)
• free admission to all evening lectures
• invitation to annual gala
• lunch with the executive director
Participants in the
Antiques Forum’s
optional preconference
tour are greeted at the
Catalpa Plantation,
near St. Francisville,
Louisiana.
NOR TH AMERI C AN RECIPRO C AL MUSEUM PRO GR AM
Members of the Merieult, Mahalia, Jackson, and Laussat Societies and the Bienville Circle receive
reciprocal benefits at other leading museums through the North American Reciprocal Museum (NARM)
program. These benefits include free member admission, discounts on concert and lecture tickets, and
discounts at the shops of participating museums. Visit www.narmassociation.org for more information.
Fall 2016 15
COMMUNIT Y
ON THE S CENE
Dinner, Theater,
and Drinks
A
B
The 2016 New Orleans Antiques Forum, held
August 4–7, focused on the wares and rituals of
the Southern dining room. China patterns, flatware, serving utensils, and dining-room furniture
each got a turn in the spotlight for antiques lovers
to discuss and enjoy.
A. Adam Erby, Sumpter T. Priddy III, Kelly Conway,
and John Stuart Gordon
B. Steve Stirling, Joanie Jennings, and Jack Pruitt
C. Leslie Grigsby and Nick Dawes
D. Jeanette Feltus and Bridget Green
E. Louisiana Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser
(right) greets preconference tour participants at
Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site.
F. Neal Alford, Sumpter T. Priddy III, and Laurie
Ossman
C
D
E
F
G. Ron and Anne Pincus with Ashley and James
Fox-Smith
G
The 14th Les Comédiens Français Lecture, held
July 12, focused on the work of the 19th-century
poet and playwright Victor Séjour, a free man
of color.
H
In June the culinary symposium “Rum, Rhum,
Ron!” occasioned lectures and libations centered
on the sugarcane-derived spirit.
J
H. Abigail Gullo, Elizabeth Pearce, Jessica Harris,
Ed Hamilton, Nick Detrich, Rosie Schapp, and
Shannon Mustipher
I. John H. Lawrence and Jessica Harris
16 The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly
I
J. Walter Harris Jr., Janet Daley Duval, Alfred E.
Lemmon, Pamela D. Arceneaux, and Howard
Margot
tapestry hanging over his sleigh bed; bisque
porcelain figurines of Hellenic warriors;
and plaster copies of medals from Pompeii,
which became popular souvenirs following
the rediscovery of the ancient city in the
1700s. With such a wide range of interest
in his collecting and his appreciation of art,
Blanda finds plenty to discuss with visitors to The Collection in the course of his
volunteer work. “I’ve met people from many
of the countries I’ve visited, and it’s such a
pleasure,” he said.
On several occasions, he has invited curious passers-by, peeking through his garden
gate from Esplanade, into his wonderland
of plants and outdoor furnishings. There,
they can see 35-year-old orchids brought
back from Haiti, gigantic night-blooming
cereus (which, in Blanda’s younger days,
occasioned annual blooming parties), flagstone from India, busts of Roman emperors
mounted in archways along the top of the
patio’s back wall, and dozens of thriving
palms, ferns, begonias, and more. “I’ve
gotten so many thank-you letters over the
years,” he said. “I’m just a caretaker. I don’t
want to be selfish.” — MOLLY REID
FO CUS ON PHIL ANTHROPY
C. J. Blanda
C. J. Blanda announces his love of
antiques and art as soon as one steps into
the foyer of his historic Esplanade Avenue
townhouse. Serving as a wall opposite the
front entry are a pair of 300-year-old floorto-ceiling French doors with gold leaf trim,
originally hailing from a Spanish castle
but found in a New Orleans antiques shop.
For Blanda, a New Orleans native whose
roots in the city extend to the 1700s, travel
and decorative arts are entwined passions,
ones he has indulged through multiple
trips around the world and the beautiful
souvenirs that appoint his abode.
