My Stories of New Orleans

Badges of Allegiance

2007-11-29T21:54:00.000-08:00

I came to New Orleans expecting something different. I expected a new city in a new part of the country to have a different feel from that which I am accustomed. Maybe the locals would talk differently, dress differently, and act differently. What I did not expect, but have noticed time and again, is the level of pride and outpouring of love that the citizens of New Orleans have for this city. People nationwide have hometown pride and large cities everywhere capture the hearts of their inhabitants, but the natives to this city seem different to me. New Orleanians love their home – their neighborhoods, their accents, their food, their city. In observing this I have realized that New Orleans is far from being just a dot on a map somewhere in the state of Louisiana; it is a way of life and state of mind that has to be experienced to be fully understood. The city, founded in 1718 on the banks of the Mississippi River, grew rapidly with the influence of Americans, French, and Creole French cultures. New Orleans is in many ways like its own little city-state, part of the United States but at the same time so different from everywhere else that it can feel like you have stepped into a different world as easily as crossing the causeway over Lake Pontchartrain. Home to Mardi Gras and more parades than you can count, jazz music, streetcars and neutral grounds, heat and humidity, crawfish, muffulettas and po’boys, beignets and chicory coffee, Yats, and the French Quarter, there are so many things that are so unique and so embedded into New Orleans and its people that are so foreign to everywhere else in America. Few American cities have become so fixed in the public mind that tourists and natives alike have very specific ideas of how New Orleans should taste, smell, sound, look, and behave.
The longer I have been in this unconventional old city, the more colorful shotgun houses and Creole cottages I passed by, the more eccentric characters I met, the more I realized that this place was like no other. It was so intriguing to see this day-to-day flow of the city that I wanted to uncover my own personal understanding of New Orleans. I wanted to understand the people who call this city home and what makes them love this place so much. It was obvious that the natives of this city felt an emotional connection to New Orleans, but I didn’t know why it was so important as a place. New Orleans has a whole collection of symbols, lingo, and traditions and I wanted to understand all the mysterious, catchy phrases that I kept seeing around the city. I thought that once I understood one of these things, the others would follow, that somehow deciphering one piece of the city would give me the key to deeper understanding of life here.
As I searched for an easy answer to a convoluted bundle of questions I realized that it was not going to be as simple, straightforward task. The New Orleans culture is hard to define in single words or catchy phrases or appealing emblems. To an outsider the culture is limited to the spicy food, the strong drinks, and the never-ending party, and the French Quarter where all of these things supposedly happen. This New Orleans culture that tourists perceive is a watered down and hyped up version of the real thing. Tourists may see parades, but they may never know about the more un-choreographed second-line parades. Tourists may buy and wear the colorful, iridescent beads sold in the souvenir shops, but they may never know about the Mardi Gras Krewes and the dozens of Carnival Parades that fill the days and nights between January 6 and Ash Wednesday. Tourists may find the New Orleans dish of red beans and rice, but they may never know that this traditional food was served on Mondays because that was “wash day” and a meal was needed that could cook unattended all day using the soup bones from Sunday dinner. Even the French Quarter, the main tourist destination people visit to catch a glimpse of New Orleans, is nothing but the three dimensional shell and ornate façade of a real place that used to exist within the narrow, gridded streets. The two-storied buildings with their iconic wrought iron balconies dripping in tropical greenery are nostalgic, but the businesses below are designed for the tourist trade. People still call the French Quarter home. It is still a living, breathing part of New Orleans. But in the eyes of tourists the appeal is in hoping to experience a part of history with a touch of fantasy of what it must have been like in its prime, perhaps a time and lifestyle only vaguely remembered by older generations.
So much of the true identity of New Orleans is masked behind tourism and what visitors expect their experience to be like in The Big Easy (and by the way, I have never once heard a local call New Orleans by this nickname). The culinary traditions of Creole and Cajun food can give you a taste for the city, the sound of jazz musicians and impromptu parades can give you a voice to the city, the stale odor of Bourbon Street can give you an associative smell to the city - but part of what defines New Orleans culture is captured only in the day to day and permeates through everything else. The houses, the neighborhoods, and the easy-going way of life are the things that give a heartbeat to New Orleans. New Orleans is like a favorite old quilt; well-worn and faded, patched and mended. Each piece of the quilt tells a story from the past, a certain history that has been brought into the present. The quilt pieces all fit together, the mismatched swatches of cloth together form a beautiful whole. The seams of adjacencies are sometimes precise and rigid, other times it takes a second glance to see where one piece ends and the other begins. The city is made up entirely from these slapdash patterned pieces. Each piece of this quilt has its own pattern, and this pattern is the distinct vibe of each neighborhood, the local dialects that vary from street corner to street corner, the favorite bowls of gumbo and hole in the wall bars.
Being from New Orleans is like being a member of a secret members-only club, a friendly group to outsiders, but whose foundation is so built on history and tradition it is hard for someone on the outside to fully become integrated as a full-fledged member. As impossible as it may seem to break through the invisible shield into understanding the magic of the real New Orleans, so much of the New Orleans spirit is accessible to anyone. The city’s laissez-faire demeanor can make newcomers feel like they truly belong here after only seeing a small slice of life. No matter where you are visiting from or how long you are staying, how badly you may mispronounce the names of the streets, how perplexed you may look the first time someone asks if you want your sandwich dressed, New Orleans welcomes you just like an old friend. Maybe this is because so many families have been here for many generations, living in the same neighborhoods and attending the same schools and growing up together. In many ways being from New Orleans is like being from a very small town and it is hard to meet a stranger. In New Orleans’ case, these very small towns are the neighborhoods of the city.
