Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2009 - (Page 39) that claimed the lives of firemen William J. Hartnett and Michael DeLehr of Columbia No. 5. This tragedy, combined with losses sustained in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic, nearly bankrupted the volunteer fire department. The William Freret-designed McDonogh 11 was built on the same site the following year. A NEIGHBORHOOD ALIVE WITH MUSIC Long before jazz was a household word, Lower Mid-City resounded with music — classical and military, ethnic and popular, amateur and professional. So pervasive was street music that, in 1876, Charity Hospital officials complained noise from fife and drum bands playing along Common Street was disturbing their patients. Constantin Ople, son of Alsatian music teacher Franz Anton Ople, was one of Robert Eichhorn’s business partners. A generation later, Robert Eichhorn’s sons celebrated Carnival in the neighborhood as they marched to the music of the Bohler’s and Christian’s brass bands. According to music historian Lawrence Gushee, 80 percent of the 222 New Orleans-based musicians and music teachers identified as such in the 1870 census were foreigners, most of whom were German, Austrian or Swiss. Many of these musicians lived in the area we now call Lower MidCity. A Belgian who had taught music in Houma just before the Civil War, A n astounding number of early neighborhood residents, including members of the Eckert, Schrenk, Wehrmann and Moran families were employed as engravers and lithographers. COLLECTION THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS Lower Mid-City once boasted a large number of musicians, music teachers and composers. Some examples include Canal Street music teacher and composer Marie Herr (a teacher at the Loquet-Leroy Institute), composer John William Herman Eckert, and African-American classical music school director William J. Nickerson. Spring 2009/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 39
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