Category Archives: HNOC

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Shopping 1825-1925

Our best French Quarter museum, The Historic New Orleans Collection, has another interesting exhibit that just opened and will run for 6 months over on Royal Street. Their exhibits are free and are conveniently located just off the gift shop. The exhibit is called Goods of Every Description: Shopping in New Orleans, 1825–1925.

So much of what we ate, wore and used in this colonial city was imported from other American cities and in the case of the furniture or finer household items, quite often from European makers. One of the luxuries of being a significant port city.

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Mule-drawn streetcar model; between 1865 and 1870; silver, gold; by Zimmerman’s (New Orleans); The Historic New Orleans Collection, acquisition made possible by the Laussat Society, 2015.0464.20

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“The German Bazaar of New Orleans, 1915”

Wednesday:Lecture to highlight local German American event during WWI
Letter from the office of New Orleans Mayor Martin Behrman responding to request for support for the German Bazaar; April 1915;THNOC, gift of Deutsches Haus, 2008.0113
a lecture by THNOC Deputy Director Daniel Hammer, presented in conjunction with the exhibition At Home and at War: New Orleans, 1914 – 1919
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
extended exhibition viewing: 5:30 – 6 p.m.
lecture: 6 p.m.
Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres Street
Admission is free. Reservations: (504) 523-4662 or wrc@hnoc.org
                              
On Wednesday, April 20, THNOC Deputy Director Daniel Hammer will discuss the 1915 German Bazaar, an event that helped fortify a sense of community identity among the city’s German Americans.
In April 1915, nine months after World War I engulfed Europe, the German community in New Orleans held a major public event to raise funds for the German and Austrian Red Cross, while also educating fellow citizens about the German war effort. The United States would not enter the conflict for another two years, and Germany and Austria had not yet become the subject of intense American pro-war propaganda. The event was supported by a number of prominent community figures, including then-mayor Martin Behrman (see above), and was a tremendous success, in part because of the city’s rich German culture.
The existing documentation of the event is remarkably complete, making the German Bazaar a rare window into the life of the German American community of New Orleans at a critical time in history. Reserve your seat for the lecture today by emailing wrc@hnoc.org or calling (504) 523-4662.
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HNOC Concerts in the Courtyard

Tonight, stop and listen to one of the best clarinetists in town perform in the lovely Royal Street courtyard of the Historic New Orleans Collection.

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Miller’s Crossing this Saturday-free screening

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Creole World by Richard Sexton

Great exhibit at the Historic New Orleans Collection’s Laura Simon Nelson Galleries of photographer Richard Sexton’s details of Caribbean life. It includes New Orleans, Colombia, Haiti, Ecuador and of course Cuba. The exhibit is designed well, with the New Orleans scenes hung next to their Caribbean counterpart, both photos sharing the exact same architectural or at least many composite details.

The exhibit reminds one that the Caribbean face of New Orleans is most likely another reason for its emotional distance from the rest of America. Those places have no great hold on  the American imagination, as seen in the lack of the same architectural styles of Washington DC, or in Savannah or even San Antonio.

America turned its back after its imperialism was slowed by Bolivar, Castro and others and left little New Orleans (and Miami too) without any older sisters to sit with, remembering the past.

On viewing this exhibit, I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes from those dark days of 2005 post-levee break reconstruction, said by a well known Cuban architect in a piece in The Atlantic. Andrés Duany, a co-founder of the Congress for New Urbanism, and a persistent advocate for traditional small-town design, gets to the essence of New Orleans as a Caribbean city said then:

“When I originally thought of New Orleans, I was conditioned by the press to think of it as an extremely ill-governed city, full of ill-educated people, with a great deal of crime, a great deal of dirt, a great deal of poverty,” said Duany, who grew up in Cuba. “And when I arrived, I did indeed find it to be all those things. Then one day I was walking down the street and I had this kind of brain thing, and I thought I was in Cuba. Weird! And then I realized at that moment that New Orleans was not an American city, it was a Caribbean city. Once you recalibrate, it becomes the best-governed, cleanest, most efficient, and best-educated city in the Caribbean. New Orleans is actually the Geneva of the Caribbean.”

Sexton’s Creole World Blog

exhibit and book information

And for those that remember the old Tally Ho Restaurant that was here at the corner of Chartres and Conti, it is a treat to walk through the gallery and remember the ghosts of past grits and red beans had at that counter….