St. Patrick’s Day is nearly upon us! It has been mere weeks since Mardi Gras, but we’re ready for another parade-centric celebration. St. Paddy’s Day parades are held across the globe, but in New Orleans, they really make sense. We’re a city with a ton of Irish history.

For example, by the 1880s, the neighborhood approximately encompassed by Magazine Street to the north, First Street to the east, the Mississippi River to the south, and Toledano Street to the west had been given the name, “Irish Channel.” But how did it get that name?

Some say it’s because the Irish “channeled” into the area during the earlier decades of the 19th century. Others say it’s because heavy rains would pool up in the streets of this neighborhood heavily populated by Irish immigrants. (Maybe the poor drainage was meant as a sarcastic reference to the waterway separating Ireland and England, known as the “Irish Channel” in the 19th century.) 

The true answer, unfortunately, is likely lost to history.

And how Irish did the Irish Channel get? Actually, not as Irish as people tend to think. While there was a large proportion of Irish immigrants in the neighborhood by the middle of the 1800s, it was really more of a community for immigrants in general. In fact, there were more Germans in the neighborhood than Irish; and the numbers of French, British, and African Americans were also sizable.

That’s not to say, there weren’t a lot of Irish in New Orleans. They just didn’t all settle in that one neighborhood. By 1850, somewhere between 20%and 25% of the city was Irish!

Close your eyes and imagine walking around New Orleans today and hearing an Irish accent from one out of every four residents. It must have been an amazing place to live.

Our city was home to the largest number of immigrants from Ireland in the American South, and those immigrants did so much to build our current home. So let’s look at how they got here, what they did once they were here, and how we can honor those contributions during the weeks leading up to St. Patrick’s Day.

The Colonial Irish

Another common misconception is that immigration from Ireland to New Orleans began in earnest during the Potato Famine of the mid-19th century. Actually, the Irish began arriving once the Spanish took over Louisiana from France in 1763.

In fact, Louisiana’s second governor under Spanish rule was Alejandro O’Reilly, an Irishman by birth who enlisted in the Spanish army to serve a Catholic monarch. (Why? More on this later.) 

O’Reilly was sent to New Orleans to restore order after more than 500 French, German and Acadian Louisianians — who preferred French rule to Spanish rule — banded together to expel the previous Spanish governor, Antonio de Ulloa.

When O’Reilly arrived in 1769, he did so with 2,000 “Spanish” soldiers — many of them Irish. He invited 12 French leaders of the rebellion against Ulloa to dinner. (If we were them, we wouldn’t have accepted this invitation, but they did.) 

After hearing their account of the events, O’Reilly ordered six of them to death. The street on which they were executed earned the name “Frenchmen Street,” in honor of the dead, and the Irish Spanish governor earned the nickname, “Bloody O’Reilly.”

When New Orleanians think of early Irish immigrants to the city, we tend to think of them as poor and working class. In the 1700s, that was not the case. The Irish generally arrived for military service or business. Many remained in the city long after O’Reilly had left, with jobs as wide-ranging and lofty as running the area’s militia, negotiating with American Indians, and supplying the entirety of the army with flour.

But why did so many Irish choose to serve the Spanish monarch? In short, Catholic Ireland was being ruled — and often persecuted — by Protestant Britain. 

The British government enacted brutal Penal laws during the 17th and 18th century that were far-reaching, but had the combined effect of economically destroying Ireland’s Catholic subjects. For example, plots of land that had been owned by a family for centuries, could now be taken from them just because that family happened to be Catholic.

Rather than endure persecution, many Irish families emigrated to Catholic countries like Spain and France. Then, after a 1798 uprising in Ireland failed to end British rule, a larger wave of Catholics decided to also leave their home country rather than face continued persecution; and many came to places in America that were friendly to Catholicism, such as New Orleans.

Passage from Ireland to the New World wasn’t cheap, so, like the wave that had arrived in earlier decades, these Irish weren’t poor. This group tended to be in the middle class and worked as financiers, doctors, attorneys, educators, journalists, printers, and more.

As opposed to their predecessors, this group of Irish that arrived after the failed 1798 rebellion were more likely to come directly from Ireland and with a strong sense of Irish heritage. They created the first Irish charitable and social club, as well as their own local militia known as the Republican Greens and an organization, the Friends of Ireland, that collected money to send back to pro-Catholic candidates in Ireland.

This growing community would be attractive to an even bigger wave of Irish immigrants arriving just decades later.

A Green Wave

During the 1820s and 1830s, yet another wave of Irish immigrants arrived in Louisiana. But worsening conditions back home meant this group was much poorer than the first. 

Many of them were escaping the economic depression afflicting all of Europe due to the recently concluded Napoleonic Wars. Ireland’s high population density — as well as a series of poor harvests and periodic famines — motivated many residents to leave their homes.

The booming cotton business also contributed. Ships would depart the Mississippi River for Europe, full of cotton. Rather than return empty, they would offer cheap passage to Europeans looking for opportunity in America. The squalor impoverished Irish met on these ships earned the vessels the collective nickname, “Floating Coffins.”

The antebellum period was a golden era for New Orleans’ economy and the hope of opportunity — plus the heavily Irish and Catholic populations — made for an appealing destination. Local officials also tricked many of these immigrants, convincing them that the major Irish centers of the Northeast — like Boston, New York and Philadelphia — were much closer to New Orleans than they actually were.

Like in much of America, Irish immigrants in New Orleans helped to build rail lines, roads and canals. They arrived in the city in large numbers in the 1830s, which is the same decade the Pontchartrain Railroad and the New Basin Canal were finished. (It wouldn’t paint the complete picture, however, to say that Irishmen only helped to build the infrastructure. Several of their countrymen also held stake in a company that owned and financed the projects.)

Building the New Basin Canal was an especially dangerous job. The canal was built as a shipping lane from Lake Pontchartrain through the swamp to the booming “American” business district of the city, now known as the Central Business District. It was meant to compete with the Carondelet Canal (which now partially exists as Bayou St. John) that connected the lake to the rival Creole downtown portion of the city in the Treme and French Quarter.

Clearing swamps exposed workers to yellow fever, cholera and many other deadly diseases. Mortality rates were so high, slave owners didn’t want to risk the lives of their human property on the project. New Irish immigrants, on the other hand, were considered expendable, with boatloads of poor Irish flooding the city and willing to perform back-breaking work for $1 per day. From 1832 to 1838, it’s estimated that between 8,000 and 20,000 immigrants died digging the canal.

The New Basin Canal stretched from present-day West End Boulevard and Robert E Lee Boulevard (in the 19th century, this was where the lakefront was) all the way to today’s Union Passenger Terminal at the edge of the CBD. It served its intended purpose for more than 100 years, and then was filled in by about 1950.

Most of the dead were buried in unmarked graves wherever they died along the canal. To rectify this, in November of 1990, the Irish Cultural Society of New Orleans dedicated a large Kilkenny marble Celtic cross in New Basin Canal Park to commemorate the Irish workers who labored on the city-changing project.

Looking forward

That’s where we’ll end today, but in our next post we’ll explore the rest of New Orleans’ history as it relates to our Irish immigrants. We will begin with the infamous Potato Famine, explore notable Irish-Americans from the Crescent City, and look at how we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day today.

Until then, we hope Lent has been going well and is allowing you to rejuvenate ahead of Springtime.

The post More than St. Patrick’s Day: New Orleans’ Irish History, Part 1 appeared first on Gambinos Bakery.

The overindulgence of Mardi Gras is over and we are now in a period of scarcity known as Lent. For many, this time of the year—the more than six weeks between Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday preceding Easter—is a time marked by a smudge of ash on your forehead, Friday night fish fries, and giving up comforts like chocolate. 

But beneath these modern traditions lies a complex history shaped by both religion and survival that pushes us to persevere to Springtime.

Let’s dig into that history!

Forced scarcity

Imagine what late February and March must have felt like in the Northern Hemisphere during earlier millennia. As we explored during a recent Carnival season post, the food societies had preserved from their Fall harvest was spoiling and it would still be weeks or months until the Earth bore fruit and vegetables again. 

In fact, the pre-Christian predecessor to Mardi Gras was a final celebration to feast on what remained of past harvests—an effort to raise morale and put on a few pounds before this period of scarcity.

Christian adaptation

The word Lent comes from the Old English lencten, which literally translates to “spring” or “the lengthening of days.”

In the first two centuries of the Christian Church, “Lenten” preparation was brief—often lasting only 40 hours. This time represented the time Jesus was said to spend in the tomb following his crucifixion. 

Initially, this period was a rigorous “boot camp” for catechumens—converts preparing for baptism on Easter Sunday. Over time, the entire congregation began to join them in solidarity, adopting a spirit of penance and reflection.

By the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, that 40 hour Lent was becoming a 40-day period standardized across various Christian regions. This specific number was chosen to mirror several biblical events: the 40 days and nights of the Great Flood in the biblical book of Genesis, the 40 days Moses spent on Mt. Sinai waiting for the Ten Commandments, or the 40 years the Israelites spent in the wilderness after fleeing Egypt.

Most commonly, however, the 40 days of Lent is connected to the 40 days Jesus spent fasting and being tempted by the devil in the desert. Like for Christ, it is now meant for Christians as a time for spiritual purification and preparation for Easter.

In addition to a spiritual purpose, it also served a more practical one.

Matter of survival

Just as modern Christians are asked to show self-discipline by giving up certain pleasures during Lent, earlier followers of the religion were asked to give up meat.

The reason was likely a matter of life or death.

Imagine it is March and your children are hungry. Your Winter harvest is dwindling and it will be weeks until the Earth once again bears fruit. You do have a cow, though it is not yet mature.

You might be tempted to slaughter said cow, providing relief for your children—an understandable choice. The Church, however, is worried about the long-term well-being of the town. If that cow is allowed to mature, it can reproduce to provide future milk and meat for many mouths.

