The French Quarter and the Faubourg St. John

The 2013 joint annual meeting of the Council of State Archivists (CoSA) and the Society of American Archivists (SAA) ended on Saturday afternoon, and I left New Orleans for my parents' house in Ohio the next morning. Now that I've had the chance to catch up on a few things, I can say a few things about the sightseeing I did after the meeting ended. I injured my knee a few weeks ago and have to be careful about overtaxing it, so I decided to take the streetcar over to the French Quarter and explore a couple of historic houses.

My first stop was the Beauregard-Keyes House at 1113 Chartres Street, which was built in 1826 and is named for its two most famous inhabitants: Confederate General Beauregard, who resided there in 1860 and in 1866-1868, and Keyes, a writer of historical fiction who bought the house in 1943 and restored it.  The house is an elevated center hall colonial -- a distinctively "American" design -- and as a result it's something of an oddity for the French Quarter, which remained solidly French and Spanish well into the 19th century. Its design is the result of its architect's rather unusual background: his parents were French colonists who fled a slave revolt in the Caribbean and made the unusual choice to go to Baltimore instead of one of the other French colonies.  As a result, he received his architectural training on the East Coast, where neoclassical center hall buildings were common.

The building behind the Beauregard-Keyes House resembles those situated behind many grand French Quarter homes.  The first floor housed the kitchen, which was kept away from the main house in order to reduce the risk of fire, and the second floor was inhabited by slaves; in some instances, French Quarter inhabitants also installed their teenaged sons in these rough quarters.

I then headed to Madame John's Legacy, a French colonial home built in 1788. This home, which is one of the few French Quarter structures to survive the devastating fire of 1794. Homes resembling Madame John's Legacy once filled the city, but changing tastes and laws intended to reduce the risk of future conflagrations led the city's inhabitants to rebuild their homes in the Spanish colonial, not the French Colonial, style.

Madame John's Legacy, which was named for a George Washington Cable short story and not a former inhabitant, is now owned by the Louisiana State Museum, which uses it as exhibit space. At the moment, the house features an exhibit devoted to Newcomb Pottery, the New Orleans art pottery firm initially established to employ young women who had majored in fine arts at Newcomb College.

Today, Newcomb Pottery's wares are highly collectible.

I spent a little time walking around and admiring the lavish plantings hanging from the balconies of many of the French Quarter's townhomes, many of which feature Spanish-inspired balcony railings, but I have to be honest: the French Quarter attracts more than its share of idiots, and after a few hours of witnessing the various acts of rudeness, cluelessness, and poor reading comprehension committed by some of my fellow tourists, I had had enough.

My knee was holding up pretty well, so I decided to return to Faubourg St. John, a Mid-City neighborhood I visited in 2010 and which attracts far fewer tourists than the French Quarter.

While waiting for the streetcar, I had a little time to ponder the fate of the World Trade Center, which was designed by Edward Durrell Stone and has been vacant since 2011.  The city wants to tear it down, but historic preservationists are campaigning to save it.  I'm not overly fond of Stone's Albany masterwork, but the World Trade Center has a 1960s, Men in Black vibe that I like.

 Once I boarded the streetcar, I had ample opportunity to contemplate the weirdness that is the French Quarter on a Saturday evening. While we were at a stop, we were passed by this bus, which had a powerful sound system that was blasting bounce, a distinctive form of hip-hop that developed in New Orleans. I assumed that it was some sort of chartered bus for adult revelers and was stunned when I realized that it was full of very small children. A few minutes later, a grown man in a Spongebob Squarepants costume drunkenly curtseyed to the streetcar . . . or to the passengers in the streetcar. I couldn't tell, and he probably doesn't remember.

The French established a small settlement in the Faubourg St. John area in 1708, ten years before the city of New Orleans was founded. Travelers who came to New Orleans from the north entered the city via Bayou St. John, which drains into Lake Ponchartrain was connected to the Mississippi River via canal in 1803. The canal was filled in during the early 20th century, and at present the bayou forms the centerpiece of a pleasant residential neighborhood.

