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.