Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007 - (Page 29)

a history of new orleans markets later, the municipality had built a total of 34 public markets. It added them to the system well into the 20th century, long after other cities had abandoned their public markets. By 1884 the major ones included the French meat, fruit, and vegetable markets; the St. Mary, Poydras, Tremé, Dryades, Magazine, Lafayette, Ninth Street, Claiborne, Burton, Shakespeare, Delamore, Guillotte, Pilié, and Carrollton markets; and, in Algiers, the St. John. These well-dispersed centers of food and society played an essential role in the city’s cultural, economic and political life. They also generated their share of crime, graft, rule defiance, and contract disputes. beautiful — all colors, nations and tongues are commingled in one heterogeneous mass of delightful confusion ” A LUCRATIVE MONOPOLY The municipal government was intimately connected to the market system, regulated it closely, and spent money on it. As surveyor Louis H. Pilié remarked dryly in 1884 after 45 years of personal involvement, “the markets require a great deal of attention. They require police. They require cleaning and repairs.” But many years earlier, the city’s overriding interest had become less to manage than to derive revenue from its fresh-food monopoly. Meat, fish, Postcard of a fruit vendor, circa 1905 Market employment served as a professional stepping stone for young people, immigrants, and free people of color. The market was also a bastion of preservation for languages, culinary traditions, social occasions, and the drinking of coffee. City ordinances made no distinctions in class, gender, or race among vendors or shoppers. It left management to the general lessors, usually tough characters good at responding to free-market forces. Citizens flocked to the markets on Sunday mornings to shop for the week’s most important meal while enjoying the social occasion. “The greatest market day is Sunday,” wrote Benjamin Norman in 1840. “At break of day the gathering commences — youth and age, beauty and the not-so- vegetables, and fruit could be sold only in the pubic markets, while dried, barreled, or canned goods could not. These were groceries, the legal province of the so-called “private markets“ or corner stores. So if, in the mid-19th century, Antoine Alciatore wanted to serve foie gras à la gelée, he had to procure the tin of foie gras from a grocer, along with the brandy. But the veal bones, onions, sweet peppers, and celery for the jelly could only be sold in the public market. New Orleans followed the old European system known as “farmer-of-the market.” Bidders competed at auction to become the “farmer” or prime contractor, leasing the entire facility, furnishing a surety, and paying the city on a monthly basis. The farmer then subleased the stalls to the Fall 2007/LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 29

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007

Contents Friends & Letters Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Big Charity: A History of New Orleans’ Public Hospital Historic New Orleans Collection Making Groceries: A History of New Orleans Markets New Orleans’ Faubourg Tremé: Rooted in Tradition Jazz Notes Louisiana Association of Museums Chinatown New Orleans Louisiana Foodways A Question of Secession Louisiana Architecture Louisiana State Museum The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish Terra Incognita Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007

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