Schwegmann's: Where New Orleans Made Groceries
Schwegmann's wasn't just where you made groceries. It was where New Orleans made groceries. In a city that takes food more seriously than most places take anything, Schwegmann's Giant Super Market...
Godchaux's: Canal Street's Quiet Aristocrat
On a street of giants, Godchaux's held its own — and dressed New Orleans while doing it. Canal Street in its prime was lined with department stores that each had their own personality and loyal fo...
Pontchartrain Beach: Where New Orleans Went to Play
Before there was Jazzland, before there was Six Flags, there was Pontchartrain Beach — and nothing has ever replaced it. For 55 years, Pontchartrain Beach was the place where New Orleans went to h...
Jazzland: The Rise, Ruin, and Haunting Afterlife of New Orleans' Lost Theme Park
It was supposed to put New Orleans on the theme park map. Instead, it became the most haunting ruin in a city full of them. Jazzland Theme Park opened in 2000 with big ambitions and a distinctly N...
The Old Absinthe House: Bourbon Street's Most Historic Pour
Some bars serve drinks. The Old Absinthe House serves history. At 240 Bourbon Street, tucked between the neon and the noise, stands one of the oldest and most storied bars in America. The Old Absi...
The LaSalle Hotel: The Grand Dame They Shouldn't Have Torn Down
It was elegant, it was grand, and in 1974, they knocked it down. New Orleans has been second-guessing that decision ever since. The LaSalle Hotel stood on the corner of St. Charles Avenue and Comm...
The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway: 24 Miles of Water and Nerve
Twenty-four miles of bridge. Nothing but water in every direction. And for a stretch in the middle, you can't see land at all. The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway is one of those structures that sound...
The Saenger Theatre: The Night Sky on Canal Street
Walk into the Saenger Theatre, look up, and you'll see the night sky over a Florentine courtyard. It's fake. It's also one of the most beautiful things in New Orleans. The Saenger Theatre on Canal...
Lafcadio Hearn: The Outsider Who Understood New Orleans Best
Every city has that one person who sees it more clearly than anyone who was born there. In New Orleans, that person was Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek-Irish journalist who arrived in the Crescent City in ...
Louis Prima: The Wildest Entertainer New Orleans Ever Made
New Orleans has produced more than its share of larger-than-life musicians, but Louis Prima might have been the largest of them all. Born in the French Quarter to a Sicilian family, Prima became on...
Who Invented Jazz? The Ghost of Buddy Bolden
Before there were recordings, before there were jazz clubs with velvet ropes, before the word jazz even existed, there was a cornet player in New Orleans so loud you could hear him across the river...
George Herriman: The Cartoonist Who Left Treme and Changed Comics
If you have ever loved a comic strip, a cartoon, or any visual storytelling that mixes art with absurdity, you owe a debt to a man born in Treme in 1880. George Herriman created Krazy Kat, which cr...
John Kennedy Toole: The Genius New Orleans Almost Lost
There is a bronze statue on Canal Street, right where the old D.H. Holmes department store used to stand, of a large man in a hunting cap clutching a shopping bag. That's Ignatius J. Reilly, the fi...
Al Copeland: The Spiciest Man New Orleans Ever Produced
New Orleans has produced jazz musicians, literary giants, and Mardi Gras royalty. But only one person built a fried chicken empire, raced speedboats, married four times, and put up a Christmas ligh...
Leah Chase: The Queen Who Fed a Movement in New Orleans
There is a particular kind of New Orleans magic that happens when someone puts a plate of food in front of you and tells you to sit down and eat. No menu. No discussion. You just eat. Leah Chase pe...
The Unwritten Rules of a New Orleans Crawfish Boil
There's no instruction manual for a crawfish boil. Nobody hands you a pamphlet when you walk up to the table. But make no mistake - there are rules. They're just the kind you learn by watching, by ...
The Unwritten Rules of a New Orleans Crawfish Boil
Nobody hands you a rulebook when you show up to your first New Orleans crawfish boil. There’s no orientation, no pamphlet, no YouTube tutorial that’s going to fully prepare you. You just show up, s...
The Axeman of New Orleans: When Jazz Saved the City
On March 13, 1919, a letter appeared from the Axeman, the serial killer terrorizing New Orleans. He'd spare any home where jazz was playing on March 19. That night, every dance hall was packed. Ban...
The Boswell Sisters: New Orleans' Forgotten Vocal Legends
Before Ella Fitzgerald found her voice, three sisters from Camp Street in New Orleans were doing something nobody had ever heard. Martha, Connee, and Vet Boswell turned jazz into vocal arrangements...
Andrew Higgins: The New Orleans Boatbuilder Who Won World War II
On D-Day, 160,000 soldiers stormed Normandy's beaches. Most arrived in flat-bottomed boats designed and built in New Orleans by Andrew Higgins. Eisenhower said: "Andrew Higgins is the man who won t...
