NOLA History Guy
The Blog
Visiting the Brother Martin High School library #BOSH
Brother Martin High School Library Brother Martin High School Library I stopped by Brother Martin on Monday, to bring Mrs. Aucoin, the Library's Director, the photos from the BOSH book, so they can have more digitized "old stuff". It was great to see the...
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Texas and Pacific Railroad – Train Thursday
Texas and Pacific Railroad - Train Thursday. Texas and Pacific Railroad - Uptown, West Bank, Points West! EMD E-8A #2011 leads a Texas and Pacific passenger train out of the Trans-Mississippi Passenger Station, New Orleans. Data on a Texas and Pacific Railway history...
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Mid-City Railroading in the late 1940s
Mid-City Railroading in the late 1940s Mid-City Railroading - late 1940s I ran out to the UNO Library a couple of weeks ago, chasing down some old railroad maps. I remembered seeing a set of maps there a few years back, but resisted the temptation to go totally down...
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Prytania Market
Prytania Market Prytania Market Before home and commercial refrigeration was widespread, folks made groceries at the neighborhood's public market. So, these markets were all over the city of New Orleans. The Prytania Market was located on Prytania Street....
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USS Hartford, sloop of war
USS...
read moreRoyal Street – Louisville and Nashville observation car #TrainThursday
Royal Street (cross-posted to Pontchartrain RR) Royal Street I caught the Louisville and Nashville observation car, Royal Street, out at the KCS yard in Metairie, LA, yesterday. This corrugated observation car was one of eight built by Pullman Standard and delivered...
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D. H. Holmes in 1864 – #CanalStreet
D. H. Holmes D. H. Holmes in 1864 I spoke to the tour guides that volunteer with the Friends of the Cabildo on Monday. They're a lovely group of folks. I like to say that talking with them is like teaching an AP History class. You have to come prepared and offer...
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Carrollton Station – NOPSI 813, 1948
Carrollton Station Carrollton Station in 1948 New Orleans Public Service, Incorporated (NOPSI) streetcar 813, on the ladder tracks on Jeanette Street, behind Carrollton Station. Streetcars based uptown returned to the barn by turning onto Jeanette Street from S....
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Dixie Brewery – Art by Jane Brewster
Dixie Brewery Art Dixie Brewery Art I had the pleasure of giving a talk at a private event last night, Uptown. It's becoming an ongoing thing, and they're lots of fun. These talks give me a chance to introduce my books and speaking to others. I also get the...
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Snippets of New Orleans by Emma Fick – Podcast!
Snippets of New Orleans by Emma Fick Snippets of New Orleans by Emma Fick We've got a book review for you this week, a fun title on New Orleans by artist, historian, and illustrator, Emma Fick. Snippets of New Orleans is a wonderful illustrated primer on New Orleans...
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Retail Giants – Tennessee Williams / New Orleans Literary Festival – FRIDAY!
Retail Giants Retail Giants at the Tennessee Williams Festival! The Tennessee Williams / New Orleans Literary Festival is a fantastic annual event. It's in the French Quarter. I've been asked to be part of a panel titled Retail Giants. The panel will be on Friday,...
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St. Aloysius Memories – The Brother’s Residence on Esplanade
St. Aloysius Memories St. Aloysius Memories Here's an image that didn't get into the book, Brothers of the Sacred Heart in New Orleans. It's an architectural drawing of the altar in the chapel in the Brothers' residence, next to the school on Esplanade....
read moreLimmud Fest New Orleans 2018 – We’re talking Krauss next weekend
Limmud Fest New Orleans 2018 Limmud Fest New Orleans 2018 We're going to Limmud Fest New Orleans 2018! Mr. Hugo Kahn and I will discuss Krauss - The New Orleans Value Store. The presentation is on Sunday, March 18th, 10:20am, at the Jewish Community Center Uptown....
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Hermes Parades! It’s Carnival Time!
Hermes! Hermes parade and ball over the years Krewe of Hermes, 1938 (Teunisson photo) Even in times of adversity, New Orleans uses Carnival to give the city an emotional boost. Carnival time got the city through the Great Depression. In typical New Orleans fashion, a...
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MB Memories – Escalators on Canal Street
MB Memories - Escalators on Canal Street MB Memories - Escalators on Canal Street While Krauss - The New Orleans Value Store was the first department store on Canal Street to install an escalator, MB wasn't far behind. MB Memories for me include a lot of up and down...
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Twelfth Night Reveling in New Orleans #Podcast
Twelfth Night Reveling! Twelfth Night Reveling! It's Carnival Time! We're starting off the season talking about Twelfth Night, the Feast of the Epiphany, King's Day. There are three segments to this week's pod. In the first segment, we discuss the history of Twelfth...
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Finding photos in unlikely places
Finding photos in unlikely places (this article is cross-posted from ArcadiaCoach.com) Finding photos in unlikely places - it's fun! Checking our Facebook group, "Ain't There No More" (the title is an homage to a popular New Orleans song) this morning, I...
