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Museum Review: The Southern Food and Beverage Museum
The Southern Food and Beverage Museum on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard is across the street from historic buildings and the New Orleans Jazz Market. It seems to be an anchor for a museum district in Central City. I visited on a quiet afternoon. The guide who helped me at the front desk was very informative.
Uranium Glass in the Absinthe Museum, an exhibit in the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans The exhibit starts with a section on Al Copeland and Popeye’s Chicken, who they credit with spreading the taste of Louisiana around the world. It then spills into the American Museum of the Cocktail and then the Absinthe Museum. The Absinthe Museum was a collection in a separate museum that closed in 2010. I spent most of my time soaking in the extensive collection of paraphernalia and in depth history. The hint about a former absinthe speakeasy in the French Quarter makes me want to run down another rabbit hole.
Then there is an exhibit on coffee and its history in New Orleans. The exhibit included green coffee beans and a video demonstrating cafe brulot along with a history of chicory as a coffee additive. I loved learning New Orleans receives beans from 31 countries, accounting for 530,000 tons or 30% of all of the coffee that enters the United States.
My favorite part of the museum was an exhibit dedicated to the women of the culinary history of New Orleans including contemporary legends like Susan Spicer and Leah Chase, as well as historical greats like Madame Begue and Rose Nicaud.
Woven in between the major exhibits are the stories of the food of Southern states, with many brand names mentioned. The last exhibit is, of course, Louisiana with king cake, snoballs, poboys, and St. Joseph’s altars featured along with famous restaurant signs. But no gumbo, pralines, callas, or jambalaya.
Overall, the museum is a wonderful look at the influential culinary history of the South with a particular focus on cocktails, New Orleans and Popeye’s Chicken. It was an interesting approach to associate the culinary history largely with brands, but I think that brands do define culinary history in a lot of ways.
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Bourbon Street Refections: On Terror and Joy
Five days after the Bourbon Street Attack, I managed to make my way to the French Quarter. I had a mission to get some footage for a video I’m working on about Storyville. As I crossed Bourbon Street, the brass band nearby started playing “I’ll Fly Away.” Everyone’s mask melted a little. Everyone, just barely holding it together, a little closer to the breaking point. I saw and gave less bright smiles.
In a January 6 article for the New Yorker, Paige Williams got to follow Frank Perez around for the day. Frank is my tour guiding mentor and a true culture bearer for the city. She captured this interaction:
A drunken man wearing Mardi Gras beads greeted him with, “What’s up, family?” Perez didn’t know him. The guy said, “Let me tell you something. This motherfuckin’ scene that we went through? You don’t have to be Black, white, whatever. Love us. Am I correct?”
“You’re absolutely right,” Perez told him.
“I’m American, homie.”
American. Not some strange foreigner with different culture and different values, but American. So many people keep questioning, why New Orleans? We’re just down here minding our business eating beignets and making a roux, swirling a Sazerac waiting for crawfish season. We’ve got no tall buildings in your way and no obnoxious billionaires spoiling the vibe. Why would anyone want to bother lil ole us?
Is this why? New Orleans is that very American place that I’ve been trying to explain. We are American, homie. The embodiment of America from before America existed. The harbinger.
The Most…American
Eight days after the attack, I went to a talk in the French Quarter entitled, “The Royal Street Corridor: America’s Most Literary Neighborhood?” Question mark necessary as so many will scoff. Dr. TR Johnson, a professor at Tulane, thoroughly and beautifully explained that the 13 blocks of Royal Street in the French Quarter have been home to the people who produced the greatest American literature, a claim true of no other 13 blocks in the country.
Many of them were not from New Orleans, but came here, let the city change them, and then changed the rest of the world with their writing. The big ones — Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Kate Chopin — did their most important work while in New Orleans or after their experience in the city, specifically the French Quarter.
In the LGBTQIA+ History of New Orleans class I took with Frank, he shared the revelation that the beginning of Leaves of Grass can be found in the notes Walt wrote as he left the city in 1848. Dr. Johnson confirmed this in his lecture. He also explained that Faulkner, nearly a century later, was an ordinary Victorian poet until he came to New Orleans and started transforming into a Nobel Laureate. Tennessee Williams himself said that he wrote half of his best work in New Orleans. The Awakening by Kate Chopin is the fifth most assigned book by a woman in college literature classes.
The most startling nugget he shared though was that Abraham Lincoln, the man who would sign the Emancipation Proclamation, spent time in New Orleans. He came down the Mississippi on a flatboat, like so many other young men, in 1828 and 1831. The site of open slave markets disgusted him and changed him. A truth that would eventually change America. The harbinger.
Beloved Bourbon
Unfortunately, insomnia meant that I knew about the attack almost instantly. I saw a post on social media from a dancer on Bourbon Street explaining their experience. It didn’t sink in.
My partner woke up a few hours later, “Someone drove a truck through Bourbon Street!”
“I saw,” I replied, still not quite grasping that it was a terrorist attack. I pulled up the live local news on YouTube, and spent the next 15 hours trying to parse the information they fed me. When they started detonating IEDs in the French Quarter, I started to understand. I drank whiskey from a dusty bottle on my bar. Bourbon.
Many people will claim that locals do not go to Bourbon Street, but half the victims were locals celebrating a renewing year. I know how beloved Bourbon Street is, even to my own family. My parents met at Pat O’Brien’s, a tale as old as New Orleans itself. My father is one of those people who came here and never managed to leave. For the record, so was my grandfather. And my great-grandfather.
Evolution
Bourbon Street has evolved. My mom remembers a time when you dressed up to go to Bourbon Street. It was an elegant affair where husbands brought their wives to dinners and shows. Even before my mom, the French Opera House, seat of New Orleans society of the turn of the 20th century, was situated right in the middle of Bourbon until 1919. The area slipped into a slum around this time until the 1920s and 30s saw a revival of art and literature in the French Quarter. In the 1940s, admidst the literati revival scene, the first gay bar in the United States opened on Bourbon Street, Lafitte’s in Exile.
