Old Vieux Carré like Merieult House live on under the stewardship of nonprofits.
The Merieult House, 533 Rue Royale
Painting by Jim Blanchard. THNOC record: “View of the façade of the Merieult House, now the Historic New Orleans Collection. Painted between January 1 and April 14, 1993.”
The Merieult House dates to 1794. The house currently houses the headquarters of The Historic New Orleans Collection. From THNOC’s timeline of the house:
1792: Merchant Jean François Merieult purchases the plot at auction, three years after a devastating fire destroys 80 percent of the colonial city, including the early- and mid-colonial structures on the site. Merieult signs a contract with William Cobb for 7,200 pieces of lumber to be floated down the river from Natchez. Merieult contracts with builders Jacob Cowperthwaite and Robert Jones to lead the construction.
Like many living in New Orleans after the Great Fire of 1788, Merieult acquired property and helped re-build the city. Builders completed the main house in 1794. They finished the dependency wings in 1797.
Enslavement
While THNOC refers to Merieult as a “merchant,” they overlook the part where he bought and sold people. Also from their timeline of the house:
1795–97: Supporting buildings surrounding the rear courtyard are constructed to serve as a service area, counting house, warehouse, and slave pens for Merieult’s merchant business. Between 1792 and 1812, Merieult bought and sold over 400 enslaved Africans on this site.
Four hundred enslaved Africans. Slave pens. Merieult was a big player in human trafficking.
Changes and renovations
Originally of a Spanish Colonial design, Merieult House underwent renovations under later ownership. From a Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) in the 1930s:
Lizardi Hermanos (Lizardi Brothers) acquired the property in 1832 Antonio Maria Pintado, possibly the Lieutenant Surveyor of the district of Iberville, who has left such a valuable collection of papers, seems to have taken the house on terms he could not fulfill, and three years later, it reverted to Lizardi Hermanos, at a price of $80,000. This increase in price indicated that during these three years the house was reconditioned, and the Classic Revival details were substituted for the original Spanish mouldings, and the square granite openings were substituted for the original arches.
The house was about forty years old when these changes took place. Preserving Spanish Colonial architecture was not a concern in the growing, booming New Orleans of the 1830s and 1840s.
Headquarters
Kemper and Leila Williams acquire the house in 1938. They embark on a major renovation project. The Williams family were founders of THNOC. They open the the house to the public in 1970.
Four Ways to Support NOLA History Guy
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St. Claude Avenue was the main street of the Marigny/Bywater/Ninth Ward.
Kaufman’s on St. Claude
This 1961 photo of the Kaufman’s Department Store on St. Claude Avenue illustrates the retail climate in New Orleans in the early 1960s.
“I’m going shopping downtown!” what what your grandma (shoot, your great-grandma these days) would say, as she put on her hat and gloves that matched a nice dress. Off she went, catching the bus, then a streetcar, exiting on Canal Street. The world was hers, as she walked from Krauss to Godchaux’s to Maison Blanche, stopping for lunch at Holmes. She returned home in time to get dinner started, knowing that the stores would deliver her purchases the next day.
That routine changed for a lot of women by the 1960s. Women entered the workforce during World War II, covering essential jobs. In the new Orleans area, the Cold War and the “Space Race” created jobs for women. Additionally, the city’s footprint grew out more, with younger couples buying houses in Gentilly and further out in the Ninth Ward. Families who lived further away from the Central Business District were less interested in a longer ride on public transit. Car culture dominated.
Suburban growth
Local retail saw this coming in the 1950s. Maison Blanche opened stores in Gentilly and Mid-City, but it was Kaufman’s that truly embraced the suburbs. Charles Kaufman & Co. operated in the Dryades Market corridor from the 1880s. The store boasted of easy accessibility, with three major streetcar lines passing by. While the Dryades corridor would never surpass Canal Street, many New Orleanians, particularly Black locals, recognized the value of the area. The company leveraged that popularity, opening satellite stores in Gentilly (Paris Avenue), Lakeview (Harrison Avenue), and two in Jefferson Parish.
Our photo this week is of the Kaufman’s store at 2135 St. Claude Avenue, corner Elysian Fields Avenue. Here’s the caption from THNOC:
View of business at 2135 St. Claude. A billboard advertising “Pan-American Life Insurance Company 50th Anniversary” sits atop building. Commissioned by Latter and Blum.
