Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans (34 page)

Destruction and Renovation of the Cabildo

On Wednesday, May 11, 1988, at 4:00 p.m., a fire broke out in the historic Cabildo and raged for ninety minutes, bringing down the cupola and the Mansard roof and damaging a storehouse of historic furniture on the third floor. Artifacts on the lower floors were seriously water-damaged. New Orleanians and tourists watched as the fire department’s hoses sprayed from all directions and as firemen and volunteers made repeated trips into the building to salvage art works. A possible cause of the fire was a spark from a welder’s torch during repairs to the roof gutters. The St. Louis Cathedral next door remained unharmed.

Six years and $8 million later, on Sunday, February 27, 1994, New Orleanians saw the renovated building, improvements, and new exhibits for the first time. James F. Sefcik, director of the
Louisiana State Museum,
said that the fire had given them the opportunity to present the comprehensive exhibition on the history of Louisiana that he already had in mind. The renovated building now includes carefully planned exhibits telling the story of Louisiana from the European explorers in 1877, with emphasis on the American Indians, black slaves, and free people of color, instead of only the Spanish, French, and Anglo-Americans who controlled their politics.

Cuisine

Because of the variety of seafood and vegetables in and around New Orleans, much experimenting has been done with cooking, resulting in such delicacies as stuffed merlitons, eggplants, and artichokes, as well as soups, sauces, stews, gumbos, and étouffés prepared with Creole tomatoes, onions, garlic, and green peppers. Red beans and rice is also a mainstay in the New Orleans family.

The colonial French learned from the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians how to use roots and herbs in their cooking, such as sassafras in their gumbos and chicory in their coffee. The Acadians brought with them their one-pot dishes, which started with a roux, a gravy made with browned flour. In the 1890s, the Italians came with their highly seasoned dishes.

Some of the oldest French restaurants in the Vieux Carré are still in operation today:
Antoine’s
(opened in 1840),
Galatoire’s
(1905),
Arnaud’s
(1918), and
Broussard’s
(1920). Others of equal stature are
Brennan’s,
Commander’s Palace, Delmonico’s, Mosca’s, Tujaque’s,
and
Dooky Chase’s.

Reflecting the additions to our population, many ethnic restaurants are operating successfully in New Orleans today, such as those that feature Korean, Japanese, Greek, Cuban, Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, and Turkish cuisines, to name a few.

The Music of New Orleans

The Crescent City is known for jazz because of the pioneers such as
Buddy Bolden, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong,
and
Jelly Roll Morton.
Jazz is still nurtured by musicians such as Danny Barker, the Humphrey brothers, Dr. Michael White, and many others. It’s also being played by brass bands such as the Dirty Dozen and Rebirth. New Orleans boasts modern jazz players such as Red Tyler and Clarence Ford.

Ellis Marsalis
came back to New Orleans in 1989 to a prestigious professional post at the University of New Orleans. His sons
Wynton, Branford, Jason,
and
Delfeayo
are enjoying well-deserved success on an international scale. The same may be said for the multi-talented singer-pianist-actor,
Harry Connick Jr.

Al Hirt, Pete Fountain,
and
Ronnie Kole
are New Orleans’s best-known jazz artists. Pete Fountain’s Club at the Hilton Hotel is a must for any visitor. A unique establishment for the jazz purist is
Preservation Hall
at 726 St. Peter Street, where one can enjoy the music for a minimal fee without the usual club-type atmosphere and the cost of food and drinks.

Pete Fountain, a New Orleans native, one of the nation’s greatest jazz artists.

Rhythm and blues became an art form in the fifties, when hometown hero
Fats Domino
topped the national charts. Another R&B artist was the late
Professor Longhair (Roeland Byrd),
whose Afro-Cuban rumba style bore evidence of the New Orleans connection to Caribbean culture. An artist who started in the fifties and is still a songwriter, producer, pianist, and vocalist is
Allen Toussaint,
one of the creators of New Orleans rhythm and blues. The R&B scene flourishes with stars still in great form, such as
Irma Thomas, Frankie Ford,
and
Clarence “Frogman” Henry.

The Grammy-winning
Neville Brothers
blend Louisiana pop tradition and rock energy. Both the Neville brothers and
Dr. John (Mac Rebennack)
have taken New Orleans R&B out to the world. Other R&B artists include Johnny Adams, Walter “Wolfman” Washington, and the late Snooks Eaglin, who passed in 2009. Some popular R&B nightclubs include
Tipitina’s,
the
Maple Leaf Bar,
and the
House of Blues,
to name only a few of the jazz venues in the city.

Rock and Roll is alive and well as played by the Radiators, Dash Rip Rock, and the House Levelers at places such as Jimmy’s, the Carrollton Station, and Rock ’N Bowl.

Cajun music and zydeco, its African-American Creole counterpart, are unique to the local scene. This music can be heard at restaurants such as Mulate’s and Michael’s.

The Latin music scene still thrives in the music of Ruben “Mr. Salsa” Gonzales, Hector Gallardo, and the Iguanas.

City Life

New Orleans is a fun-loving city where the party never ends. The taverns in the French Quarter are alive with laughter, music, and fun. People fill the streets, some of which are now pedestrian malls. They shop, sightsee, and enjoy the atmosphere as music spills out of the many establishments. Panoramic views of the city and river can been seen from the high-rise buildings, including the
Marriott Hotel
and the many eating places in the
Jackson Brewery
and the
Millhouse.

