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Founding WWL: Louisiana's First Radio Station
WWL, Louisiana's first radio station, started broadcasting in 1922 as a means to raise funds for Loyola University. As a project of a Catholic University, WWL was bound by the rules of the Catholic…
Sicilian Bakers of New Orleans: F. Lombardo and Sons Bakery
The French may claim New Orleans French bread, but later immigrant bakers' influence on the city's bread-making traditions is undeniable. At the turn of the nineteenth century, a wave of Sicilian…
Local No. 35: The New Orleans Bakers' Union
Bread-baking is a hard, physically demanding job. Before the Civil War, most bakery owners relied on apprenticeships and enslaved laborers to handle the workload. Postbellum bakery workers inherited a…
The French and Spanish Colonial Mark on New Orleans Bread-Making: Cadet’s Bakery
The intersection of St. Peter and Royal Streets is loud and busy with the passing hustle of to-go drinks, music, and tourists, making it hard to notice a faded patch of tile work outside the corner…
A Bakery Shaped by Place: Garic’s Bakery
Often visible in the background of historic images of the French Market, the three-story Italianate building with the “Garic’s Bakery" sign anchored the neighborhood. [1] Garic’s Bakery was once part…
The Legend of New Orleans French Bread: Chretien’s Bakery and B.C. Francingues Bakery
In 2013, the reality cooking television series Top Chef filmed its eleventh season in New Orleans at 1231-33 Bourbon Street to revitalize the struggling restaurant and tourism industry following the…
Enslaved Bakers and the Foreign French: D’Aquin, Bouny, and Poincy Bakeries
Before the Civil War, enslaved labor was an integral part of the commercial baking industry and the overall economy in New Orleans. While food historians note the role that French, Spanish, and Anglo…
Muffaletta Sandwich
The muffaletta is one of New Orleans’ most iconic and identifiable dishes. Made on large rounds of sesame bread and layered with olive salad, genoa salami, ham, mortadella, provolone and Swiss cheese,…
Henry Bibb and The Slave Pens of New Orleans
During the major slave-trading season, September through May, yards surrounded by high brick walls called slave pens bustled with activity in the areas surrounding the French Quarter. Slave traders…
Temple of the Innocent Blood
Today, nothing identifies the location in the Lower Ninth Ward where Mother Catherine Seals' “Temple of the Innocent Blood” once stood. This was true even before Hurricane Katrina devastated the area…
Duncan Plaza
This past July, if you happened to be downtown near the Superdome and New Orleans City Hall, you might have seen something unexpected: in the public park known as Duncan Plaza, there were students…
936 St. Peter Street: A Cottage Industry in the Quarter
In 2014, the University of New Orleans was invited to conduct archaeological testing at 936 St. Peter Street while the property was undergoing renovations. Below the surface layer, archaeologists…
Archaeology of The Melpomene Neighborhood During Reconstruction
During 2013 investigations in City Square 350, archaeologists excavated a large and well-constructed brick-lined privy shaft, producing a rich assemblage of glass containers and ceramic vessels, along…
The Melpomene Neighborhood Before 1880
In the Colonial Era, the area that eventually became the Melpomene neighborhood and later utilized for the Guste Homes was located in a low-lying backswamp zone at the rear of the Livaudais plantation…
Archaeology of the Melpomene Neighborhood at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: Excavation of a Privy at 1304 Howard/LaSalle
In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, many of the people who lived in the Melpomene neighborhood of Central City rented their residences with some addresses seeing rapid turnover. …
The Melpomene Neighborhood, 1880-1900
By the early 1900s, the Melpomene neighborhood in Central City was a densely populated urban neighborhood, where many residents worked in occupations related to shipping, particularly in the nearby…
The Salvaggio Household: Early 20th Century Archaeology of the Melpomene Neighborhood
In 2013, archaeological firms conducted test excavations in City Square 383 in the Melpomene neighborhood, the city block once bounded by Erato, Freret, Thalia, and South Robertson (or Locust)…
The Melpomene Neighborhood, 1900-1930
In working class neighborhoods like the Melpomene in Central City, the importance of women’s labor in the household’s economy is visible both in historical records and archaeological materials. Women…
The Puckett Household: 1930s Archaeology of the Melpomene Neighborhood
In 2013, archaeological consulting firm Earth Search, Inc., excavated a block of the Melpomene neighborhood originally bounded by South Liberty, Erato, Clio, and Howard/LaSalle Streets. Earth Search…
The Melpomene Neighborhood, 1930-1960
Between the 1930s and 1960s, racist policies at every level of government pushed Black residents of New Orleans into lower-paying jobs and racially segregated neighborhoods. Throughout the nation,…
The Guste Homes and Melpomene Neighborhood in 1964
In 1964, the Urban League of Greater New Orleans published the results of “A Survey of the Recreational, Social, and Economic Conditions of the Negro Population of the William S. Guste, Sr., Homes and…
Guste Homes: Excavating a Central City Neighborhood
What is archaeology, and why would you do archaeology at the former site of the Guste Homes?
1961 Construction of the William J. Guste, Sr. Homes
In 1961, the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) announced plans to construct the William J. Guste, Sr. Homes, named for the Housing Authority’s long-time general counsel. The 1961 Report of the…
The Cabildo: The Archaeology of a Colonial-Era New Orleans Prison
The excavations at the Cabildo represented a rare opportunity to recover archaeological evidence of Colonial era governance, particularly in the realm of punishment. Modern conceptions of the prison…