Tuesday 8th May 2007. The Big Easy...

Fire, Flood and FEMA...the three 'F's' that got New Orleans...two historic and one solely incompetent, a little like the city's mayor!

I start my morning with a leisurely breakfast, sunny side up.

Today Joanne is taking me on a tour of St Charles Avenue, the grandest boulevard of mansions in the south. The avenue follows the gentle curvature of this natural levee and it exudes the air of gentility we all imagine as stereotypical of the deep south.

Our first major point of interest is the Van Benthuysen House (built 1868-69) with its extensive side garden and columned pavilion it served both as the German Consulate before World War II and as the venue for Christine and Joe's wedding.

As many of you know I am a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright and my must see is the Unity Temple with its circular forms announcing clearly that it was designed by a Lloyd Wright student, Leonard R. Spangenberg. Home to the New Orleans Unity Society of Practical Christianity its planters and lines are clearly Lloyd Wright. Although this 1961 building was not open I went in and asked to have a viewing...the lady allowed me to look around and she gave me a postcard!

The circular staircase (which evoked memories of the Xanadu Gallery in San Francisco)is meant as a symbol that God is eternal and in the sanctuary the circular design is meant to symbolise unity and make you feel that God's arms are wrapped around you.

Our next major stop was the Columns Hotel which began life as the home of wealthy cigar manufacturer Simon Hernsheim. Designed by Thomas Sully in 1883 if you stripped off the later addition Doric columns (added to make this property more Southern) then you see the original Italianate-style house. This was the setting for the Hollywood film Pretty Baby based on the life of local photographer Ernest J. Bellocq.

Its back to Frank Lloyd Wright at 4101 with a double house made to look like a single residence and evocative of the Robie House in Chicago. Designed in 1963 by the New Orleans architect Victor Bruno it borders Palm Terrace which is a small street laid out in the 1920's and lined with small, low budget Hollywood Hills style stucco houses which really don't fit here...but I liked them!

Next stop is the Touro Synagogue (1909) home to the oldest Jewish congregation in the Mississippi valley. Named in honour of Judah Touro, a New Orleans merchant born the son of a rabbi in Newport, Rhode Island; who it is claimed never left New Orleans except for a visit to the battlefield at Chalmette. As a philanthropist he liberally supported Jewish, Protestant, Catholic and nonsectarian charities; he founded a public library, the Touro Infirmary and the Shakespeare-Touro Home for the Aged.

The building that bears his name is built in the Byzantine Revival style from a greyish-yellow brick with terracotta ornamentation to the design of Emile Weil. The 1989 addition, the Norman Synagogue House is considered the best contemporary addition to any building in the city and it is the work of Lyons & Hudson.

Think the great 'public schools' of New England with their architecture evoking the Old Country and you get a sense of the Academy of the Sacred Heart home to the school of the Les Mesdames des Sacré-Coeur, the elite teaching order founded in 1800 in France by St Madeline Sophie Barat.

This order traces the social fashions of the city. On arrival in 1818 they opened their convent and girls' school in the French Quarter before moving with the fashion here to the uptown district. On this site originally stood a mansion house from 1847 and after thirteen years in the old building the Mesdames engaged the firm of Diboll and Owen to design this colonnaded masterpiece. Further expansion led to a third story on the school building.

Whilst St Charles Avenue with its large and historic homes is symbolic of the south there are many architectural styles represented here such as the Brown Mansion (the largest house on the avenue) with its Richardsonian Romanesque style to the design of Favrot and Livaudais. Completed in 1905 this limestone building represents the style and continuing wealth of the city post the Civil War with the story going that cotton broker William Perry Brown offered Margueritte Braughn the "finest residence on the avenue" if she married him...she did.

There are great stories here. The Orléans Club for example is housed in an 1868 mansion that was built for Colonel William Lewis Wynne as a wedding gift for his daughter Mrs. George C. Garner and even today as a woman's social and cultural club it is a favoured venue for debutante teas.