Christianity and its many rules were a tool to keep the town working toward a common goal instead of selfish ends. The abstinence of Lent was a tool for survival. And so was Carnival.

In fact, the term comes from carnavale—Italian for “goodbye to meat.”

The evolution of fasting

For most modern Christians, Lenten fasting means no meat on Fridays. Historically, however, the rules were more demanding. Observers were typically permitted only one meal a day, taken after sunset.

That meal excluded meat, as already mentioned, but it also excluded any products derived from animals such as eggs, fats, butter, and other dairy products. (That’s why Christian communities around the world eat these products one last time on Fat Tuesday.)

A quick math lesson

If you are particularly observant, you might have noticed that the period between Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent) and Holy Thursday (which leads up to Easter) is actually 46 days instead of 40.

This is because the six Sundays between these two days are considered celebrations of the Resurrection and not included in the actual fasting count. The 40 days refers to 40 days of fasting.

Lent around the world

Today, Lent is observed by Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and many Protestant denominations. While the theological core remains the same, the cultural expressions vary significantly by region. Here are just a small number of examples:

The Philippines: Public Devotion
In the Philippines, Lent is a deeply public affair. One of the most unique traditions is the Pabasa, a non-stop rhythmic chanting of the Pasiong Mahal (the Passion of Christ). Communities gather to chant the text over several days and nights. On Good Friday, Senakulo or Passion plays are performed in streets and town squares to depict the trial and suffering of Jesus.

Mexico: Capirotada and Community
In Mexico, the culinary traditions of Lent are distinct. Because meat is avoided, Capirotada becomes a staple. This is a spiced bread pudding layered with cinnamon, cloves, raisins, nuts, and cheese. Each ingredient holds symbolic weight: the bread represents the Body of Christ, the cinnamon sticks represent the wood of the Cross, and the cloves represent the nails.

The Eastern Orthodox Tradition: “Great Lent”
In Eastern Orthodox churches, the season is known as Great Lent. It begins on Clean Monday rather than Ash Wednesday. The fasting remains quite strict; many adherents follow a plant-based diet for the entire duration, omitting meat and dairy. The focus is on “bright sadness”—the idea that while the soul acknowledges its shortcomings, it does so with the joyful anticipation of the Resurrection.

Ireland: Modern Fasting
Ireland has moved from the “Black Fast” (bread and water) of the past to more modern forms of abstinence. It is now common for people to take the “Pioneer” pledge (abstaining from alcohol) for the duration of Lent. Additionally, the Trócaire box is a staple in Irish homes, where families save spare change throughout the 40 days to donate to international poverty relief.

Why it matters in the 21st century?

Traditional fasting still exists, but so do modern day alternatives. Some limit their social media intake while others attempt to reduce their energy consumption, to name two examples. Others choose to add something: maybe daily meditation, volunteering, or writing letters of gratitude to loved ones.

Whether you view this time period through a religious lens or a secular one, humans have been using this season as an opportunity to reset for thousands of years. And, regardless of if that period of scarcity culminates in Springtime or Easter Sunday, many have found it extra special to reach it in a way that taps into a world’s worth of tradition.

The post Lent: The story about the period of scarcity following Mardi Gras appeared first on Gambinos Bakery.

Carnival is here! In our last blog post, we dug into how the ways New Orleans celebrates this special season can be traced back thousands of years to ancient Europe.

We learned why we have these traditions leading up to Mardi Gras, but these traditions aren’t ours alone. While we are celebrating the Carnival season by wearing colorful costumes, eating and drinking in excess, and parading in the streets, cultures around the world are doing the same thing.

Many of these cultures put their own unique spin on the festivities. In this post, we’re going to explore a handful of them!

USA! USA! USA!

Before we span the globe, we should acknowledge that New Orleans isn’t the only Carnival celebration in the United States. 

French explorers celebrated the first Fat Tuesday in North America on March 3, 1699 at a spot they appropriately christened Point du Mardi Gras. The site is on the west bank of the Mississippi River, 60 miles south of New Orleans, though future settlers would eventually spread Carnival across the Gulf Coast. 

The first Carnival season parades in the New World took place in Mobile, Alabama. It is believed this began in 1711, when 16 members of the Société du Bœuf Gras (Society of the Fatted Ox) paraded on Mardi Gras while pushing a cart carrying a large papier-mâché cow’s head. Today, the city hosts more than 40 Carnival season parades.

Meanwhile, in the small towns around Lafayette that make up Cajun Country, their Courir de Mardi Gras is entirely different. Masked participants in homemade costumes, many on horseback, go from house to house begging for ingredients to make a town gumbo. Most famously, this includes live chickens, which revelers chase through the mud. 
But American Mardi Gras isn’t only left to the states along the Gulf coast. Polish communities in Rust Belt cities, for example, celebrate the day before Lent by eating doughnuts known as pączki. In the Hamtramck enclave of Detroit, an annual Pączki Day Parade takes place, while in Parma, Ohio, Rudy’s Strudel bakery hosts a celebration with special flavors of pączki, live polka music, pierogies, and mimosas.

The world’s biggest Carnival

Rio de Janeiro has been celebrating Carnival since as early as the 16th century thanks to Catholic Portuguese colonizers. Those explorers could have never imagined what their festival would become. Today, more than two million people take to the streets every day during Rio’s lead-up to Mardi Gras.

The celebrations are highlighted by hundreds of street parties, as well as parades featuring more than 200 “samba schools.” These are more akin to community clubs than traditional schools, however, with thousands of neighbors engaging in a year-round effort to prepare elaborate floats, costumes, music, and choreographed dancing rooted in Afro-Brazilian culture.

A Winter Wonderland

If Brazil sounds too warm for you, how about Mardi Gras in the snow at the Quebec Winter Carnival. Held since 1894, this is the largest winter festival in the Western Hemisphere, featuring French-Canadian culture, snow sculpture competitions, ice canoe races on the frozen St. Lawrence River, nighttime parades, live music, toboggans, an Ice Palace, fire pits, tons of food, and the festival’s iconic snowman mascot Bonhomme Carnaval. 

Caribbean Carnival

Trinidad, Anguilla, Grenada, and Barbados—these are just a handful of the Caribbean islands that celebrate what many describe as the most electrifying Carnival in the world. 

Here, it is a tradition rooted in Black rebellion. In 18th century Trinidad, enslaved Africans were forbidden from participating in the masquerade balls of European colonizers. Instead, they created their own celebrations, defiantly crafting costumes of colorful feathers. They dance through the streets in parades to the Afro-Trinidadian sounds of calypso.

The joy of freedom is palpable in the thousands who still gather in the streets each Carnival, more than 200 years later.  

Pancake Day

Cross the Atlantic Ocean for something completely different. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the pre-Lenten meal of choice is a thin pancake topped with butter and lemon. (In Newfoundland, Canada, a tradition similar to our king cake involves a trinket hidden inside the pancakes for children.) 

The day is often called “Pancake Day,” but is officially called Shrove Tuesday because the word “shrive” refers to the absolution before Lent that comes from the required confessions. Celebrations take place in communities throughout the country, often with “pancake races” where participants race while flipping pancakes in a frying pan. Some towns have continued the medieval tradition of chaotic “mob football” games involving many participants playing at once with very few rules.

Maslenitsa Festival

Countries like Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine trace their Carnival season feasts to pre-Christian Slavic people, according to Sharon Hudgins, a University of Maryland professor and author of T-Bone Whacks & Caviar Snacks: Cooking with Two Texans in Siberia & the Russian Far East. Their Maslenitsa is known as Butter Week or Crepe Week.

“Early Slavs hoped for the short, dark, cold days of the preceding months to be banished in favor of longer ones illuminated by sunlight,” she said. 

This was portrayed as a battle between winter spirits and the god of the sun. By indulging in gluttonous ritual foods, such as a circular treat similar to a pancake, Hudgins said they were doing their part to cheer on the sun’s return.

“It makes sense that in Russia they still eat a type of thin pancake called bliny this time of year,” Hudgins added, “and that you still find costumed merrymakers celebrating the sun and burning an effigy of the Old Witch of Winter.”

Today, while smaller town Maslenitsa festivals are still popular, hundreds of thousands of participants attend Maslenitsa in Moscow’s Red Square.

Renaissance splendor

As we mentioned earlier, a major component of Carnival is the erasure of norms and social class. The Carnevale di Venezia in Venice, Italy does exactly this with two weeks of elaborate masks and ornate costumes at anonymous masquerade balls held in palaces and themed public celebrations in St. Mark’s Square. Costumed participants and spectators are everywhere transforming the city with water parades, music, and street theater.

Food fight!

As you can see, many countries celebrate Mardi Gras in interesting ways. Perhaps none is more unique than the Carnival of Ivrea in Northern Italy. This is thanks to the “Battle of the Oranges.”

The origins of this celebration are dark. A local 12th century tyrant set his mind to raping a young commoner on her wedding night. The tyrant’s plan backfired, however, when the young lady decapitated him. Emboldened by her courage, and enraged by the tyrant’s disrespect, the town stormed and burned the palace. 

Centuries later, these events are (very) loosely reenacted. Each year, a young girl plays the part of the defiant woman. The townspeople are armed with oranges (some say they represent the tyrant’s testicles, but who knows) and the citrus is thrown at those acting as the tyrant’s army.  is split into two groups—the townspeople on foot and the 

In addition to the Battle of the Oranges, Ivrea Carnival also includes a large bonfire, linking back to ancient celebrations about the end of winter and return of spring. 

El Carnaval del Toro

Bœuf Gras parades have been a part of Carnival celebrations for centuries. Historically, butchers parade solemnly through the streets with an ox, cow, bull, or a sculpted representation of an animal. 

