Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006 - (Page 19)

ew Orleans, as Blount indicates, is “like no other place in America.” Attracting more than ten million visitors in 2004, many people travel to the city for its traditions and because it appears to have changed less than most American cities. However, as evident in Phillip Collier’s new visual history book, Missing New Orleans, the city has changed, has remained in a process of continual evolution. Collier, a noted New Orleans designer, contemplated initiating this book project as he witnessed the city’s evolution and as he heard countless stories about “missing” New Orleans over the years. As his history files and photographic archives for the project expanded, and as the stories continued to unfold, his concepts for a book took shape, with the current volume taking form over the past five years. Since its founding, almost 300 years ago, New Orleans has attracted a broad and diverse range of visitors and new residents, including notable writers, artists and photographers. As a result, while much of the city’s architectural history and material culture has been lost, much has been preserved, and much has been recorded — in literature, in oral traditions and in the visual arts, including photographs and films. Looking through Missing New Orleans, one develops a greater understanding of the individuals who have populated the city, as well as an appreciation of its many “missing” historic structures, institutions and business enterprises. In the 21st century, we are fortunate to be able to read the words of those who lived in or passed through the city during an earlier era, describing its neighborhoods and public structures, as well as its homes, clubs, restaurants and social organizations. During the 1850s, when New Orleans was known as the “Queen of the South,” it was one of the nation’s largest cities with America’s second busiest port. In this period, Thomas Wharton, a supervising architect on the Customs House, then under construction on Canal Street, served as an acute observer who documented the city’s life in his drawings and journals. He witnessed and described the construction of the new Robb mansion on Washington Avenue (demolished in 1954), an imposing Garden District home for one of the city’s greatest entrepreneurs with a nationally significant art collection: Automobile and streetcar traffic merge on Canal Street, the city’s busiest thoroughfare in the late 1940s. A wrought-iron façade, a large vertical sign marking the entrance, belt-driven ceiling fans from the 1884-85 World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition held in New Orleans, and beer steins decorating the walls were the trademarks of Kolb’s Restaurant. Located on St. Charles Avenue, in the first block off of Canal Street, it opened in 1899 and gave locals a taste of schnitzel and other German dishes. Kolb’s closed in 1994. photograph by Mike Terranova. “Long walks in the afternoon amid the beautiful residences of the Fourth District. The air loaded with perfume, and comparatively free from the dust of the City. Mr. Robb’s grand square mansion rapidly approaching completion, and the grounds around, comprising the entire square, already laid out in sweeping walks, and grass plots, parterres and groups of planting and embellished at suitable points with statues, and rich vases. A wide parapet, carefully sodded and faced with a high breast wall of solid masonry surrounds the house, and gives it an imposing effect.” After the Civil War, New Orleans entered a very different period in its history. One of the authors often associated with the city during these years was Mark Twain, who, in Life on the Mississippi (1883), recorded his impressions not only of well-known areas, like the Mississippi River and the French Quarter, but also areas like Lake Pontchartrain and the West End: “And by and by we reached the West End, a collection of hotels of the usual light summer-resort pattern, with broad verandas all around, and the waves of the wide and blue Lake Pontchartrain lapping the thresholds….Thousands of people come by rail and carriage to the West End and to Spanish Fort every evening, and dine, listen to the bands, take strolls in the open air under the electric lights, go sailing on the lake, and entertain themselves in various and sundry other ways.” During the early 20th century, the city influenced many of that century’s most significant figures. One of them was Louis Armstrong, who was raised in New Orleans and remembered the thriving district known as Storyville, which served as home to many noted jazz musicians and the prostitutes immortalized by Ernst Bellocq in his photographic survey of the area: “There were all kinds of thrills for me in Storyville. On every corner I could hear music. And such good music! The music I wanted to hear. It was worth my salary — the little I did get — just to go into Storyville. It seemed as though all the bands were shooting at each other with those hot rifts.” Storyville was closed by the Navy in 1917, and was eventually destroyed to make way for a public housing project. During the years between World War I and World War II, (continued on page 30) Winter 2005-06/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 19

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005 Contents Letters Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Louisiana State Museum After Katrina: “It’s time somebody woke us us up.” Missing New Orleans On Perilous Ground The Buildings of Louisiana (Architectural History by Karen Kingsley) Historic New Orleans Collection Louisiana Association of Museums Back to New Orleans Diary of a Displaced Person Jazz Notes (Music History by Bruce Raeburn) Cradle of the Stars The Terrible and the Brave Bookstand (Book Review by Thomas Uskali) Sound Advice (Music Review by Ben Sandmel) Forum (Commentary by James Lee Burke)

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006

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