The Parlor

For those wondering about the building that was demolished this month at the corner of South Galvez and Canal Streets (google streetview above), it was designed by New Orleans architect Hayward L. Burton (1867-1953) in 1906 as a luxurious stable for boarding fine horses. Named "The Parlor," the structure originally boasted a ladies' parlor, feed rooms and a neighboring riding ring. Clients W.T. and G.E. Burns envisioned that the boarding stable would be popular among "the millionaire element" of tourists.(1)

Burton utilized St. Louis hydraulic pressed brick (Color No. 503) with colored mortar and cast cement ornamentation and fronted the Canal Street entrance with a landscaped Schillinger walk. He incorporated an elevator, electric wiring and fixtures and a sprinkler system.(2)  The project was completed under the supervision of the newly founded Burton & Bendernagel firm.

Project drawings and specifications are retained in the Southeastern Architectural Archive.

(1)"Parlor for Sterling High-Bred Driving Horses and the Storage of Vehicles and Equipment." Newspaper clipping dated 9 December 1906.

(2)Specification of Stable Building for Messrs. W.T. and G.E. Burns, situated corner of Galvez and Canal Strets. New Orleans. H.L. Burton, architect, New Orleans. Undated.

Both references from H.L. Burton Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

The People's Slaughterhouse

In March 1892, Brooklyn architect J.Graham Glover (1852-) published his competition proposal for the new People's Slaughterhouse and Refrigerating Company to be located in New Orleans' Ninth Ward at Alabo Street and the Mississippi River (top image).(1) Ultimately, his design was not selected, and instead the commission went to the local Williams Brothers, who developed a more modest scheme (second & third images) that utilized a simple frame structure as the corporate office (fourth image).

By 1895, the People's Slaughterhouse was modernized under new management operating as the New Orleans Abattoir Company, Limited. The main structure was demolished in the summer of 1964 and its accoutrements publicly sold.

If you want to read more about nineteenth-century New Orleans slaughterhouses, see Lindgren Johnson's "To 'Admit All Cattle without Distinction': Reconstructing Slaughter in the Slaughterhouse Cases and the New Orleans Crescent City Slaughterhouse," chap. in Paula Lee, editor. Meat, Modernity and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse. University of New Hampshire Press, 2008.

(1)American Architect & Building News (12 March 1892). Louisiana Architecture Prints, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Top image from (1).

Others from: Williams Family Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Lost Carrollton

New Orleans architect C. Milo Williams (1867-1954) took an interest in the old Porter residence, located at the intersection of Levee and Monroe Streets in Carrollton. According to Williams, the structure was constructed of Hoey's bricks, and was one of the oldest buildings standing in Carrollton. He photographed the building prior to its demolition in the early twentieth century (top image).

His father, William H. Williams (1817-1886) had also taken an interest in the Porter properties and the Hoey brick operations.  In 1878, he copied an 1845 D'Hemecourt survey of the Porter properties and sketched the building's basic plan (second & third  images). The elder Williams also developed a proposed levee plan for John Hoey's brick operations in November 1865 (bottom image), the year prior to the plantation owner's death.

All of these historic sites no longer exist, although the Hoey residence, constructed for John Hoey's widow Carolyn Pierce Hoey (1871) remains at 7933 Willow Street. Louisiana Research Collections (LaRC) retains John Hoey's papers, including his brickyard account ledgers.

Images:

Top: C. Milo Williams, photographer. Porter residence, 8643 Levee Street/806 Monroe Street. Before 1909. Williams Family Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Second & Third: William H. Williams, surveyor. Surveys of Porter Property. Notebook No. 86. From 3 January 1878. William H. and C. Milo Williams notebooks, Louisiana Research Collection, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Bottom: William H. Williams, surveyor. Diagram of Hoey's Levees. Notebook No. 43. November 1865. William H. and C. Milo Williams notebooks, Louisiana Research Collection, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

The Fatal Switch

In the summer of 1891, New Orleans architect-engineer C. Milo Williams (1867-1954) traveled to Sauvé (Jefferson Parish), five miles outside of New Orleans. He witnessed the wreckage of a head-on train collision that had occurred on the Illinois Central Railroad line near Sauvé station (top image above). The I.C.R.R.'s "Cannon Ball" mail and passenger train smashed into a Toledo, St. Louis and Kansas City freight train, resulting in four fatalities and many other serious injuries. Both engineers died immediately. Newspapers referenced the "fatal switch," alleged conductor and brakeman fault, and charged that no warning lights were in use.(1)

C. Milo Williams later photographed safety improvements along the same I.C.R.R. track (lower image). He indexed his series of  images "Bofinger switches" in reference to New Orleans businessman-inventor William H. Bofinger. Just a few days before the Sauvé collision, Bofinger had received a patent for a new switch that allowed an engineer on a moving train to "throw the point of the switch against the main track without leaving his engine."(2)  A few months after the accident, Bofinger filed a second railroad patent, his so-called "switch-stand'" -- essentially a cage-enclosed switch that prohibited tampering. It is the latter that Williams documented in Jefferson Parish.

Among Bofinger's less safety-conscious inventions, one must mention his 1894-95 Rocking Chair Fan Attachment.

(1)"The Crash of the Cannon Ball." The Daily Picayune (21 June 1891): p. 4.

(2)No. 453,690. Patented June 9,1891.

Images above: C. Milo Williams, photographer. Williams Family Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Cabildo Fire & Restoration

William Ransom Hogan archivist-photographer-scholar Lynn Abbott provided the Southeastern Architectural Archive with some images he took of the 1988 Cabildo fire and the structure's 1992 restoration.