The Pitot House, a West Indies-style Creole colonial plantation house built in 1799, is one of the neighborhood's most noteworthy homes.  However, it was not always at 1440 Moss Street: in 1970, it was moved approximately 200 feet to accommodate the expansion of nearby Cabrini High School.  The house is named for James Pitot, the first "American" mayor of New Orleans; Pitot had been born in France, but he became a naturalized American citizen before he took up residence in the city. Other owners of note include Madame Rillieux, the great-grandmother of French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas (who in 1872-73 stayed with his New Orleans cousins in an Esplanade Avenue house located a few blocks away) and Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American citizen to be canonized by the Catholic Church.  The house is currently the headquarters of the Louisiana Landmarks Society and is open for tours during the day, but staff close the shutters during the evening.

Faubourg St. John is home to a wide array of vernacular New Orleans architecture. Shotgun homes, which are long, narrow, and rectangular dwellings in which all of the rooms are arranged in a straight line, and double shotgun homes, which look like two shotgun homes pushed together, are extremely common.  The colorful home above is a classic Eastlake double shotgun built during the Victorian era; the "Eastlake" in question is British architect Charles Locke Eastlake, whose ideas about furniture design influenced many American architects and builders. 

Next door to the double shotgun pictured above is this bracket single shotgun home; the style takes its name from the fancy brackets supporting the roof over the front porch.  This home is currently unoccupied, and a close look at it reveals why:  this section of Faubourg St. John was flooded when the city's levees failed in August 2005.  Most of the flood-damaged homes have since been restored, but this one is still awaiting refurbishment.

One of the oldest extant houses in the neighborhood is popularly known as the Spanish Custom House; however, there is no evidence that this building was ever used as a customs house. It was built in 1784 and is situated at 1300 Moss Street, and it is a stunning example of Creole plantation architecture. When you look at it from across Bayou St. John, you can sense just how stately it must have seemed to the men and women who traveled on the bayou in the 18th and 19th centuries . . . and are forced to ponder the slave economy that propelled its construction.  The domed structure behind it is the Church of the Holy Rosary, which plays an important role in the neighborhood's social, cultural, and religious life.

No amount of time spent in New Orleans is ever quite long enough.  I really wanted to spend more time exploring the neighborhood -- and other neighborhoods I have yet to see -- but it was getting dark, it started to rain, and I needed to return to my hotel and pack my things in preparation for my morning flight to Ohio.  However, I'm already starting to sketch out the itinerary for my next trip to the Crescent City, and I hope that the Society of American Archivists returns to New Orleans sooner -- much sooner -- rather than later.

New Orleans Museum of Art

The 2013 joint meeting of the Council of State Archivists and the Society of American Archivists will start -- for me, at least -- at noon tomorrow. I got into town late last night, and I spent most of the day at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA).

NOMA is situated on the edge of the 1,300-acre New Orleans City Park, which is one of the oldest urban parks in the nation. City Park suffered extensive damage as a result of Hurricane Katrina (2005), but New Orleanians rallied to repair it.  As a result, the park is once again a beautiful, inviting, and extremely popular place; however, if you look closely, you can still see lingering damage in many areas.

City Park is home to a wide array of trees, among them bald cypress, magnolias, live oaks, and a wide array of other oak varieties . . . .

. . . . And every now and then you find a tree growing in another tree.

 NOMA occupies a 1911 neoclassical building designed by Chicago architect Samuel Marx. A 1971 addition dramatically increased the museum's storage and exhibition space, and the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden (which I visited in 2010) opened in 2003.

NOMA's collections comprise approximately 40,000 objects.  Although the museum's collection spans the world and ranges from ancient to contemporary works, French and American art are particular strengths.

NOMA allows visitors to take non-flash photographs of works that it owns and which are on display in its permanent galleries, so I'm going to share a few of my favorite pieces.

NOMA has a small but carefully chosen collection of 16th- and 17th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings, and Marinus van Reymerswaele's The Lawyer's Office (oil on wood, 1545) has long been a favorite.  How could it not be?  The documents depicted in this painting relate to an actual lawsuit that was filed in 1526 but not resolved until 1538 . . . by which time the property at the center of the suit had been destroyed by storms.

Jehan Georges Vibert's The Cardinals' Friendly Chat (oil on canvas, ca. 1880) was meant to be at least slightly anti-clerical; the men are sitting in Marie Antoinette's Fontainebleau boudoir, completely oblivious to the upheavals heading their way.  To 21st-century eyes, however, there's something appealing about the contrast between their opulent surrounding and dress and their relaxed, informal demeanor.

