Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007 - (Page 40)

New Orleans’ Faubourg Tremé Rooted in Tradition basketball in St. Augustine’s school yard and attended countless dances and parties in the surrounding area. Laden with beads and coconuts, I spent part of Mardi Gras 2007 at Miss Esther Barnum Green’s shotgun double on Tremé Street enjoying her traditional Mardi Gras menu — hot dogs, chili, red beans and rice, egg salad, and sweet red punch. For as long as anyone can remember, Miss Esther has held an open house on Mardi Gras Day for any passerby seeking respite and sustenance. She has lived in the same house in Tremé for over seventy years where she raised six children. Her brothers — William, Herman, and Adolphe — were old-line carpenters with vast knowledge and appreciation of New Orleans architecture. In residents such as Miss Esther, one can find the soul of Tremé. She remembered the days of vegetable and fruit vendors on horses and buggy, the “Taffy Man,” the Mardi Gras Indians, Baby Dolls and jazz funerals, the sweet shop on St. Philip Street, and longtime friendly neighbors. She stated that only three residents on her block have permanently returned since Hurricane Katrina. “The neighborhood is improving because people are bettering their conditions,”she observes. “They’re building up the houses better but it’s not as friendly as they used to be. Even before Katrina, people were leaving the neighborhood for [New Orleans] East, uptown, across the river, out of the city. You can count the people who used to live around here on one hand. Neighbors used to go visit one another. People don’t visit any more.” Rick Matthew also maintains a poignant appreciation for Tremé’s historic legacy. As a third-generation construction NEW ORLEANS NOTORIAL ARCHIVES Drawings by Eugéne Surgi, dated May 23, 1844, (above and opposite page) preserved in the New Orleans Notorial Archive in Plan book 21, folio 27, depict the streetscape of Orleans and St. Peter Streets. Similar houses still exist in historic Tremé, a neighborhood that continues to offer a lively street culture in spite of heavy damage and a population upheaval following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. 40 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Fall 2007 PHOTOS BY CHERYL GERBER

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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