The comparison between New Orleans to a Caribbean city comes up a lot, especially in recent talks of rebuilding after the storm. Andres Duany, a contributor to Metropolis Magazine, described the city of New Orleans as being “not among the most haphazard, poorest, or misgoverned American cities, but rather the most organized, wealthiest, cleanest and competently governed of the Caribbean cities.” (Duany 2007). Many of the traditions and much of the culture comes from this leisurely way of life most often attributed to a Caribbean lifestyle. Historically, New Orleanians had “time to create the fabulously complex Creole dishes that simmer forever…time to practice and listen to music…time to make costumes and to parade…time to spend all day marking the passing of friends.” (Duany 2007). This lifestyle allowed a complex culture to form that may otherwise have not. When locals realize you are not from New Orleans, many go out of their way to extend a heartfelt welcome to their city. They want to know if you like it here and if you have visited their city before. They want to make sure you have been to all of their New Orleans favorites and local must-sees and dos. They have a sincere love for this city and want you to experience the same New Orleans that they have grown to know and cherish.
However, as ready as the locals are to share their city with newcomers and tourists, there is also a layer of mystique that is ingrained into the very core of this city and the people who live here. I suppose that like any new place, there are localisms that a newcomer may not “get” at first. The bumper stickers of black boxes with white x’s inside, the cryptic words Be a new orleanian. Wherever you are, the fondness towards the fleur-de-lis are all examples of these localisms. To me it is like catching a glimpse into a secret society whose members are so loyal and so allegiant to something that I can only barely begin to understand, let alone understand why they would be. These words and glyphs place an identity onto this city and its residents, and although I may not be aware of the whole background story I see what a powerful presence these symbols have on the present and future of New Orleans. It is like wearing a home team jersey on game day and seeking out other fans; New Orleanians want to claim their city and its residents as part of their own family or dearest friends. Wearing or displaying these symbols give a sense of belonging to both the person wearing the badge of allegiance and to those who may see it and be able to relate; it is a way to identify yourself within a city and region as both an individual and part of something much larger than yourself. Whatever it is, wherever it stems from, these badges of allegiance are worn so proudly, like the figurative heart on your sleeve, and they are what makes New Orleans so different from anywhere else.
These proclamations of local pride in the form of symbols and phrases were one of the first things I noticed upon arrival in my new city. It was late August and close to the two year anniversary of Katrina and the levee failure, and I thought that this outpouring of local pride might have something to do with remembrance. But as I became more immersed in the quirks and tics of New Orleans and learned more about this city than I could have in just a short vacation, I realized that allegiance to this city is not solely a result of the aftermath. The way that New Orleanians latch onto these localisms is just a part of who they are; it is part of declaring identity and linking themselves to the place they call home. New Orleans has always been a unique city, and the people who live here have always known what a special place this city is.
In the same way that local dialect, neighborhood identity, and regional cooking define New Orleanians, there are other symbols of this city that people are apt to take on as a mascot of sorts. The X, the fleur-de-lis, the shape of the crescent, the colors of Mardi Gras, the alligator…all have their roots deep into this unique culture and place. The bumper sticker that first caught my attention is an example of how this X symbol was thrust upon New Orleanians, and how many have chosen to hold onto these marks of catastrophe by turning them into artwork, T-shirts, even tattoos. (The Associated Press 2006). There are fleur-de-lis charms and flags, signs declaring that New Orleans is still home and they will rebuild, and purple, gold, and green are still the New Orleans colors of choice.
The X saw recent notoriety as a spray-painted marking used by Katrina rescue workers. Devised as a way to track which houses and buildings had been checked for occupants and hazardous material after the storm, many have remained prominently displayed on New Orleans homes and businesses. The marks vary in size, color, and location, but they have become a national icon of New Orleans and the people who call this place home. Bywater seems to have kept the most of these now weather worn symbols on reoccupied homes. Reoccupied homes in neighborhoods like Broadmoor and Lakeview have fewer of these marks remaining. Maybe it’s due to the bohemian inclination of Bywater neighborhood towards the offbeat that more Xs have stayed here, the colorful tattoos blend into the colorful houses. At the corner of Montegut and Chartres, there is a home with an iron replica of the existing X placed over the original spray-painted marking. In this instance, a bold statement was made by its occupant to never let the memory fade away. For them to add this X to their collection of New Orleanian emblems is a far cry from houses elsewhere that would rather have a contrasting paint blob than hold onto this symbol of tragedy.