In the 1960s, Jim Garrison became district attorney and made a name for himself in several ways. One of his imprints was his crack down on crime on Bourbon Street. One version of this tale appears in The Last Madam by Christine Wiltz. Another in Cityscapes of New Orleans by Richard Campanella. Seems that Garrison’s efforts to drive out crime drove out the underground businesses that sustained the classy drinking establishments people dressed up to go to. Once sex work and gambling were run out, the dollars they drew didn’t come. Turns out those were the true source of income for the classy bars, and soon dives and strip joints replaced them. My mom remembers when the swinging legs at Big Daddy’s were an actual woman. Drinking on the street instead of going into the sticky floored bars became the norm.
During my childhood in the 1990s, Bourbon Street was sleazy, but still a tourist site. Every time family visited, we walked down Bourbon Street. As an adult, we still make a pilgrimage to Pat O’s for a drink and to thank the booze gods for my parents’ marriage. One of the first times I stayed in a hotel in the French Quarter was when I was about 17 years old. I came with a friend to a singing competition, and we stayed at the Astor Crowne Plaza on the corner of Bourbon and Canal.
One night during college, we decided way too late to drive to New Orleans to go to Bourbon Street. Once we arrived, one of my friends realized they didn’t have their ID. We were barely even 21, so there was no hope of getting in any bars. We drove back to Baton Rouge while the sun rose. I moved to New Orleans in 2008, and the transformation to adult Disney land had begun. They took the swinging legs down that year, but you could still find bars on Bourbon playing porn on every tv screen.
I have impasto smears of memories of Bourbon Street the night the Saints won the Super Bowl in 2010. My partner was there that night. He was new in my life and was the catalyst for our venture to Bourbon Street. “We have to go to the Quarter!” Everyone had the same idea. More people than any Mardi Gras I’ve experienced, a wall bricked with smiling faces and loud WHO DATs. The gravitational pull of the whole world latched onto Bourbon Street. So many bad things could have happened that night. But everyone was so deeply joyous that only someone intent on terrorizing…
America, Mirrored
I’ve taken a lot of friends to their first taste of Bourbon Street. I try to remember the wonder they experience as their senses are assaulted and beckoned simultaneously. Dr. Johnson ended his lecture about Royal Street with a thought about how New Orleans is the mirror the rest of the country uses to see who they are, an idea explored in A Hall of Mirrors by Robert Stone, an idea I’m still trying to understand. Another guest chimed in saying that while other places have become more homogenized in the age of the internet, New Orleans has maintained a unique identity that feels more like home even if you’re from a thousand miles away. Kind of how we can’t understand terror or joy until we’ve experienced the opposite.
At points in history, New Orleans was the biggest city in the South, the largest slave market in the country, the largest community of free people of color before the Civil War. New Orleans is the home of Folgers coffee and Domino sugar along with jazz and gumbo. We get more rain than Seattle, send a lot of crab up to Maryland, and I’ve certainly heard far more stories about lovers meeting in New Orleans than Virginia. But New Orleans isn’t really known for any of these superlatives like other places.
Thirteen days after the attack, I started a part time job in the French Quarter. I have never seen the French Quarter from one perspective. The French Quarter has always been frenetic, always in motion, hyperactive and slow simultaneously, no where to stop and no where to pee. As I approached the building contemplating this, the familiar echo of someone yelling at their demons filled the narrow street and a flicker of fear ran through me, the closest to terror I felt the whole day. I’ll be reading A Hall of Mirrors between shifts and reflecting on the remnants of the greats as I sink deeper into the swamp, with joy.
Recent Essays about New Orleans
Hirsch, Jordan. “What Bourbon Street Stands For: A week after this horrific attack, I can’t stop thinking of what America’s rowdiest street has taught me,” Slate.com, January 7, 2025. https://slate.com/business/2025/01/new-orleans-attack-why-bourbon-street.html
Buckles, Jr. Edward. “Stop Telling New Orleans to be Resilient,” Time, January 7, 2025. https://time.com/7205139/stop-telling-new-orleans-to-be-resilient
Williams, Paige. “Bourbon Street After the Terror: In the wake of the New Year’s attack, party-hard New Orleans staggers to its feet.” The New Yorker, January 6, 2025. https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/in-new-orleans-the-party-goes-on
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New Orleans’s Triennial: Prospect.6 Review
Prospect.6: The Future is Present. The Harbinger is Home.
After Katrina, the city earned our very own large scale art exhibit like the great cities of the world who prioritize art. Originally advertised as a biennial, it is now a triennial on its sixth iteration, Prospect.6: The future is present. The harbinger is home.
The Saginaw News, Sun, Oct 19, 2008 ·Page 31 Another thing popped up after Katrina — the slogan, “Be a New Orleanian, Wherever you Are.” Many people were still flung to the corners of the country, if they ever returned. Others had the experience of coming home after life “elsewhere” for a while. The refrain, slightly scoldy, reminded us that we still have strong roots, limitless cultural essence, and a name to uphold even if we had to leave our home. The easy, slow confidence of the well-fed, partying people who live in the cypress swamps fanning out from the bend in the Mississippi has left the world with colorful, friendly expectations. We proudly abide by being a New Orleanian, wherever we are.
Ignatius captured a sometimes sentiment of New Orleanians, “Leaving the city limits frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins.” (A Confederacy of Dunces) I don’t think many realize how sarcastic John Kennedy Toole was being, even if Ignatius is earnest in his declaration. This insular attitude helps preserve a certain culture and helps us believe that we’d rather live here than anywhere else. But if we can’t…we’ll still be a New Orleanian.