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Maison Blanche Budget Store Carrollton and Tulane, 1964
Maison Blanche Budget Store Carrollton Maison Blanche Budget Store Carrollton This 1964 photo of the strip at S. Carrollton and Tulane shows the transition of the Maison Blanche store at that location. The store opened in 1948, as the company's first store...
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Canal Street Christmas Parade 1953
Canal Street Christmas Parade Canal Street Christmas Parade in 1953 New-model Fords parade up Canal Street, Christmastime, 1953. We've had numerous versions of the Canal Street Christmas parade over the decades. Commercial parades such as this don't happen...
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Cemeteries Fog on Canal Street #canalstreetcar
Cemeteries Fog Cemeteries Fog It's a beautiful morning now (0938CST), but around 0715, fog blanketed Mid-City New Orleans. Cemeteries fog is at once beautiful and dangerous. Misty, foggy cemeteries are wonderful for writers and poets. That same fog is...
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Letter from William A. Smith to his wife, Caroline, 1862-12-29
Letter from William A. Smith to his wife, Caroline, 1862-12-29 Letter from William A. Smith to his wife, Caroline, 1862-12-29 I'm sure most of you know that, in addition to my history books, I write fiction. I've written two YA novels and an Urban Fantasy...
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New Orleans History Books for Christmas – Part 3
New Orleans History books make great gifts! New Orleans History Books for Christmas – Part 3 Third part of a series. Part 1 here, Part 2 here. Three more books you can run out to local stores or the usual online suspects to get before Christmas. Baseball...
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New Orleans History Books for Christmas – Part 2
New Orleans History Books for Christmas – Part 2 Part 2 of a series. Part 1 here. New Orleans History Books for Christmas – Part 2 Three more books tonight! Links go back to Octavia Books' website, but you can get these books at all the usual suspects....
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New Orleans History Books for Christmas – Part 1
New Orleans History Books for Christmas - Part 1 New Orleans History Books for Christmas - Part 1 Over the next few days, we'll be offering some suggestions for books on New Orleans History for Christmas. We'll feature two or three books each evening....
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St. Louis Cathedral, 1819
St. Louis Cathedral, 1819 St. Louis Cathedral, 1819 I'm working on a scene that's a bit of a flashback to 1820 New Orleans, for my next novel. As usual, I looked around for some contemporary illustrations of the Quarter, and found two interesting drawings...
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Old Metairie – 800 Metairie Road then and now
Old Metairie Old Metairie, Metairie Road, near the railroad tracks. This is a Franck photo of the strip shopping center at 800 Metairie Road in 1962. I went there a bit with my parents as a kid, when we lived on Bonnabel Blvd and Dream Court. Daddy...
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Elysian Fields House, 1842
Elysian Fields House 1842 Elysian Fields House 1842 This is a house on Elysian Fields Avenue, between Levee and Victory Streets. "Levee Street" was the earlier name of Decatur Street. "Victory Street" is now Chartres Street. The house is in the French Colonial style....
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NORTA Cemeteries Terminal – Almost Done
NORTA Cemeteries Terminal (cross posted to Canal Streetcar (dot com)) NORTA Cemeteries Terminal is almost finished The terminal at the foot of Canal Street, NORTA Cemeteries Terminal, is nearing completion. Construction began back in August, and it all appears to be...
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The Touro Buildings on Canal Street – Podcast
The Touro Buildings The Touro Buildings - Canal Street Retail This pod begins a series we'll be presenting on the connections between Krauss Department Store and other merchants up and down Canal Street. The logical place to start is the 700 block of Canal Street,...
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Fishing Shack in the Rigolets, artist Jane Smith Ninas
Fishing Shack in the Rigolets 1943 - Fishing Shack in the Rigolets I spent some time this afternoon, looking in a couple of photo collections for local Radio Shacks. It's part of a new project, a Facebook group for sharing memories of New Orleans stores. The name of...
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Maison Blanche Airline
Maison Blanche Airline The first suburban MB - Maison Blanche Airline When S. J. Shwartz founded Maison Blanche in 1897, MB was a single store on Canal Street. It remained that way until 1947, when the company opened its second location, at Tulane and S....
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Canal Street, 1890s
Canal Street 1890s. The CBD - Canal Street, 1890s - Before electric streetcars A Mugnier photo depicts an interesting transitional period. Electricity arrived for buildings, but not yet for streetcars. That puts the photo pre-1894, but not much earlier....
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Camp Nicholls, Bayou St. John
Camp Nicholls - for Civil War Veterans Camp Nicholls along the bayou New Orleans has always been good to its native sons returning home from wars. After the Civil War, an “Old Soldiers Home” was founded as a refuge for veterans, located on Bayou St. John....
