64 Parishes

National Archives, France

The National Archives of France in Paris is an important resource for scholars of early Louisiana architecture.

by Robert Cangelosi

National Archives, France

Wikimedia Commons.

Reproduction of a color photograph of the Archives Nationales Main Building in Paris, France.

A vital resource for scholars of early Louisiana architecture, the Archives Nationales was created in 1790 to preserve French historical records. It operates under the authority of the Directorate of the Archives of France, in the Ministry of Culture, and its various departments, which were established in 1796. The largest in the world, the archives are divided into five centers. For the researcher of Louisiana architecture, the Centre des Archives d’Outre-Mer (Center for Overseas Archives) is the most fruitful. Created in 1966 and located in Aix-en-Provence, France, the archives contain records from the seventeenth through the twentieth century, covering forty present-day independent countries.

The resources for Louisiana architecture in the archives were brought to light when Samuel Wilson, Jr. was studying abroad on an American Institute of Architects scholarship, researching and transcribing Louisiana colonial documents in the French archives. In September 1938, a year before the outbreak of World War II, archivist M. De la Roncière helped locate additional Louisiana colonial documents and waived the usual time-consuming approval procedure so that Wilson could have photographs made of the plans. Roncière told Wilson, “Get a photographer here as soon as you can. I wish I could give you these things to take back because we might have a bomb through the roof any day.” Ignace Broutin, Alexander de Batz, Valentin Devin, Bernard Deverges, I. E. Gonichon, Jean Pierre Lassus, Pierre Le Blond de la Tour, and Adrien de Pauger are among the Louisiana architects whose work Wilson recorded.

Author

Robert Cangelosi

Suggested Reading

Wilson, Samuel. “An Architectural History of the Royal Hospital and the Ursuline Convent of New Orleans.” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 29 (1946): 559–569.

—.“Architecture in Eighteenth-Century West Florida.” In Samuel Proctor (ed.), Eighteenth-Century Florida and Its Borderland (Gainesville: University of Florida, 1975), 102–140.

—.Bienville’s New Orleans: A French Colonial Capital, 1718–1768. New Orleans, LA: Friends of the Cabildo, 1968.

—.The Capuchin School in New Orleans, 1725. New Orleans Archdiocesan School Board, 1961.

—.“Colonial Fortifications and Military Architecture in the Mississippi Valley.” In John Francis McDermott, The French in the Mississippi Valley (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1969), 103–122.

—. “The Director’s House, La Direction, 1722.” New Orleans States (February 21, 1953).

—.“Early Aids to Navigation at the Mouth of the Mississippi River.” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 70 (1944): 278–287.

—. “Ignace François Broutin.” In John Francis McDermott (ed.), Frenchmen and French Ways in the Mississippi Valley (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1969), 259–266.

—. “Louisiana Drawings by Alexandre DeBatz.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 22 (1963): 75-89.

—.“Religious Architecture in French Colonial Louisiana.” Winterthur Portfolio 8 (1973): 63–106.

Additional Data

Entry Published August 4, 2016
Entry Last Updated April 1, 2019
Coverage 1790–Current
Category Architecture
Topics
Regions Central Louisiana, Greater New Orleans, Northeast Louisiana, Northwest Louisiana, Southeast Louisiana (Florida Parishes), Southwest Louisiana (Acadiana)
Time Periods French Colonial Period
Index letter N