Prospect.6 is entitled “The Future is Present. The Harbinger is Home.” Art exhibits that skip a year are two are dramatic and semi-political like this. When I visited the Venice biennial, the theme was “May you Live in Interesting Times,” which is starting to feel like a curse. I got to see that viral hydraulic sculpture there; the piece that couldn’t save itself from bleeding to death.
This recent opinion piece about climate change coincides nicely with the theme of Prospect.6:
“A few years ago, when a Tulane University study found that the disintegration of the coastal marsh had already crossed an irreversible tipping point, and its lead author predicted that New Orleans, in the best-case scenario, would one day be an island in the Gulf of Mexico, some 30 miles off the coast, the headline in The Times-Picayune read, “We’re Screwed.” Other major American cities don’t talk like this. Other cities don’t live like this. But one morning, not very long from now, they will. On that morning, everyone will be a New Orleanian.” Nathaniel Rich, New Orleans’ Striking Advantage in the Age of Climate Change, November 30, 2024 [emphasis mine]
Be a New Orleanian, Wherever You Are has a new meaning. Look to the Crescent City to see how to behave in these interesting times, like so many before you. The future we’ve all been awaiting is lapping at our shores. The harbinger is, unfortunately, my home.
I’ve visited the Prospect exhibits since the beginning, even covering the first one for a now-defunct online magazine. The themes repeatedly bang up against the nature of the future, and this year states it frankly. I’ve visited a few of the Prospect.6 exhibits. Here are my impressions.
The Historic New Orleans Collection Gesture to Home by Didier William
The exhibit in the Historic New Orleans Collection starts before you enter the room. The ambiance changes, the lighting is intentionally dramatic. The artist used the whole room, sprawling like the swamp, a manmade swamp. A swamp becoming man. A man becoming swamp? The swamp is decay, stinky mucky polluted decay. The artist gave some insight into their thoughts in the description:
“Acknowledging that these trees can live over one thousand years, William regards them as witnesses to the past, having lived through European colonialization (sic), the transatlantic slave trade, the Haitian Revolution, and the Louisiana Purchase. Blending human and botanical elements, William explains, ‘All my paintings are about looking for home, looking for ground.’”
Witnesses to the the past that are becoming the past…
Press St.
One of the many cultures that made New Orleans but we have forgotten is the Filipinx community. I know almost nothing about this community outside of its existence, but the artist responsible for this wheat paste and several other pieces in the Prospect.6 exhibit is hosting a lecture on St. Malo. This wheat paste takes up the entire wall of the building and depicts the small water bound community, the first Filipinx settlement in the United States.
From the description: “Manilamen” or Filipino sailors and escapees from Spanish ships, established the community on a site previously settled by Indigenous people and formerly enslaved Africans. Stephanie Syjuco sourced engravings of St. Malo from an 1883 Harper’s Weekly essay, inverting the original black-and-white images so that structures, figures, and shadows stand out in ghostly white. The enlarged images are then adhered to outdoor facades using wheat paste— a type of glue made from starch and water. Over time, Syjuco’s outdoor murals will disintegrate, just as St. Malo’s former site on the Louisiana coastline erodes due to climate change.
Nearby on Press Street, Abigail DeVille’s installation called Carbon is part of a sound sculpture in the shape of a carbon cluster meteorites and the chambers of the human heart. From the description, “The sound in this artwork will evolve over the exhibition’s run. Beginning with abstract sound, eventually visitors will hear the names, ages, and descriptions of enslaved persons, read aloud by New Orleanians of corresponding ages.”
Harmony Circle
I love that the city is finally repurposing this prominent space for inclusive exhibits. The Sacred Heart of Hours and the Trees of Yesterdays, Today, and Tomorrow by Raúl de Nieves sit atop all the pedestal and urns available. de Nieves explained in the description, “The crowned heart evokes the Catholic Sacred Heart of Jesus, which carries significant spiritual resonances in Mexico and beyond. For de Nieves, whose work often explores Catholicism and Mexican folklore, its placement serves as a loving reset for a site once dedicated to memorializing the Confederacy and signals the relevance of Latinx immigrants in New Orleans. In the four urns surrounding the granite pedestal, de Nieves has installed brightly colored trees fashioned from thousands of recycled Mardi Gras beads.”
The Batture
The exhibit on the Batture provides a great opportunity to experience the world outside of the protection of the levees. It is a small walking trail along the banks of the Mississippi River with three very different exhibits along the way by Christopher Cozier, Marcel Pinas, and Andrea Carlson. All three deal with change, erasure, colonialism.
Exhibit at HNOC 
The Trees of Yesterdays (Faith), the Trees of Today (Justice), the Trees of Tomorrow (Strength), the Trees of Now (Diligence) by Raúl de Nieves 
Exhibit at the Batture 
Exhibit at the Batture 
Exhibit at the Batture Overall impressions
I love the idea of chasing art and ideas around the city every few years, inviting strangers and friends from around the world to indulge in the luxury of release through creativity. But then I worry about the emissions I’m creating by zipping back and forth to soak it in.
The themes for the Prospect exhibits seems to get more and more depressing each time, and I wonder if it’s my changing perspective. Or is it another luxury that a certain set who can zip around the world to look at art have to ponder the horrible future humans are facing without any real effect on their lifestyle.
Previous Prospect ExhibitsProspect.1 — November 1, 2008-January 18 2009
Prospect.2 — October 2, 2011-January 29, 2012
Prospect.3 Notes for Now — October 25, 2014-January 25, 2015
Prospect.4 The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp — Nov 18, 2017-Feb 25, 2018
Prospect.5 Yesterday We Said Tomorrow — Nov 6, 2021-Jan 23, 2022
Prospect.6 The Future is Present. The Harbinger is Home. — Nov 2, 2024-Feb 2, 2025
The Times-Picayune September 12, 2010 – page 42 
Prospect.2 New Orleans The Times Picayune, October 21, 2011, p. 104. 
The Daily Review, Mon, Apr 23, 2012 ·Page 4 
The Times Picayune, October 26, 2012, p. 
