Delirious New Orleans

by Stephen Verderber

  2.7: The Pearl Oyster Bar & Restaurant, St. Charles near Canal, 2005 (preKatrina).

  2.8: Cajun Cabin, Bourbon Street, 2005 (preKatrina).

  2.9: Joe Gambino’s Bakery, Veteran’s Memorial Boulevard, Metairie, 2005 (preKatrina).

  Similarly, the Oak Street shopping district was built in the pre-auto age. However, with the introduction of the automobile, people opted to drive to places they had previously walked to. So in the 1940s the owner of Meisel’s Fabrics, on Oak Street, opted for a neon sign to signal its presence to this new type of customer—the driver (Fig. 2.10). In the case of the Lamplighter Lounge, located on the older section of the Veteran’s Memorial Boulevard commercial strip, the sign works at both a pedestrian scale and from a passing auto. This sign and the Gambino’s sign are located five miles apart on “Vets” Boulevard (Fig. 2.11). Luckily, all of the abovementioned vintage signs survived Katrina intact.

  The Age of the Automobile

  The automobile profoundly influenced the American urban and suburban landscape in the post–World War II period.18 This impact has given rise to a strong backlash. A chorus of critics has charged for years that the car, the superhighway, and the interstate highway system were the three most important determinants—or culprits—in the rise of sprawl. These factors were strongly associated with having spurred the decline of historic urban centers across the United States, New Orleans included.19 Ample statistical evidence supports this thesis, since downtowns suffered from benign neglect due to steady depopulation.20 Many neighborhoods that were forsaken and left behind soon bore telltale scars, becoming crime-ridden war zones. In New Orleans, the persistent out-migration from pedestrian-scaled—and, later, streetcar-scaled—pre-automobile neighborhoods was the main reason why these neighborhoods fell into a precipitous decline.21

  By the 1940s, the automobile had aggressively pushed its way into dominance, clogging street traffic on Canal Street, the city’s main commercial thoroughfare. The car had replaced horses and then streetcars as the status seeker’s preferred mode of transportation. Despite the congestive, intrusive impact of the auto on Canal Street, the changing times fostered yet another new generation of neon signs along Canal, all competing now for both the pedestrian’s and the motorist’s attention. Signs for Regal Beer, Mother’s Home Made Pies, the Hotel New Orleans, Loew’s Theatre, and myriad others stretched the limits of neon-sign technology (Fig. 2.12). The bombastic display put up each holiday season at the Holmes department store included a five-story Santa Claus standing atop the main entrance canopy over the sidewalk.

  The auto age gave rise to a new building type, the gas station. At first, the density of New Orleans left few sites available on which to build freestanding gas stations. Oil companies, however, jockeyed for prime, high-visibility locations. It became a sort of arms race for prominence and status among the most powerful oil companies—Standard, Gulf, Texaco, Shell—and others that built impressive facilities in a number of large American cities. Texaco built a mixed-use facility on Lee Circle in New Orleans. Barthelemy Lafon designed this circular area in 1807, at the spot where St. Charles Avenue intersected with Howard Avenue. This spot, originally called Place du Tivoli, initially served as a pleasure garden, with outdoor lights, tables, a dance floor, and brass bands on the weekends. In the 1840s, Italianate mansions just coming into fashion were built around the circle. Later, many of these beautiful mansions gave way to impressive new civic buildings, including Temple Sinai (1872), the Howard Memorial Library (1899), and the New Orleans Public Library (1908).22 When it was constructed in 1926, this ornate gas station and service garage was designed to conform in style to the former prestige of the neighborhood and to St. Charles’s status as the city’s premier residential address (Fig. 2.13). It was demolished in the 1960s in favor of a generic “rubber stamp” gas station.

  2.10: Meisel’s Fabrics, Oak Street, 2005 (preKatrina).

  2.11: Lamplighter Lounge, Veterans Memorial Boulevard, Metairie, 2005 (preKatrina).

  2.12: Canal Street, 1948.

  2.13: Texaco station and garage, Lee Circle, 1928.

  The compactness of New Orleans meant that the interstate highway system would have a less intrusive effect on the historic fabric of the city than it did in most other large American cities. However, its mitigation was also the result of an intense and suspenseful battle that played out in the 1960s to halt a riverfront elevated expressway, a project that would have decimated the historic riverfront for the entire length of the Vieux Carré. This grassroots battle pitted state and federal highway planners against a small but passionate coalition of civic activists. This fight has been documented in detail.23 The locals won. As a result, Interstate 10 was built instead along Claiborne Avenue behind the Vieux Carré, and a bypass loop was constructed east to west through the 6,000-plus-acre City Park, the largest urban park in the United States, with a spur built along Howard Avenue to connect I-10 with the Greater New Orleans Bridge, later to be rechristened the Crescent City Connection. A local renaming contest was sponsored by the local paper, the Times-Picayune, in 1990. The range of proposed names, many of them politically satirical, was deliriously funny.