We already mentioned that Mobile’s first Carnival parade was related to Bœuf Gras, and many New Orleanians are aware that one of Rex’s floats is that of a Bœuf Gras. All of this, of course, is meant to symbolize one final meal of meat before Lent. 

In Spain’s Ciudad Rodrigo, however, El Carnaval del Toro (Carnival of the Bull) uses their bovine in a different way. During their multi-day Carnival festival, celebrants run with bulls in the street and bull fights take place in medieval rings. Costumes signify a battle between good and evil, and brass bands and dances liven the atmosphere. On “Piñata Sunday” locals and visitors gather to eat one last round of the bull before it is forbidden.

A Jewish Carnival

Even other religions get in on the act. And that makes sense, given that it wasn’t only Christians facing food scarcity this time of year.

Purim is a Jewish holiday celebrating the storied salvation of the Jewish people from a plot to destroy them in ancient Persia. 

At first glance Purim’s story doesn’t appear related to Carnival. But how can it be a coincidence that this late-winter holiday also calls for colorful costumes, indulgent eating, and merrymaking. Purim is also the only holiday in which Jews are encouraged to get drunk, with holy text reading that followers should drink until they can’t tell the difference between the phrases “Blessed be Mordechai” (one of the story’s heroes) and “Cursed be Haman” (its villain).

Just the tip of the iceberg

And this is truly just a small handful of a world’s worth of Carnival celebrations. Festivals in Cologne, Germany and Viareggio, Italy are renowned across Europe, while a Carnival parade and wine festival in Goa—a Catholic region of India—shows how the traditions of Mardi Gras have continued to spread. 

Iceland and Australia, Colombia and Japan — Carnival and Mardi Gras continue to grow.

Our New Orleans Carnival is unique, for sure, and there is a reason we attract more than a million visitors for it each year.

But—as we in New Orleans are fond of saying—”Everywhere else it’s just Tuesday?”

Not so fast!

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During Mardi Gras, the Greater New Orleans Area—and really most of Louisiana—feels like a one-of-a-kind place!

In fact, we have a phrase to describe this feeling: “Everywhere else it’s just Tuesday.”

The traditions of Louisiana during our weeks-long Carnival season are definitely special. Other places in the world have their version of king cake, for example, but we’re the only place that enjoys it as a Mardi Gras—rather than a Christmas season—treat. 

But the truth is that, while we are cheering on our parades and screaming for beads, millions of people around the globe are also celebrating. Some parade in colorful costumes, while some stuff their faces with stacks of pancakes and butter. Some wear elaborate masks at secret soirées, while others heave citrus fruit at one another in the streets.

These parties have the same origin as our own. And, just like ours, the festivities often last longer than a single day. We aren’t only celebrating Fat Tuesday, we’re celebrating Carnival—a festival that can be traced back thousands of years ago and an ocean away.

Pre-Christian roots

Many of the ancient world’s most important holidays were centered around the fear and uncertainty of a long winter and/or the promise of springtime. The Babylonians celebrated their Sacaea, a five-day festival announcing the arrival of spring. The Romans commemorated the Winter Solstice—the longest night of the year—with their Saturnalia, and the Athenians marked the end of winter with their Dionysian festivals.

Historians believe one purpose of these celebrations was to raise morale during the annual calendar’s most challenging and dangerous period, when the days were short, the temperatures were low, and food was scarce.

A hallmark of these festivities that would have certainly raised the collective spirit was the temporary disposal of class roles. During Sacaea, for example, the Babylonians encouraged masters and slaves to reverse roles through the outfits they wore. Meanwhile, the Roman Saturnalia featured a cake with a bean hidden inside. Find the bean—even if you are a peasant or child—and you are crowned king of the Saturnalia. (We continue these customs today during our Carnival by pretending to be peasants begging for coins, beads, and food thrown by faux royalty on floats, and through our king cake.)

Another feature of these ancient precursors to Carnival was the encouragement of gluttony, both through heavy drinking and through an excess of food. (It’s not called “Slim Tuesday,” after all.)

In fact, in the Northern Hemisphere, long before Christianity, the period we now call Lent was almost always one of food scarcity. In late winter and early spring, the meat you saved for winter was running low or threatening to spoil, and the crops you planted for the incoming warmer weather hadn’t yet produced food.  

So, in February or early March, a feast before that scarcity—what we now call Carnival season and Mardi Gras—was one last chance to put on a few pounds and raise morale before the long season of forced fasting.

Eat your cow or wait?

In more recent millenia, Christianity has become the dominant belief system in much of the world. Hoping to convert pre-Christian pagans to their growing religion, Church leaders opted to absorb—rather than abolish—the customs of these earlier societies.

Many of the traditions of the Roman Saturnalia, for example, are still present in the Christmas season. Similarly, the traditions of Carnival are believed to be remnants of both Saturnalia and another Roman festival, Lupercalia, a pagan fertility festival in February marked by feasting and revelry that commemorated the transition from winter to spring.

Of course, pagan or Christian, the primary problem facing societies in the Northern Hemisphere during this time of year was identical: food was about to become dangerously scarce.

Today, the 40-day Lenten period is said to mirror Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness. Christians are asked to remember Christ’s sacrifice and prepare for his resurrection by repenting for their sins. 

Just as modern Christians are asked to show self-discipline by giving up certain pleasures during Lent, earlier followers of the religion were asked to give up meat. 

The reason was likely a matter of life or death. 

Imagine it is March and your children are hungry. Your Winter harvest is dwindling and it will be weeks until the Earth once again bears fruit. You do have a cow, though it is not yet mature.

You might be tempted to slaughter said cow, providing relief for your children—an understandable choice. The Church, however, is worried about the long-term well-being of the town. If that cow is allowed to mature, it can reproduce to provide future milk and meat for many mouths. 

Christianity and its many rules were a tool to keep the town working toward a common goal instead of selfish ends. The abstinence of Lent was a tool for survival. And so was Carnival. 

In fact, the term comes from carnavale—Italian for “goodbye to meat.” 

See ya later, meat!

But it wasn’t just meat, it was also products that came from animals. This explains why Carnival celebrations around the world include one last chance to indulge in products featuring butter and eggs. 

The British and Irish eat pancakes with lemon and sugar while the Italians eat sweet dough balls called castagnole or deep fried cookies called cenci. The Polish have pączki, the French have beignets and the Germans have fastnacht—all members of the doughnut family. (In the case of fastnacht, most are filled with jelly, though some are stuffed with mustard as a cheeky pre-Lenten prank.)

In Iceland, the day is called Sprengidagur, or “Bursting Day,” and in eastern Slavic countries like Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, their Maslenitsa festival is often referred to as Butter Week or Cheesefare Week. Outside of the western hemisphere, for example, even Christians in India spend the day before Lent eating colorful, coconut-filled crepes known as Alle Belle, Goan Pancakes, or Madakasan depending on the region.

All of these food customs come from the same tradition: people around the world get their fill of the things they can’t eat in the coming weeks, whether that be because their religion or their environment simply doesn’t provide it for a time.

In the New Orleans area, we feast on king cake (order your Joe Gambino’s king cake here!), fried chicken, and other decadent treats before dutifully reporting to church on Ash Wednesday. We dress in colorful costumes. We dance. We sing. We drink far too much. 

The way we celebrate is unique, but we are not alone in celebrating. 

In our next blog post, we will show you some of those other celebrations around the world! Some seem similar to ours, while others will appear bizarre and unrecognizable. Either way, now you know, they all come from the same origin!

The post Discover the roots of Carnival season—a worldwide phenomenon! appeared first on Gambinos Bakery.

The Greater New Orleans area is full of longtime family businesses. We know that because we at Joe Gambino’s Bakery are one of them! 

We love supporting other local businesses that have stood the test of time, and few have stood that test better than fifth generation New Orleans company, Chisesi Brothers Meat Packing Co.

The company originated at the start of the 20th century, when Philip Chisesi sold chickens, rabbits, ducks and turtles in the French Market. In 1878, Chisesi sailed to New Orleans from his unique Albanian enclave in Sicily. New Orleans, too, had an Albanese center at the time. By 1908, Chisesi opened a saloon and a grocery in the lower French Quarter, where many Sicilians were settling.

But this was just the beginning of the Chisesi family’s journey!

Making meat in New Orleans

Today, it’s ham that Chisesi Brothers is best known for, but that isn’t what started the company. Rather, in the early 1900s, Philip Chisesi focused on distributing a variety of groceries around the Crescent City and chicken was his most popular item. 

Chisesi’s great-grandson — also named Philip — said he remembers coming home from school and cutting up chickens for distribution in the middle of the French Quarter.

In 1953, the company decided to leave the Quarter for more modern facilities at the corner of North Galvez and Lapeyrouse, just down the street from Dooky Chase’s Restaurant. The building was an old ice house with thick brick walls where, in the days before household refrigeration, 100-pound blocks of ice were made. It was perfect for the Chisesi’s growing business, which increasingly required ample cold storage. And it was here that the company began to transform into the Chisesi Brothers meat company we know today.

That Galvez Street move took place at a time when the company was selling an increasing amount of pork products, including other businesses’ hams. By the 1950s, Philip’s father was tinkering around with the idea to smoke their own meats. A neighbor who lived in a trailer behind the warehouse showed the Chisesis how to smoke a ham in a wooden box with wood chips that Philip said could only smoke about six hams at a time.

The iconic Chisesi ham was born!

Philip said the family was also cutting steaks. Between the cutoffs from those steaks and the ham, there was quite a bit of leftover meat piling up the freezer. What to do with it all? The answer is why Chisesi Brothers is now in the sausage making business, as well.

Chisesi ham began to develop its teardrop shape in 1971, the same year Philip’s father died. To honor the loss of such a “very important person” in the family, they decided to call it the “V.I.P. Ham,” which is still the name many locals know the product by today. 