NOMA's collection of French and American Impressionist works is impressive, and I was particularly taken by Elizabeth Woodward's Paradise Wood, Beaux Bridge, Louisiana (oil on canvas, ca. 1910).  If I hadn't seen the painting's title, I would have guessed that Woodward had depicted City Park.

Wassily Kandinsky's Sketch for "Several Circles" (oil on paper, laid down on canvas, 1926, draws the eye of every visitor who walks into the room in which it is hanging.  Owing to its fragility, it's kept under glass, and photographing it means photographing a reflected image of nearby works . . . and oneself.

As one might expect, NOMA's collection of contemporary New Orleans and Louisiana art is particularly strong.  Robert Gordy was known for his whimsical portraits, and his Female Head #2 (oil on canvas, 1976) made me chuckle aloud.

Alexis Rockman's Battle Royale (oil on canvas, 2011), seems humorous at first, but it's really deadly serious.  Rockman depicts fifty-four native and invasive species fighting for dominance in a Louisiana swamp.  Non-native plants and animals -- some of which have been present for a long time and some of which have recently arrived -- are placing increasing stress on the state's ecosystems, and the warfare Rockman depicts is quietly taking place all over the state.

Robert Warrens's The Command Ship of the Toxic Flotilla (painted wood, light bulbs, and mixed media, 1986) is another work that initially seems light-hearted but, as it's name indicates, it's anything but.  Southern Louisiana has long been a center of petroleum drilling and refining and chemical manufacturing, and Warrens's work draws attention to the impact of these human activities upon the natural world.

In contrast, Willie Burch's North Villere Street (acrylic and charcoal on paper, 2007) is a sensitive depiction of one small human community. 

I have a finite capacity for museum-going. After a few hours, my eyes start to skim over the works and my ability to comprehend the contextual information recedes.  When this starts to happen, I leave; there's no point in forcing oneself to look at things one can't appreciate and won't remember afterward. As a result, I didn't view NOMA's galleries of Indian, Japanese, Chinese, or African art -- and thus have a compelling reason to go back the next time I'm in New Orleans.

New Orleans: City Park and the Esplanade Ridge Historic District

Note: I planned to publish this post on the evening of 24 March, but exhaustion overtook me and I ended up going to bed before I could finish drafting the text and preparing the images. Between traveling home on 25 March and going into the office for half a day yesterday, I simply didn't have the stamina to finish it. Now that I've recovered a bit and the cats have forgiven me for abandoning them, I've found the time and the energy to do so. I hope you enjoy it.

Today was my last full day in New Orleans, and I opted to explore New Orleans City Park and the Esplanade Ridge Historic District. I did so in part because I wanted to visit the superb New Orleans Museum of Art, which is located within City Park, but I discovered to my dismay that the museum had closed early for a special event (thanks bunches for not noting this fact on your Web site, NOMA!) I had a lovely time nonetheless.

Prior to 29 August 2005, City Park's grounds were immaculately landscaped. However, the park and the surrounding area flooded when the levees safeguarding the city failed. Although the city has been working hard to restore the park to its former glory, it still looks a bit battered. Fortunately, many of the park's live oaks survived.

New Orleans City Park is one of the nation's largest urban parks, and it has something for everyone. In addition to the usual green space, tennis courts, walking paths, and picnic facilities, it has an amusement park, a botanical garden, a model train garden that features replicas of New Orleans landmarks, and Storyland, a fairy-tale themed playground filled with children joyfully climbing in and out of Cinderella's pumpkin carriage and darting around the home of the old woman who lived in a shoe.

I spent quite a bit of time at the New Orleans Botanical Garden, which began as a rose garden built by the Works Progress Administration. The garden, which features a series of Art Deco sculptures by Louisiana artist Enrique Alférez (Renascence is pictured above) is still recovering from Katrina. Some of the trees have died and others have had to be pruned radically, and some sections of the gardens are still being restored. It's a tranquil and fragrant respite nonetheless.

I was particularly taken with this staghorn fern-lined walkway. These striking ferns apparently do quite well in New Orleans' climate.

Many of the WPA-built structures in the botanical garden are still standing. This charming little building houses the succulent collection.