  When the Times-Picayune built its new main offices and printing plant on Howard Avenue near the interstate in the 1970s, it adopted the motif of a “newspaper column” as its signature identifying element so that the building could be clearly seen by passing motorists on I-10. The large white column was meant to be read from the adjacent expressway and the nearby Broad Street overpass. The column was topped with an entablature bearing the paper’s name depicted in illuminated letters (Fig. 2.14). This landmark was designed to have maximum impact on commuters to and from downtown and those crossing the Greater New Orleans Bridge.

  2.14: Times-Picayune main office and plant, Howard Avenue, 2005 (preKatrina).

  Orienting motorists passing along I-10 to the downtown area was the inspiration behind Richard Haas’s immense fourteen-story clarinet mural he painted on the blank wall of the Downtown Holiday Inn. This mural immediately became a landmark when it was completed in 1990. It pays homage to Pete Fountain, the legendary New Orleans clarinetist, and to the city’s incomparable jazz legacy. Fountain performed on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show a record thirty-two times. The post-Katrina scene at the hotel featured huge decontamination trucks trying to combat the mold problem inside the flooded first floor of the hotel (Fig. 2.15). The rooftop of this hotel was also the base for a deadly sniper’s attack on innocent citizens across the street in Duncan Plaza in the 1960s.

  2.15: Clarinet (mural), Holiday Inn Downtown, Loyola Avenue, 2005 (post-Katrina).

  New Orleans contains many strong examples of what Robert Venturi described in 1972 as a “decorated shed.”24 Often appearing as bland “shoeboxes,” these structures, including many industrial buildings, were enlivened with color and arresting graphics on their front façades. Wild Wayne’s Seafood Shack on Airline Drive in Metairie was painted in a bright hue of yellow. Flanking the doorway were two playful graphics, one of a crawfish wearing a hat, with “Po Boys” emblazoned beneath, and a second depicting a crab on the verge of succumbing to a boiling kettle, with the words “Boiled Seafood—Live” below (Fig. 2.16). The Point restaurant was housed in a classic decorated shed in an industrial area along the River Road in Gretna. It was impossible to miss its main attractions—beer and burgers (Fig. 2.17).

  Often a business will employ architecture to establish a close affinity between its sales objectives and its customers’ predilections, even to the point of concealing or masking its true function. The designer of the main building for Lumber Products, Inc., located on Airline Highway (now Drive) in Metairie, purposefully made it look identical to a suburban house, just like the ones being built in the surrounding community. This building was built in 1940 (Fig. 2.18). Jefferson Parish experienced explosive population growth in the post–World War II period, and this lumber company’s modest blue building (repainted green post-Katrina), complete with roof
dormers, wood siding, small-paned “picture windows,” and a covered front “porch,” emulated nearby residential architecture.

  2.16: Wild Wayne’s Seafood Shack, Airline Drive, Metairie, 2005 (preKatrina).

  2.17: The Point, Gretna, 2005 (preKatrina).

  McKenzie’s bakery was the most well-known name in New Orleans baking throughout the twentieth century. The chain was founded over seventy years ago, and its history was thoroughly interwoven with that of the Mardi Gras king cakes that are sold by the tens of thousands each year during Carnival season. Folklore has it that in the seventeenth century Louis XIV took part in a Twelfth Night festival at which a bean or ceramic figure was hidden in a cake, which became known as the gâteau des rois (kings’ cake). The cakes, baked throughout the city, were originally round in order to portray the circular route taken by the magi to confuse King Herod, who was trying to follow the wise men so he could kill the Christ child. Hidden away somewhere in a few of the cakes was either a small bisque or china doll, a trinket, or a bean, usually a red bean that was sometimes covered in silver or gold leaf. The finder became king, or queen, for the day. Today, a plastic baby is baked inside the king cake, and according to local tradition, whoever receives the baby in their piece of cake must buy the next king cake.

  The first king cakes Donald Entringer made were commissioned for a Carnival group called the Twelfth Night Revelers. In 1935, his father, a baker in Biloxi, Mississippi, had bought a bakery on Prytania Street in New Orleans, keeping its original owner, Henry McKenzie, on as manager. The Revelers supplied porcelain trinkets to McKenzie’s every year. The shop baked five or six cakes each year for the group’s annual Carnival ball. An additional half dozen or so cakes would be sold, and that was all. The porcelain doll was switched out with a plastic baby in the early 1950s. The phrase “I got the baby!” is exclaimed by the person who received the baby, and this phrase remains as much a Mardi Gras ritual as the phrase “Throw me something, mister!”

  By the early 1950s, a McKenzie’s bakery outlet could be found in nearly every New Orleans neighborhood. The store in the Gentilly section (1957) possessed all the trademark architectural features of in-vogue 1950s strip-center architecture. It was sheathed in green 2′ × 2′ porcelain Bakelite panels. These panels were applied to a brick surface in a grid pattern. The name of the bakery was outlined in white neon letters, set against the shimmering green panels. The appearance, combined with the extruded-aluminum full-height storefront windows, was that of streamlined moderne. The grid wrapped around the corner of the box, in this case a corner site within the shopping district. The progressive design of this McKenzie’s Gentilly Woods store embodied the spirit of the city during the post–World War II period of major civic growth and prosperity.