Old-school roots

Developing the ham’s familiar shape took some trial and error. A Chisesi ham consists of two boned-out pieces of trimmed ham. A skilled worker arranges these pieces together crosswise, then places them inside netting. They roll and spin the ham to orient the meat, pressing out the air pockets, and shaping it into its signature appearance before placing it on a rack heading toward the smoker. 

The family experimented with machines to shape the ham, but it never matched the quality they wanted. The result is that every ham is still made by hand.

As ham and house-made sausage joined a growing list of meat products that Chisesi distributed, the company bought additional adjacent so the increasingly elaborate smoking facilities had space to grow. Still it wasn’t enough room as the family was forced to unload trucks in the middle of a busy road. Finally, in 1978, the next generation of Chisesi moved to 2419 Julia Street, in the shadow of the new Superdome.

But Chisesi wasn’t the only ham game in town. For years, they had been in a rivalry with Schott’s, another local, family-run business that had been in operation since 1879. However, in the early 1980s, a fire at their facility just before the holidays made it impossible for Schott’s to fulfill their Christmas ham orders. 

When Chisesi stepped in to fill those orders, some customers said they were pleasantly surprised with what they tasted. Within two years, the Schott company sold the business, including its recipes, to Chisesi. Chisesi Brothers still distributes some of the Schott products including its popular chili meat. 

The 21st century has brought both successes and challenges for the company. During Hurricane Katrina, for example, Chisesi Brothers lost 2.5 Millions pounds of spoiled meat in a single day. Tasked with a major clean-up that even a USDA inspector refused to see, Philip told his sons Nick and Cody that, “The cavalry isn’t coming — we have to do this ourselves.”

That is exactly what they did. Through a Herculean effort, the factory was up and running in time to distribute hams for Thanksgiving that year. 

Nowadays, the factory is in Elmwood, near the Huey P. Long Bridge at 5221 Jefferson Highway. One employee has worked with the company for nearly 60 years! During all of this time the goal is still the same: to produce high quality food products that New Orleanians can be proud of.

Here at Joe Gambino’s Bakery, we can relate to that! And we hope to be saluting the great work of the Chisesi family for another 100 years!

The post This “VIP Ham” is Very Important to New Orleans appeared first on Gambinos Bakery.

We all know there is no shortage of famous New Orleanians. Louis Armstrong and Britney Spears. Reese Witherspoon and the Manning family. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

But are you familiar with Beulah and Albert Ledner? Ironically, for all of the renowned citizens from our region, the most influential mother-son duo in local history might not be known to you by name.

Just because their names don’t roll off your tongue doesn’t mean you aren’t aware of their accomplishments. Trust us, you have probably seen his architecture and tasted her cakes. If you haven’t, you will want to before this article is done.

Like mother…

Nowadays king cake is the cake most closely associated with southeast Louisiana. King cake is fantastic and we at Gambino’s would never try to get in the way of your love for this delicious Carnival season tradition. (In fact, with Mardi Gras coming up, we’re ready to help you satisfy this tradition.)

If there is an issue with king cake, however, it’s that it is only available between January 6 and Fat Tuesday.

Fortunately, Beulah Ledner gave us another decadent Louisiana tradition—one that can be enjoyed year-round. Her doberge cake remains popular nearly a century after she adapted a related European pastry to be more suitable for New Orleans’ hotter and more humid climate. 

Beulah’s doberge is a descendant of the Austro-Hungarian dobos (pronounced DOH-bosh) torte, an elegant, layered pastry invented in late-19th century Budapest. Hungarian chef József C. Dobos created the dobos torte to outlast other cakes in terms of freshness during an age with limited cooling techniques. Its many layers of then-rare buttercream filling, and its hardened caramel top helped prevent Dobos’ Italian-style sponge cake from drying and allowed it to be shipped.

The woman credited with turning the Hungarian chef’s dobos torte into New Orleans’ doberge cake was none other than Beulah Ledner, born in nearby St. Rose in 1894. She is from a family of European-Jewish immigrants. In fact, her grandfather was a respected baker in Germany. 

During the early years of the Great Depression, Beulah supplemented her family’s income by opening a home bakery called Mrs. Charles Ledner’s Superior Home Baking. Her lemon pies were a hit, but it was her version of the Hungarian dobos torte—by then popular among Jewish-American families—that would leave a lasting mark on New Orleans cuisine.

Beulah adapted the cake to a city that was much hotter and more humid than Budapest. She felt local palates would prefer a lighter dessert, so she not only introduced yellow butter cake in place of the dobos torte’s sponge, but she also substituted a lighter custard filling for the original’s heavier buttercream.

Finally, to fit the French heritage of the new cake’s home, Beulah gave the dessert a francophile touch, switching its name from dobos to doberge.

Her intuition proved correct. She earned the title “Doberge Queen of New Orleans” as she made doberge cake for the city’s residents for decades. Her business’s success prompted her to turn her operation into a brick-and-mortar that moved several times before closing in 1946 when Ledner suffered a heart attack. 

Joe Gambino agreed to purchase the bakery and recipes from her, resulting in the founding of our very own Joe Gambino’s Bakery. 

Once Beulah recovered, she opened a new bakery—this time in Jefferson Parish—where she churned out doberge cake until she was 87 years old. That bakery would eventually become Maurice French Pastries

Now, approaching a century since its creation, doberge in the style of Beulah Ledner is still available and popular in southeast Louisiana. Our doberge recipe at Gambino’s is almost exactly what Beulah made so long ago: a light, refreshing alternated with a rich cake. Perfect for New Orlans, just like Beulah Ledner wanted it to be.

…like son.

As mentioned at the start of this article, Beulah isn’t the only Ledner who left a lasting impact on our city. Her son, Albert Ledner, would become one of the city’s most important architects.

Albert was born in 1924. He was actually born in the Bronx in New York, but was living in New Orleans by the time he was nine months old. At Lusher and Fortier schools, he was known as a “tinkerer,” filling notebooks of sketches including those of buildings he admired.

He enrolled in the Tulane University School of Architecture, but left college in his second year to volunteer with the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. Stationed near Tucson, Arizona, Albert would use his time off to visit Taliesin West, one of the schools run by the renowned Mid-Century Modern architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. 

Mid-Century Modern—most famously championed by Lloyd Wright—prioritizes the buyer, allowing the architect to build a home that is personal and unique to the future homeowner. This is in contrast to another popular style of the time, the International Style, which provides design solutions that are said to be indifferent to location, site and climate.

Upon completing his military service, Albert finished his architecture degree at Tulane in 1948. With no money to his name, he traveled to another Frank Lloyd Wright school, Taliesin Spring Green School in Wisconsin, and basically begged his way into a seat. His time at Taliesin had a major impact on his future architecture, and his studies included daily tea exchanging ideas with the influential founder of the school and his wife. 

Lloyd Wright said, “Human houses should not be like boxes, blazing in the sun.” Rather, they should reflect the unique personality of the homeowner. 

It was an incredible time for Albert and he only left the school to return to New Orleans when he was hired to design his first home.

Albert’s imagination and sense of humor often shown through in his designs. For example, in his 1951 project, the Lake Vista neighborhood Kleinschmidt Residence, Albert created light fixtures made of Schlitz beer as a distinguished feature of the home. On Park Island, where many of Albert’s most renowned homes can be found, his Cointreau House included skylights and light fixtures fabricated from Cointreau liqueur bottles. 

In 1961, Albert was asked to design another Park Island home. This time his client was the Sunkel family, a couple who loved to smoke cigarettes and cigars. The result was a home featuring 1,200 amber-colored glass ashtrays on the exterior. The house was later owned by former Mayor Ray Nagin, and curious locals still gawk at the property to this day.

Ledner’s other Park Island home, built in the mid-1960s, is called The Galatoire House and incorporates historical elements collected by the client, Leonie Galatoire, such as a curvilinear curtain of windows (installed, both, upside down and right side up) salvaged from an 1866 convent. 

John P. Klingman, a professor of architecture at Tulane University, told the New York Times that Ledner “was one of the first people, not just in New Orleans but around the country, to incorporate historic elements in such unusual ways in a modern project.”

This is just a small sampling of the stunning residences built by Albert. His projects were not always residential, however, and they weren’t even always local. He began designing buildings for the National Maritime Union in both New Orleans and New York City.

His work still grabs the attention of passersby in Manhattan. Three of his buildings in the New York City borough include hundreds of windows suggestive of portholes, intended to be fitting for a hiring hall of maritime sailors. One such building is at 346 West 17th Street. Another, on Ninth Avenue between 16th and 17th Streets, is said to look like a pizza box with porthole windows.

“Designing for Life: The Modernist Architecture of Albert C. Ledner” is a documentary about Ledner’s incredible contribution to American architecture. He passed away in 2017, but his legacy will live on as long as the buildings he designed still stand; just as his mother’s legacy will continue as long as New Orleanians continue to enjoy her delicious cake.

If we have anything to do with it, that will be for generations to come!

The post New Orleans’ most famous mother-son duo continue to spread joy appeared first on Gambinos Bakery.

Welcome to the second installment of our two-part series on all of the American presidents that have visited New Orleans. It turns out there have been a lot of them!

In Part 1, we traced our way from the start of our country all the way to an exciting visit from President John F. Kennedy. In this post, we’ll go from his predecessor to our modern-day leaders of the Executive Branch.

Lyndon B. Johnson

America’s 36th president visited the Crescent City twice. The first was for a campaign fundraising gala in October 1964 at The Jung Hotel and Residences on Canal Street.