After I left the Botanical Garden, I went to the New Orleans Museum of Art's Sculpture Garden, which re-opened on 20 March after an extensive renovation and wasn't affected by the closure of the museum itself. The works in the Sculpture Garden consist chiefly of modern works, but it also has a number of older, largely French, bronzes. The grounds are beautifully landscaped -- nary a trace of Katrina remains.

Several of the artists represented in the Sculpture Garden have ties to New Orleans. George Rodrigue, who has a studio in the city and whose series of paintings of blue dogs has become synonymous with the Crescent City. We Stand Together (2006) features this icon; the other facets of the sculpture consist of the same dog in the other primary colors.

Jean-Michel Othoniel’s Tree of Necklaces (2002) evokes Mardi Gras. Bead-bedecked trees are a common springtime sight in New Orleans.

Claes Oldenburg’s Safety Pin (1999) amused me. I suppose other visitors might be inspired to look at safety pins in a new light, but I’ve been fascinated by the design of safety pins ever since I was a kid.

I love Louise Bourgeois’s work, which for the most part I’ve seen in museum installations. Spider (1999) is absolutely striking in an outdoor setting; someone really should created a sculpture garden composed exclusively of her giant arachnids. A couple of the children in the Sculpture Garden regarded this work with unease, but most of them were fascinated by it.

As I was walking through the Sculpture Garden, I kept hearing a rooster crowing. At first, I thought that it was an audio recording associated with one of the sculptures, but I was wrong: a rooster and a chicken -- gone feral, perhaps – were rooting around in the shrubbery behind Seymour Lipton’s Cosmos (1973) . . .

. . . which is pictured above.

George Segal’s Three Figures and Four Benches (1979) has been positioned carefully: the figures are contemplating the other artworks and the landscaping of the Sculpture Garden, and the vacant benches invite viewers to rest and do the same.

Alison Star’s Travelin’ Light (1999) honors victims of terror and violence. Although depicted in a tortured position, the figure is formally dressed and carries itself in a formal, dignified manner. Inspired by Japanese purification rites that involve the ringing of bells, Star made the figure a bell that can be rung by pulling a chain on its back.

After I left the Sculpture Garden, I started walking down Esplanade Avenue, which runs past City Park all the way down to the Mississippi River, into the uppermost reaches of the Esplanade Ridge Historic District. This part of the district sits a few feet above sea level and was spared the worst of the post-Katrina flooding. However, other portions of the district were badly flooded and are still struggling to recover. (As was so often the case, the flooding was most severe in areas that were home to poor and working-class people of color. All of New Orleans suffered as a result of Katrina, but those hit hardest were generally those least able to recover from the blow.)

I turned onto Moss Street, which abuts Bayou St. John, the site of the earliest settlement in the area: Canadians who came down the Mississippi River began building here in 1708, ten years before the founding of what is now New Orleans. The area was initially home to indigo plantations, and a number of grand 18th and early 19th century plantation homes survive.

During the 19th century, the area's population swelled. In the wake of the Louisiana Purchase, affluent Creoles (i.e., Louisiana-born descendants of French and Spanish colonists) determined to show up the Americans who settled the Garden District built grand homes on and around Esplanade Avenue. After the Civil War, the area attracted wealthy New Orleanians of varied backgrounds and people of more modest means who built smaller homes on parcels of subdivided plantation land.

At one point, Bayou St. John was a navigable waterway connected to Lake Ponchartrain, and the Carondolet Canal, which was built in the 1790s and filled in a few decades ago, connected the bayou to the Mississippi River. During the 18th and 19th centuries, many visitors to New Orleans entered the city via Bayou St. John. Now, however, it serves as a resting place for egrets, herons, ducks, and other birds and as a tranquil recreational area for area residents.

The Pitot House, a plantation home built ca. 1800, sits opposite Bayou St. John on Moss Street. However, according to the owner of a neighboring property who came out and talked to me when he saw me taking pictures of the area, the house was moved several hundred feet in order to make way for a new school building; much to his dismay, the move required the sacrifice of the playground on which he and other children who grew up in the neighborhood had played.

This helpful gentleman -- and a passing letter carrier who actually stopped his mail truck to give me pointers -- also directed me to other noteworthy houses on the same block.

The home at 1342 Moss Street, which was built for Évariste Blanc and his family in 1834, is now the rectory of the Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church.

