Tag Archives: Entrepreneurial Jackson Square

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Entrepreneurial Jackson Square part 2: WPA

I continue to do research on the history of the square in terms of how it has been used and reworked by entrepreneurs, including the Baroness herself.

Last January was my month to dive deeply into the city archives to find new visual clues and records to bring alive the last 170 years of the Upper Pontalba. I was able to review the rental and management documents for the building at the New Orleans Public Library…

I am hoping THIS January I can unlock the key to gaining access to the state archives to be able to research the Lower Pontalba in the same detail.

Happy to find a photo of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) era renovation of the buildings as that project had the largest influence on the buildings and the Square in their history- so far.

WPA renovation 1930s of Upper Pontalba. Courtesy of the City Archives Repository

The WPA had an enormous impact on the entire city, and one could argue that it set the table for the population explosion, (which peaked at 627,000 around 1960), and the subsequent media attention that New Orleans had through the post war years,

By most accounts, New Orleans was in the top 5 in terms of completed projects through this Roosevelt administration initiative, most notably City Park where many WPA plaques and motifs can still be seen.

The Pontalbas received about $300,000 in repairs through the WPA, a staggering sum for 2 buildings that had been purchased just a few years earlier by preservationists for (likely) around 1/3 of that cost.

They had been built 80 years before for a total cost of about $330,000 and held by the Pontalba family in France through 3 generations before selling the Upper (St. Peter side) to Alfred Danzinger, Jules D. Dreyfous, and William Runkel in 1920, and the Lower (Saint Ann side) in 1922 to William Radcliffe Irby. Irby bought the Lower building for 68,000 and when he passed in a few years later, deeded it to the Louisiana State Museum.

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JSE: Before Retail Returned to the Upper Pontalba

Seeing visual clues about how the buildings and the open square have been designed and used and redefined during that 170 years is amazing. This pic was taken right before retail shops returned to the Upper Pontalba. Notice the sash windows on the ground floor! *Notice it is also still a road and not yet made into the permanent pedestrian mall.

1973 courtesy of the Vieux Carre Commission, photographer unknown

The lower Pontalba DID have some retail throughout the 20th century including the 1850 house and Tourist Center, the latter opening in 1965.

The letter to the editor below from the same year that the picture was taken indicates the tension that often arises between preservationists and entrepreneurs:
“The commission’s decision to restore the first floor shops was to bring back to the building and Jackson Square the kind of activity and occupancy originally envisioned by the Baroness Pontalba when she erected these buildings. No ‘tourist’ shops will be allowed. Only shops which will be patronized locally..””

[N.B. Henry M. Krotzer, Jr. was employed by the firm Koch & Wilson.]
— Source: Times-Picayune Author: Henry M. Krotzer, Jr., architect Date: Saturday, April 7th 1973.