The fleur-de-lis is another one of these iconic symbols that has historically been closely associated with New Orleans. It was originally an emblem from the Court of Louis XIV but now has more of an emotional connection to New Orleans. Fleur-de-lis is a French phrase meaning, “flower of the lily.” In connection with New Orleans, it was adopted during the French occupation of Louisiana from 1682-1762 and has been used ever since. More recently, the fleur-de-lis has been the emblem of the New Orleans Saints football team and worn on the player’s helmets and by many fans. But you don’t have to be a Saints fan to wear this symbol proudly; the fleur-de-lis is used repeatedly with no connection to the team emblem. I think that because the fleur-de-lis was a symbol long used in New Orleans art and architecture and even part of the official flag, it became a symbol of hope for the future of this rebuilding this city.
The colors of Mardi Gras are also important in defining symbols of New Orleans. The official colors for Mardi Gras are purple, green, and gold. These colors were chosen in 1872; purple representing justice, green standing for faith, and gold signifying power. Even outside of the Carnival Season, these three colors hold value to New Orleanians. Everything from new signs promoting rebuilding to old storefront signage used these traditional colors. It is even said that the colors of Mardi Gras influenced the choice of school colors for Louisiana State University and Tulane University. According to local legend, when LSU was deciding on its school colors for a game against Tulane, the stores in New Orleans had stocked up on Mardi Gras colored fabrics for the upcoming Carnival Season. LSU chose the colors purple and gold, and Tulane purchased the only remaining color. Whether this is true or just a good story, it is interesting that these colors are so associated with Mardi Gras that this seems like a very convincing and logical explanation.
The source for a lot of the more recently asserted badges of allegiance is a local t-shirt company, Dirty Coast. The two young owners are local entrepreneurs that wanted to put New Orleans in the national spotlight. They wanted people that lived elsewhere to realize, and remind the people that live here, that New Orleanians have a different attitude about their city. Their mission is to give people a way to say this is why I love New Orleans. This is why I live here and will continue to live here. The grassroots business first began to gain recognition as a way for New Orleanians living in other places after the storm to declare pride and place to a home they were far away from. It is a small company to say the least, and the shirts are screen-printed to order just down the street from their new storefront. These T-shirts have become known for their combination of self-effacing humor and hometown pride. Others are simple declarations of pride and place. Still others are riddled with inside jokes that only New Orleanians can share. (Stay Local 2006).
Dirty Coast created the tagline, Be a New Orleanian. Wherever you are. This was another localism I first noticed that I wanted to understand beyond just reading the words. These stickers are all over the country now; more than 200,000 have left the hands of Dirty Coast. In an email message, the creator explains it as being a state of mind as well as a badge of pride. (Haney 2007). Wherever you are in the world, be a New Orleanian. It means different things to different people, but that is what makes it so appealing. I somewhat disappointed in this explanation; I wanted something more, but even though the answer is simple the words remain just as compelling. It answers the question of meaning, but leads to more questions about how can you “be” a New Orleanian.
The King Alligator is a modern symbol of the city that seems to encompass just as much portrayal of local identity than the more established symbols. The X becoming a symbol for “X marks the NOLA” and signifying home I can understand. The fleur-de-lis was so long ago given as the symbol for New Orleans; of course it would remain as one. The catchy t-shirt phrases and bumper stickers have a trendy appeal for a place that you know so well, all the quirks you have come to love. The one symbol that seems to speak so clearly of New Orleans and yet is whimsically vague is the King Gator, designed for t-shirts and stationery by a local designer, Alexa Pulitzer. Alligators ruled the swampy bayou and the area now known as New Orleans long before the Europeans claimed it, but how has an image of an alligator wearing an elegant crown of royalty captured the creative spirit of so many looking for a way to wear their badge of allegiance for New Orleans? And yet it has; it is a testimony to the sub-tropical landscape and the pervasiveness of carnival’s royal tinge. (NOCVB 2006).
People have a tendency to associate their own mental images and ideas with different places. It is a way to give yourself a definition to an unknown or to create a snapshot of a memory so you can visit a place time and again. This type of word and image association comes naturally when you think about a city as unique as New Orleans. People all over America, all over the world, have a vivid idea of what this city looks like and feels like even if it is a place unvisited and thousands of miles away.
Being from a small town hundreds of miles from New Orleans, my own associations of “place” and therefore symbols of New Orleans were based on hearsay and pictures. I immediately thought of Mardi Gras and the wild times I had heard of happening in the French Quarter. I pulled images from my mind from media coverage after the levees broke and the city was under water. I thought of the taste of jambalaya and the sounds of jazz music, the fleur-de-lis charm someone had given me as a souvenir. Living in New Orleans, I was confronted with all of these preconceived notions about what makes this city “who” it is and what makes someone a true New Orleanian. I began to notice more intricate details, which only led me to wanting to know more.
Every place has its own characteristics; its personal symbols and ways of representing their past that have made their way into the life and texture of the present. Local symbols unite the people that live there and allow the place to have its own reality that distinguishes it from all other places. In New Orleans, these symbols have a stronger presence. They are more accentuated and acknowledged. They are a little more foreign, a little more veiled beneath a layer of mystery simply because they are unlike anything you would find in American cities elsewhere. They all gather together and whisper, You are in New Orleans and there is no place like this. The natives of New Orleans have an understanding of their city that is unmatched in other parts of the country. After living here and seeing this city from the eyes of a local (albeit transient) rather than the eyes of a visitor, I realize how unique and unreplicable, how precious this city really is.