Prospect.4 New Orleans The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp
St. Mary and Franklin Banner-Tribune
Franklin, Louisiana, Mon, Dec 4, 2017 , Page 3
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The Tomb: Part I
There is a tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 3 that attracts attention on tours. On the map it is labeled Hebert, 30 Ste. Philomene Aisle1. It is very near Florville Foy’s tomb, which I always visit on tours.
It is falling apart in a beautiful way and provides and opportunity to see inside the tomb. Visitors are often drawn to the dust we return to, sinfully curious about what they may see inside. I leave space for respectful observation. Although I have unfortunately witnessed a child, without reprimand, jump on the fallen marble. I have found a rosary left behind and broken wine glasses scattered around the tomb…remnants of rituals?
There are no first names on the broken marble, but there are several last names: Hebert, Martin, and Heilbron, along with a pedestal with the name Dreuil. On a recent tour, a guest asked if I knew the story. Since I didn’t, I’ve been trying to find it. The website for Catholic Cemeteries in New Orleans says that their burial search feature will be fixed November 2024, so I’ve been hoping to uncover more there2.
In the meantime, here’s what I’ve learned about the Jesus Saves tomb. It is connected to two of the most prominent plantations in south Louisiana, Colombian dignitaries, and the newspaper printing industry in New Orleans. Most amazingly, the last burial seems to have occurred in 2015. What could cause so much destruction in less than a decade?
Hebert
Edna Hebert graduates from the Hebert Institute. The Times Picayune July 19, 1896. 
Sanborn’s Insurance Maps, 1896, Courtesy of: Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries. Provenance: Howard-Tilton Library (Tulane University) The Historic New Orleans Collection Edna Ellen Hebert Heilbron (1880-1931)3 is the lynchpin connecting the names. She was born in New Orleans. Her mother was Mary Ann Martin and her father was Dorville Hebert. Edna eventually married Oscar D. Heilbron.
Edna and her sister Alma attended the Hebert Institute on the corner of St. Peter and Burgundy streets. The principal, Miss H. Hebert, was Edna and Alma’s aunt Hortense. Hortense purchased the property at 701-703 Burgundy (old address 159 Burgundy) in 1884 from Emile Angaud, father-in-law to Berthe Camors. She sold it in 1905.
Hortense Hebert dies at 78. New Orleans Item, May 15, 1919, p. 7. Victor Hebert (1838-1881), who was Edna’s uncle, was possibly a printer for newspapers in New Orleans. There were at least three people named Victor Hebert in New Orleans during this time, a bookseller, a drygoods seller, and a newspaper printer.
Victor-the-printer died in 1881. His wife Augusta was also a teacher at the Young Ladies’ Institute in 1893 with the same residential address as Victor, 356 St. Peter, and the same business address as Hortense, 159 Burgundy. She was also a teacher in 1890, 1895, 1901. This is the only connection I could find to link Victor Hebert, a printer of the New Orleans newspapers, to this Hebert family.
The Daily Picayune, Wed, Aug 24, 1881, Page 4 In the censuses, his occupation changes. In 1860, he was a painter. In 1870, he was a gardener while his son, August, was a printer. In 1880, he was a printer. However, Victor is listed in the directory as a journeyman printer in 1868. He is listed as a printer for newspapers (New Orleans Times and New Orleans Republican) in 1869-1879, that I’ve found so far. His obituary leaves his family and burial details a mystery but invites both the Hall of Orleans Steam Fire Engine Company No. 21 and the New Orleans Typographical Union No. 17 to his residence for his funeral. The only Victor Hebert buried in New Orleans, according to Find A Grave, was born in 1928 and died in 1977.
Edna’s niece Anna (her brother Alfred’s daughter) married Ernest Haydel, whose ancestors founded what is now the Whitney Plantation. His great great great great grandfather was Ambroise Haydel (Heidel).
Martin
Edna’s mother was Mary Ann Martin (1854-1904). Mary’s mother, Ellen McLaughlin (1838-1923), immigrated from Ireland.
Joseph Martin (1836-1917) arrived in New Orleans in 1838 from France, when he was two years old. He married Ellen McLaughlin in 1858. His father was Nicolas Martin and his mother was Maria (last name unknown).
Joseph was originally buried in Vault #1 of the family tomb. He was transfered from this tomb to the Resurrection Mausoleum Crypt 139, Tier D, Christ the Savior Patio. Resurrection Mausoleum was built in 1975, but the reason he was moved is unknown. Joseph’s Find A Grave4 entry led me to find the vault, which has the same three last names engraved. No other information is inscribed providing no further clues.
Edna’s grandparents outlived Edna’s mother Mary (who died at 50 years old) and her father Dorville (who died at 39 years old). Perhaps this is how Edna, the eldest daughter, became responsible for the burials.
In Part II, I’ll dive into the Colombia connection, the other plantation family, and what mysteries remain.
Sources
- St. Louis Cemetery No. 3 Map https://files.ecatholic.com/16998/documents/2020/10/ST%20LOUIS%203%20SQUARE%201-6%20redone.jpg?t=1603750799000 ↩︎
- New Orleans Catholic Cemeteries Burial Search. https://nolacatholiccemeteries.org/burial-search ↩︎
- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/219644015/edna-ellen-heilbron ↩︎
- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/62770649/joseph-martin ↩︎
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Cast Iron Victorian Hinges
When you’re seeking your next deep New Orleans experience, look for the cast iron Victorian hinges. You can still find them on shutters on every block of the French Quarter and in many neighborhoods beyond.1 I learned about these special historic details at the New Canal Museum tour in the Lighthouse.
Note: This is part of my series on atypical things to do in New Orleans, the deep experiences. Click the button to see the rest!
The design allows one to open or close the shutters and lock them in place without tools. You lift the shutter up and then replace it to change its position. These cast iron hinges are so functional in their purpose that there are images of the Lighthouse blown completely over from Hurricane Katrina, but the shutters remain locked in place.