Top:  Lynn Abbott, photographer. Cabildo Fire. 9 December 1988.

Bottom:  Lynn Abbott, photographer. Raising the Cupola. 15 October 1992.

Both are housed in the Miscellaneous Photographs Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries. Both images are issued by the Southeastern Architectural Archive. Use requires written permission from the photographer. Each image may not be sold or redistributed, copied or distributed as a photograph, electronic file or any other media. The user is responsible for all issues of copyright.

NEW! Benjamin Morgan Harrod Atlases Finding Aid

The Southeastern Architectural Archive recently finalized the processing of the Benjamin Morgan Harrod Atlases. The collection consists of two atlases once belonging to Harvard-educated civil engineer and architect Benjamin Morgan Harrod (1837-1912), who served on the Mississippi River Commission (MRC) from 1879-1904. Both atlases represent the work of the MRC to investigate the river’s outlet, levee and jetty systems.

The first atlas, Preliminary Map of the Lower Mississippi River ( 1881 through 1885) establishes the commission’s attempt to document the river system between the Ohio River and the Head of the Passes, Louisiana. Engineer Edward Molitor drafted most of the sheets, engraved the title page and compiled the index maps. Sheets provide depth soundings and topographical information for areas near the river; they illustrate cutoffs, landings, and post offices; and record names of property owners. Some sheets – (5) Johnson’s Landing, (18) Madison Parish, (22) Shreve’s Cutoff and (28) New Orleans – include penciled annotations.

The second atlas, larger in format, bears the cover title, Detail Charts of the Lower Mississippi River. Based on surveys conducted in the 1870s, the charts record soundings between the Ohio River and the Head of Passes. Under the direction of MRC President and United States Army Corps of Engineers Major Cyrus Ballou Comstock (1831-1910), New York lithographer and cartographer Julius Bien (1826-1909) printed the 69 chart sheets in 1890 (detail image above).

Image above: United States Mississippi River Commission. Survey of the Mississippi River [Projected from a trigonometrical survey made in 1876-77 and 1879-80]. St. Louis, MO: Mississippi River Commission, 1890. [Note: Title on the cover is Detail Charts of the Lower Mississippi River from the Mouth of the Ohio River to the Head of Passes, Louisiana]. Julius Bien, lithographer.

NEW! Odiorne Finding Aid

The Southeastern Architectural Archive recently finalized the processing of the William C. Odiorne New Orleans Photographs. The collection consists of seventeen gelatin silver prints taken by William C. Odiorne during his years in New Orleans, 1919-1924.

The son of an Illinois storekeeper, William Cunningham Odiorne (1881-1978) was an itinerant photographer who lived briefly in New Orleans from 1919-1924. Prior to his arrival in the Crescent City, he established a succession of commercial studios in the Mississippi River towns of Barry and Quincy, Illinois and apprenticed with Chicago portraitist Eugene Raymond Hutchinson (1880-1957).¹

The earliest printed mention of the photographer in New Orleans occurred in November 1919, when one of his society portraits was published in The Times-Picayune.²  Like Eugene Hutchinson, Odiorne surrounded himself with artists and writers. He befriended William Spratling and Lyle Saxon, and spent leisure time with Sherwood Anderson on Lake Pontchartrain.3  In 1921, Odiorne opened a gallery and photographic studio in the upper Pontalba building. A feature story from the period announced him as “a nationally known photographer, [who] makes a specialty of photographing children.”4  He exhibited his own images, as well as etchings by such California artists as Roi George Partridge (1888-1984) and Cleo Damianakes (1895-1979).

Odiorne left New Orleans for Paris in the spring of 1924. The following year, Spratling visited Paris accompanied by William Faulkner, whom he introduced to Odiorne.  Friendship ensued and Odiorne took a number of photographs of the southern writer and read his manuscripts. Faulkner and Spratling included Odiorne – whom they referred to as “Cicero” – in their caricature book, Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles (1926),5 wherein the photographer’s visage appeared peeking from behind a copy of the journal Le Rire with Faulkner’s caption, “Odiorne of the Café du Dome and New Orleans.”

Odiorne continued his itinerant lifestyle. He lived in Paris until circa 1930, followed by moves to New York and Chicago, then ventured West, first to San Francisco and finally Los Angeles. In 1977, one year before his death, the Stephen White Gallery launched a one-person show devoted to his Parisian photographs. Interviewed by Los Angeles Times reporter Lynn Simross, the 95-year-old reminisced about his years in New Orleans, claiming it to be the only city he had ever lived where it could be said that he had social standing.

¹“W.C. Odiorne.” Bulletin of Photography 18:458 (17 May 1916): p. 634.

² “Bevy of Debutantes This Year.” The Times-Picayune (9 November 1919): p. 17.

³ Simross, Lynn. “Memories of a Bohemian in Paris.” The Los Angeles Times (14 April 1977), Part IV, pages 1,12.

⁴ “New Art Gallery Is Latest Thing in Vieux Carré.” The Times-Picayune (27 November 1921): p. 61.

⁵ Williamson, Joel. William Faulkner and Southern History. 1993, pp. 205; 215; p. 464 n109.

Images above:  William C. Odiorne, photographer. Courtyard on Hospital Street [724 Governor Nicholls Street]; Unidentified Vieux Carré street. Both circa 1919-24. William C. Odiorne New Orleans Photographs, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.