Works Cited
Duany, Andres. “Restoring the Real New Orleans.” Metropolis Magazine (February 2007). http://metropolismag.com. (Accessed November 4, 2007).

Haney, Blake. E-mail message to author, November 13, 2007.

NBC Weather Plus Network LLC. The Associated Press. “Remembering Katrina.” (August 28, 2007) http://weatherplus.com/weathernews. (Accessed November 10, 2007.)

New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau. http://www.neworleanscvb.com (2006). (Accessed November 21, 2007).

The Urban Conservancy. Stay Local! “Success Stories: On Being New Orleanian.” December 7, 2006. http://staylocal.org. (Accessed November 21, 2007).

New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau. http://www.neworleanscvb.com (2006). (Accessed November 21, 2007).

Badge of Allegiance

2007-11-01T06:44:00.001-07:00

Since moving to New Orleans, I have noticed time and again the level of pride that residents have for this city. New Orleanians love their home – their neighborhoods, their accents, their food, their city. In noticing this I have realized that New Orleans is far from being just a dot on a map; it is a way of life and state of mind that has to be experienced to be fully understood. Being from New Orleans is like being a member of a club, a friendly group to outsiders, but whose foundation is built on history and traditions it is hard for someone on the outside to fully become a member. When locals realize you are not from New Orleans, many go out of their way to extend a heartfelt welcome to their city. They want to know if you like it here. They want to make sure you have been to all of their New Orleans favorites.

As ready as locals are to share their city with newcomers and tourists, there is also a layer of mystique that is ingrained into the core of this city and the people who live here. I suppose like any new place, there are localisms that a newcomer may not “get” at first. The bumper stickers of black boxes with a white x inside, the cryptic words be a new orleanian. Wherever you are. – to me it’s like catching a glimpse into a secret society whose members are so loyal and so allegiant to something that I can only barely begin to understand.

These proclamations of pride were one of the first things I noticed after moving here. It was close to the two year anniversary of Katrina and the levee failure, and I thought that this outpouring of local pride might have something to do with it. But as I became more immersed in New Orleans and learned more about this city than I could have in just a few days time, I realized that allegiance to this city is not solely a result of the aftermath.

I wanted to figure out New Orleans. I wanted to figure out the people that call this city home. I wanted to figure out all the mysterious, catchy phrases that I kept seeing around the city. I thought that once I understood one of these things, the others would follow, that somehow deciphering one would give me a key to deeper understanding of life here.
Then I realized something. This secret society, this club, this union of people, was not at all limited to New Orleans. This New Orleanian pride was something of a nationwide trend, not something that everyone is aware of, but a bond to this city and the people who call New Orleans their home even if they don’t live here.