New Canal Lighthouse following 2005 hurricanes via https://www.historic-structures.com/la/new_orleans/new-canal-lighthouse/ Listings for the hinges often include a history explaining that Harvey Lull invented them in 1854. They are referred to as the Lull and Porter Hinges sometimes and commonly the Acme Lull and Porter, or ALP, hinges today.
But the image on the patent for these hinges is similar but clearly not the same. Indeed, a repeated complaint about the 1854 design was that they did not stay closed in wind.
Many designs for hinges appear in the patent records as improvements on the Lull and Porter hinge design. The design that seems most similar to the hinges you can still find in New Orleans to my inexperienced eyes is the 1867 design by Pascal Child.
Lull filed and received extensions for his patent in 1867 and 1876. He claimed poverty. By 1874, he earned only $14,500 — about $427,768.97 in 2024 money or $21,388.40 for each of the 20 years of his patent. Others agreed that his invention should have been worth a lot more, as it was now in common use.
“No opposition to the extension has appeared, but, on the other hand, some eighty prominent hardware dealers and manufacturers (not interested in the patent) residing in the cities of New York, Hoboken, Philadelphia, Reading, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Washington, &c, have petitioned Congress for its extension, on the grounds that the invention is of great value to the public; that the said Lull has not received adequate compensation; that the public will be better protected by the extension, in having good and substantial castings made; and that the cost to the public will not be increased,” William Windom wrote in a report submitted to the 44th Congress on March 20, 1876.2
This wasn’t exactly true. Two years before, in 1874, the report issued by the Committee on Patents did not recommend extending the patent. Henry B. Sayler outlines how much Lull has made from his invention and ends with, “It is but reasonable to conclude that this sum would have been substantially increased had it not been for certain sales of interests in said inventions which were unfortunate in failing to bring to the applicant any returns whatever. No considerable time or money by the applicant in perfecting his invention is shown. Your committee are of the opinion that the equities in this case are not of such a character as to entitle the applicant the relief asked for, and would therefore report adversely thereto.”3
Nevertheless, Congress granted his extension in 1876 for seven additional years.
Patent Case
In 1882, the year before his second extension ended, Harvey Lull sued Charles Clark and several others for patent infringement.45 His claim was that the other hinges were not substantially different than his original invention, which was the mechanism by which the shutters closed and locked and not the specific pieces constructed. The invention was the mechanism, and the court agreed. “Where the mechanism used by defendant’s shutter hinge is a mere formal variation from that of plaintiffs’ invention, having the same mode of operation, it is an infringement of the patent,” the Federal Reporter concluded in 1882.
However, Clark appealed to the Northern District of New York in 1884. The decision resulted in a precedential ruling.6 The defendants objected to the initial ruling because the court found that none of the similar hinges except the Clark hinge were similar enough to infringe on Lull’s patent. They argued that this was an uneven application done without any authority of the court. In other words, the judge couldn’t have been expert in hinges enough to know that the only similar one was the Clark hinge. The court said that it was done to the best of his ability and without substantial confusion or delays. “It would create intolerable delays and confusion, besides putting an unnecessary burden upon the court to hold, that each time the master makes a ruling, the aggrieved party may, by special motion, have it reviewed,” J. Coxe wrote in his decision to deny the motion.
I found at least one case that cites Lull v. Clark (1884). In Pathe Laboratories, Inc. v. Du Pont Film Mfg. Corporation, 3 F.R.D. 11 (S.D.N.Y. 1943), the “motion to quash subpoena duces tecum issued under Rule 45 to produce records before a hearing master authorized to determine the issue of plaintiff’s damages” was denied, and the Lull decision of maintaining the authority of the court to determine what was relevant evidence was cited as a precedent.7
Lull v. Clark is also cited in Modern Pleading and Practice in Equity in the Federal and State Courts of the United States, with Particular Reference to the Federal Practice, including Numerous Forms and Precedents Volume II by Charles Fisk Beach, Jr. from 1900.8
Conclusion
In 1874, Harvey Lull had spent $1,500 on litigation, or about $40,000 in 2024. However, he hadn’t made any substantial improvements on his invention, either via time or money. He invented another totally different hinge in 1874 for blinds.9 He also had patents in 1837 (Improvement in machines for breaking and dressing hemp and flax), 1856 (Improvement in feathering paddle wheels), 1871 (Improvement in auxiliary springs for treadles), 1871 (Improvement in shade racks), and 1873 (Improvement in curtain cord fasteners). I didn’t find any indications that he sued anyone over those inventions.
Perhaps he was right to fight so hard to protect his intellectual property at the time. We are still using a variety of it today, 170 years later. I found a comment on an article explaining that the Acme version of the hinges was patented in 1906. I have struggled to find this patent. Please let me know if you know where to find it!