First opened in 1907, The Jung boasted the city’s first retractable roof. By the middle of the 20th century, the hotel was being advertised as theSouth’s largest convention hotel in the heart of America’s most interesting city. President Johnson’s $100 per person gala was also interesting. It was held just a few months after the passage of The Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

At this point in history, the southern states had largely leaned in favor of the Democratic Party. However, many Democratic southern voters were upset with the passage of The Civil Rights Act. Johnson came to New Orleans to defend himself. Here is what he said to local party leaders at The Jung:  

“We have a Constitution and we have a Bill of Rights, and we have the law of the land, and two-thirds of the Democrats in the Senate voted for it and three-fourths of the Republicans. I signed it, and I am going to enforce it, and I am going to observe it, and I think any man that is worthy of the high office of President is going to do the same.”

Johnson won the election, but he lost Louisiana—a state in a region that had overwhelmingly voted for Democrats for the century following the Civil War. He might not have realized it then, but that stronghold was now lost. This proved to be a major turning point in American politics.

His next Presidential visit—less than a year later—was an unexpected one. It was September 10, 1965 and Hurricane Betsy made landfall the night before, killing 81 residents and requiring the evacuation of 250,000 more. Russell Long, the son of Huey P. Long called President Johnson and convinced him that making a presidential visit wouldn’t just be the right thing to do, but that it would also help his reelection aspirations.

LBJ listened. Less than 24 hours after Betsy made landfall, the President was in New Orleans. After looking at the flooded Lower Ninth Ward from a bridge over the Industrial Canal, he went to George Washington High School on St. Claude Avenue (which was later renamed “Richard Drew Elementary School,” and is now called Arise Academy). 

Arriving at night, the President went to the high school, which was serving as a de facto shelter for victims, and was met with cries of despair from citizens who had lost their homes. They didn’t know he was there and none of them could see his face in the dark, so—as if sitting around a campfire telling ghost stories—he shined a flashlight on himself and yelled, “This is your President! I’m here to help you!”

Richard Nixon

Unfortunately for Johnson, by the time his next election campaign rolled around, he had become an unpopular president. That, combined with health reasons, caused him to withdraw his reelection bid.

Richard Nixon won in 1968 and he was scheduled to speak at the Royal Orleans Hotel on St. Louis Street in the French Quarter on August 14, 1970. The Royal Orleans was at the same location as the former Maspero Exchange and St. Louis Exchange Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln had visited more than 100 years earlier. Today it’s called the Omni Royal Hotel, home to the Rib Room bar and restaurant. 

The day Nixon spoke was the 25th anniversary of the Japanese surrender in World War II, and the President mentioned that. But he also spoke positively about his rival political party:

“It happens that the entire delegation from the State of Louisiana are members of the Democratic Party. I happen to be in the other party. But I want to say this: that when I look at the record of the members of the delegation from the State of Louisiana, whether they be in the House or the Senate, that when it comes to the great issue of building a strong United States and those policies that will build a just peace, they do not think of themselves as Democrats, but as Americans first, and that is the kind of policy that we need in America today.”

A few years later, President Nixon was back in New Orleans. He was there to speak at the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) National Convention, at a location called “Rivergate.” (Rivergate, of course, sounded a whole lot like Watergate, and apparently was a joke a lot of people were making at the time.)

Rivergate was a beautiful, unique building that stood where Harrah’s Casino now does. Before arriving, however, the President’s motorcade would parade down Canal Street, toward the river.

This Washington Post article, below, documents there were no less than four assassination plots on Nixon that authorities were investigating in advance of the President’s arrival. These involved the pursuit of a Black Liberation Army cell and suspected wire tappings.

Though, Louis Boasberg, a novelty store owner at the time, admitted, “Everybody in New Orleans thinks their phones are tapped all the time.”

The author of the article writes, “For a city that seems to thrive itself on conspiracies, real or imagined, New Orleans may have outdone itself during the three weeks before President Nixon’s visit here on Aug. 20.”

Nixon fortunately arrived at his speech safely, accepting the Peace Award from the Ladies Auxiliary. He spoke about peace during his speech, although the Vietnam and Cold wars unfortunately continued on.

Gerald Ford

Next was President Gerald Ford. He was not in office very long, but his visit to the Avron B. Fogelman Arena in Devlin Fieldhouse at Tulane University on April 23, 1975 was an important one.

Ford became the first President to acknowledge that America’s involvement in the Vietnam War was over. He took a page from New Orleans history to show how his policy would improve our standing abroad, as well as our self-esteem at home:

“On January 8, 1815, a monumental American victory was achieved here – the Battle of New Orleans. Louisiana has been a State for less than three years, but outnumbered Americans innovated, outnumbered Americans used the tactics of the frontier, to defeat a veteran British force trained in the strategy of the Napoleonic wars.

“We, as a Nation, had suffered humiliation and a measure of defeat in the War of 1812. Our national capital in Washington had been captured and burned. So the illustrious victory in the Battle of New Orleans was a powerful restorative to our national pride.

“Yet, the victory at New Orleans actually took place two weeks after the signing of the Armistice in Europe. Thousands died although a peace had been negotiated. The combatants had not gotten the word, yet the epic struggle nevertheless restored America’s pride.

“Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam, but it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned.”

The crowd erupted in appreciation.

Jimmy Carter

On October 21, 1980, President Jimmy Carter—facing a struggling economy, the Iran Hostage Crisis, severe fuel shortages, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—arrived in Louisiana, his reelection in serious jeopardy just a few weeks before voters would go to the polls to decide between him and Governor Ronald Reagan. Carter’s motorcade made its way to Jackson Square, where he spoke that evening in front of a packed crowd at about 7:20pm.

The hotel is still grand as it was when Carter arrived: extravagant chandeliers, marble-white columns, and ornate floors made of blue, yellow, red and cream tiles. But much else is different. The Bayou Room and the Imperial Ballroom, both used during the visit, have since been converted into guest rooms on the second floor.

Any other evidence of President Carter’s visit had been destroyed by Hurricane Katrina more than two decades later.

Carter’s speech that night was proof that Louisiana was still a battleground. Eisenhower admitted the state was not within reach for Democrats in the 1950s, and LBJ conceded that changed with his Civil Rights Act of 1964. Now, Carter was fighting to keep his Democratic relevant in a quickly-shifting region.

His words, however, failed. A few weeks later, Reagan squashed Carter in the general election, 489 electoral votes to 49. Every state in the Deep South, with the lone exception of Carter’s home state of Georgia, voted Republican.

Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush’s Republic National Convention

Reagan came to New Orleans, Louisiana now considered a swing state, several times during his Presidency. His first trip was during his inaugural year as President, on September 28, 1981, to speak at the Annual Meeting of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. He spoke at the same Rivergate Convention Center that Nixon spoke at a decade earlier.

Reagan was characteristically charismatic:

It’s a privilege to stand here today with those who command the front lines in America’s battle for public order. You have a tough job and a dangerous one. Believe me, I know. I mean no irreverence when I mention that I once played a sheriff on TV who thought he could do the job without a gun. I was dead in the first 27 minutes of the show.

He would visit again in ’82, ’83 and ’86, but his last trip—for the Republican National Convention in 1988—was the most memorable.

The Convention, held in the Superdome, hosted five past, current, and future Presidents: Ford, Reagan, H.W. Bush, W. Bush, and even Donald Trump.

This nola.com article about the convention has some amazing descriptions of the lengths the city went through to put our best foot forward:

“It was a beautiful thing – and it took considerable time and effort to pull that beautiful thing together, not to mention millions of dollars. But, despite a local economy that was still hurting from plummeting energy prices and the subsequent bottoming out of the state’s oil industry, New Orleans did its darndest to put its best foot forward. And, following months of preparation, it showed. Political touches were everywhere around town, with the Crescent City trading its traditional purple, green and gold for red, white and blue.

“Flowers in those patriotic colors were planted just off Interstate 10 in Metairie to form a blooming GOP pachyderm. A giant American flag was painted – by Orleans Parish Prison inmates – on the grass in front of the New Orleans Museum of Art. A Dixieland jazz band and a retinue of star-spangled greeters met delegates as they stepped off their planes at New Orleans International Airport, thrusting Hurricanes from Pat O’Brien’s into their waiting hands.”

The deadpan bodyguard to Maine’s governor said, “Not enough restaurants. Food’s terrible. People are really unfriendly. There’s just not enough enthusiasm in this town,” before breaking out in laughter: “It’s incredible. What an effort this must have been.”

Reagan flew into the airbase at Belle Chasse and his motorcade rode him over the not-yet-opened twinspan bridge that would later be the Crescent City Connection. He gave his speech on the first night, which at times was more like a stand-up routine. Joking about his age, the President said, “You know, I always feel at home here in Louisiana because, you know, I’m the fella that talked Tom Jefferson into buying it.”

Vice-President (and presumptive Presidential nominee) Bush arrived for the third day of the Convention and still hadn’t announced who his running mate would be. He arrived at the same Belle Chasse airbase Reagan had, but opted to take a riverboat across the Mississippi to Spanish Plaza.

But running mates and pageantry weren’t the only drama. Prominent local newsman, WWL-TV’s Garland Robinette, was detained by security for trying to sneak a handgun into the convention in his briefcase. (Harkens back to the attempted Nixon assassination in New Orleans years earlier.)

This is also the Convention when Vice-President Bush swore, “Read my lips – no new taxes!” as well as when he promised, famously and eloquently, to “keep America moving forward, always forward—for a better America, for an endless enduring dream and a thousand points of light.”

The Modern Presidency in New Orleans

Many have forgotten – or never knew – that President Bill Clinton’s very first speech outside of Washington was in New Orleans. He carried the State in the 1992 and 1996 elections, the last Democrat to do so in a Presidential election.

A common belief is that the moment that sank President George W. Bush’s presidency was when he flew over—instead of landing in—New Orleans during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

A little more than two weeks after the storm, though, Bush arrived in a mostly-evacuated city to give a nationally televised speech about the state of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and the steps that had been taken to save it. At one point he looks into the camera and said, “There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans.”

