Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2009 - (Page 40) THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION above: Hotel Dieu Hospital, circa 1910, was built in 1859 and demolished in the early 1970s. below: Straight University (after 1915, Straight College) was a historically black college that operated between 1868 and 1934. The administration building, shown here, was built in 1878 at a cost of $8,130. Designed by architect James Freret and built by Frederick Wing, it was located in the 2700 block of Canal Street, on the site that became the former City Hall Annex (built as the Pan American Life Insurance building). John Swartenbrock was once partner in the firm of F. Charpaux & Company, a Canal Street firm that sold pianos and music instruments. In the early 1880s, Swartenbrock taught music and resided on Palmyra Street. Thanks, in part, to Derbigny Street resident William Lawrence Hawes’ long-term correspondence with composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s sister, Gottschalk is one of the few 19th-century New Orleans musicians to escape obscurity. An insurance representative by trade, Hawes was also a musician and music critic. In 1900, nearly two dozen of the people residing in the area bounded by South Claiborne, South Rocheblave, Tulane Avenue and Canal Street listed “music teacher” or “musician” as their profession. Among them was Cleveland Avenue resident John Franklin Eckert, a member of Charles Jaeger’s brass band. The son of Third Ward music teacher John Eckert, his brother was composer John William Herman Eckert. Musicians Denis and Mark Laine lived on Galvez Street, near another musical family, the Werlings. Joseph Werling’s 1906 obituary indicated the Bavarian immigrant had performed with the Charles Jaeger and Joseph Sporer bands, two influential German military bands, and had taught music for more than half a century. In 1910, Italian-born band musician Santo Guiffro lived across the street from the Werling family home. Nearby, on Miro Street , one could find German musician, Leonhardt Beyersdorffer. Musicians of Northern European heritage once predominated in Lower Mid-City but at least two professional musicians who taught there during the 1880s were African Americans. George E. Jette lived on Cleveland Avenue while Jules Ogilvie lived only a few block away, on South Johnson Street. Jette and Ogilvie were not the only black or multiracial musicians to reside or work in Lower Mid-City. Mrs. Walter T. Nesbitt, who the 1914 Woods Directory identifies as a “Musical 40 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Spring 2009 THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION
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