The source for a lot of the badges of New Orleans allegiance, as I like to call it, is a local t-shirt company. They first began to have recognition as a way for New Orleanians living in other places after the storm to declare pride and place to a home they were away from. It is a small company to say the least, the shirts are screen-printed to order just down the street from their new storefront. I wanted to ask the man behind all of the local taglines the same questions I had been asking myself. Surely he knows the answers to all of these riddles I have been seeing around town. I have an interview with him on Monday, until then, I will just have to wonder.

Interview #1

2007-10-10T21:42:00.000-07:00

I began on my quest for New Orleans information with a visit to The Historic New Orleans Collection. I was looking for information on New Orleans neighborhoods; who built them, why were they built, who lived there – I just didn’t know what I was going to find to help me narrow down such a broad topic into something I could really start to explore in depth.
The Historic New Orleans Collection is actually a complex of historic buildings located in the French Quarter. As I found the entrance, I felt the presence of history. The style of the building is typical of the French Quarter, two stories with the second story creating a balcony over the sidewalk beneath. There was something very appealing about going to look through historic documents and photographs for answers on this city’s past in a place that was so historic itself. To me, this is a perfect example of how New Orleanians hold the past near and dear to their hearts, even as they live very much in the present.
I soon realized that the Williams Research Center, where I intended to go, was actually located on Chartres Street and not part of the collection on Royal Street. It wasn’t far, so I decided to walk. As I asked for directions, I smiled to myself as the lady said, “You’ll know it when you see it, it’s a brick building with arched windows.” What a rarity in New Orleans, especially in the French Quarter! No balcony, no pilasters, and no rectangular shuttered windows, I knew I wouldn’t miss it. My black t-shirt soaked up the sun as I made my way down the block. I arrived at the Williams Research Center and crossed my fingers that all I ever wanted to know about New Orleans would be tucked away in this tidy brick building.
The Williams Research Center is open to the general public and access to the collection begins with an interview. I had come to interview them, but the tables had been turned! I had been worried that taking someone’s time with an interview on the spot would be inconvenient, but as I sat down with someone on the reading room staff, I realized that talking about this collection and the history of New Orleans is not only their job, but their passion. I soon learned that this particular part of The Historic New Orleans Collection holds 35,000 books, pamphlets, and periodicals and 300,000 other documents like photographs, maps, and drawings. This was perfect.
I began the interview by telling them what I was interested in and asking for their insight on how to go about finding answers to my questions. I told them I was interested in the social aspect of the development of New Orleans neighborhoods; how had they come to be and why are these neighborhoods so unique to each other in terms of the architecture, figure-ground organization, and their condition today. I said I was specifically interested in the French Quarter, Garden District, and Bywater neighborhoods. They agreed with me that the relationship between the French Quarter and the Garden District would be interesting because of the Creole sector, American sector dichotomy, and that the Bywater was so different from each of the others that it would be a good contrast in comparison. She told me that the WRC has specific collections on the urban development of New Orleans, the French Quarter, Mississippi River life, and New Orleans architecture that might be a good place for me to start looking into the development of specific areas of the city.
I asked if she had any knowledge on the development of these neighborhoods in question and she paused to formulate a response. She began with what I already knew, that Canal Street was the great divide between the Creoles and the Americans. When the Louisiana territory became part of the United States, the people that lived here believed that unrefined Americans must be kept separate from their far more cultured society and therefore city. Canal Street became a kind of dividing line or "neutral ground" where the Creoles conducted trade, but did not socialize, with the Americans. She laughed as she went on to tell me something I did not know, how the Garden District got its name – this beautiful neighborhood whose name invokes a romantic ideology of stately homes and lush gardens – was actually an insult. When the Americans began to build these grandiose homes with visible gardens, the Creoles couldn’t believe that Americans would build such a brazen display of wealth and that this was proof that the Americans were not worthy to be a part of their society. To have a garden in front the front of your house that could be viewed by the public was unheard of by the Creoles and their courtyards. The Creoles nicknamed the area the “Garden District” as an insult to the American way of life.
Information on the history of the Bywater neighborhood was something that she was not as familiar with. I asked if she knew who had traditionally lived there; I had heard that it was one of New Orleans’ first “suburbs” of sorts. She clarified this by saying that Faubourg Marigny (Faubourg being the French word for suburb) was the first area downriver from the French Quarter of unclaimed land and that soon after the city was founded people began to move to this area, so many say that this was essentially the first suburb of New Orleans. At the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the city’s population could be classified as French Creole, Black, and Anglo-American in that order of population numbers. A lot of the Americans that were just moving to New Orleans continued to move into the American sector of town and the French Creoles and Free Persons of Color continued to live in the French Quarter and the newly forming suburbs downriver. Bywater became a very diverse neighborhood where many different groups of people lived side by side, bringing with them their own styles of neighborhoods.
I could tell that my interview was ending and even though I was finding these pieces of information interesting, I knew that I needed more depth. The reading room staff member I was interviewing was very knowledgeable about the general history of New Orleans and how I could use the resources at the WRC to further my own knowledge, the personal insight I was hoping to find into this subject was not something that was in her area of expertise. She led me to a table in the reading room and explained the layout of the collection and went back to her station to help the next person.
I sat at the table and looked over my hurried notes and tried to figure out the next step. She had given me a good start and it was all very intriguing, but I knew that this was only the tip of the iceberg. It was getting close to 4:30, closing time, and I knew that my perusal of the library needed more of my time than I could spend there on this visit. I thanked the staff member that had been helping me and walked back into streets lined with the history I had just been talking about.

