The Back Side Is the Black Side

Among the people who came to New Orleans by the Lake route (see "Portage" in the Archive) were slaves who, before the Carondelet Canal was built, were a convenient sort of cargo because self-propelled. They could walk the portage. The portage wound through undeveloped swamp to the edge of the city at what is now the corner of Rampart and Governor Nicholls. This was the threshold between the wilderness and the European town, and it was New Orleans’ back door sill. It would not be the last time that these individuals would be admitted “‘round back.”

            Later, Carondelet Canal brought the water route to its end at Congo Square. For slaves who arrived by this route during these years, the square marked their first footfall in North America. There had been ramparts between the city and this piece of ground; thus the square lay on the far side of Rampart Street from the Vieux Carrè. There were at least three reasons, then, why Congo Square would be given over to the slaves on Sundays for dances and revelry: it was at the “back” side of town; it lay outside the old city proper; and it was, for many, the North American soil nearest Africa, the near shore of that fearful passage. 

Discovering New Orleans

The Vieux Carrè—the "Old Square," the original city of New Orleans—is a rectangular settlement on a curvaceous site, on the east bank of the Mississippi River ninety miles upriver from the Gulf of Mexico. It has always been a turned around place. It faces, if not the wrong way, at least some other way, looking over its shoulder at other towns (when it looks at them at all) with a sly grin. It was built backwards, too, considering how it got to be where it is, and how people got to it, in the early days.
            Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, claimed Louisiana for France in 1682. Whether he actually saw or, more to the point, noticed the site that became New Orleans is not clear. We know that his expedition floated past it, coming down the Mississippi River from Quebec.
            I have always imagined explorers coming the other way, struggling upriver against the current, the natural levee at what is now Jackson Square rising up directly before them as they push up the straight reach of river below Algiers Point. (This comes from looking always at maps with north at the top, whence also the childhood belief that all rivers flow south, or down the wall.)  La Salle, however, was heading downstream, and saw the site of the Vieux Carrè over his left shoulder, en passant, if he saw it at all.

Portage

In 1699, the Choctaw Indians showed the brothers Pierre and Jean Baptiste Le Moyne (Sieur d’Iberville and Sieur d’Bienville, respectively) the smart way into the river from the Gulf. From the east, along the coast below—or, rather, south of—the present-day city of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, a boat can enter Lake Borgne through Chandeleur Sound. From Lake Borgne, there is clear passage into the eastern end of Lake Pontchartrain at the old Highway 90 bridge. From Lake Pontchartrain, a boat could come up the four-mile length of Bayou St. John to within two miles of the river. This was the old Choctaw portage: easier and safer to carry goods and boats these two miles than to enter the river’s mouth.

Memory and Anticipation

The formality of Jackson Square—its symmetry and the cathedral’s frontality—doesn’t jive with our everyday experience of it. We don’t march up to the square on axis, but instead come from the side, along Chartres Street, walking from the streetcar and bus stops along Canal or Esplanade. But the order of the square is in our minds, anyhow.
            The symmetry of the cathedral’s façade, obliquely viewed and opening onto light, suggests the presence of the square before the square itself is seen and lures us with a foretaste of arrival. Memory and anticipation accompany us in our experience of the city, the seen, the remembered, and the imagined, all intertwined.

In Then Up Then Out Again

All the world’s a stage, but especially the balconies. Imagine it’s Mardi Gras day, and you are on St Charles Avenue, along the route of the Rex parade. Behind you and overhead, you hear laughter and loud talking, a party on the balcony of a house. One thing leads to another and pretty soon someone lets you in and brings you up a dark, curving stair, and you’re on the balcony yourself. All of a sudden you’re big friends and there’s plenty of beer and boiled shrimp. 

            Physically, you’ve ended up not so far from where you began, but the social gain is dramatic. Along with the beer and shrimp you get gossip about the Rex krewe and whichever Louisiana politician is (like the shrimp) in hot water today. And, while you’re still part of the audience, you’re now equally part of the show.

            Knowledge and performance, initiation and display: these are no doubt terms of the social economy anywhere, but in few places are they dramatized like they are in New Orleans.

Depth and Appearance

There must be some things about the spatial patterns of New Orleans that are different from the patterns of Chicago or Louisville or Sacramento. Preservation Hall demonstrates one such pattern: Standing outside the window, you look across the backs of the musicians to the audience, crowded into folding chairs and onto the floor of the simple space. For a few dollars, you can join the audience inside. You enter through a carriageway to the right of the storefront, pass down it to a door at the back of the room, turn, and sit facing the musicians—and, behind them, the window through which you had looked. You are “in.”

            Looking in on a scene with its back to the front, seeing people like yourself beyond the scene looking back at you, finding your way into that scene through an extended passage with a final about-face, seeing the same scene from a privileged position: this scenario is characteristically New Orleanian.

Twist It, Baby

In New Orleans, the great geographical fact is the bending of the Mississippi River. Its curve causes the street grid to bend in fragments reflecting the subdivision of former plantations. The converging streets produce oddly shaped lots.

            Wonders appear on the lots that are just big enough to build on: triangular buildings, trapezoidal buildings, and flatirons. Because people as well as geometries often converge at these intersections, commercial enterprises frequently thrive here.

            Traditional forms melt into the embrace of the city, echoing the languid curve of the great river. Architects call buildings “sexy” when they catch the eye or show a bit of structural leg. Usually, it is a vague and meaningless term. But if buildings ever were sexy, these are: taut, form fitted, pressing up close to the street.