Archaeology
Archaeology of the New Orleans Area
In New Orleans archaeological explorations span 2,500 years of history
Archaeology
Archaeology Index
Archaeology
Evans Culture
This entry covers the prehistoric Evans culture during the Middle Archaic Period, 6000–2000 BCE.
Archaeology
Historical Archaeology in Louisiana
Archaeologists at sites across Louisiana help fill in the written record through physical excavations of the past.
Archaeology
Pre-Clovis and Clovis Cultures
This entry covers the Pre-Clovis and Clovis cultures during the Early Paleoindian Period, 11500–9500 BCE, and Middle Paleoindian Period, 9500 BCE–8800 BCE.
Architecture
Architecture IndexArchitecture
Weiss, Dreyfous and Seiferth
The architectural firm of Weiss, Dreyfous and Seiferth is best known for designing public buildings in the 1930s, many of which were commissioned by Governor Huey Long.
Architecture
Thomas Sully
Louisiana architect Thomas Sully introduced innovative national architectural trends—aesthetic and structural—to New Orleans.
Architecture
Public Works Administration Architecture
The Public Works Administration projects in Louisiana during the Great Depression include numerous courthouses, university buildings, and Charity Hospital in New Orleans.
Architecture
Metairie Cemetery
Tombs at Metairie Cemetery are more spaciously laid out than in other New Orleans cemeteries and constitute some of the most spectacular and grandiose funerary architecture in the United States.
Art
Art IndexArt
Artists' Association of New Orleans
The Artists' Association of New Orleans, which was incorporated in 1886, promoted the appreciation of fine arts in the South in general and New Orleans in particular.
Art
Richard Johnson
Richard Johnson is often labeled an"abstract illusionist" New Orleans painter who explores classical landscapes and the figure to create highly expressionistic compositions.
Art
Alexandre Alaux
Alexandre Alaux, born in France in 1851, came to Louisiana at the age of six. After studying in Europe, Alaux returned to Louisiana, where he painted with his children until his death in 1932.
Art
Christopher Harris
Based in New Orleans from 1969 to 1989, Christopher Harris worked as a freelance photojournalist, capturing dynamic, striking black-and-white images.
Business & Industry
Business & Industry IndexBusiness & Industry
Strand Theatre
Designed by New Orleans–based architect Emile Weil, the Strand Theatre opened in Shreveport on July 3, 1925.
Business & Industry
First Louisiana Oil Well
Exploitable petroleum deposits were found in Louisiana in 1901, changing the state's economy and landscape forever.
Business & Industry
Plantation Slavery in Antebellum Louisiana
Enslaved people endured brutal conditions on sugarcane and cotton plantations during the antebellum period.
Business & Industry
Jean Baptiste Roudanez
A radical civil rights advocate during the Civil War and Reconstruction, Jean Baptiste Roudanez helped found two historic Black newspapers.
Disasters
Disasters IndexDisasters
Coastal Land Loss
The gradual loss of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands is a slow-moving disaster largely set in motion by a series of human interventions in natural processes.
Disasters
Hurricane Andrew
After wreaking havoc on Florida, Hurricane Andrew made landfall in Louisiana and caused widespread devastation.
Disasters
Hurricane Rita
Making landfall in Cameron Parish on September 24, 2005, Hurricane Rita was the fourth-most-intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded.
Disasters
Hurricane Camille
Hurricane Camille struck coastal Mississippi in mid-August of 1969, marking the first designated Category 5 storm and one of Louisiana’s most storied tropical weather events.
Folklife
Folklife IndexFolklife
Louisiana Folktales
Louisiana’s folktales have been influenced by Indigenous peoples and the many cultural and ethnic groups that have immigrated to the state.
Folklife
Campeche Chair
The Campeche chair, a leather or caned sling seat supported by a non-folding cross-frame, was in widespread use in the United States and New Spain in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Folklife
All Saints Day
All Saints Day or All Hallows Day is a Catholic tradition honoring the saints and also deceased family members each November 1.
Folklife
Creole Folktales
Many Louisiana Creole folktales represent a convergence of African and European culture.
Foodways
Foodways IndexFoodways
Sagamité
Entry describes sagamité, a range of cornmeal-based soups, stews, and porridges with Native American origins that became a common component of French colonial cuisine.
Foodways
Antoine’s Restaurant
Founded in 1840, Antoine’s Restaurant is the oldest continually family-owned and -operated restaurant in the United States.
Foodways
Crawfish Boils
Crawfish boils are a springtime ritual in Louisiana.
Foodways
Lucky Dogs
The wiener-shaped Lucky Dog hot dog pushcarts in New Orleans’s French Quarter were the inspiration for the fictional Paradise Vendors in John Kennedy Toole's novel “A Confederacy of Dunces.”
Geography
Geography IndexGeography
Florida Parishes of Louisiana
A portion of Louisiana was once the western extremity of colonial Florida
Geography
Bayou Teche
Before railroads and highways, Bayou Teche served as an important transportation route deep into the fertile interior of south-central Louisiana.
Geography
Neutral Strip
The Neutral Strip existed outside the governance of either the United States or Spain until 1821.
Geography
Natchitoches Settlement
The Natchitoches settlement, founded in 1714, is the oldest in the Louisiana Territory.