The home at 1300 Moss Street was built ca. 1785, and the locals refer to it as the “Spanish Custom House” because it dates from the time of Spanish rule; however, there is no firm evidence it was ever used as a custom house. It was probably built for Don Santiago Lloreins, whose plantation encompassed the land in this area, and it is one of the oldest extant buildings in the city of New Orleans.

I then returned to Esplanade Avenue and started walking toward the Mississippi River.

Many of the homes along Esplanade Avenue are modest, but most of them are very well -- and very colorfully -- maintained.

The Luling Mansion, which is situated on Leda Street just off Esplanade and which I discovered quite by accident, differs quite markedly from most Italianate structures in New Orleans. It was built after the Civil War in the style of a Renaissance palazzo for Florence Luling, who made his fortune selling turpentine during the Union occupation of New Orleans. The Luling family, which had lived in the Garden District prior to having this home built, found that their ornate new home was a source of tragedy: both of Florence Luling’s young sons drowned in the nearby Bayou St. John. In 1871, the family sold the house and left New Orleans forever. Given this sad history, the house’s current forlorn state somehow seems appropriate; however, it was recently used as a film set for the remake of Night of the Demons (no doubt a timeless classic) and is being renovated.

This ornate Queen Anne home at 2809 Esplanade rivals anything in the Garden District. Note the black-and-gold fleur-de-lis flags, which are everywhere in New Orleans these days. This city must have gone absolutely wild on Super Bowl Sunday.

This Victorian gem at 2453 Esplanade is one of the few homes in the neighborhood that has a mansard roof. This house was originally one of a matching pair of homes, but the other home was torn down some time ago.

The French painter Edgar Degas stayed with his Creole relatives, the Mussons, in this home at 2306 Esplanade for approximately 6 months in 1872-1873. He produced several noteworthy paintings during his time in New Orleans. It should be noted that this house, which is now a bed-and-breakfast, has been altered extensively. At the time the Musson family lived here, it was a center-hall double gallery home. Some years after they left, part of the house was torn down, rendering it a side-hall house.

It was starting to get a bit late, so I headed back to the French Quarter and had dinner at the Chartres House Cafe, which is one of the few restaurants in the area that offers multiple vegetarian options. Its vegetarian muffaletta is tasty (and big enough for two people!) and it introduced me to the joy that is Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan.

I really enjoyed my time in New Orleans, even though it was painfully apparent that I'm only beginning to grasp what makes this extraordinary city so special. The Society of American Archivists is returning to the Crescent City in 2013, but I sure hope I'll be back before then.

New Orleans: French Quarter and Algiers

I came to New Orleans with a lot of plans firmly set, but today I simply let circumstances dictate my itinerary. I had a full slate of plans for yesterday and have another set for tomorrow, and I felt the need for a little less structure today.

I started out at the Cabildo, which sits next to St. Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square in the heart of the French Quarter. This late eighteenth-century building, which was originally the seat of the Spanish colonial government, later housed the Louisiana Supreme Court and other governmental bodies. It is now a Louisiana State Museum facility that interprets the history of New Orleans and its peoples -- Native American, French, Spanish, African, American, English, German, Italian, and Irish -- from the time of European exploration through Reconstruction. I had no idea that during the 19th century New Orleans was second only to New York as a port of entry for immigrants or that some of New Orleans' free people of color, intent upon preserving their social and economic status, actually fought for the Confederacy. The exhibits may be a bit text-heavy for younger visitors, but if you've got the time and the inclination to do a little reading, the Cabildo is worth a visit.

The Cabildo's Sala Capitular originally served as a city council meeting room and a courtroom, and continued to do so after the Louisiana Purchase. Moreover, officials twice convened in this room to transfer control of the colony: on 30 November 1803, the Spanish ceded control to the French, and on 20 December 1803 the French ceded it to the Americans.

After I left the Cabildo, I made my way through Jackson Square for café au lait and beignets at Café du Monde. The crush of people in and around the area kind of annoyed me -- I had forgotten just how touristy the Quarter is -- so I opted to go someplace quiet and contemplative: the Old Ursuline Convent.

In 1727, twelve Ursuline nuns arrived in New Orleans. They were the first nuns to come to what is now the United States, and they and their successors left an indelible mark on the city. They nursed the city's sick and educated its female children, and they fought tirelessly against what they saw as the city's woeful spiritual state: Sister Marie Madeleine Hachard concluded in 1728 that "the devil here has a very large empire, but this does not discourage us from the hope of destroying him." The Americans who assumed control of New Orleans in 1803 were a bit nonplussed by these educated, determined women, who owned a substantial amount of real property and did not shy away from defending their interests.

