Sunday 6th May 2007. The Queen of the River, Louisiana.

History is people because they make the events...

New Orleans is the home of creole culture. Creole is the name given to the native traditions born in Louisiana from the fusion of rich cultural, historical and geographic elements...

Without its history, if the city had taken a different journey, we would not have the joy that is New Orleans and its people.

Now because the slaves here were catholics they were not allowed to be worked on Sundays or Holydays and they were free to practice their own food and music traditions. The law was based on French Catholic law (and when the Spanish took over being a catholic country they saw no need for change). The freedoms associated with catholicism are a major reason why the creole culture of New Orleans was free to develop.

Festivals such as Mardi Gras have their roots in religion with the festival being a last 'fling' before lent. Even today the Catholic Church has a major influence on this city and people here have a deep affection for a Church which they saw do far more to get the city back on its feet post-Katrina than did their elected representatives.

Quick History tour...
The French/Indian War meant the loss for France of the colony of Luisiana ultimately to the British. To prevent such a British gain the French King ceded Louisiana to his cousin the King of Spain. Later in history, Napoleon was to demand the return of this territory; but needing money he quickly sold the territory to the United States in what became known as the Louisiana Purchase.
French Luisiana was a territory that covered all the lands drained by the Mississippi.


Today we set off from the Jean Lafitte Visitors Center to explore the blending of some 300 years of French, Spanish, West African, Caribbean and American (and some Italian and Irish too) influences that make the Vieux Carré one of the worlds' most distinctive architectural districts.

From the French colonial period (1718-1762) with its steep roofed, small dormer windowed half-timber construction that is evocative of Normandy (the wide porch and elevated living areas were designed to catch the cooling breeze); to the Spanish colonial (1762-1803) when the city saw two disastrous fires that necessitated major rebuilding (in an attempt to safeguard the city this was characterised by brick and masonry construction with thick fireproof common walls)...this tour is quite the trip.

Let's begin with the city and its architectural origins...

The symbol of the city is the Fleur-De-Lis. The King of France Clovis I in 496AD found his army trapped between a riverbed and an enemy army. As he pondered his fate he noted a yellow Iris growing midway in the river and realised that the river was shallow at this point and so he was able to cross his army to safety. Louis VII used the iris as his court symbol and the flower of Louis (fleur-de-lis) was subsequently used by Charles IV as a symbol on the French banner...Named for the Regent of France, the city naturally took the Royal symbol as its symbol.

The French military engineer Adrien de Pauger planned the first city blocks of New Orleans based in the area now known as the French Quarter. He drew nearly 100 city blocks with lots of equal size except one...his own house. What is now the Jean Lafitte Visitors' Center was de Pauger's home and later belonged to Edward Degas' maternal grandparents.

The French Quarter was an area bustling with cotton, sugar and lumber; a place where people shopped in open air markets; an area laid out with military precision on square blocks based around the public square.

The architectural gems of the French Quarter come in distinctive forms:

The Creole Cottage is one of the simplest housing plans with four spacious rooms that were interchangeable. With two shuttered openings and interior doors connecting each room to the next and a fireplace in one of two shared chimneys, the design allowed for ventilation, light and privacy. Creole cottages are one-and-a-half story houses with at least four shuttered front openings, casement doors or windows and a high roof running parallel to the street...and they are characterised by that wide porch gallery on the upper story.

The Shotgun House is characterised by its elaborate exterior decorative elements that are small and versatile and thus inexpensive. The name comes from the belief that you could fire a shotgun in the front door and it would go straight out the back without hitting any of the interior walls. Deriving from West Africa via the Caribbean the design became popular in the 1840's and spread across the South. With their narrow street frontage and welcoming porch with all four rooms placed one behind the other, these compact dwellings were ideal for the now sub-divided smaller lots available in the city. Also as tax was paid according to street frontage, the Shotgun became a very attractive option.

Characteristic of the Quarter are:

the Gallery which is a terrace supported over the sidewalk on poles, whilst the balcony is a cantilevered verandah.