Government, Politics & Law
Government, Politics & Law IndexGovernment, Politics & Law
Reconstruction
The post-Civil War period in US history is known as the Reconstruction era, when the former Confederacy was brought back into the Union.
Government, Politics & Law
William B. Hyman
William B. Hyman served as the chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court from 1865 to 1868.
Government, Politics & Law
Jared Young Sanders
Democrat Jared Sanders, who served as governor of Louisiana from 1908 until 1912, was the first governor elected under a state law that required gubernatorial candidates to participate in a primary election.
Government, Politics & Law
H. L. Billiot v. Terrebonne Parish School Board et al.
In 1917 the Louisiana court system ruled that Native people occupied the same legal status as African Americans under Jim Crow.
History
History IndexHistory
Police Juries
A distinct form of government exists in over half of Louisiana parishes
History
Dew Drop Social & Benevolent Jazz Hall
A rural jazz hall in the early twentieth century, the Dew Drop Social & Benevolent Jazz Hall experienced a revival in the early twenty-first century.
History
Pralines
The praline, a confection made of sugar and nuts, is a representative dish of the Franco- and Afro-Creole Atlantic diasporas.
History
Women in Colonial Louisiana
Women constituted a valuable asset in colonial Louisiana.
Literature
Literature IndexLiterature
Ernest J. Gaines
Considered among the most important southern writers, Ernest J. Gaines was an award-winning fiction writer whose work often features the region where he grew up: rural and small-town south-central Louisiana.
Literature
Local Color Fiction
Local color fiction was a literature genre popular with American readers between 1870 and 1900.
Literature
Solomon Northup
Solomon Northup, a free Black New Yorker, was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841, spending twelve years enslaved on Louisiana plantations before regaining his freedom.
Literature
Creole Literature
Few other movements in the American literary scene evoke exotic images rivaling those conjured by Louisiana's Creole writers.
Music
Music IndexMusic
Opera and Ballet
New Orleans has an almost unbroken tradition of opera that began in 1796 and first documented ballet was presented just three years later.
Music
Dewey Balfa
Dewey Balfa was a Cajun musician and cultural activist who emerged in the 1970s as an effective spokesman for the grassroots Cajun identity movement.
Music
Clarence "Frogman" Henry
Louisiana singer and pianist Clarence "Frogman" Henry Jr., will forever be identified with the 1956 novelty rhythm & blues classic "Ain't Got No Home."
Music
Isleño Décimas
The traditional songs of the Spanish-speaking Isleños of St. Bernard Parish are known as décimas, traditionally a ten-verse satiric composition set to music.
Peoples of Louisiana
Peoples of Louisiana IndexPeoples of Louisiana
Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana
The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana is the largest of four federally recognized tribal governments in Louisiana.
Peoples of Louisiana
Receiving Communities
A receiving community is a city, town, or neighborhood that accommodates people displaced by a disaster.
Peoples of Louisiana
Filipinos
Louisiana is home to the earliest Filipino American community in the United States.
Peoples of Louisiana
Irish in New Orleans
The influence of Irish immigrants in New Orleans can still be seen in the Irish Channel neighborhood, St. Patrick's Day celebrations and churches such as St. Alphonsus.
Religion & Spirituality
Religion & Spirituality IndexReligion & Spirituality
Marie Tranchepain
Marie Tranchepain was the first Mother Superior of New Orleans’s Ursulines and an early female diarist.
Religion & Spirituality
Henriette Delille
Henriette Delille was a free Afro-Creole woman who founded sodalities, or religious sororities, for women of African descent that dedicated themselves to the care of the poor, the enslaved, and free people of color.
Religion & Spirituality
St. Peter Street Cemetery
Thousands of New Orleans’s eighteenth-century residents are interred at the site of the St. Peter Street Cemetery in the French Quarter.
Religion & Spirituality
St. Mark's Community Center
St. Mark's Community Center, a settlement house run by Methodist deaconesses, opened its doors in New Orleans in 1909 and continues to operate today.
Science & Technology
Science & Technology IndexScience & Technology
Freeman and Custis Red River Expedition
An American effort to explore the Louisiana Purchase territory was hindered by a log jam on the Red River and two hundred Spanish troops.
Science & Technology
Cholera in Louisiana
During the nineteenth century, cholera epidemics caused tens of thousands of deaths throughout the state of Louisiana.
Science & Technology
Flint-Goodridge Hospital
Flint-Goodridge Hospital opened in 1896 to serve New Orleans’s Black community and provide medical training for Black nurses and physicians at a time when other hospitals denied services to Black people.
Science & Technology
Hurricanes in Louisiana
Louisiana hurricanes have played an essential role in the state’s history from colonization through the present and are as memorable as the places and people they impact.
Sports & Recreation
Sports & Recreation IndexSports & Recreation
Linda Tuero
New Orleans's Linda Tuero was a collegiate and professional tennis champion in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Sports & Recreation
Louis "Rags" Scheuermann
Louis "Rags" Scheuermann was a winning baseball coach at Loyola University and Delgado Community College, as well as in municipal sports programs for the city of New Orleans.
Sports & Recreation
Ralph Dupas
Ralph Dupas emerged from humble beginnings in New Orleans to become a world champion boxer
Sports & Recreation
John Franks
John Franks dominated the sport of horse racing for over twenty years and became one of the leading stable owners and breeders in the country.