A longtime member of The Historic
New Orleans Collection and a current
volunteer, Blanda has attended every New
Orleans Antiques Forum since the event’s
founding in 2008. He has also included
The Collection in his estate plan, making
him part of THNOC’s Williams Society.
“They are wonderful stewards,” he said.
“I enjoy volunteering at The Collection
because it’s such a marvelous place, and
you meet so many people.” By opening his
doors to visitors for various historic house
tours over the years—in effect, hosting his
own antiques show—he shares with The
Collection a commitment to exhibiting
beautiful, historically significant objects for
the public. “The Collection is doing a great
service to the state and the city by preserving and presenting all their artifacts related
to the history of the region,” Blanda said.
“I collect because I love the beauty of the
object and the history.”
Blanda had a long career in insurance
before his retirement, and his travels have
taken him to 78 countries, including
multiple trips to every country in Europe
and three stints in India and in China. On
his travels, he likes to follow his instincts,
seeking out “places where I think there
are beautiful things, and I let them speak
to me.” This wanderlust-fueled collecting tactic has led him to treasures such
as 19th-century lithographs of Persian
warriors, which he has placed in his
burgundy-red bathroom; a white marble
table inlaid with lapis lazuli and mother of
pearl, from India; an 18th-century Spanish
engraving of the Christ child sleeping on
the cross and two Russian icons, which
fill his “sacred wall”; an enormous French
Blanda’s stereo room features a first-empire cabinet
topped with verde antique marble, as well as an
arrangement of portraits and portrait miniatures on
ivory hanging above.
Fall 2016 17
Gregg J. Frelinger
French Quarter Citizens Inc.
Colette Stelly Friend and
Joseph Friend
Steve Friesen
Kathleen Galante
Loren Gallo
D ONOR S
Jackson R. Galloway
April–June 2016
Betsie Gambel
The Historic New Orleans Collection is honored to recognize and thank the following
individuals and organizations for their financial and material donations.
Jacqueline F. Gamble
Garrity Solutions
Elisabeth Gehl
Dr. Gene A. Geisert and Karen Walk
Marilyn and John H. Gesser III
Eugenia Foster Adams
Mr. and Mrs. Robert N. Bruce Jr.
Margo Delaughter
Jean M. Gibert
Claudette Allison
Cheron Brylski and Harold F. Baquet
Maurice L. R. Delechelle
Dale Gibson
Mary Elizabeth Alvarez
Bethany Bultman
Sandy and Hayden S. Dent
Carla Jean Gonzalez
Anonymous
Patrick M. Burke
Kathleen L. and Richard A. Derbes
Robin and Tim Gray
Tiki and Arthur J. Axelrod
Amelia M. and Neil C. Cagle
Sandra Derenbecker
Janice Donaldson Grijns
Ronn Babin and Peter Jolet
Cahn Family Foundation Inc.
Katherine Miller Determan
Lee Meitzen Grue
Jenny Bagert
Kathleen and Robert Campo
Isabelle Dissard-Cooper
Joan Guccione
Clinton Bagley
Shirley G. Cannon
Ana Maria C. Dobrescu
Ronald J. Guidry
Doris B. and William M. Barnett
Dr. and Mrs. Michael E. Carey
Judith S. and Jeffrey René Doussan
Mary and David F. Haddow
Björn Bärnheim
Nell Carmichael
Elizabeth A. Drescher
Dr. and Mrs. Frank A. Hall
Jeanette and Robert Barras
Carol Lise and Irving Rosen Fund
Wendy Hall
Baskerville
John K. Carpenter and John C.
