LCV Winter 2012 - (Page 67)

opposite: The Poydras Market once stood in the middle of Poydras Street. This view is looking from Baronne toward Rampart streets in the late 1860s, when the market anchored a thriving commercial area near today’s South Market District. above right: An 1880s interpretation and translation of a 1798 map highlighting Faubourg St. Mary identiﬁes the area between Carondelet and Rampart as “Land not occupied for not being sold.” above left: This photograph depicts Freret’s Cotton Press, ca. 1858, an enterprise that was located on Poydras Street. The Benson Tower and Mercedes Benz Superdome would be to the far right today. the city’s first Protestant burying ground established in 1822 and demolished in 1958. The area along Girod between rampart and the cemetery was developed — in a sense. reflecting its swampy surroundings, it was called “the Swamp,” and by the early 1820s was filled with huts and hovels teeming with dancehalls, saloons, gambling dens and bordellos. Even as this rough neighborhood developed more permanent buildings, it remained a fairly disreputable area until the end of the century. The 1830s and 1840s witnessed some of New Orleans’ most remarkable growth, as it competed with New York as the nation’s leading port as well as trading and banking center. an influx of Europeans, mostly Irish and Germans, helped boost the city’s population from about 50,000 in 1830 to 150,000 in the early 1850s. Faubourg St. Mary benefited from this wave of immigrants, as local american business leaders helped it evolve into the city’s main business district, robbing that distinction from the more conservative French Quarter. Winter 2012-13 • LOuISIaNa CuLTuraL VISTaS 67 THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION plantation. Subsequently it passed through several families and their heirs until it became the property of Bertrand Gravier, who had it subdivided in 1788 by Surveyor General Carlos Trudeau to accommodate the expansion of New Orleans. The city’s first suburb, the area was named Faubourg St. Marie — later St. Mary — for Gravier’s late wife. The subdivision went as far as Phillipa Street (later Dryades and now O’Keefe Street, which is part of the South Market District), but growth was initially slow, prompting Trudeau to reduce the plan in 1796 to cover just a few blocks near the river. This excluded the South Market District, which was left to plantation farm land for the time being. To drain the low-lying land, in 1805 Jean Gravier, one of Bertrand’s heirs, constructed a 30foot wide ditch along what would become Poydras Street. Its basin was at Baronne Street and was regarded as little better than a mud hole, prompting it to be popularly dubbed the “Duck Pond.” Indeed, at the time much of the back portion of Faubourg St. Mary was considered good hunting and fishing grounds. By the mid-1810s maps showed streets in the South Market District, but in reality these were primarily on paper. Jacques Tanesse’s map of 1817 refers to the vacant blocks beyond South rampart Street as the “Banlieue Du Faubourg Ste. Marie,” or the fringes of the suburb and most likely not developed, while just back from South rampart Street are “Cabanes Negres” on the still agricultural part of the Gravier plantation. Francis Ogden’s 1829 map shows streets in the South Market District as vacant beyond South rampart Street. Girod Street ends at the Girod Cemetery,

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LCV Winter 2012

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