Timeline
1854: H. Lull Shutter Hinge
1867: Improvement in Hinges for Window Shutters
1867: Lull filed first patent extension
1874: Lock Hinges
1874: Design for Blind Hinges
1874: Patent No. 156,277 to Charles B. Clark October 27, 1874
1874: Lull filed second patent extension
1882: Lull v. Clark and others
1906: ACME Lull and Porter hinge patentedSources
- House of Antique Hardware “Acme” Cast Iron Mortise Shutter Hinges – 3 3/4” x 2 1/2” https://www.houseofantiquehardware.com/shutter-hardware-3-3-4-inch-acme-mortise-hinges ↩︎
- Windom, William. Report No. 160 to Senate, 44th Congress, 1st Session, March 20, 1876. ↩︎
- Sayler, Henry B. (Committee on Patents), Report No. 601 to the House of Representatives, 43rd Congress, 1st Session, May 22, 1874. ↩︎
- Lull v. Clark patent and case info, https://oldhouseguy.com/images/shutters/HingePatentInfo.pdf ↩︎
- “Lull v. Clark and others,” Circuit Court, N. D. New York 1882, Federal Reporter, p. 456. https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F/0013/0013.f1.0456.pdf ↩︎
- Lull v. Clark, Court Listener, 20 F. 454, 22 Blatchf. 207, 1884 U.S. App. LEXIS 2233, https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/8162499/lull-v-clark/ ↩︎
- PATHE LABORATORIES, Inc., v. DU PONT FILM MFG. CORPORATION, Case Text, Pathe Laboratories, Inc. v. Du Pont Film Mfg. Corporation, 3 F.R.D. 11 (S.D.N.Y. 1943), https://casetext.com/case/pathe-laboratories-inc-v-du-pont-film-mfg-corporation ↩︎
- Beach, Jr. Charles Fisk. Modern Pleading and Practice in Equity in the Federal and State Courts of the United States, with Particular Reference to the Federal Practice, including Numerous Forms and Precedents Volume II, W. H. Anderson and Co., Cincinnati, OH. © 1900, p. 681. ↩︎
- H. Lull Patent for Lock-Hinges for Blinds No. 148,315, March 10, 1874, https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/1b/39/c0/982aa30904e5da/US148315.pdf ↩︎
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Sazerac House: Museum Review
The other night, I had an opportunity to visit the Sazerac House Museum with a private event. The Sazerac House is one of the free museums in New Orleans, and it offers a cocktail tasting with your tour.
The exhibit goes through the history of cocktails in New Orleans, from treatments for disease in pharmacies through Prohibition, including a shrine to Antoine Peychaud. Louisiana was the first place to license pharmacists in the country. The laws were the result of both trying to regulate folk medicine and treat the rampant disease.
During Prohibition, around 5,000 defiant businesses continued serving alcohol, according to the museum. New Orleanians also tried to classify alcohol as a food to get around the regulations of the 18th Amendment. “Hidden shops and bars called speakeasies flourished. Rum-runners used the busy port to transport liquor from the Caribbean,” an exhibit in the museum.
Tourists commonly ask about speakeasies that still exist in New Orleans to this day. We don’t really hide the drinking anymore. In fact, New Orleanians take pride in the fact that we can legally drink on the street. However, there are a few speakeasy type bars around to satisfy the need for secrecy. Reach out for more.
I found the information about coffee houses or exchanges very interesting. According to the museum, by 1852, there were 859 coffee houses in New Orleans where businessmen drank and did business. Cafe du Monde claims an 1862 opening year, but we certainly had coffee shops in New Orleans well before that. (Once someone pointed out that the Battle ofNew Orleans during the Civil War occurred in 1862, I have firmly doubted this claim.)
The exhibit is very well done with multiple stories. If you’re interested in a less serious visit to a museum that still provides valuable knowledge (albeit under an obvious branded long form advertisement for the liquor company) and interactive experiences, the Sazerac House Museum is a great way to spend a rainy afternoon. In the meantime, check out my video about the Origin of the Cocktail below.
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New Orleans Ghosts: The Beauty of Ancestor Worship
Many explanations of New Orleans Voodoo will start with ancestor worship. Ghosts and death and all the accoutrements surrounding ancestors are integral to the monotheistic religion that New Orleans is known for. The rituals around ancestor worship and interacting with ghosts work well with the rituals of Catholicism, like All Saints Day and All Souls Day, feasts celebrating all saints known and unknown and all the faithful departed. The overlapping rituals provide even deeper connections to the afterlife and a strong root in New Orleans.
The Daily Picayune, November 2, 1848, page 2 All Saints Day in New Orleans — Decorating the Tombs in One of the City Cemeteries, a wood engraving drawn by John Durkin and published in Harper’s Weekly, November 1885.
via Wikimedia.The Night of the Pontalba, one of the ladies, a retired Catholic school teacher, told me about an experience she had with a psychic. We were waiting for one of the tour guests to finish a reading in Jackson Square. She asked if we were familiar with it. One of the guests said she does her own readings.
“Now, I am a devout Catholic. I believe. But one time, I had a reading done,” the teacher explained. “It was that lady from New York. My kids really believed in it, so we went to see her at a show. That lady told us things she couldn’t have known.”
Heidi chimed in reiterating the deep knowledge the psychic from New York inexplicably had.
“I asked my priest about it after, and he told me that we believe it’s the possession of the devil,” the teacher continued.
“Straight to confession!” I joked.
“I DID!” The teacher professed. “I went straight to confession before the end of that day, and I don’t mess with it anymore.”
This tracks with my experience with Catholicism also. I learned that Voodoo was devil worship or evil. Interacting with the spirits (that no one doubts exist) is certainly an invitation for demons and possession. However, I learned from people who practice the religion that there isn’t even a devil figure in the Voodoo tradition. The Catholic notion that it is devil worship is based on misconceptions. Ghosts, spirits, and ancestors are prominent in Voodoo, but the devil doesn’t exist.
The Ghosts of New Orleans
“You think you’ve never seen a ghost?” My teacher’s husband asked this one night in the Voodoo class that I took last summer. I’m a natural and trained skeptic, so I admitted that I never saw a ghost before. Although I do believe any weird sounds or moving objects in my home are definitely the ghost of my cat Salome, who died in 2021.
RIP Salome 2009-2021, but please don’t stop haunting me. She serves as my personal New Orleans ghost. “You know those people you see in the Quarters walking by themselves and talking to themselves? Those are ghosts. They don’t all know they are dead,” he explained.
I thought he meant this figuratively. New Orleans can wring you out like Las Vegas, but it’s a different kind of vice. Finding yourself or losing yourself are equally likely in the Crescent City.
Shortly after that, I learned he meant it literally through experience. I saw such a man in the French Quarter one morning when I was also alone. I often go for a walk through the Old City alone in the early mornings for inspiration and because one of my favorite things in the whole world is the French Quarter in the morning.
