Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007 - (Page 33)

a history of new orleans markets COURTESY OF ANN MAYLIE BRUCE Maylie’s Restaurant (far left) was established in the 1870s adjacent to the Poydras Market. By the time this photograph was taken in the 1920s, the market had been demolished and replaced by parking spaces in the center of Poydras Street. The building adjacent to Maylie’s was razed when O’Keefe Street was widened, but the wisteria bush that twined both balconies was spared. Marché aux Bestiaux. The stock landing handled steer, pigs, sheep, milk cows, and calves, graded as either from Texas (high quality or choice), or more generically from “the West” (third quality). The French-born butcher Bernard Tujague and his son Sylvain, both of whom had stalls in the Magazine Market, sold nothing but veal over the course of a combined 33 years in business there. Until the end of the Civil War, the French Market’s Meat Market was the only legal source of meat in the French Quarter. The Beef Market, or Halle des Boucheries, was one block long, from St. Ann to Dumaine streets. Not until the 1850s, three decades after other public markets appeared around town, did it become known generally as the “French Market,” primarily because although founded by the Spanish, it was the market in the “French” part of town. Many of the butchers were French, mainly foreign-born, although there were Germans and Creoles. For a century, the aproned butchers standing beside their hanging sides of meat imparted an Old World ambience to the market scene. Poydras Market, a painting by William Woodward, reprinted from Early Views of the Vieux Carré, published by the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, 1965. THE END OF AN ERA Not long after the Civil War, two unstoppable forces began to erode the power and profitability of the markets and the butchers — technology and the federal government. As early as 1864, the availability of locally manufactured ice began to undermine the case for the city’s monopoly on the sale of perishables. Ice and then electricity spread quickly during the late 19th century, making it possible for corner Fall 2007/LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 33

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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