Sykes III
Susan Schoonmaker Dufour,
Ann Schoonmaker Lopez,
Rae Schoonmaker Miller,
Gail Schoonmaker Ruddock,
and Jan Schoonmaker
Charles Case and Phillip St. Cloud
Margaret M. Dziedzic and
James Marunowski
Julie Hardin
Barry Cazaubon
Thelia Jean Eaby
Mr. and Mrs. Judson Chase
Dr. and Mrs. Valentine Earhart
Ronald Harrell and M. Christian
Mounger
Stephen Chesnut
J. Peter Eaves
Martha Harris and Morgan Lyons
Caroline and Greg Christman
Dr. Jay D. and Andrea Edwards
James Harvey
Mrs. William K. Christovich
Mr. and Mrs. Robert D. Edwards
Diana Hayman
Sarah Churney
Mary Lou Eichhorn
Polly and Dan Henderson
Loretta Capdevielle Clark
Mr. and Mrs. Stanley E. Ellington Jr.
Jacquelyn B. and Arthur A. Clarkson
Haydee Lafaye Ellis and
Frederick S. Ellis
The Herman and Seena Lubcher
Charitable Foundation Inc.
Lawrence E. Batiste
A. Chandler Battaile Jr.
Mary Jane Bauer
BBC Destination Management
Dr. Edwin and Barbara Beckman
Joan and Roland Becnel
Deena Sivart Bedigian
Aimée and Michael Bell
Dorothy L. Benge
Mr. and Mrs. Emanuel V. Benjamin III
Myrna B. Bergeron
Alvin Y. Bethard
Lila and Ernest B. Beyer
Sonya and Joe Carr
Karen N. Carroll
Carolyn and Merlin Clausing
Steven Halpern
Dr. and Mrs. William Hammel
Mrs. Roger P. Hanahan
Kathy Harrell
Kevin Herridge
Kurt D. Engelhardt
Earl J. Higgins
Estate of Tatham E. Hertzberg
H. Jack Hinrichs
Charlotte A. Estopinal
History Antiques and Interiors
Deborah Fagan
Louise C. Hoffman
Sonny Faggart
Max C. Holland
Elizabeth and Lynton G. Cook
Jean M. Farnsworth
Hotel Management of New Orleans
Mac and Pamela Corbin
Jennifer Farwell
Hotel Monteleone
Joyce Corrington
Jan Feldberg
Judge and Mrs. Henley A. Hunter
Mr. and Mrs. Ralph C. Cox Jr.
Karen and Ray Fernandez
Sean Hurly
Betty Crow
Dr. Terrance and Merle Fippinger
Newton E. Hyslop Jr.
Louis D. Curet
Fitzpatrick Foundation
Helen Ingram
George L. Dansker
Marlive E. Fitzpatrick
Elizabeth and Benjamin Janke
Joe Darby
Ella and Walter Flower III
Mr. and Mrs. R. Andrew Jardine
Jan E. Davis
Helen Flammer and Raúl Fonte
Thomas Jayne
Drs. Elizabeth and Robert Bray
Eileen M. Day and Alan J. Cutlec
Charlotte Fontenot
The Honorable and Mrs. Peter Scott
Bridges
Marie Louise de la Vergne
John Ford
Jimmy Maxwell and
His Orchestra Inc.
Winston De Ville
Mr. and Mrs. Forrest Forsythe
Arthur Brocato
Deborah and Joseph Exnicios
Family Fund
Dr. R. Fortier-Bensen and
Sylvia Bensen
Susan B. Deckert
Brandon J. Frank
Anne and Christopher G. Bird
Eric R. Bissel
Catherine and Tom Bissell
C. J. Blanda
Bryant Blevins
Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Bonner Jr.
William E. Borah
Joan B. Bostick
Isabelle and Lester Bourg
Leslie Lambour Bouterie and
Larry Bouterie
Angela M. Bowlin
Mr. and Mrs. John G. B. Boyd
Bradish Johnson Co., Ltd.
Brigid Brown and Steven Guidry
Gay Browning
Susan Clements
Linda and Martin Colvill
Mr. and Mrs. James P. Conner
Donna Capelle Cook and
Tony S. Cook
18 The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly
Barbara Viavant Broadwell Johnsen
and Erik F. Johnsen
Leonard Earl Johnson
Madeline and David Jorgensen
JP Morgan Chase and Co.
Jeanne and Mark Juneau
Mary Martin Morrill
Bill Ross
Sheryl L. Thompson
The Kabacoff Family Foundation
Moss Antiques Inc.