The Old Ursuline Convent, which was built in 1748-1752 in Louis XV style, is the only extant French colonial building in the French Quarter; fire and other disasters claimed the rest. Moreover, it is the oldest documented structure in the Mississippi Valley.

The graceful cypress staircase in the entry hall is even older than the rest of the convent: it was originally part of the first convent, which was built in 1734 but proved to be no match for New Orleans' subtropical climate.

Following a property dispute with the city government, the Ursuline sisters moved uptown in 1824. In the years that followed, the building has served as the residence of the Archbishop of New Orleans, an archdiocesan office,and even, for a short time, the meeting place of the Louisiana state legislature.

And just in case you were wondering whether there's an archival angle to any of this: the second floor of the Old Ursuline Convent now houses the archdiocesan archives, which are open to researchers who make advance arrangements. However, the original archives room, a simple, roughly 12' x 12' space, is located on the first floor and is thus open to visitors.

The convent is connected to the St. Mary's Church, which was built in 1845. For a long time, this church served the Italian immigrants who settled in the French Quarter.

One of the windows in the church commemorates the Battle of New Orleans, the final engagement of the War of 1812. The night before the battle began, the Ursuline sisters and relatives of the men fighting under Andrew Jackson prayed fervently for American victory. Even though the Americans were outnumbered and outgunned, they prevailed.

If you look closely at the bottom section of the window, you will see an American flag (center pane, second row). The city of New Orleans is depicted to the left of the flag, and the battle itself is depicted to the right of it.

After I left the convent, I headed further east across Esplanade Avenue and into the Faubourg Marigny, which was originally New Orleans' first suburb and is home to the bohemians who in decades past would have lived in the French Quarter. I stopped by Faubourg Marigny Art and Books, New Orleans's independent LGBT bookstore -- an endangered species these days -- and found an out-of-print book by Jane Rule.

I then walked down to the end of Esplanade Avenue and hopped the Riverfront streetcar to Canal Street, where on impulse I hopped the ferry to Algiers Point. Algiers, which was first settled in 1719 and annexed to the city in 1870, is located across the river from the rest of the city.

Algiers is home to a Bollinger Shipyards facility (seen here from the ferry as it sits at the Algiers dock) that repairs tugboats and other vessels. However, most of the area is residential. It's a quiet, charming-seeming place, and in many respects it feels more like a village than a city neighborhood. However, it's filled with fantastic, well-maintained examples of vernacular New Orleans architecture.

This simple shotgun home has been dressed up with Victorian trim, and many other houses in the area have Victorian decorative touches. Shotgun homes were popular not only because they promoted air circulation but because property taxes were at one point based on the width of one's lot; the depth of the lot was immaterial.

This slender shotgun home sits next to a two-story double, which was built to house two families. Two-story doubles exist throughout the city.

Algiers is also home to Craftsman homes, which can be found in many New Orleans neighborhoods.

This double gallery house has a hipped roof. Other double gallery houses in New Orleans have flat or side-gabled roofs.

This double shotgun home, which has been renovated extensively, has a partial second story. Such homes are commonly known as "camelback" or "humpback" homes. Camelback homes are also found throughout New Orleans, and the tax code may have facilitated their construction: for tax purposes, houses with partial second stories were classified as single-story homes.

I took the above picture while standing atop the earthen levee that stands between the Mississippi River and the Algiers neighborhood itself. Unlike the levees built adjacent to the 17th Street Canal, the London Canal, and the Industrial Canal, this levee held after Katrina hit. As a result, Algiers (which seems to have experienced its own post-Katrina problems) was one of the first New Orleans neighborhoods to reopen in the hurricane's wake.

A paved path runs atop the Algiers levee, which attracts people walking their dogs, running, riding their bikes, or simply seeking a quiet place to contemplate the river, the Central Business District, and the French Quarter. I spent a lot of time sitting on a bench, watching the ships, tugs and barges, and ferries ply the water -- New Orleans is one of the nation's busiest ports -- and enjoying the calm.

Tomorrow: City Park, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and a few other destinations.