Parts of a Whole

2007-10-04T05:30:00.000-07:00

The New Orleans culture is hard to define in single words. To an outsider the culture is limited to the food, the drinks, and the party. So much of the true identity of New Orleans is masked behind tourism and what tourists expect their experience to be in The Big Easy. Culinary traditions can give you a taste for the city, the sound of jazz can give you a voice to the city, the odor of Bourbon Street can give you an associative smell - but part of what defines New Orleans culture is captured only in the day to day and permeates through everything else. The houses, the neighborhoods, and the easy-going way of life is the heart of New Orleans.
After living here and seeing this city from the eyes of a local (albeit transient) rather than the eyes of a tourist, I realize how unique and unreplicable, how precious this
Place and its culture is. New Orleans is still shaking off the devastating effects of flood damage and struggling with luring the people back; not only just tourists but displaced residents. The people of New Orleans not only lost their house, they lost their home. The rebuilding of this city is not limited to the tourist experience of the French Quarter; if this was the case then Disney would have rebuilt New Orleans in their take on the city. The many neighborhoods that give this large city a small town feel and the people that live here are the parts of New Orleans culture that is most vulnerable to the effects of Katrina and the water that came with it.
With the loss of housing in New Orleans, there was a loss of a piece of the complex culture that will not be restored by reinhabiting its neighborhoods alone. When you see the damaged and abandoned houses, you can still see a glimpse of what they were like before. It is easy to give each house a story about who may have lived there and what their life was like, to wonder about how this house as a structure fit together with its neighbors to create a community unique to itself.
After a previous post on the architectural cues of neighborhoods as I drove from one point in the city to another, I began to think about what it was historically that gave each neighborhood its own rhythm, its own spatial indicators of place. Why were these neighborhoods built as they were and who were they built for? What role has the evolution of New Orleans as a large US city played on determining what these neighborhoods are like today? My initial observations made it impossible for me to ignore the missing pieces of what I didn’t know about these places and how each neighborhood is an essential piece to the city.

On my way to studio

2007-09-26T18:22:00.000-07:00

“But the boundaries of a real neighborhood are well known to the residents, even if they are not obvious to the casual passerby.”
-Greenbie

