Here are the questions that sparked this FQ project:
Who uses the Quarter to work, to live, to meet, to drink/eat, to shop, to protest?
If you have an opinion, I'd like to hear about it. This project will tell details of all kinds, of every single block in the Quarter and of New Orleans. Reviews, interviews, essays, stories, criticism. And links to those places and written histories that need to be remembered-leaving the obvious to the postcards-to dig up some old underused ideas and add some new innovations to our city center. Blog pieces, zines, broadsheets, articles, maps and other forms will be used in this project.
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I am beginning research on the commercial history of Jackson Square since the addition of the Pontalba Bldgs. Feel free to contact me if you have primary documents, ephemera or first-hand accounts of Jackson Square retail, apartment dwelling or other commercial aspects pre 1950s. The latter years and the entire history of the artists colony will be tackled later.
“Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations.”
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