Barack Obama learned from the mistakes of his predecessor and visited a recovering New Orleans early and often. During his Presidency, he visited our city no less than four times. President Obama’s first visit was October 15, 2009, when he visited Dr. King Charter School in the Lower Ninth Ward and spoke at the University of New Orleans.

Obama also learned from his predecessor when he went to Dooky Chase’s to eat during his primary battle with Hillary Clinton in 2008.  In an unforgivable snafu, President Obama put hot sauce on the gumbo Leah Chase prepared for him. She reprimanded him for it then and even reminded him of it seven years later when he came back in 2015! 

In his two terms as president, Obama also ordered a fried oyster poboy with fried pickles from Parkway Bakery & Tavern (during his first term) and fried chicken at Willie Mae’s Scotch House (during his second).

That visit was on August 27, 2015—ten years after Hurricane Katrina—and the President spoke at the newly-built Andrew P. Sanchez Community Center in the Lower Ninth Ward.  He made jokes about not being able to finish the bread pudding at Willie Mae’s, but then got emotional when he spoke to the crowd of New Orleanians, no longer the scattered refugees President Bush reached out to by television.

So many had come home.  And they were here in front of him that afternoon.  President Obama told the crowd, “You inspire me.”

And the visits haven’t stopped with the two most recent presidents.

President Biden came several times, most notably to discuss his big infrastructure bill and to mourn the victims of this year’s New Year’s terrorist attack. President Trump has also come to the Crescent City, most recently for the Super Bowl. That makes two different sitting presidents in one calendar year. Not bad!

When Thomas Jefferson purchased our port more than two centuries ago, he knew he was purchasing something important. 

So important, that  New Orleans has inspired presidential visitors for years.

Nixon was inspired by our kindness when he said, “This is a good city and it is a warm and friendly, hospitable city. May it always be that way for a President, or for somebody that was nothing, as I was [when I first visited] 29 years ago.”

Ford was inspired by our balance when he told a crowd at Tulane University, “New Orleans is more, as I see it, than weathered bricks and cast iron balconies. It is a state of mind, a melting pot that represents the very, very best of America’s evolution, an example of retention of a very special culture in a progressive environment of modern change.”

Bush was inspired by the thought of losing her, when he said we “can’t imagine an American without New Orleans.”

And Obama was inspired by our resilience. “The people of New Orleans, there is something in you guys that’s just irrepressible,” he said from the lectern. “You guys have a way of making a way out of nowhere. You know the sun comes out after every storm. You’ve got hope.”

The post Every American President That Has Visited New Orleans, Part 2 appeared first on Gambinos Bakery.

When we had the idea to create a blog post about each of the American presidents who have visited New Orleans, we thought we would be mentioning George W. Bush’s post-Katrina address in Jackson Square along with a handful of spots Barack Obama came to eat. 

Boy, did we underestimate the task in front of us! It turns out many, many, many presidents have prioritized a trip to the Big Easy—whether during their presidency, outside of their presidency, or both. 

But it was a slow start. The first president to even acknowledge New Orleans was Thomas Jefferson, the third man to hold the office. He wrote of what was then France’s colony: “There is on the globe one spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy.” He gave this city such importance because he understood the economic and military necessity of us controlling the entirety of the Mississippi River, particularly its connection to the world via its mouth in the Gulf.

When Jefferson authorized the purchase of the region from France in 1803, he began its transformation from a Creole colony to an American city. And, once it became an American city, the American presidents started coming.

Andrew Jackson

Several future Presidents visited here earlier in their lives, sometimes shaping their worldview or helping them gain prominence. Andrew Jackson, for example, became a national hero when he helped repair American pride by resoundlingly defeating the British in the Battle of New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812.

In advance of the battle, it is said that Jackson met with the infamous pirate Jean Lafitte at the St. Louis Exchange (then called the “Maspero Exchange”) where he convinced him to join his cause against the British.

As we’ll soon learn, Jackson wouldn’t be the only president to visit the St. Louis Exchange. (For more about the St. Louis Exchange see our previous blog post.)

Zachary Taylor

Zachary Taylor, or “Old Rough and Ready,” as he was called by the soldiers he led to victory during the Mexican-American War, was the only President to have lived in Louisiana. He resided in Baton Rouge for much of the second quarter of the 19th century and was stationed in New Orleans twice with the army.

Abraham Lincoln

As a teenager, ‘ol Honest Abe captained flatboats down the Mississippi River between 1828 and 1831. New Orleans is the only major deep south city he is said to have visited, and, upon arrival in New Orleans, it is believed Lincoln witnessed his first slave auction—at that same aformentioned French Quarter exchange Andrew Jackson is said to have met with Jean Lafitte.

What he witnessed at these auctions is believed to have shaped the future president’s view on slavery, shaping the direction of our nation.

Ulysses S. Grant

On September 2, 1863, General Grant—feeling celebratory after victories in the South, such as the one at Vicksburg—rode into New Orleans. Unfortunately, after stopping for what was likely a substantial quantity of food and drink, Grant was trampled by his horse. 

“My leg,” he wrote in his memoirs, “was swollen from the knee to the thigh, and the swelling…extended…up to the armpit. The pain was almost beyond endurance.”

The Union general remained in his New Orleans hotel bed for more than a week.

Theodore Roosevelt

On June 7, 1915, six years after his presidency, Teddy Roosevelt visited Louisiana (starting with a brief stop in New Orleans) “under the auspices of the Audubon Society in the hopes of seeing first-hand” what his conservationist policies had accomplished.

Calvin Coolidge (and Herbert Hoover)

President “Silent Cal” Coolidge lived up to his name, choosing to remain invisible rather than visit southeast Louisiana following the horrible 1927 flood.

His absence also showed future presidents the political consequences of such a decision. Instead of going himself, Coolidge sent his Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. Hoover was painted as a hero and savior, and rode that popularity to win the presidency the following year. 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

President FDR arrived in New Orleans by train on April 29, 1937, seemingly making him the first sitting U.S. President to visit the Crescent City.

Roosevelt’s “New Deal” was helping to lift the country out of the Great Depression, and his Works Progress Administration (WPA) put roughly 8.5 million Americans back to work rebuilding the nation. In the 1930s, WPA projects appeared around New Orleans, including many of the stylish buildings and bridges seen in City Park. On this visit, the President came to town to be honored at the dedication of the park’s Roosevelt Mall.

Also on this stay, FDR took part in what would become one of the most famous anecdotes in our city’s political lore. He went to dinner with Louisiana Governor Richard Leche (who Roosevelt’s Justice department would eventually send to prison, but not because of this dinner), New Orleans Mayor Robert Maestri, and others. Mayor Maestri was not known for his eloquence, and advisers implored him to say as little as possible during the meal.

The dinner was at Antoine’s Restaurant, which, established in the French Quarter in 1840, is the country’s oldest family-run restaurant. In the late-19th century, the restaurant invented its most famous dish, Oysters Rockefeller—named for the wealthy Rockefeller family because of the “richness” of the green, herbaceous sauce.

When the oysters were brought to the table, Mayor Maestri—so eager to please—was unable to contain himself. “How do ya like dem ersters, Mr. President?!” he blurted in his thick, unrefined local accent to a startled Roosevelt. The dignitaries at the table rolled their eyes and a legendary tale was born.

Through the years, Antoine’s has been a common stop for several former presidents, as well. Presidents Carter, H.W. Bush, and Clinton all visited here after their terms in office were complete.

FDR Returns…Under the Cloud of War

On September 29, 1942, FDR was back, but this time the President wasn’t here to eat oysters and visit parks. He was here to view the nation’s war machine. A year after the United States entered WWII, Roosevelt was on a cross-country tour of America’s defense systems.

FDR was here to meet Andrew Jackson Higgins, the man who invented the Higgins boats, whose design allowed troops to land on beaches without natural harbors, and who General Eisenhower would later call, “the man who won the war for us.” 

The President toured the Higgins Industries plant near City Park in a convertible. The company’s band played music for the President, and Higgins yelled for workers to give “the world’s greatest man three cheers.” Once they did, he hollered at them again to “show how fast you can get back to work!”

As Vice-President, Truman also visited the plant. It was at factories like this one, around New Orleans, that Higgins’ workers made 29,000 of his vessels. It was these ships that carried our troops onto the beaches of Normandy and mainland Europe on D-Day.

Though the Higgins Industries plant no longer exists, one can still find a plaque on City Park Avenue commemorating the factory and its role in the war effort.

Today, the space is occupied by Delgado Community College, whose graduates Higgins lauded as helping to secure an Allied victory.

Dwight Eisenhower

As a young military officer, Eisenhower spent time in central Louisiana, and he came to New Orleans in 1952 as the Republican nominee for President. But, on October 17, 1953, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, Eisenhower visited our city for the first time as Commander-in-chief.

That October morning, he spoke in Jackson Square of how unique the purchase of Louisiana from the French truly was:

“We are observing the anniversary of an act which, though born of other nations’ conflicts, involved the death of not a single American soldier. It was, for the United States, an act of peace. It was also an act of vision and of daring.

“It was daring for a new-born nation, lacking all modern communications making for unity, to venture into a huge, unexplored area of unknown natural hazards and little-known inhabitants. It was daring for such a nation to accept so heavy a debt as this unique purchase imposed upon it. It was daring for our two negotiators in Paris–Livingston and Monroe–to decide to accept Napoleon’s surprising offer without fear of repudiation by their national leaders separated from them by the breadth of an ocean. It was daring for our President, Thomas Jefferson, to support their decision instantly and to face squarely the opposition not only of foreign powers but of political critics of great passion and small vision.”

Eisenhower’s speech, which focused on the importance of peace, international trade, and friendly relations with other nations, took place at Jackson Square at 11:52am.

But he wasn’t done yet. Ike gave one more speech that day—somehow less than one hour later—at Moisant Airport.