Dressed in decorated rags and mumbling loudly to himself, I instinctively made sure there was no emergency and let him be. Then, I remembered the wisdom from class and turned to see the ghost again.
He was gone.
There wasn’t a block for him to have turned down. There wasn’t time to duck into a building. He was loudly talking to himself and then like the fog burned off by the morning sun — was he ever there?
Savvy marketers built the tourism industry in New Orleans on ghost stories, some with roots of truth, most entirely made up for marketing. Tour guides and servers and bartenders will tell you personal stories about ghosts that have visited them and then laugh behind your back at the gullible tourists. I’ve even seen other tourists get in on the act and provide life long memories for their comrades in New Orleans.
I don’t believe in gatekeeping information. I also can’t participate in spreading falsehoods that will certainly be warped and repeated without explaining that they aren’t true. However, I am still learning and understanding. Sometimes, I get things wrong.
There are earnest people living in New Orleans who believe the stories, but many are full of shit and know it. No matter how many times people admit to making up the ghost stories or people like me prove them wrong or the guests feel that twinge of disbelief, they still want to hear the ghost stories. And I’m sure some rush to confession after.
I still hold skepticism that my ghost disappeared in an entirely corporeal and logical way and not in a New Orleans or paranormal way. But I have no way to prove what I did or didn’t see. I wonder if I have ever been someone’s New Orleans ghosts on my early morning strolls.
Fewer and fewer people in New Orleans participate in All Saints Day on November 1, but newspaper archives share that this was a festive day with crowded cemeteries in the New Orleans of the past. “All the ceremonies passed off in the usual quiet manner, and we trust that many years will elapse before the interest now taken in its observance shall have died away,” 1848 article from The Daily Picayune. Sometimes the premonitions in the archives are calls to action.
Please tell me your brushes with the paranormal in the comments. Or, preferably, your rituals around ancestor worship. Most of my family’s tombs in New Orleans are regularly maintained, but there has never been a picnic in the cemetery during my lifetime…yet?
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Mardi Gras in New Orleans
“It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh; and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi-Gras in New Orleans.” A letter from Samuel Clemens to his sister1.
Lea from the Deep celebrating Mardi Gras He did not say the world has not seen America. He focused on the Americans whose American experience is not complete without Mardi Gras. Many visitors have shared with me on tours that they knew nothing about New Orleans beyond the Mardi Gras stereotypes before the tour.
When I lived in China, I kept a daily blog. It was to keep in touch with my friends and family back home, but some of my entries got public attention. One of my blogs continued getting comments for years until I finally unpublished it. I was tired dealing with the public judgment of the thoughts of 23-year-old Lea.
But that blog was entitled “Is America Culture-less?” And I think I struck some SEO magic with those young thoughts. It was my musing on how incomprehensible it was for me to hear Europeans calling America “culture-less” as a Louisianan. I was in extreme culture shock when I wrote that blog — a mixture of exhilaration and frustration at the new and unknown with a longing earned via a deeper understanding of that which I did know.
I’m learning with more experience that our culture is American culture. So much of the music, food, art, literature, slang…culture of our time springs forth from the mouth of the Mississippi, spread around the world just like so much of the country’s goods. (And don’t forget: everything you love about New Orleans is because of Black people.)
It’s been nearly 20 years since I had to travel around the world to learn how much I love my home. And how much I hate my home. And how much so many others love my home. And how much I have left to learn to understand. My home.
127 days until Mardi Gras 2025. Hopefully I get to meet you while you get to see America from the perspective of Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
Sources:
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Canal Street: The Widest Street Debate
Is Canal Street, at 171 feet wide, the widest street in the world? Many sources on the history of Canal Street will include the fact that this is the widest street in the world, sometimes in America, sometimes in New Orleans. The reason for the girth (and the name) is the planned but never built here canal.123
Highsmith, Carol M, photographer. Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. [Between 1980 and 2006] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2011630059/>. While I grew up across the lake, my mom grew up on this side. Canal Street in the 1960s was the shopping district. I learned from stories from my mom’s childhood about going shopping with her aunts on Canal Street, getting dressed up and taking the bus to spend the day going to the fancy shops and eating yummy food. It was a special treat to get to go to Canal Street to go shopping.
Canal Street was laid out around the turn of the 19th century and reached its most prominent time in the 1840s, according to Richard Campanella, when the Americans were flooding into the city and settling upriver from the French Quarter. Canal Street became the border between the two neighborhoods, Faubourg Ste. Marie and the Vieux Carre. Some say that the term neutral ground (still used today instead of median) originated here. This area was a neutral territory between the Americans and the Creoles, who some historians say had hostile relations.
I heard the fact about the widest street in the world and repeated it without question4. Canal Street is still often a sparkling magical place of my mom’s childhood in my memories. But the person I repeated it to, thankfully, questioned it. It came up again on a tour recently, where I had to break the news.
Widest Street in the World
A Google search for “widest street in the world” does not return Canal Street as the answer. The result, in Argentina, is 110 meters and 16 lanes wide, which is more than double the width of Canal Street. They built this roadway well into the 20th century though. It couldn’t have been the widest road in 1891 when the Library of Congress published images with captions claiming Canal Street as the broadest street in the world.
View on Canal St., New Orleans broadest street in the world, U.S.A. Washington, D.C.: J.F. Jarvis, Publisher, Jun 2, 1891. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress,<www.loc.gov/item/2015645053/>. Broadest Street in America
You can find many sources showing Canal Street as the broadest street in America5. Wikipedia has narrowed this down further, “Canal Street is often said to be the widest roadway in America to have been called a street, instead of the avenue or boulevard titles more typically appended to wide urban thoroughfares.”6 This seems like it’s possibly only oft-repeated by tour guides as it doesn’t include a source for this claim, but using semantics like these does make it far more likely to be true.