The only grand house open to the public is the Milton H. Latter Memorial Public Library which is housed in a 1907 mansion that played host to the silent movie star Marguerite Clark who is pictured posing on the strong staircase in 1918 at the height of her Hollywood career. She was married to Henry Williams the well-known local aviator and heir and stayed here with her husbands' family, the second owners of the mansion.

In 1948 this became the uptown branch of the New Orleans Public Library and this baronial building in Indiana limestone is a treasure. Stretching over a complete city block and built for Mark Isaacs, owner of a Canal Street department store, it is another Favrot and Livaudais work set high on an earthen berm to dominate it surroundings. In the front two rooms I found original French ceilings that once graced a French Quarter mansion and in a back office I saw the delph style work of local artist John Geiser. In the grounds you can find one of the city's earliest free standing and purpose-built automobile garages...it would make a substantial cottage in its own right.

The property was given by real estate magnate Harry Latter and his wife as a memorial to their only son, killed at Okinawa in World War II.

Today sadly this treasure needs work but in a city with so much devastation and so little tax dollars coming in arthouse projects like this restoration would need a specific donation from someone genuinely interested in restoring this architectural treasure.

And no tour would be complete without Tara, a large white-painted brick house from 1941 designed by Andrew M. Lockett on a lot at 5705, to imitate Margaret Mitchell's iconic Gone with the Wind property.

We went all the way up to the lovely grounds of Loyola and Tulane university's.

On now to the Garden District and its historic homes...After the Civil War, New Orleans stood as the only intact city in the south and after Katrina, historic New Orleans stands intact!!!

The trees, the grounds, the impossibly huge homes...it is beautiful! My two highlights here were 1331 Third Street, the Michel Musson House that was home to Edgar Degas uncle. An Italianate house built for the Postmaster of New Orleans and President of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange, Degas immortalised his uncle in his 1873 work The Cotton Factor's Office.

The neighbouring and mammoth 1415 is reputed to have been the first house in the city with indoor plumbing.

The more I journey the more wonderful cast-iron work I see and that leads me to the Italianate villa built for Kentucky born merchant Col Robert Henry Short in 1859. The house is the work of Henry Howard but it is over-shadowed by the cornstalk fence made in Philadelphia by the Wood & Perot foundry. New Orleans' famed cast-iron was a statement of wealth and unlike its partner in the French Quarter, this cornstalk extends fully around the property.

Our final stop on this architectural tour is the City of Lafayette Cemetery No 1 dating from 1833. I couldn't come to the home of the jazz funeral and not visit a cemetery!

Indicative of the centrality of death in the creole culture of New Orleans, the city placed a cemetery and not a public park at its heart. The work of Benjamin Buisson it has wide avenues and above ground tombs designed to accommodate large funeral processions. A fascinating place to study the immigrant history of the city, this multi-cultural resting place also serves as a timely reminder of the mortality in us all. The Society for the Relief of Destitute Orphan Boys plot from 1894 caused me to draw parallels with the paupers' graves that were common in Britain until after the second world war.

I also loved the local colour with the cemetery keeper and his website...can't help thinking its a little strange e-mailing the dead???

From the Jazz funeral to the importance of November 1st, All Saints Day, New Orleanians are bright enough to see death as central to life...a lesson we all should note!

Ladies who lunch...

But then there is Commander's Palace. Erected in 1880 for Emile Commander who operated her restaurant on the first floor and lived upstairs, by 1920 a speakeasy was in full swing here. Since 1974 it has been the flagship in the local Brennan family restaurant empire. The culinary and the social summit of life in the Big Easy, Commander's Palace holds a well-deserved national and international reputation.

Well I had my Mint Julep with Joanne, Patsy and DiAnn and I had a wonderful creole lunch that included the legendery Turtle Soup and the famed Bread Pudding...and to round off my time in the city I enjoyed a wonderful homemade gumbo tonight with Joanne.

I cannot leave New Orleans without publically stating my thanks to Miss Joanne for all she has done to make my stay more comfortable and the project more interesting for all its participants...A real Southern Belle!!