I’m taking a little break from procrastinating on my Irish New Orleans series to document an adventure in tour guiding cooperation. Recently, a few other guides helped me crowd source an elusive list, the cornstalk fences of New Orleans, and I want to share it with you. 

The First Legend I was Told

The Cornstalk Fence in New Orleans is a subject of fascination by many. I recently posted a video about the fence and its origin. Tour guides have created winding histories of the fence and pegged it as unique. I received such a tale on a Garden District Food Tour for my first wedding anniversary. We had gone on a food tour in Miami on the way home from climbing Machu Picchu for our honeymoon, and the experience was incredible. We couldn’t stop raving about the bites we tasted, the stories we learned, and how much we enjoyed the tour guide, who was phenomenal at her job.

Because of this experience, we searched for a food tour in New Orleans. This was 2013. We struggled to find even one then believe it or not. Eventually, we booked a Garden District food tour for a weekend near our anniversary. We were excited because we knew that a food tour in New Orleans would be worlds better than the amazing tour we had in Miami. 

On the day of our tour, the guide called to confirm that we still wanted to do it even though no one else had signed up…yes, a private tour is a feature not a bug. As a tour guide, this still seems like a weird question to me. We did a mini tour of homes in the Garden District and ate food at some places along the way. One of the homes featured was Col. Short’s Villa on Fourth Street where the guide told us The Legend of the Cornstalk Fence. 

In short, the legend claims that the wife who lived in the home was from Iowa and was homesick. Her husband had a custom fence built so that she could see her familiar rows of Iowa corn at home in New Orleans. The legend can’t be true for many reasons, explored in thoughtful articles before my research began.

Other Legends of the Cornstalk Fence

The legend is probably repeated most often in the French Quarter though, where there is another prominent iron fence with a cornstalk pattern. The double cornstalk fences provide a bit of a problem for the tour guide legends that claim it was a one-of-a-kind masterpiece…The 1938 New Orleans City Guide doesn’t include the legend and does point out the two cornstalk fences and their “similar” designs, claiming these are the only two in New Orleans. Perhaps they were at the time.

During my tour guiding class, our Garden District tour also included the cornstalk fence legend. It was presented as a legend and Frank, our teacher and guide, ended his spiel by saying it was probably from a catalog from Pennsylvania…

The Elusive Eleven Fences

The main article I found exploring the legend was from Strange True Tours written in 2020 by Historian Jane. The article is no longer available, but it is captured on the Wayback Machine. In the article, she mentions that there are 11 cornstalk fences in New Orleans. ELEVEN!? There were four that were fairly well known. The French Quarter and Garden District and then one in the Marigny and one in Bayou St. John. Where are the other seven cornstalk fences???

I knew that I wouldn’t be able to search the city to find them, but I collected references I found along the way. For instance, once someone posted in a comment that they knew of one at 3434 Canal Street.

I commented on Reddit recently about the cornstalk fences, and someone revealed the one at 1540 Erato Street. I posted a photo of that one on Facebook, and a tour guide friend revealed the one on Willow Street. After that, another tour guide friend posted one he had found in 2021 on Marias Street. Then, other tour guides chimed in with the ones they had found on missions to find them all, including the husband of Historian Jane.

In total, our cooperation revealed 13 current fences around the city and one former fence. All of them are mapped below, so you can build your own deep tour of the city and probably see neighborhoods you’ve missed. I’ve also included fences that are outside of New Orleans.

Tour guides have a tendency to be extremely competitive. This is an example of wonderful cooperation for our collective knowledge, and I couldn’t be happier to be a part of it. Maybe together we are just as influential as the tour guide who made up the legend.

But what about that catalog…?

The Cornstalk Catalog

The Metal Museum says that the original fence was the 915 Royal Street fence and it was installed in 1856. But I haven’t found any primary documentation for that yet. The Metal Museum also includes the Iowa story as if it’s true…The fence was added to the Wood & Perot foundry catalog in 1858, and there are only three remaining complete fences, per the Metal Museum — the one in the French Quarter, the one in the Garden District, and one in California that was moved from a property at Julia and St. Charles. The Metal Museum also explains that the Fourth Street example is from the Wood and Miltenberger foundry in New Orleans. Although, the plaque on the fence says it’s from Philadelphia.

One late night, I was trying to find any semblance of Romeo Spikes in an archived ironworks catalog for the Robert Wood foundry in Philadelphia from the 1860s. My bleary eyes focused on a cornstalk in one of the fence designs. I still haven’t found any Romeo Spikes but I found…the catalog with the cornstalk fence???

Yes, there are the pumpkins (my favorite part), and the morning glory vines, and the cornucopias, and the butterflies! This is clearly the cornstalk fence design. Is the 915 emblazoned on the plate like the supposed original on Royal Street? No, of course not. [To be fair, the address in 1856 for this lot was 217 Royal Street. It was changed to 915 when the numbers were standardized around 1895.]

G. W. Mordecai 1860  

The fence plate reads “G.W. Mordecai 1860”. There were two G.W. Mordecais who could have this fence built in 1860. George Washington Mordecai (1801-1871) and George Washington Mordecai II (1844-1920).