Moisant Airport would become New Orleans International in 1961, and then renamed Louis Armstrong International Airport in 2001. That is why, to the confusion of many in the present-day, our airport’s code is MSY (short for Moisant Stock Yards).

John F. Kennedy

On May 4, 1962, a very locally popular John F. Kennedy became the first President in nearly a decade to visit New Orleans. He made a stop at Uptown’s Nashville Wharf to talk to a crowd of 15,000 about the Port and trade expansion (“Trade or fade!”), before his open-topped motorcade made its way down St. Charles Avenue.

As Camelot drove by, the street was packed with schoolchildren and onlookers of all kinds. Marching bands filled the avenue with music, and one bandmember said that “when the president passed by, our band director was so excited he ran to the street leaving the band to play on its own.”

Author, Errol LaBorde wrote, “For a city used to seeing float-filled Carnival parades and getting beads in return, waiting for the president offered comparatively little in exchange, although it did take time away from being in class and it did provide a brush with history. All in all, not a bad deal.”

Kennedy ended his ride at City Hall where he attempted to speak to a massive crowd, though there were electronics issues to overcome. In his six-minute speech, he accepted an honorary citizenship and key to the city from Mayor Schiro, and then gave a pep talk, advising locals to prepare themselves to take advantage of what would be billions of dollars in federal investment to the Gulf Coast as part of the emerging space race. (As we wrote about in this blog post, it was an opportunity New Orleans most definitely took advantage of.)

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With that visit by President Kennedy, we will conclude Part 1 of our two-part series on U.S. presidential visits to New Orleans. And Part 2 will be jam-packed, because nowadays, a president can’t serve their four-year term without a visit to the Big Easy!

The post Every American President That Has Visited New Orleans, Part 1 appeared first on Gambinos Bakery.

In recent years, countless movies have been filmed in the Greater New Orleans Area. That is  great news, as it creates jobs and is a boon for the local economy. 

While many of those films may have been shot in the Crescent City, you wouldn’t necessarily know it when watching them on the big screen. That is because the setting is kept ambiguous, or—in some cases—New Orleans is a stand-in for some other location. 

In other cases, however, New Orleans is essentially a character in the movie, and elements of our Big Easy help support the plot.  These are the kinds of movies that were considered for this list.

So, without further ado and in no particular order, here are what we consider to be 14 of the very best films to ever feature our special city.

Angel Heart

Our list begins with the story of a private detective, Harry Angel, played by Mickey Rourke. He is contracted by Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro) to track down iconic singer Johnny Favorite. The hunt for Favorite takes Angel to New Orleans, where it seems anyone who gives the detective useful information meets a horrific end.

This 1987 film is part supernatural, part gumshoe detective flick, and part psychological thriller. Roger Ebert gave it 3.5 out of 4 stars and it’s still a bit of a cult favorite today!

The Big Easy

1987 must have been an incredible year for New Orleans-set movies because The Big Easy was also filmed that year!

This colorful drama takes place in the midst of a gang conflict nearing the boiling point. The main plot centers around the developing relationship between a young police lieutenant and an idealistic female district attorney. She is not impressed with the corruption in the cop’s unit. (“This is New Orleans, darlin,’” he tells her. “Folks have a certain way of doin’ things down here!”) Still, that doesn’t stop sparks from flying. Ebert gives it a perfect 4 out of 4 stars!

Cat People

Now for something completely different…

Irena Gallier travels from her home in Canada down to New Orleans to reconnect with her brother, Paul. Straightforward enough, except that Irena and Paul are descendants of ancient cat people who transform into black panthers…when sexually aroused.

This 1982 movie is weird, sexy and has plenty of panther maulings. It’s also a lot of fun.

The Cincinnati Kid

Eric Stoner is an up-and-coming Depression-era poker player from New Orleans, curiously nicknamed “The Cincinnati Kid.”

To be the best, you’ve gotta beat the best, which is why Stoner challenges Lancey “The Man” Howard to a game. “The Man,” who has a nickname that actually makes sense, is widely considered the best poker player around. But, when Stoner learns the game is being fixed in his favor, he rejects the help and tries to beat the champ on his own merits.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) was born in New Orleans in 1918 (and the city looks especially beautiful in this 2008 movie). Benjamin was no ordinary boy. He was born as an elderly man and he ages in reverse. Our protagonist goes on a series of incredible adventures over the course of his life, but the one constant is his relationship with Daisy Fuller (Cate Blanchett). She was born around the same time as Benjamin, but ages in the more traditional forward manner.

Down by Law

There is no shortage of New Orleanians who will happily discuss their love this black-and-white, independent 1986 film. The story centers around three men arrested in New Orleans and placed in the same cell. While the trio didn’t know one another before their crimes, they eventually plan a prison escape together.

While “Down by Law” is in the drama/crime genre, this movie focuses more on the evolving relationships of the convicts, rather than on the mechanics of the actual escape.

Girls Trip

If you don’t yet know who the Flossy Posse is, you are in for a treat!“

“Girls Trip” is a 2017 comedy about four best friends who have grown apart over the years. But don’t worry—they are reuniting. And they’re doing it at Essence Fest right here in New Orleans! What starts off as a work trip turns into a vacation after one member of the posse receives some devastating news.

Hard Target

If Jean-Claude Van Damme hasn’t filmed a movie in your city, then your city is second-rate. In this 1993 action-thriller, Van Damme plays Chance Boudreaux, an out-of-work Cajun sailor skilled in martial arts. He soon finds employment protecting a young woman, Natasha Binder, as she tries to find her nomadic father—a Vietnam veteran believed to be in New Orleans. Easy enough, until they run into a sinister group of wealthy men who hunt the homeless for sport.

Will Chance Boudreaux save the day? You’ve got to watch this (van) damn good movie to find out.

Interview with the Vampire

This 1994 film was adapted from a 1976 novel by New Orleans author, Anne Rice. It has an all-star cast, and shooting primarily taking place in and around the Crescent City. “Interview with the Vampire” is the story of an 18th-century lord (Brad Pitt) who tells his past to a biographer, played by Christian Slater.

Pitt’s character, Louis, explains how he was convinced to turn to immortality by Tom Cruise (well, technically, the vampire Tom Cruise portrays). Kirsten Dunst plays a young vampire girl who widens the conflict between Pitt and Cruise, and Antonio Banderas is in the movie, as well. It was nominated for a pair of Oscars and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.

JFK

Directed by Oliver Stone, “JFK” chronicles the Jim Garrison-led investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Garrison is a New Orleans district attorney played by Kevin Costner. The movie was nominated for eight Oscars in 1991, including for Best Picture and Best Director.
It’s one of the most successful New Orleans-centered movies ever made and its themes call into question how much we’re able to trust our government in times of crisis. It’s certainly worth a watch!

King Creole

The trailer of this 1958 movie describes it best: Elvis Presley plays the “hard-loving, hard-hitting” Danny Fisher, who is singing his way to stardom from the “gutters of lusty, brawling New Orleans!” As Fisher’s star rises, a club owner tries to gain control of him with threats, as well as the charms of his sometimes-girlfriend.

Presley fondly reported that, of all the characters he portrayed, the role of Danny Fisher in “King Creole” was his favorite.

Panic in the Streets

Not only was this movie from 1950 filmed exclusively in New Orleans (with numerous New Orleanians playing a variety of roles), its subject matter garnered the film a second wind of notoriety in 2020.

Dr. Clint Reed supervises the autopsy of an unknown man and discovers he died of the contagious pneumonic plague. Reed and his wife have 48 hours to determine where the mysterious man came from and who he had contact with before New Orleans is consumed by an epidemic.

The Princess and the Frog

This list wouldn’t be complete without New Orleans’ very own Disney movie.

Tiana dreams of opening the finest restaurant in the Crescent City (who hasn’t?!), but her dream takes a detour when she meets a frog claiming to be Prince Naveen of Maldonia. What’s going to happen?

We won’t spoil it for you, but we can say this movie has trumpet-playing alligators, Cajun fireflies, a voodoo witch doctor and all our favorite local foods. Whether you have kids or not, watching your city get the Disney treatment is a lot of fun.

Runaway Jury

After a workplace shooting in New Orleans, a trial against the gun’s manufacturer pits a lawyer played by Dustin Hoffman against a jury consultant played by Gene Hackman. Hackman’s shady character uses illegal means to stack the jury on the side of the gun company, so Hoffman tries to beat him at his own game. 

Jurors played by John Cusack and Rachel Weisz convince both sides they can sway the jury, triggering a thrilling game of cat and mouse!

A Streetcar Named Desire

Let’s end this list with a classic. 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and 4 out of 4 stars by Roger Ebert, the 1951 film adaption of Tennessee Williams’ play, “A Streetcar Named Desire” is almost universally loved.

Troubled former schoolteacher Blanche Dubois (Vivien Leigh) comes to New Orleans to stay with her sister, Stella Kowalski, and Stella’s husband, Stanley (famously played by Marlon Brando). The Kowalskis have a passionate, volatile relationship, and Blanche’s presence shifts the balance for the worst. One loud word: “STELLLLAAA!”

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That is our list of 14 of our favorite New Orleans-centric movies. Do you have a favorite, either on this list or otherwise?

The post The 14 best movies set in New Orleans appeared first on Gambinos Bakery.

In our most recent blog post, we began exploring the small, mysterious street in the French Quarter that—at various points in history—has gone by Exchange Place, Exchange Alley, and Exchange Passage. We mentioned how the tiny thoroughfare ran between two exchanges (which explains where the name came from).

Exchanges were large, opulent hotels where travelers stayed and locals conducted business. They included bars, restaurants, libraries, and much more.

On one end of the alleyway, near Canal Street, was the Mercantile Exchange, which was built in 1835 with the support of the city’s growing Anglo American contingent that began arriving in New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. These new citizens were in a tug of war for power with the city’s Creole population and they hoped the building of this exchange in the French Quarter would help to shift influence in their direction.