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Podcast – “Ain’t Dere No More” with Heather Elizabeth Designs
Heather Elizabeth Designs! Heather Elizabeth Designs - Ain't Dere No More! This week's pod is a departure for NOLA History Guy Podcast - it's an interview! Been wanting to get this started for a while now. Heather and I were brainstorming a couple of weeks...
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Krauss Service Building, 28-February-1951
Krauss Service Building Krauss Service Building While it was a huge store, Krauss Department Store wanted more space for shopping! This service building was a long time in planning. Krauss broke ground on the project in 1950. It opened for business in...
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French Quarter Map 1808
French Quarter Map 1808 French Quarter Map 1808 - Gilbert Joseph Pilié My Facebook friend Cathe Mizell-Nelson shared this fascinating map from The Historic New Orleans Collection. While there are several maps showing the streets of the French Quarter in...
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Sunset Limited 1897 #TrainThursday
Sunset Limited in 1897 Riding the Sunset Limited, 1897 The Southern Pacific Railroad began passenger service from New Orleans to Los Angeles in 1894. The Sunset Limited originally ran from New Orleans to San Francisco, via Los Angeles. The train was a...
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800 Canal Street: So long Feibelman’s, hello Gus Mayer
800 Canal Street 800 Canal Street The corner of Carondelet and Canal, January 12, 1949. The old Pickwick Hotel building is gone. The New Gus Mayer building replaces it. The Pickwick Hotel gets its name from the Pickwick Club. The club is a private social...
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800 Block Canal Street, 1864
800 Block Canal Street 800 block Canal Street - Shopping! The Canal Streetcar line is about three years old at the time of this photo. None of the mule-drawn, "bobtail" streetcars appear here. The greenery on the sides of the Canal Street neutral ground isn't...
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American Standard Gentilly: Warplanes to Plumbing
American Standard Gentilly: Manufacturing When the United States entered World War II, New Orleans stepped up immediately. The Lakefront became the nexus of war manufacturing. Higgins Industries and Consolidated Aircraft (now Convair) led the way. The US Navy built a...
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Buggy Rides: Five Reasons you should take a tour!
Buggy Rides! Buggy Rides: Five reasons to hop in the carriage 1. It's OLD. Taking a buggy ride is taking a step back into the past. I'm doing a bit of research for a fiction project set in the Civil War. In 1861, the first mule-drawn streetcars come to Canal Street....
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Mid-City New Orleans: MB Carrollton, 1952
Mid-City New Orleans Mid-City New Orleans Mid-City began to grow as a neighborhood in the 1860s. That's when the New Orleans City Railroad extended the Canal Street streetcar line to the cemeteries. By the beginning of the 20th Century, the Sicilian...
read morePodcast – Cemeteries Terminal on Canal Street
The Cemeteries Terminal The Cemeteries Terminal at the Foot of Canal The Cemeteries Terminal expansion project begins just over a week from now. Let's explore the history of Canal's end of the line. 1861 to 1894 - Mule-Drawn Streetcars The Canal Streetcar...
read moreCrowdsourcing: Podcasting Suggestions
podcast crowdsourcing: 1. What topics would you like to NOLA History Guy podcasts on? 2. I'm expanding the pod to include interviews. Suggestions? 3. I do a "YatBooks" podcast, and history books are certainly fair game. Any suggestions? Merci...
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Cemeteries Terminal on the Canal Street Line #StreetcarSaturday
The Cemeteries Terminal The Cemeteries Terminal - End of the line If you ride the Canal Street line from its beginning at the foot of Canal Street, you come to the Cemeteries Terminal, 4.3 miles later. The New Orleans City Railroad Company began operations...
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The Atlantic Slave Trade – a TedEd video
The Atlantic Slave Trade Understanding the Atlantic Slave Trade 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...
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Denver Zephyr and Minor League Baseball #TrainThursday
The Denver Zephyr The Denver Zephyr - Chicago to Denver The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad operated streamlined passenger rail service from Chicago to Denver, from 1936 to 1973. The Route of the Denver Zephyr: Westbound Chicago Omaha Lincoln Denver Eastbound...
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Krauss – The New Orleans Value Store
Krauss - The New Orleans Value Store The cover of the Krauss - The New Orleans Value Store And here it is! Here's the back-cover text: For almost one hundred years, generations of New Orleans shoppers flocked to Krauss. The Canal Street store was hailed for its vast...
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Camp Stanislaus – Summer with the Brothers of the Sacred Heart
Camp Stanislaus, by the bay. Camp Stanislaus - Beat the heat! I've written several pieces for GoNOLA.com on how New Orleanians beat the summer heat. Leaving New Orleans doesn't fit with the tourism-promotion. Let's escape to the Mississippi Gulf Coast here. Most...
read moreMaison Blanche Monday – the MB Building as Hotel
The Maison Blanche Building - Since 1907 Greatest Store South In 1906, S.J. Shwartz's department store, Maison Blanche, felt growing pains. The Mercier Building, in the 900 block of Canal Street, was home to MB, but Shwartz envisioned something grander. He decided to...
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