The high gabled roofs that were designed to let light stream into a buildings second floor.

The projecting abat-vent over the sidewalk acts as an awning for passers by while its principal purpose was as a shade for windows and doors.

The deep set casement windows and doors regulate warm sunshine and cool breezes by means of wooden shutters
and secluded courtyards offer respite from the city bustle with the loggia and outside stairways offering sheltered breezeways.

The outside staircases and hallways not only offered natural air conditioning but also a tax loophole as tax was paid on the number of interior doors.

The Spanish colonial period ushered in the era of private courtyards behind houses with street access via carriageways reminiscent of the townhouses of Paris. These Spanish buildings have tall arched openings, loggia 'walkways' along the courtyard, and rear access to the upper floors...and they claim here that the word 'courtyard' is a local word created because this patio was at the core or heart of the home.

Across the Quarter you will find stucco protecting the 'native' soft handmade brick...some builders would draw lines in the stucco to give the appearance of more expensive stone.

Unusually for the Quarter the Pontalba Buildings erected on either side of Jackson Square by the Baroness Micaela Almonaster de Pontalba in 1851 are prominent brick buildings. The first apartment complex in the United States the twin building design was inspired by the Palais-Royal and the Place des Vosges in Paris. Featuring apartments upstairs with retail space below, the ornate cast iron galleries bear the baroness' family initials. It was the Baroness who is credited with remodelling the square and renaming it in honour of President Andrew Jackson...there is a story that the Battle of New Orleans hero's statue was placed with him tipping his hat toward the residence of the Baroness who was rumoured to have been his mistress.

A few city facts...

If you happen to be in the Quarter then visit Pierre Maspero's restaurant as the building is the only slave auction house left here.

New Orleans in the 1800's was a very educated city with the nuns responsible for educating the girls and the priests for educating the boys...and I mean all boys and girls...orphans, slaves, free people of colour and Europeans.

And if you believe that HRH Princess Grace of Monaco (the former Grace Kelly) was the first American born princess then think again. She was pre-dated by HRH Princess Alice of Monaco, a gal from New Orleans.

The architecture of the Quarter thus integrates both the decorative and the functional.

I have to thank the National Park Service (one of my favourite things about America) and our wonderful guide C. J. Longanecker.

Moving on... As you drive down Canal Street you get a sense of the devastation that hit this city, I remember seeing this area on the news, but more of that later.

Femme, Femme, Femme...the paintings of women in French society from Daumier to Picasso here on loan as a support to this city from the museums of France is being held at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

As we are to discover the French certainly did not sent their very best pieces here. As I heard it put today...they must have cleared out the basement. That was a little harsh and the French are certainly to be commended for their efforts to help out. So on now to the exhibition...

The image of the French woman excites an undeniable interest. For example French painting from the 1830's offers a compelling visual testimony to the changing role of women in the France of that time. In the countryside and amongst the urban middle classes women are beginning to show signs of emancipation venturing into the working world with new forms of sociability taking hold.

Today I see works from Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Manet and Renoir running through motherhood, class, prominence, professional and leisure opportunities to the emerging independence of the modern woman.

Be she artist, socialite or businesswoman, like the ground-breaking artworks this exhibition is an extraordinary gift to Louisiana with the fulfillment of a promise made to New Orleans just two months after Katrina sending works not just from The Louvre and other significant museums but from my personal favourite the Musée d'Orsay.

Beginning with the Women of the Third Republic (1870-1940) this is an important period in French history when women were going to start skiing mountains, driving cars and bathing in the sea. It was a period of propaganda paintings such as Auguste Trupheme's At School (1897) reflecting the ideal of public education. It was under the Third Republic that laws were instituted to make education free, compulsory and secular for both boys and girls.

This was the period when day care centres were established by an 1862 government decree to take care of infants whose mothers worked outside the home and when there was a growing awareness of childcare and nutrition. It was also a period when there remained a lingering belief that physical exertion might be dangerous to womens' reproductive health and so sport would become a symbol of the suffragette.