But, as mentioned, there was a second Exchange in the area. That building is where our focus is about to shift.

Approaching an icon

In our last post, we had reached where Exchange Place runs into the Louisiana Supreme Court building at Conti Street. 

The courthouse wasn’t completed until 1910. This means that, for nearly 80 years before that, Exchange Place actually ran one more block to St. Louis Street.

Walk around the massive court building to pick up where Exchange Place would have been on the next street, where it intersects with St. Louis. Here—according to John Chase’s book, “Frenchmen, Desire, Goodchildren: … and Other Streets of New Orleans”—is where pedestrians would have encountered the street’s most vibrant “attractions.”

The author explains that, at this corner, a man hawked “a strange new-fangled beverage called beer,” and that for quite some time, this was the only place in New Orleans to get it!

This corner of Exchange Passage and St. Louis Street also hosted Charles Hicks’ cockpit, where he famously “staged hotly contested cockfights.”

But local historian, Richard Campanella, in an article he wrote, describes the main attraction and the second exchange in our story:

“One of the best-known exchanges in the early 1800s had so many uses and owners that just about everyone referred to it differently. Located at what is now 501 Chartres, the enterprise started as Tremoulet’s New Exchange Coffee House and became Maspero’s Exchange in 1814, then Elkin’s Exchange after Maspero died in 1822.

“John Hewlett renamed it Hewlett’s Exchange by 1826, although the enterprise also went by the name, Exchange, or New Exchange Coffee House, Hewlett’s Coffee House, or, for Francophones, La Bourse de Hewlett. The two-story corner structure boasted, behind its Venetian privacy screens, a 19-foot-high ceiling, four chandeliers, framed maps and oil paintings (described by one Northerner as “licentious”), wood-and-marble finishing, an enormous bar with French glassware, and billiards and gambling tables upstairs.

“Hewlett’s Exchange buzzed with trilingual auctioning activity for everything from ships to houses to land to sugar kettles to people legally changed hands. The city’s seven auctioneers worked the block on a rotating schedule, every day except Sunday, and it was likely here that a young Abraham Lincoln witnessed a slave auction on his 1828-1831 flatboat visits to New Orleans.”

In 1835, New Orleans made the questionable decision to split into three separate municipalities. This further intensified the rivalry between Anglo and Creole New Orleanians, because now they were competing separately for investment, instead of together as one city. 

To attract those investments, the Anglo-Americans built the St. Charles Hotel—one of greatest American hotels of its time—upriver of Canal Street in 1837. It had all of the one would find in a multi-functional exchange. 

In order to compete, the Creole business community had to respond. That is exactly what they did the following year when they built the St. Louis Hotel—originally called The Exchange Hotel—on this corner of Exchange Passage and St. Louis.

Just like the previous exchanges that existed here (as the Campanella article mentioned), the St. Louis Hotel housed an exchange inside, known simply as “The City Exchange.” 

The hotel was the center of social activities for Creoles and visiting Europeans. It was meant to be a Creole place; a place for aristocrats to eat, drink, make love, and buy and sell commodities. Businessmen of the French Quarter would go to register sales and consummate business here, and it was also the site of many balls and banquets.

Predictably, and unfortunately, this was the site of many kinds of business. Walking into the hotel in the 19th century, one would have seen a large auction block—set under the building’s grand rotunda—where slaves were sold. Those that weren’t sold were held in slave pens around the French Quarter until the next auction. Joseph Le Carpentier was an auctioneer at the exchange and, as an example of how lucrative this business could be, in 1840, he sold slaves at a value equivalent to what would have been more than $1.5 million in 2015 dollars.

The hotel remained a central hub of life and business until it was captured by Union soldiers in 1862. For the remainder of the Civil War it served as a Union hospital, destroying much of its grandeur and elegance. 

From 1865 until 1867, during Reconstruction, the building was sold to the state of Louisiana and became its de facto capital. After Reconstruction, the building was sold from one owner to the next, serving either as a hotel or a bank, until the hurricane of 1915 left it in a heap of rubble.

Over the years, Exchange Place had accrued an impressive maze of bars and a not-so-impressive reputation. A recurring joke was that the street had gotten its name because men who frequented them were exchanging a successful future for a decadent present.

Some New Orleanians, however, were unhappy with the direction of their beloved French Quarter. After much discussion in the city about restoring the historic Quarter’s charm and prominence, one step in that direction was when, in 1960, the hotel on St. Louis Street was finally rebuilt, now as the Royal Orleans. The 20th-century hotel encompassed the same European grand design as the old one, including the “exact drawings of the remaining stone arches … and [the] exact duplicates of the Spanish wrought iron railings” which had once graced the hotel. 

In 1986 Omni Hotels of Dallas, Texas, took over the hotel’s lease and named it the Omni Royal Orleans.

Past and present

The enormous Omni Royal Orleans stretches the entire length of St. Louis Street between Chartres and Royal. Ornate gas lanterns hang from the outer balcony beside slim green columns spaced every few feet. The number of windows and rooms is astounding.

Beginning in the 1830s, Exchange Passage passed directly through the St. Louis Hotel and, conveniently, its bar. In his book, Chase writes that this hotel bar was the finest in the city at the time. He even revealed an innovation that occurred there.

“The real business in the exchanges—the auctioneering,” he wrote, “took place between the hours of noon and three o’clock. There simply wasn’t time to stop at a bar, go home for lunch, and get back to business. The St. Louis Hotel Bar would give free lunch—soups, vegetables, a choice of meats and bread—to any customer who came in for ‘a toddy.’” 

This idea spread throughout New Orleans, and across America, resulting in bars competing for customers through the quality of their free lunch—a practice that lasted all the way until Prohibition.

Today, inside the Omni Royal Orleans, a modern-day hotel bar, Touché Bar, sits to the left of what would have been Exchange Place. You might still be able to order a hot toddy, but you’ll be dismayed to learn it no longer comes with a free lunch.

Taking care of business

From the bar, Exchange Passage would have continued through the hotel and out the back into Improvement Bank (which later became Citizens Bank), and then out of the bank onto Toulouse Street. But, sadly, this path no longer exists.

The best you can do is to exit the bar to Royal Street and walk downriver, parallel with where Exchange Place would have been.

Royal Street is teeming with day-time shoppers and tourists. You can make a right on the next street you run into, Toulouse Street.

Chase writes that continuing on Exchange Passage from Toulouse was tricky, but that historians suggest “surmising businessmen” may have hopped a fence to forge ahead. In the 1840s, there was talk of the First Municipality (the governing authority for the French Quarter when—as  mentioned earlier—the city split into three) buying property and clearing a right-of-way for Exchange Passage to the next street, St. Peter Street. But that never happened, and the alley never achieved more than a dotted line on maps between Toulouse and St. Peter.

Or so we are told…
Walking down Chartres Street, you’ll next reach St. Peter Street. Make a left to where Exchange Place would have run. Look to your left and you will find a small alleyway behind a fence one can imagine would have been the remnants of that dotted line on the map.

Then, look to your right. Here is another alley. Today it is called Cabildo Alley, but it was once certainly the final piece of Exchange Place. It extends one block, from St. Peter Street to Pirates Alley (originally created in 1831 as a path around the St. Louis Cathedral Garden).

The Cabildo, just on the other side of Cabildo Alley, originally had a prison attached to it. Unlike on the previous block, the First Municipality agreed to accommodate a young Exchange Place. The fence of the prison was moved back to make room for this last stretch of road, allowing men to walk directly to the Cabildo’s courthouse, in order to more easily handle business.

No women allowed

You’ll probably need to dodge a ghost tour or two, as well as artists, vacationers, cyclists, and so much more before you can exit the alleys and find your way to Jackson Square.

It’s a lot of work, but maybe not as much as those 19th century businessmen would have had to contend with. Think about it. Walking through buildings? Jumping fences? Maneuvering around prisons?

Why not just walk on Chartres or Royal streets, only half a block on either side?

As with so many questions, Chase has an interesting explanation:

“Chartres and Royal were the two great shopping streets of the First Municipality. Women were there! Women buying bonnets and parasols and lace and calico, etc., etc. Women are wonderful, the men of business reasoned, but they didn’t mix with business. Exchange Passage was a stag street hemmed in by petticoats.”

Fair enough. According to the Daily Picayune newspaper, letters going to the Merchant Exchange post office that were addressed to men were delivered to the Exchange Passage entrance, while mail addressed to women were delivered through the Royal Street side.

Shortly after Prohibition, however, things changed. A reporter for the Item-Tribune surveyed the situation in 1934, during the Great Depression. A barkeep told the journalist this:

“A woman, she was an unusual sight in the alley—everyone used to leave the bar and go outside and look at her when one passed. But…the way it is now, there’s proportionally as many women as men who come in at night to take a little quiet glass of beer or something stronger.

“We used to be the poor man’s club, but now we’re the poor woman’s club, too, and there ain’t too many rich men or women’s clubs no more. Not where you can get ten ounces for a nickel, no sir.”

Out of favor

Eventually these big, multi-purpose exchanges fell out of favor. That, in part, had to do with the struggles of the South’s economy during and after the Civil War.

But their decline was also due to their success. As the economy rebounded, many industries decided they wanted their own exchange, rather than being part of more general establishments. The Cotton Exchange was established in 1871. The Produce Exchange was founded in 1880. The Louisiana Sugar Exchange in 1883. And a Stock Exchange in 1906. These are just a few of many local examples.

As the 20th century progressed, the city would invest quite a bit of money to make Exchange Place less a place for locals to drink and more a place for tourists to shop. But taking a walk down this narrow street on a weekday afternoon was a reminder of the incredible commercial success—but also the growing challenges—of 19th century New Orleans.

The post Exchange Passage: The extraordinary French Quarter street you might not even know is there, Part 2 appeared first on Gambinos Bakery.