This Franck-Bertacci Studios photo is undated, but the billboard establishes the date. Pan-American Life Insurance was founded in 1911, making its fiftieth anniversary 1961. The St. Claude streetcar is long gone. Riders wait for the bus, as the corner of Elysian Fields and St. Claude was a transfer point. The bus stop sign on the right is for the Elysian Fields line.
Kaufman’s, along with other stores in the Dryades corridor, encountered push-back from the Black community during the Civil Rights movement of the early 1960s. That push-back led to Kaufman’s closing the flagship store in 1961. In spite of that tension, the outlying stores continued with success until the popularity of shopping malls overtook them.
Pullman Porters didn’t earn a living wage from the company.
Linen postcard of one of the Pullman-built sleeping compartments aboard the KCS train Southern Belle, which originated in New Orleans.
The Pullman Porters
A Pullman Porter assists a passenger, Chicago, 1880s.
When George Pullman’s company began providing sleeping car service to passenger railroads in the US, he hired Black men, formerly enslaved, to staff the cars. Those men staffed sleeping cars, dining cars, and lounge/club cars. Pullman provided these services from the 1860s until the company ceased operations at the end of 1968. Pullman insisted that all his porters be dark-skinned black men. He knew that these men struggled to find employment as free men. So, He paid them incredibly low wages. The porters relied upon tips from passengers. Wikipedia lays out the economics of life as a Pullman Porter:
The company required porters to travel 11,000 miles, nearly 400 hours, per month to earn a basic wage. In 1934, porters on regular assignments worked an average of over 73 hours per week and earned 27.8 cents an hour while workers in manufacturing jobs averaged under 37 hours per week and earned an average of 54.8 cents per hour.
What’s interesting is that, in spite of the deck being stacked against them, the porters’ hard work formed the backbone of the Black middle class in cities with lots of passenger rail activity, particularly West Oakland, Chicago, and New Orleans.
Since railroad workers’ unions were segregated, Black porters received no representation. A. Phillip Randolph formed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP). The union organized the porters. It enabled collective bargaining and negotiation.
Amtrak
The national passenger railroad company took over in 1971. Amtrak dropped use of the term “porter,” referring to their employees in that role as “sleeping car attendants. The BSCP merged into the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks in 1978.
After the original Canal Station streetcar/bus facility was demolished. The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority replaced it with a new bus terminal. The Authority named that facility for A. Phillip Randolph, founder of the BSCP.
Tipped Minimum Wage
The Pullman Porters normalized the concept of “working for tips.” While the concept originally enabled white passengers to control how much Black men got paid, the system continues to this day. Diners at restaurants control how much money servers and bartenders earn beyond the $2.13/hour mandated by the federal government.
A Facebook friend shared this TedEd video this morning. It’s clarity and frankness impressed me. This video (about five minutes long) is a great resource for classroom teachers and homeschoolers alike. If you teach History in middle school or above, add this to your lessons. This is the perfect addition to inadequate textbooks.
The Atlantic Slave Trade brought enslaved Africans to North America. One of the things folks excusing human trafficking say is, “Africans sold their own into slavery.” Yes, this is true. So, this presentation explains European involvement in the trade. African rulers sold their enemies from rival areas and tribes to the Europeans. In addition rulers profited from enslavement. It was an easy solution for refugees and prisoners of war.
New Orleans and Human Trafficking
New Orleans became a major port of entry for enslaved Africans. It wasn’t a direct part of the Atlantic Slave Trade, though. Africans died in large numbers in transit. Therefore, traffickers ran from West Africa to North America as quickly as possible. They unloaded the survivors of the passages in cities on the Atlantic coast. Additionally, they traveled to the Caribbean, Saint-Domingue or Havana. New Orleans connected the Islands to the US. As the plantation economy grew in the Deep South, slave owners in the islands moved their property to the mainland. Even though the British outlawed the slave trade in 1807, the practice continued for decades. The port of New Orleans moved many of the enslaved into the country.
Museums and Memorials
USS Constellation, anchored in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor (courtesy Flickr user sherseydc)
This video presents the background for the concept of a “slave ship museum.” In Baltimore, the USS Constellation museum recognizes the ship’s past as a slaver. So, the impact of human trafficking isn’t the main focus. Is New Orleans the right place for such a museum? Check out the video and share your thoughts.
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