Throughout the exhibition you see women at the heart of the family as the key to preserving family structures. What was wonderful about this exhibition was its study of history through people, specifically women, from the down-and-out to the washer woman to the aristocrat.

Covering the hardships of life and women's quiet and conscientious ways of living to the excesses of Parisian frivolity where women were merely clothes-horses to show and reflect their husbands commercial successes; the exhibition also raised questions.

Few may want to admit it, but a great deal of the advances made in women's rights are a direct result of their lesbian sisters and that was reflected both in the paintings and the stories of male dress wearing, short haired, cigar smoking, gambling artists, writers and intellectuals who challenged the 'norms'.

Add into this mix the improved transport and facts such as women no longer needing a male escort to ride a train and we see wives journeying into the city for the first time. Traditionally a man could lead a double-life. Many were respectable gentlemen who ran their suburban homes with a rod of iron, but who enjoyed all the pleasures that were available when they were at work in the city...no longer could men operate in such splendid isolation.

A fact that will shock many is that the very upper-crust activity of ballet (a must for all respectable young girls) was infact almost a soft-porn experience in the 1800's. Ballet was at this time merely an accompaniment to opera and thus as a profession it was seen as only being fit for working class girls in scanty costumes (who if successful would eventually earn more than their fathers).

As well as propaganda work you also see the growing nostalgia of the urban bourgeoisie who placed a poetic stability and prosperity on the notion of the quiet life in the country.

It was from this exhibition today that we see the new fashion for following fashion on a global scale. The white wedding dress as a symbol of purity for example was pioneered by Queen Victoria in her wedding to Prince Albert and so began a fashion common even today.

In the late afternoon I am taking a devastation tour with Joe (Joanne's son-in-law and a great guide).

It was everybody's fault and nobody's fault...

The scope of the area that was underwater is huge. It is quite simply inconceivable. I am only touching the surface of the destruction (here in waterlogged New Orleans) that fell across the Gulf Coast, you are talking about an area the size of England.

There are still many people here living in trailers two years on. Many will live this way for years to come and many of these neighbourhoods will simply never come back.

Just think for a moment...

You are an unemployed single mother with a couple of kids on a low income facing poor schools. With no car and reliant on public transport you had no way of leaving the city. Unable to evacuate you sit it out...now nobody deserves that...but you are relocated to Dallas and people are bending over backwards to help you. Two years on you have a job, a home and the kids in school...why would you come back to the old neighbourhood? The ties are gone, your neighbours may never return; everything that was familiar has been destroyed...These are the challenges for the Road Home program that aims at helping people come back home?

And as for the media coverage...its not sexy to interview a guy in a quarter of a million dollar home who evacuated with his family and who returns to find his home destroyed, but he has insurance. Yes the poor suffered disproportionately but as usual the media skewed the story to give it a bias that would sell. The racial issue was made far more of than was the reality. The reality was that the poor suffered irrespective of skin colour.

Today I saw for myself the area where the 17th Street Canal broke and where they are still strengthening the levee today...but only on the break side which makes me wonder what happens when pressure is again applied, surely the side that held up will now be weakened? Should they not be strengthening all of the levee?

I saw the devastated neighbourhoods from upper middle class Lakeview to the Lower 9th Ward. I got to visit Musician's Village where Joanne volunteers building homes with Habitat for Humanity...

And on my tour I was a bit of a tourist by taking a drive down Desire Street as in
"A Streetcar named".

From all I have seen in this great city I have to note that New Orleans teaches you that life is to celebrate each and every day.

Tonight I enjoy a great family dinner at Kelly's house with Joanne, Kelly, Christine, Joe, Evan, Gracie and Emily. I enjoyed Crawfish Etouffee and my first ever frozen cosmopolitan.

I am really loving my time in the home of jazz and creole food, which are in reality only in existence because of the special blending of cultures that is peculiarly New Orleans.