Featured Stories: 48
Maroons in Antebellum New Orleans: Independence at any Cost
Maroons were slaves who ran away from their plantations, not to head North to pass as a free person of color, but instead they chose to stay close to home and establish their own independent settlements, utilizing the area’s topography to evade…
The Levee: Gateway to Uncertainty
In his book, Soul by Soul, Walter Johnson writes that during the mid-1800’s the port of New Orleans was packed so tightly with ships that one could walk deck to deck from one end of the city to the other. All along the docks, ships were unloading…
The Beaurepaire Family-- from Freedom to Slavery and Back Again
This house, relatively unchanged since the early 1800s reflects the tricky navigation of enslavement and freedom by a family called the Beaurepaires. Louis Beaurepaire, a free man of color, bought the home on Monday, August 25, 1828 from another free…
Exchange Alley @ Canal Street
The intersection of Exchange Alley and Canal Street reflects jazz's early roots in youth culture and community, as well as Canal Street prominence as a commercial corridor.
On December 13, 1915, Chicago café owner Harry James discovered a young…
Dorothée Lassize's Family Business
Harriet Martineau, Saxe Weimar, and numerous other antebellum writers described New Orleans free women of color as promiscuous, seductive characters who sought partnerships with wealthy white men so they could live a life of leisure. Indeed,…
The Cazelars: Wealth Preservation in a Racially Mixed Family
Jean Pierre Cazelar was the wealthy patriarch of a prominent free family of color in 19th century New Orleans. He intended that his real estate, possessions and slaves all be inherited by his five children. However, the Louisiana Civil Code of 1808…
St. Louis Cemetery No. 2
Louis Armstrong Park
Louis Armstrong Park is a 30 acre park featuring several sites and sculptures related to New Orleans music history. The main pedestrian entrance is on N. Rampart at St. Anne Streets.
The shady landscaped space to the west (towards Canal St.) is…
Danny Barker’s Birthplace
Musician, educator, author and storyteller Danny Barker was born in 1909 in the rear building at this residence. At the time of Barker's birth, the lower French Quarter community was largely home to African American and Sicilian immigrant…
The Dolliole Family: Builders, Architects, Patriots, and Community Leaders
Free people of color were instrumental in the creation of the ironworks and architecture that you see while walking throughout the French Quarter. The census of 1820 lists 1319 free people of color employed in manufacture, almost equal to the number…
The Tio Family's Resilience
The Tio family is best known as a prominent contributor to early jazz of the 20th century, notably the addition of a “Mexican Tinge” to the genre. However, the Tios were, in fact, native New Orleanians who had lived in the city since the late…
Romance or Power Imbalance? The Hazeur Family
A wealthy man, Louis Hazeur De Lorme (ca. 1760-1828) was a highly respected man in his community. He shared a large indigo plantation with his brothers-in-law, Francois and Louis Xavier three and half miles away from the city, where their families…
The Lyric Theatre
The Lyric Theater existed as New Orleans' premiere African American vaudeville theater during the 1920s.
Formerly located at the downtown-lake corner of Burgundy and Iberville streets in the French Quarter, the Lyric Theater was touted as…
The Tango Belt
In the 1910s and 1920s, the Tango Belt was a popular entertainment section of the upper French Quarter, and where dance halls featured local jazz.
Named after the Argentine dance that swept the globe in 1913, the Tango Belt spanned several blocks…
Preservation Hall
Preservation Hall is a French Quarter concert hall with nightly performances by esteemed local jazz musicians.
Established in 1962 by young Philadelphia natives Alan and Sandra Jaffe, the space provided a safe place for older jazz musicians to…
Storyville District
Standing at the intersection of Basin and Conti Streets and facing just west of St. Louis Cemetery #1, is the former location of the Storyville district in the Tremé neighborhood. From 1897 to 1917 New Orleans established a centralized prostitution…
The Blue Room at The Roosevelt Hotel
The Blue Room is an historic supper club in the Roosevelt Hotel where the greatest jazz artists performed from the 1930s through the 1950s.
The Blue Room officially opened to the public on New Years Eve 1933. Louis Armstrong - who grew up four…
The Eagle Saloon
401 South Rampart, known as the Eagle Saloon, anchors this block associated with Louis Armstrong's youth and musical upbringing in this diverse neighborhood of African Americans, Jewish and Chinese immigrants.
Louis Armstrong grew up on Perdido…
The Iroquois Theater
This African American vaudeville and movie theater operated from 1911-1920. One of the first theaters to feature jazz in a concert setting, it was eventually eclipsed by the larger Lyric Theater which opened in 1920.
In the era of Jim Crow, new,…
The Daughters of Charity: From New Orleans to Carville
In 1896, the Daughters of Charity boarded a barge on the Mississippi River at Canal Street heading to Carville, Louisiana, about 70 miles upriver from New Orleans. Carville was the new site of the Louisiana Leper Home, where the Sisters performed…