Royal Antiques Ltd.
W. Howard Thompson
Maurice Pres Kabacoff
Roxanne Mouton
Virginia Dare Rufin
Carol D. and James W. Thornton
William “Bill” Karam Jr.
Mr. and Mrs. D. B. H. Chaffe III
Family Fund
Marilyn S. Rusovich
Dr. Henry K. and Audrey G.
Threefoot
Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence D. Garvey
Fund
Elizabeth H. and John H. Ryan
Mr. and Mrs. Harold J. Ryan
Jessica Travis
Courtney-Anne Sarpy
Wade Trosclair
Linda J. and John R. Sarpy
Judith Talbot Tullis
Jan Schoonmaker
Nancy P. Turner
Florence and Richard Schornstein
The University of Pennsylvania
School of Design
Dr. Jan Kasofsky
Beverly Katz, Exterior Designs Inc.
Keil’s Antiques Inc.
Jack Kelleher
John Kelly
Dr. Nina M. Kelly
Dr. Susan Kelso
Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Killeen
Carole Kulman
Jenny Brown LaCour and
Barry L. LaCour
Elizabeth M. and James C. Landis
Marlin C. Landry
Tommy Laurendine
Mr. and Mrs. John H. Lawrence
John H. Lawrence
Mr. and Mrs. Clyde H. LeBlanc
Lorraine LeBlanc
Mr. and Mrs. Edward F. LeBreton III
Gladys LeBreton
Dr. Joseph and Leanne LeClere
Lili LeGardeur
LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana
Inc.
Lilian and John E. Mullane
Patricia M. Murphy
Craig W. Murray
Emilie G. Nagele
Linda M. and Randall E. Nash
The Nashua Historical Society
Katrina Neill
Alice Monroe Nelson
New Orleans Fire Department
New Orleans Silversmiths
Jeannette Chambon Noel
Teri and Randy Noel
Marguerite Nunnally
Mary Lou and Michael R. O’Keefe
Dr. Joseph F. O’Neil
Orpheum Theater
Carol S. Osborne
Michael Oubre
Mary Kay and Gray S. Parker
Mrs. Godfrey Parkerson
Pat O’Brien’s Bar Inc.
Jo Lichtman
Patrick F. Taylor Foundation
Lightner Museum
Dr. Gene F. Pawlick
Michelle Lipka
Mary Jane Phelan
Douglass R. Lore
Andrew L. Plauché Jr.
Henri M. Louapre
Carlton Polk
Dr. J. Bruce Lowe
Helen and Andrew Polmer
Mrs. Ralph Lupin
Judith and Frank S. Pons
John T. Magill
Darlette A. and William S. Powell
Drs. Jamie M. Manders and
James M. Riopelle
Preservation Hall LLC
Jacob Manguno
Princeton University, Rare Books
and Special Collections
Frances F. Marcus
Karen L. Puente
Howard M. Margot
Evelyn F. Pugh and
Richard A. Thompson
Josie and George Markey
Nora Marsh and Julian Doerr Mutter
Patricia S. and John F. Marshall
Mrs. Frank W. Masson
Michael Mays
James A. McAlister
Gregory McClain
Celia and Colin L. McCormick
Sandy and Naif Shahady
Jane B. and Edward Shambra
Dr. Alan E. and Joan Sheen
Dr. Alfonso and Maria-Eugenia
Vargas
Lindy and Jon Silverman
Caroline Vézina
Anita Silvernail
Robert C. Vogel
Adrian Sirbu
David Waldheim
Lisa Slatten
Dolores J. Walker
Diana Smith
Mr. and Mrs. John E. Walker
Gayle B. Smith
Beth Watkins
Karen G. Smith
Mary Welch
Betty J. Socha
Mr. and Mrs. Walter T. Weller Jr.