Hurricane Katrina

A history of New Orleans would not be complete without a word about Hurricane Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina
hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005, and was the costliest natural disaster to hit the United States at somewhere between $91 billion to $121 billion in damage. While the numbers vary from
source to source, one thing is clear: the numbers are high. Katrina is also one of the top five deadliest hurricanes, causing 1,577 casualties in
the storm and post-storm flooding of eighty percent of the city.

On Sunday, August 28, Mayor Nagin announced the first city-wide mandatory evacuation, telling residents that “this was the storm we’ve been waiting for . . . the
big
one.” By Sunday evening, ninety-five percent of the city had been evacuated. Mayor Nagin announced that the Superdome was designated to be a refuge of last resort for people not able to evacuate the city. The Superdome sustained significant damage, but it provided food and water to twenty-six thousand people for several days after the hurricane hit the city.

The storm surge caused by Hurricane Katrina caused fifty-three different levee breaches in and around the city, submerging eighty percent of the city in flood waters. The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO), a 660-foot-wide canal cut through the wetlands, designed to provide a shortcut from New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico to benefit the oil industry, provided a type of funnel for the storm surge, making it more deadly as it crashed into the city. Breaches in the MRGO’s levees caused much of the flooding in New Orleans East.

In an analysis of the levee breaches, the American Society of Civil Engineers indicated in their report, dated June 2007, that two-thirds of the flooding was caused by multiple failures in the city’s floodwalls, which were the primary result of system design flaws. The levees are federally funded in New Orleans, and are the responsibility of the US Army Corps of Engineers, whom the ASCE said in their report, “failed to pay sufficient attention to public safety” (Andersen and Hurricane Katrina External Review Panel 2007).

The nation and the world came to the rescue of New Orleans in its hours, days, and months of need, sending money, evacuation relief, building materials, medical help, and helping hands. Today, while rebuilding of private and public structures is ongoing in the city, the citizens of New Orleans continue to rebuild their lives. In the meantime, the Corps of Engineers has repaired and rebuilt the levee system to make it more efficent and successful. As we’ve seen throughout this history, New Orleanians are no strangers to adversity. They have been there and done that and continue on. Surviving Hurricane Katrina is no different. We’ve just built higher and stronger.

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil well exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven men on the platform and injuring seventeen others. The Deepwater Horizon well was drilled on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect. The well was finally capped on July 15, 2010, after spilling approximately 4.9 million barrels of crude oil. The federal government declared the well effectively dead on September 19. It is the largest oil spill in the history of the oil industry, which sparked President Obama to issue a six-month moratorium on drilling the in the Gulf of Mexico.

The effects of the spill on the environment were so disastrous that the White House energy advisor Carol Browner declared the spill “the worst environmental disaster the US has faced” (BBC News 2010).

The effects on the economy of New Orleans and all of Louisiana were enormous, having been felt not only in the oil, tourism, seafood, and restaurant industries, but also in downstream businesses as well, adding to an already devastated economy.

BP has made inroads into cleaning up the oil that spilled in Gulf waters and on the coast from Florida to Texas, but more work needs to be done and the longterm effects on the environment remain to be
seen.

New Orleans, a Study in Contrasts

New Orleans is a study in contrasts: the Vieux Carré, the Garden District, the University area, Carrollton, the revitalized CBD, the old buildings, the Superdome, skyscrapers and high rise hotels, Uptown, Downtown, Back-o’-Town, Riverside, Lakeside, New Orleans East, New Orleans West, New Orleans North embraced by the lake, and New Orleans South hugged by the river.

Built on a site where no city should have ever been built, it went about its business of commerce, defying floods, hurricanes, and epidemics, and it survived. New Orleans has drained half of its living area to make it habitable, has preserved its treasured heritage, and has achieved the rank of biggest port in the United States. Considering the problems it has solved in the past, those of today do not seem insurmountable.

The population is as diverse as ever, as the city continues to draw people of all cultures and backgrounds. The city has all the problems of an urban center but all the charms of an aging metropolis, spiced with a European and Mediterranean flavor.

Volumes can be written about New Orleans as the Queen of the Mississippi, and at the rate she’s progressing, no one will ever write them all. She’s romantic, aristocratic, decorative, scandalous, and old-fashioned, all at the same time. No matter what you call her, one fact is indisputable: once you lose your heart to her, it’s lost forever.

Directions in New Orleans

Where y’at? A very familiar query in New Orleans, uniquely expressed, is also uniquely answered. To explain to a visitor his or her location in the Crescent City invites a longer description than the inquirer anticipates.

First, you must explain where the city is before you can identify where you are in the city. New Orleans, located between a serpentine river and a shallow lake, surrounded by marshes, and cut up into small segments by canals and bayous, defies location because most of its boundaries are liquid. It’s hard to imagine, when arriving by plane, how the landing will be accomplished without pontoons. Once the city location has been established and the visitor understands we are not actually on the Gulf of Mexico, as most maps seem to indicate, we can get to the job at hand.

In New Orleans, a compass is a useless instrument, since the four points needed for reference are not north, south, east, or west, but uptown (upriver), downtown (downriver), lakeside, and riverside. It isn’t that we don’t use north, south, east, and west directives; it’s just that we use them in a different way.

It is a bit disconcerting to the visitor to watch the sunrise over what we call the “West” Bank. It is even more confusing to find oneself at the intersection of South Carrollton Avenue and South Claiborne Avenue, which on a compass are at the northern part of the city. Are these southerners so hostile to the Yankees that they won’t even use the word “north” as a direction? Not quite—they’re just following Old Man River as he winds around the city.

The river is the force that brought the city to life, and thus it is the central location from which all other directions are given.