New Orleans is like a favorite old quilt; well-worn and faded, patched and mended. Each piece of the quilt tells a story about the past, a certain history that has been brought into the present. The quilt pieces all fit together, the mismatched swatches of cloth together form a beautiful whole. The seams of adjacencies are sometimes precise and rigid, other times it takes a second glance to see where one piece ends and the other begins. The neighborhoods in this city are like these patterned pieces. Each piece of this quilt has its own pattern, and this pattern is the architectural cues of each neighborhood.
My route from home to studio is like a drive across this pieced together quilt of New Orleans. Houses are the most prevalent building type along my route and each neighborhood has a certain type of house that starts to define the boundaries in a far more visible sense than the lines of streets on a map. The architectural cues that signal the transition of neighborhood begin with the houses. Because the historic neighborhoods all share common characteristics, the style, size, elements, and even color signify this threshold between neighborhoods as they change from one thing to something else.
Beginning Uptown, I make my way towards I-10 on Lousiana. I bypass the Central Business District and the French Quarter in terms of architectural engagement, travel through Marigny and end in Bywater. Almost at every turn, I cross over critical thresholds where the formal and informal edges of neighborhood are very tangible and yet informal. The architectural cues guide me to define their urban identities. It becomes less about looking at the boundaries of each neighborhood on a map and more about the inclusive feel that each neighborhood has as a built context.
Uptown begins upriver at the Garden District and formally stretches itself to Broadway. On my way towards Louisiana I pass well-kept shotgun and frame houses that are very consistent as a basic house type, yet create a distinctive communal style of architecture through their vernacular form. Even in the days of vinyl siding and Dryvit, these renovated houses have escaped the renovation trends of Middle American and kept their clapboard siding and old wooden front doors. For the most part, the paint is fresh and the small lawns tidy. The mostly one-story cottages create a low datum line while the Oak trees that line the streets create another datum line just above the first. The houses set back from the street behind several layers of space transitions from public to private conditions. First there is the street, then cars parked parallel to the street, followed by sidewalk, then sometimes a fence, then lawn, front porch, and finally the house.
When I turn onto Louisiana Avenue I leave behind the nostalgic charm of an urban neighborhood that has changed very little as it moved into the 21st century and cross over the first threshold of neighborhood divide. The narrow cross street widens to a two way street separated by a neutral ground and the mix of new and old residential and commercial buildings leaves the datum line created by the houses in Uptown behind. For the purposes of this analysis, I am defining this part of my route as the second of three parts. From my transition to Louisiana Avenue, even though I do technically pass through several neighborhoods if you were to look at a map, the architectural cues along Louisiana and Claiborne do not delineate change in perception of place.
Because this stretch of my route is a mix of houses and businesses, the scale of building is not consistent. The small shotgun houses are run-down with asphalt siding peeling from the wood frame and sagging front porches. They are arranged in small pockets, several in a row tucked between newer commercial buildings ranging from corner stores, to gas stations, to restaurants. Even though these streets are much larger and more heavily traveled the progression from public space to private space muddies together from porch to street with little transition.
Not only does scale shift during this section of my route, but the density changes as well. The unbroken rhythm of density that is highly visible in Uptown and then in Bywater is forgotten and clusters of buildings are followed by irregular stretches of emptiness. Perhaps these streets once had their own sets of architectural cues that created a consistent sense of place with its own boundaries and edges, but for now it seems like the thresholds exist as a way to designate the edge of something more defined. As I drive I feel like I am in some sort of nameless middle ground from one distinguishable neighborhood to the next.
The turn from Elysian Fields into the Bywater neighborhood is the third threshold of neighborhood in terms of architectural cues. The scale of buildings shifts back to being smaller and it creates an immediate sense of close community. The houses are close together and similar in size and shape; the local vernacular is more of a Creole cottage, symmetrical with shuttered windows and doors rather than the shotgun seen along the rest of my route. Many have elaborate color schemes that trickle down to the smallest details that remind me of the many artists that live here. The self-contained urban feel of coffee shops and markets silently intermingle with the houses, the houses and shops sharing the same street façade in height and setback from the street. There is an absence of the fences proclaim ownership that is seen Uptown and the steps leading to the front door lead directly to the sidewalk, porches and yard generally absent. This small difference of transition makes the community seem like it is a seamless whole, instead of plotted out sections defined by the fence created boundary lines.
New Orleans is a large city of small-town neighborhoods; each unique to one another while carrying the eclectic feel of old and new that makes the city what it is. As each neighborhood was settled by different groups of people, their own values and their own sense of what “home” was supposed to look like clearly came through into the architecture. Unlike the rest of America, these neighborhoods have retained the same architectural cues of style, size, and density through the changing times.