Based on brief research and some clues (like GW2 would be only 16 in 1860), my instincts tell me the first G. W. had this fence made and that he initially used it in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he is also buried.

Is the fence bearing the G.W. Mordecai label the actual original fence…? According to the Society of Architectural Historians, the original fence was from 1850, so maybe not. The design was also part of an earlier catalog than I’m referencing, according to the Metal Museum, so, again, probably not the original depicted in this catalog.

When did 915 get the Fence?

The earliest photo I have found of the building is from 1899, and the fence is clearly visible. This image accompanies a 1939 article that briefly explains the provenance of the fence as they understood it then. “In its earliest days, the house didn’t have its odd fence. In the late 1850s, according to available evidence, the daughter of Dr. Biamanti inherited it, and had the fence cast.” Dr. Biamanti had two daughters, Maria and Aimee. The daughters inherited the property in 1858 and partitioned it in 1859. If it was a daughter who had the fence cast, it wasn’t in the 1850s.

The only property description I found that seems to include the fence is very vague. It’s from an ad for the home’s sale in 1900, and just says “under a massive iron inclosure” as a feature. I think the most information available is from the Sanborn Insurance Maps. I highlighted 217 on the 1876 map below to show where this property is. Based on the key, there is a firewall six inches above the roof. There are four windows on one side and two on the other. The home and back building have three stories each. The roof is composite. While the buildings next door have iron and wooden cornices, none are listed in front of 217. I don’t see anything about iron fence or gating on the key, so I don’t think this map holds the information we need to know if the cornstalk fence was added already in 1876. Please let me know if you can help me learn more!

By searching for images of the very famous building next door, formerly known as the Old Spanish Courthouse and currently known as the Andrew Jackson Hotel, I was able to find etchings as far back as 1871 showing the fence. After seeing a reference on the Historic New Orleans Collection’s Vieux Carre Digital Survey, I discovered that the University of Michigan has digitized Appleton’s Journal: A Magazine of General Literature. You can find the etching of the Old Spanish Courthouse with a cornstalk fence neighbor along with many other etchings of the city in the article “New Orleans: The Crescent City” from the October 26, 1872 issue.

So the fence was there by 1871. That means it was a Biamanti daughter, probably Maria, or Marie Antoinette Biamonti Ogden, who installed the fence. Right? She is listed at the address many times in the paper, including for her funeral.

But…ornamental iron production ceased during the Civil War in New Orleans. A massive iron fence like this wouldn’t be installed in the city after about 1860 (when the Fourth Street iteration dates from) and definitely not after 1862. So the fence probably was installed in the late 1850s, which means it was Dr. Biamanti who possibly had it cast. If the original dates to 1850, then it’s doubtful that this is the original cast. The iron trend in New Orleans didn’t really start until 1850 or 1851. Wouldn’t it be interesting to find a receipt and learn how much the fence cost originally and who it was for?

A Clue in the Maker’s Mark

I’ve been searching for a maker’s mark on the cornstalk fences. I’ve definitely been the weirdo looking at the bottom of the posts to try to see words through many layers of paint. I hadn’t found any success until the twelfth and thirteenth fences revealed their makers clearly — Wood, Miltenberger, & Co. New Orleans, LA. The most run down of the fences has the most clear mark. I did find a mark on the fence on Fourth Street and remnants of one on the Royal Street fence. So far, all of the fences with visible marks are Wood & Miltenberger, indicating they were made in New Orleans.

Let me know if you’ve found any more cornstalk fences in New Orleans or beyond. Besides California and Memphis, there is a piece at a Native American memorial in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If you have more information about the original cast iron cornstalk fence, I would love to update this information!

Sources

“Inside the Collection: Cornstalk Fence Section,” The Metal Museum, https://www.metalmuseum.org/post/2018/06/01/inside-the-collection-cornstalk-fence-section

Historian Jane, “Cornstalk Fence Blog,” Strange True Tours, 2020, archived.

Design No. 511. Robert Wood & Co.’s Portfolio of Original Designs of Ornamental Ironwork of Every Description. Philadelphia. © 1860s p. 131. https://archive.org/details/portfoliooforigi00robe/page/131/mode/1up

“George Washington Mordecai,” https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/32402890/george_washington-mordecai

“George Washington Mordecai,” https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/67809727/george-washington-mordecai

Kingsley, Karen and Lake Douglas. “Miltenberger Houses,” https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/LA-02-OR22

“New Orleans: The Crescent City,” Appletons’ journal: a magazine of general literature. / Volume 8, Issue 187, p. 449-454. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/acw8433.1-08.187/455:1?rgn=full+text&view=image

“Marie Antoinette Ogden,” https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/11894714/marie_antoinette-ogden

Postscript

As if this wasn’t long enough, right as I was preparing to publish, I found an odd connection between the French Quarter fence and the Garden District fence that still needs solving. Robert Short bought the property on Fourth and Prytania from Edward Ogden in 1858, according to the newspaper article from 1870 describing the seizure of the property from Short. Maria Biamanti married Robert W. Ogden in 1847 and lived with him in the property on Royal Street, presumably from 1859 when she inherited it completely for the duration of their marriage. Who is Edward Ogden?