Angela and Jacques Soulas
Paul Werner
Elizabeth M. Stafford
Elfriede S. Westbrook
Howard C. Stanley
Theresa D. Westerfield
Mr. and Mrs. John A. Stassi II
Sarah Whicker
Anne D. and Richard B. Stephens
Martha Vidos White
Whitney Allyson Steve
Walter H. White III
Irma Marie Stiegler
Dwayne Whitley
Betsy Stout
Catherine A. Whitney
Jason Strada
Jimmie C. Wickham
Thomas J. Stranova
Shelly Wills
Dr. and Mrs. Michael Sullivan
Gaylord Wilson
Drs. Jane F. and Austin J. Sumner
Jeanne Wilson
Alfred R. Sunseri
Nellie C. and Donald E. Wilson
Felton Suthon
Dr. James M. Winford Jr.
Mary Lee Sweat and Thomas J.
Gault
Dr. and Mrs. William J. Woessner
Frances Swigart
Dr. James H. Wolfe
Jim Tapley
Kathryn E. Rapier
Mary Melanie Thigpen
Warren J. Woods
Toni Wright
Melody Young and Steven D. Martin
Adrienne Mouledoux Rasmus and
Ronald C. Rasmus
Deborah Rebuck
Carolyn C. and John D. Wogan
Nancy G. Wogan
Laurie Taaffe
Tyrone H. Taylor
Yolita E. Rausche
Russell B. Van Dyke
Leatrice S. Siegel
Ralph Brennan Group
Gary Rauber
V. Price Leblanc Jr. Fund
Tribute Gifts
Tribute gifts are given in memory or in honor of a loved one.
Dr. and Mrs. Richard J. Reed
As You Like It Club in honor of Davis Jahncke
Barbara and David Reid
Mr. and Mrs. Fredric J. Figge II in memory of Paul M. Haygood
Leon J. Reymond Jr.
Friday Afternoon Club in honor of Amanda McFillen
Ginger Borah Meislahn
Dr. Frederick A. and
Suzanne Rhodes III
John A. Karel in honor of Priscilla and John H. Lawrence
Margit E. Merey-Kadar
Robert E. Rintz
Elsie Mae Miller
John McEnery Robertson
Mary Moises
Harriet E. Robin
Dick Molpus
John Robinson IV
Elizabeth P. Moran
Dr. Marianne and Sheldon L.
Rosenzweig
Ralph McDonald II
Ceil and Thomas C. McGehee
Robert E. McWhirter
Tony Morgan
LSU Foundation in honor of Daniel Hammer and Howard Margot
New York University in honor of Daphne L. Derven and Erin M. Greenwald
Joy and Howard Osofsky in memory of Lissa Christine Capo
Diane Fehring Reynolds in memory of Ray and Rose Fehring
Billy and Cindy Woessner in honor of Bonnie Boyd
Warren J. Woods in honor of Dolores F. Harris
Fall 2016 19
ACQU ISIT IONS
A
ACQ UISITION SP OTLIGHT
Eyes of the City
All images © Cheron Brylski and The Historic
New Orleans Collection
The Harold F. Baquet Archive comes to THNOC, bringing with it a photographic
master’s decades-long documentation of African American life in New Orleans.
A. Trampoline, Desire Housing Project, from
the Eyes of Desire series
between 1985 and 1990; photograph
by Harold F. Baquet
gift of Harold F. Baquet and Cheron Brylski,
2016.0172
B. Protester holding a sign at a Ku Klux Klan
rally in Cummings, Georgia
1987; photograph
by Harold F. Baquet
gift of Harold F. Baquet and Cheron Brylski,
2016.0172
B
20 The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly
On June 2, 2016, the photographic archive
of Harold F. Baquet was transferred to
The Historic New Orleans Collection via
donation from his widow, Cheron Brylski,
bringing to a conclusion a process initiated after Baquet’s death, at the age of 56,
on June 18, 2015. From the outset, it was
clear that Baquet’s view of New Orleans,
filtered through both his camera and life
experiences, would be a wonderful addition to The Collection’s photographic
history of New Orleans, a pictorial
chronicle that THNOC has built over
nearly 40 years.