My Soggy New Home

2007-09-12T18:00:00.000-07:00

New Orleans is a sinking island. The Mississippi River hugs one side of the city, Lake Pontchartrain the other, while the city itself sits on top of more water.
Historically, New Orleanians have learned to avoid this seemingly inescapable part of nature. The first settlers built on higher ground in the city so as to lower the risk of flooding. Most houses, including the one in which I live, sit on top of brick piers designed to let the water in, and then let it out just as easily. The development of a levee system allowed for more of this water to disappear and was successful in blocking the sight of water, if nothing else.
Water has become the proverbial elephant sitting in the corner of the room. Every time I lift my eyes from my aerial view map (which I thought showed a lot of blue…) and my eyes focus on the lack of visible water, I feel like I have walked into the middle of an ongoing argument between New Orleans and Water, and New Orleans is trying to put on a dry outward appearance.
For a city whose existence is interwoven with the water that surrounds it, I'll admit I felt a little bit cheated when I first moved here. I grew up in a town nestled next to the Ohio River. The river has always been an unfaltering reference point to where I am, always visible despite the system of flood walls and flood gates because of the hilly terrain. Unlike the Ohio River that rushes past my hometown, the Mississippi River is not terrifically impressive as it flows past downtown New Orleans. For the Mississippi, it is actually pretty narrow between the French Quarter and Algiers Point, a historic part of the city connected by ferry and bridge. The Lake is beautiful, but off the beaten path. The only water I really see on a daily basis is the rain. And it does rain consistently.
The humidity in the air should have given me an idea of just how much water this thick air can hold. New Orleanians have grown accustomed to the quite literal ebb and flow of these bucketing downpours. I, however, have not. When it rains, the street flooding is like the city’s reminder that yes, there is a lot of water lurking around here. Hard rains tend to provoke water out of its hiding places to create flashfloods like I have never seen before.
Earlier this month on a rainy afternoon, I decided to go see a movie at the IMAX theater on Canal Street. I left the side street where I live and headed to St. Charles. Like crossing over an invisible line, I was suddenly driving in several inches of water. The steady afternoon rain had transformed St. Charles into a river bounded by the concrete curb of the neutral ground and banquette. I was amazed. How could this have happened? The only flash floods that I have encountered have been along the rural roads adjacent to the Ohio River, never on a street in the middle of a city. I looked at the cars parked alongside the still flowing traffic and water was approaching the tops of the wheels. Why was everyone still driving forward? Was I the only one who had heard countless times not to drive through water covered roadways?
There was a car from out of state pulled up onto the neutral ground, the driver and passenger leaning out of their rolled-down windows at the new river that had formed around them in awe. Yet, the New Orleanians drove on like seasoned veterans. They knew that this water would recede just as quickly as it had appeared, and that they could wait it out or keep driving. I, on the other hand, felt like someone from the Deep South must feel like driving through a winter snowstorm - complete inexperience.
I pulled what little history I knew about New Orleans from my mind, and figured that since I was heading toward the French Quarter, and that pocket of the city had been settled on higher ground for this specific reason, I would eventually be able to turn onto a dry street. As I got closer and closer to this historic safe haven, the water level changed from river to stream to puddle. And after crossing over the invisible line that ended this street flood the same as it had started, the water of this city became just as invisible until the next time it feels it has been
forgotten.

Be A New Orleanian. wherever you are.

2007-09-05T19:28:00.001-07:00

People have a tendency to associate their own mental images and ideas with different places. It’s a way to give yourself a definition of an unknown or to create a snapshot of a memory so you can visit it time and again.
This type of word and image association comes naturally when you think about a city as unique as New Orleans. People all over America, all over the world, have a vivid idea of what this city looks like and feels like even if it is a place unvisited thousands of miles away. Maybe it comes from being a city steeped in cultures and traditions so foreign to the rest of the country. The food, the music, the architecture…Mardi Gras…are all so symbolic of this place and so unlike Anywhere, USA. The after effects of Hurricane Katrina introduced a whole new set of associations to New Orleans. Images of devastation and rebuilding have added to the long list of definitions of what New Orleans is.
Being from a small town hundreds of miles from New Orleans, my own associations of “place” with New Orleans were based on hearsay and pictures. I immediately of Mardi Gras and the wild times I had heard of. I pulled images from my mind from media coverage after the levees broke and the city was under water. I thought of the taste of Jambalaya and the sounds of Jazz music.
Arriving in New Orleans I was confronted with all of these preconceived notions about what makes this city “who” it is and what makes someone a true New Orleanian. The blight and disrepair I expected was confirmed as was the sense of abandonment. Fresh coats of paint and new roofs became symbols of hope for the future. However, I soon realized that buildings and landscape were not the only things that made up my definition of New Orleans. Sometimes a person can embody all that is New Orleans as well.
On the night of August 29, (a date that will forever be associated with this city) in Tipitina’s, (a place that symbolizes the past and present of this city’s culture and spirit), there was a New Orleanian I think of as The Tambourine Lady. She has created a new association for this city for me, one of the spirit of the New Orleanian. My previous ideas of what makes this city weren’t tossed aside, but sewn together and brought to life.
In her “No Evacuee Left Behind” t-shirt, tambourine in hand and clapping, she danced to the jazz music through the crowded audience. Completely at home, the Tambourine Lady was like a wave of energy through the crowd. Her spirit was contagious to everyone that she paused by to share her music. In this hot, crowded space somehow she never broke a sweat; never let her bright smile fade from her face. As the night wore on and people grew tired and the atmosphere lulled, her liveliness remained a constant. The rhythm of the music mixed with the beat of her tambourine made me feel like I was catching a glimpse of what New Orleans is all about, who a New Orleanian really is, and the spirit of this city.