Googling “widest street in America” returns many results too, including a street in New Hampshire that is 172 ft wide7 and one in Oklahoma that is “six ft short of being as wide as a football field”8. This could mean 294 ft (a football field is 100 yards or 300 ft long), 354 ft (360 ft long with end zones), or 154 ft (160 ft wide).
Postcard by Adolph Selige Pub. Co., circa 1905 via https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=51605 Widest Street in New Orleans
A Google search for “widest street in New Orleans” does return Canal Street in the AI results! AI is compiling answers from all over the web, so if it’s on the internet we can believe it, right?
Screen shot of AI Google results on October 13, 2024. The planned canal that was never here was actually built where the Pontchartrain Expressway/Boulevard is today, which is obviously wider to the naked eye than Canal Street, with a huge park as a neutral ground. According to Richard Campanella, the New Basin Canal was 60 ft wide with a foot print of 300 ft9. The photos demonstrate that construction took up all of the allotted space for the new road, more than double the space of Canal Street. But the road over the canal is called boulevard not street…
Semantics
One side of the former canal is called West End Boulevard and the other is Pontchartrain Boulevard/Expressway. Perhaps the separate names cause the distinction? Or maybe it’s because it’s a boulevard and not a “street”. I don’t know of any roadways named street that are wider than Canal in New Orleans, but I also am definitely not familiar with all the streets in New Orleans. Do you know of any wider streets?
Was Canal the widest roadway in the world at sometime? Possibly. Is Canal the widest street in New Orleans now? Maybe. That road in Argentina is an Avenida, not Calle, so it might not even outrank Canal. I think with enough qualifications we can probably make anything a superlative. Tour guides are especially good at this trick, so be careful about what you repeat 😉
Sources
- “The Historical Significance of Canal Street.” New Orleans FrenchQuarter.com https://www.frenchquarter.com/historical-significance-of-canal-streets/ ↩︎
- Hawkins, Dominique M. Et. Al. “Canal Street Historic District,” City of New Orleans Historic Landmarks Commission. May 2011. https://nola.gov/nola/media/HDLC/Historic%20Districts/Canal-Street.pdf ↩︎
- “Canal Street Study,” City Planning Commission, City of New Orleans. October 16, 2018. https://nola.gov/nola/media/City-Planning/CANAL-STREET-STUDY-FINAL-10-16-18.pdf ↩︎
- “Canal Street Historic District,” Historic Marker Database. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=51605 ↩︎
- “New Orleans Jazz History Walking Tours: Canal Street,” New Orleans Jazz Commission, National Park Service. https://npshistory.com/publications/jazz/brochures/canal-street-walking-tours.pdf ↩︎
- “Canal Street, New Orleans,” Wikipedia.org, Retrieved on October 10, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_Street,_New_Orleans ↩︎
- Rumrill, Alan F. “A moment in local history: The ‘Widest Paved Main Street in the World,” The Keene Sentinel, May 9, 2020. https://www.sentinelsource.com/news/local/a-moment-in-local-history-the-widest-paved-main-street-in-the-world-by-alan/article_41403075-ba96-5750-8e4e-ad69d2ea8289.html ↩︎
- “Marshall, Oklahoma: Widest Main Street in USA,” Roadside America. https://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/77221 ↩︎
- Campanella, Richard. “Before the Pontchartrain Expressway: Last days of the New Basin Canal.” Preservation in Print, June 6, 2024. https://prcno.org/before-the-pontchartrain-expressway-last-days-of-the-new-basin-canal/ ↩︎
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Historic Gumbo Recipes
When the weather gets cooler, even for just one day, who else craves gumbo? The traditional stew of seasoning vegetables, meat and rich roux-based soup served over rice satisfies my hunger and my soul during the fall.
When I was growing up, my dad would take my sister and me crabbing in the rivers that end in the lake where the water is brackish. If we caught any smaller ones, my mom would process them and freeze them, always calling them gumbo crabs. She added half crabs in shell to the gumbo to cook. That is still my favorite gumbo recipe by far.
Sometimes New Orleanians mistake authenticity for traditionalism. Authenticity is an evolution by definition, as it is your own. Traditionalism, clinging to the past because it is old, is often not true to now. In my experience, this is often demonstrated through recipes. Many people who live in the area of the country known for making gumbo will tell you that only their recipe is correct. Whatever they grew up eating is the only right way to eat gumbo. Does it have tomatoes? Garlic? Did you use jarred roux? What kind of sausage? Did you dare to mix chicken and seafood? Rice or potato salad? Both?! Add the potato salad or keep it on the side?
The rules for gumbo are exhausting. And entirely made up, like so many New Orleans myths.
Once, someone claimed to me that their recipes were the only authentic ones because they were over 100 years old. This was in the year of our lord 2022, so Louisiana was THREE hundred years old. There are plenty of recipes printed and published before 1922. Why does this person think that’s when authentic gumbo was invented? And why does anyone think that 100 year old recipes will satisfy our modern palates?
Because these are some of the oldest gumbo recipes I found. No mention of roux, lots of tomatoes, and beef…or rat or pickled lizard as the protein.
Gumbo Recipe 1838 The Times-Picayune New Orleans, Louisiana Tue, Oct 23, 1838 Page 2 
Gumbo Recipe 1838 The Times-Picayune New Orleans, Louisiana Wed, Dec 12, 1838 Page 2 
Gumbo Recipe 1842 South-Western Farmer Fri, Jun 17, 1842 Page 6 
Gumbo Recipe 1843 Daily National Intelligencer and Washington Express Fri, Oct 13, 1843 ·Page 2 
Gumbo Recipe 1858 The Charleston Mercury Fri, Jul 16, 1858 Page 1
Let me know which you’re willing to try… Old gumbo recipes show that we should be familiar with the past before we cling to it. Or we don’t even know we are clinging to pickled lizard and owl gumbo.
Do you have a favorite gumbo recipe to share? I’d love to hear it!