Active collection of photography (not an
area of concentration for founders Kemper
and Leila Williams) began in earnest in
1976, with the acquisition of architectural
photographs by Betsy Swanson, co-creator
of the Friends of the Cabildo’s New Orleans
Architecture book series. Since then,
THNOC has built photographic holdings
based principally on archives of individual
photographers or studios, rather than piecemeal images. The acquisition of Baquet’s
archive follows this model but is a milestone
for The Collection because it represents the
first extended body of work by an African
American New Orleans photographer at
THNOC.
The archive spans the late 1970s through
2010 and includes work made during the
administrations of the first two African
American mayors of New Orleans, Ernest N.
“Dutch” Morial (1978–86) and Sidney J.
Barthelemy (1986–94). Baquet’s inquisitive
personality, as well as New Orleans’s relatively small number of photography firms,
led to a wide range of practice for Baquet.
Consequently, his archive contains thousands of rolls of film (mostly 35 millimeter
but also other formats), color slides, digital
files, and printed photographs that run the
gamut of a busy and successful commercial
practice. Through portraits, advertisements, hard news, stock photography, and
his own projects, he covered weddings,
political events, neighborhood life and
festivals, Mardi Gras, and the larger face
of the city as embodied in its people and
architecture. Some of these topics skewed
more toward the photographer’s personal
interests, including daily life in African
American neighborhoods. His work
depicted many of the problems facing
D
black citizens, from crime to substandard
housing and limited economic opportunities. Yet despite their clear-eyed appraisal
of social inequities, his photographs also
reflected their subjects’ compassion, pride,
and tenderness, as well as their maker’s
affection.
The Harold F. Baquet Archive is vast—
and despite careful documentation by the
photographer, the complete body of work
will not be fully accessible to the public
until significant cataloging and digitization has been accomplished. As this process
advances in stages, portions of the collection will be available for consultation in
the Williams Research Center. — JOHN H.
E
LAWRENCE
C. Workers installing drywall at the Sewerage
and Water Board building
1990s; photograph
by Harold F. Baquet
gift of Harold F. Baquet and Cheron Brylski,
2016.0172
D. Ernest N. “Dutch” Morial speaking to
­supporters during his “third term” campaign
between 1985 and 1986; photograph
by Harold F. Baquet
gift of Harold F. Baquet and Cheron Brylski,
2016.0172
E. Dix’s Barber Shop, 342 S. Rampart Street
1990s; photograph
by Harold F. Baquet
gift of Harold F. Baquet and Cheron Brylski,
2016.0172
C
Fall 2016 21
ACQU ISIT IONS
RECENT AD D ITIONS
Death-Defying Tricks, Outsider Poetry,
and the Rule of Law
Handbill advertising Houdini stunt in
New Orleans
2016.0147
During his slate of appearances at New
Orleans’s Orpheum Theatre in November
1907, the renowned illusionist and escape
artist Harry Houdini (1874–1926) received
a challenge from the New Orleans Item.
Houdini often received such challenges to
perform public stunts while on tour, and in
this one he was first to allow himself to be
manacled by a member of the New Orleans
Police Department and then to dive into the
Mississippi River at the foot of Canal Street
from the steamer J. S. The date announced
was Sunday, November 17, at noon. A
recently acquired handbill bearing a bust
portrait image of Houdini in the upper-left
corner advertises the challenge, assuring
attendees that “the Leap can be plainly seen
from the Levee.”
22 The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly
On the day of the event, Houdini left
the Orpheum at 11:15 a.m. with a small
entourage and made his way onto the
steamer’s gangplank. Rain had begun to
fall but did not deter the gathering crowd
of 7,000 to 10,000 onlookers near the
Canal Street ferry landing. Soundings were
taken from the boat’s bow, and Houdini
prepared for the dive. Instead of an NOPD
officer, Judge John Fogarty of the First
Recorder’s Court shackled him with a
set of irons loaned from Orleans Parish
Prison; long, thick chains were wrapped
around his wrists, arms, torso, and neck
and secured with padlocks. His legs were
left free, although Houdini reportedly
asked that they be bound as well. As
reported in the Daily Picayune, at exactly
noon, Houdini acknowledged the crowd,
and with a “Good-by, boys!” propelled
himself headfirst into the Mississippi.
Viewers strained to get any indication of
his whereabouts in the river, and as seconds
ticked by, the crowd became restless—but
after half a minute, his arm broke through
the water, clutching a mass of chains and
opened locks. Then his head appeared, and
in triumph, he threw the hardware into a
waiting rowboat and swam for a floating
platform, where he was helped into a warm
robe. While drying off in a private dressing
room on the steamer, Houdini remarked
to the press, “That’s an awful river . . . the
worst I have ever been in. . . . I felt the
strong current . . . and while they tell me I
was down only thirty seconds, it seemed to
me that I was in that cold and darkness for
an hour.” —PAMELA D. ARCENEAUX
Arrest du Conseil d’estat du Roy qui
nomme les Directeurs de la Compagnie
d’Occident
2016.0070
The Collection recently acquired an
important addition to its holdings on
Scottish financier and economic theorist
John Law and the related Companies of
the West and of the Indies. In August
1717 the Company of the West, under
Law’s auspices, received a 25-year monopoly over fur trading, mineral rights, and
the trade in goods and peoples in the
Louisiana colony. Shortly thereafter, on
September 12, 1717, Louis XV’s council
of state, headed by the king’s regent,
the duc d’Orléans, issued this warrant
naming the company’s six directors.
These directors, listed in the document,
comprise Law and the other five French
financiers, from Auch, La Rochelle,
Saint-Malo, Nantes, and La Rochelle:
Jean-Baptiste Martin Dartaguiette, JeanBaptiste Duché, René Moreau, Jean Piou,
and François Castanier. In 1719, after
absorbing the Senegal Company and
the remnants of the several other French
trading entities based in the Atlantic and
Indian Oceans, the conglomerate was
renamed the Company of the Indies.
This larger company retained control of
Louisiana until 1731, when it retroceded
the colony to the king 11 years prior to
the expiration of its charter. —ERIN M.
GREENWALD
Kaja
2016.0011
New Orleans in the mid-20th century was
a haven for artists, poets, and musicians
of the new bohemian set, including Kay
“Kaja” Johnson, the poet and artist who
founded the New School Press in her 618
Ursulines Street apartment. Her artwork
was shown at the Downtown Gallery
in New Orleans, which represented such
artists as the photographer and painter
George Dureau and the acclaimed folk
artist Sister Gertrude Morgan. In 1961
Johnson became a representative of and
contributor to the Outsider, the pioneering
literary magazine published by the French
Quarter–based Loujon Press, and shortly
thereafter moved to Paris to seek out
Gregory Corso, her literary idol, who was
living at the famed “Beat Hotel.”
In Paris, she continued to write and
paint while corresponding with Charles
Bukowski and Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
among others. Ferlinghetti’s bookstore and
publishing house City Lights eventually
published Human Songs, Johnson’s only
book of poetry to have a wide distribution. The rest of her life and works remain
a mystery. She was known to be living in
Greece in the late 1960s, but since then
she is variously rumored to have joined
a Buddhist commune, to be living on
the streets of the Bay Area, and to have
remained in Greece. A trunk full of her
unpublished writings supposedly exists,
but its whereabouts are unknown.
Kaja is a pamphlet published by
Perdido Press in 1999 and printed and
bound at the New Orleans School of
Glassworks and Printmaking Studio in
a limited edition of 150, of which The
Historic New Orleans Collection’s copy
is number 57. It consists of a completed
poem, “Heaven at 9 Git-le-Coeur,” about
Johnson’s time at the Beat Hotel in Paris,
and a draft of another Johnson poem,
along with illustrations and an introduction by Edwin Blair of Perdido Press. It
complements other items at THNOC,
particularly the Edwin J. Blair Collection
(2011.0427); Johnson’s collection of poems
Fall 2016 23
The Impossible Possible, published by New
School Press in 1960 (92-48-L.78.121);
and a self-portrait Johnson painted in oils
around 1955 (2007.0388.30). In the introduction of Kaja, Blair states, “This book
is being made to honor Kaja in hopes that
the unpublished poems and novels, so
highly regarded by many, will resurface—
that she will again share with us the
beauty of her words.” —NINA BOZAK
Descriptive View of the Glorious Battle
of New Orleans
2016.0215.1
Early printed depictions of the Battle of
New Orleans are a longstanding strength
of The Collection, one based in cofounder
Kemper Williams’s interest in the subject,
and THNOC recently acquired another
rarity in the field with this engraving
on linen depicting the Battle of New
Orleans and other significant moments
in the history of the early republic. It was
likely produced in Scotland soon after the
War of 1812. The use of imagery from
the American Revolution—rather than
other battles of the War of 1812—sets
this textile print apart from most others
produced in the same period. A portrait of
George Washington, rather than Andrew
Jackson, is prominent over the central
depiction of the Battle of New Orleans,
which is surrounded by four historical
vignettes that include the 1773 Boston
Tea Party; the 1781 siege of Yorktown and
surrender of Cornwallis’s army; the signing of the 1783 Treaty of Paris, in which
Great Britain recognized the existence of
the United States; and the 1804 bombardment of Tripoli during the First Barbary
War, one of the earliest projections of
American naval power abroad.
The 1815 Battle of New Orleans is
thus situated within a longer-than-usual
progression of American independence
and military prowess. The central view
of the battle shows British and American
troops fighting on both sides of the
Mississippi River—also unusual in early
prints—with a key identifying persons
and events. Further indicating the likely
Scottish origin of the print, a mounted
General Jackson is shown rallying his
troops in verse based on Robert Burns’s
1793 poem “Scots Wha Hae,” though
the words were adapted for the American
cause of 1812–15. —JASON WIESE
The Historic New Orleans
Collection Quarterly
EDITOR
Molly Reid
DIRECTOR OF PUBLICATIONS
Jessica Dorman
HEAD OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Keely Merritt
ART DIRECTION
Alison Cody Design
The Historic New Orleans Collection is a
nonprofit institution dedicated to preserving
the distinctive history and culture of New
Orleans and the Gulf South. Founded in
1966 through the Kemper and Leila Williams
Foundation, The Collection operates as a
museum, research center, and publisher in
the heart of the French Quarter.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Mrs. William K. Christovich, Chair
Drew Jardine, President
John Kallenborn, Vice President
John E. Walker
E. Alexandra Stafford
Hilton S. Bell
Bonnie Boyd
Fred M. Smith, Emeritus and
Immediate Past President
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Priscilla Lawrence
533 Royal Street & 410 Chartres Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 70130
(504) 523-4662
www.hnoc.org | [email protected]
ISSN 0886-2109
©2016 The Historic New Orleans Collection
24 The Historic New Orleans Collection Quarterly
T. Hausmann & Sons building, 135 Baronne Street
ca. 1915; gelatin silver print
by Charles L. Franck Photographers
The Charles L. Franck Studio Collection at The Historic
New Orleans Collection, 1979.325.415
Fall 2016 25
A D D R E S S SER V I C E R EQ U E S T ED
Rain on the River
Map lovers can carry a piece of 19th-century
New Orleans cartography with this distinctive
umbrella, available at The Shop at The
Collection. With a wide, 42˝ span and an
automatic open/close feature, it offers shelter
from the storm in style.
New Orleans map umbrella, $17
The Shop
at The Collection
T H E H IS TORI C N EW OR L EA N S CO L L E CT I O N
533 Royal Street, in the French Quarter
Tuesday–Saturday: 9:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
Sunday: 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
(504) 598-7147
Shop online at www.hnoc.org/shop