  2.18: Lumber Products, Airline Drive, Metairie, 2005 (preKatrina).

  The growth in popularity of king cakes helped fuel the growth of McKenzie’s so much that by 2000 there were forty-two outlets in the metro area, and the main kitchen employed a staff of more than two hundred who baked pastries and bread continually.25 That same year, the world’s longest king cake was baked, measuring one thousand feet in length and weighing more than a ton.26 The operations were sold that year, and the chain began to experience financial problems. Many stores were closed in the five years preceding Katrina, and the chain’s future remained uncertain in Katrina’s aftermath.

  In recent years, the increasing cost of neon signs has forced inventive storeowners to turn to other media of expression. The Crescent City Automotive, Inc., sign was among the new wave of non-neon commercial signs. These relied on sculpted, raised lettering and images set against a wood or metal background and aperture. In this case, a vintage convertible, rendered in turquoise, is depicted as it rumbles down a street, and “Automotive” appears in cursive immediately below.

  Vines, Cows, Alligators, and Crawfish

  The city’s many fine restaurants have been a source of plenty of unusual sights, but perhaps none so bizarre as the huge wisteria vine that wound its way through the interior of Maylie’s Restaurant on Poydras Street for decades. In 1876, Bernard Maylie and Hypolite Esparbe opened an eatery that catered to the butchers of the nearby Poydras Street market. Maylie’s served only men until 1925. A unique feature of the restaurant was the immense, almost threatening vine whose trunk, more than a foot in diameter, thrust upward through the dining room and out onto the balcony above Poydras Street. Maylie’s closed in 1986 and is the present site of a Smith and Wolinsky’s steakhouse (closed since Katrina). In 1941, an advertisement was produced that featured this strange sight and the flowers in full bloom on the balcony (Fig. 2.19).27

  2.19: Maylie’s Restaurant, Poydras Street, 1941.

  In the tradition of the immense papier-mâché sculptures that have adorned Mardi Gras floats for one hundred fifty years, large sculpted figures of animals and food continue to intrigue New Orleanians. The Brown’s Dairy cows have been a landmark for decades. In 2000, the ninety-five-year-old Brown’s Velvet Dairy changed its name to Brown’s Dairy, but the slogan “Smooth as Velvet” remained on its cartons. Brown’s Dairy also remains the owner of a pair of twelve-foot-high fiberglass cows. These cows towered over Interstate 10 in Metairie for twenty-seven years, and they were brightly decorated every Christmas and Mardi Gras season. The dairy now takes the cows out on promotional tours to local schools and grocery stores. Here they are shown at rest outside the main dairy processing plant, located in the Central City neighborhood (Fig. 2.20).

  Much of the area surrounding New Orleans remains a swamp. The imagery of the swamp is expressed in myriad signs, from the quirky to the idiosyncratic, and on building adornments, from the aforementioned neon of the Cajun Cabin on Bourbon Street, to the folk architecture expressions found at swamp-tour sites in the marshes remote from the city, to brass rappers on ornate Garden District mansions. The nearby wetlands, home to nutria, alligators, and the seafood for which New Orleans became famous internationally, remain a prime source of inspiration to entrepreneurs. Crawfish, alligators, crabs, oysters, and catfish are but five main attractor-themes on commercial signs. At Airboat Tours, in Des Allemands on the west bank, a taxidermied alligator beckons customers, its jaws hanging over the side of a white picket fence as if the alligator were alive, just having crawled up out of the water. Nearby, the Cajun Swamp Tour’s main entrance off Highway 90 in Des Allemands is flanked by a pair of heroically New Orleans–themed, although thoroughly Disney-ish, fiberglass gators depicted as fishermen, each holding fishing gear, one wearing a scarf, boots, and a plantation hat (Fig. 2.21). These examples function as sign-sculptures and blur the line between one-of-a-kind Mardi Gras sculptures, which adorn floats, and mass-culture amusement-park attractions.

  2.20: Brown’s Dairy cows, Central City, 2005 (post-Katrina).

  2.21: Cajun Swamp Tours, Des Allemands, 2005 (preKatrina).

  Similarly, the crawfish perched on the roof of Semolina’s restaurant in Metairie was for a number of years a familiar sight to motorists on Interstate 10. This large red fiberglass sculpture appeared to be climbing out of a gigantic holding tank to escape being served as someone’s dinner in the restaurant below (Fig. 2.22). Semolina’s was founded in New Orleans in the 1980s and operates a number of locations in the metro area. It is a sit-down-only restaurant, and the food is traditionally prepared and served. This location remains shuttered in Katrina’s aftermath, and the whereabouts of the crawfish remains unknown.

  2.22: Semolina’s, Metairie, 2005 (preKatrina).

  The Lucky Dog

  To people around the world who visit the Big Easy, the Lucky Dog is a well known larger-than-life sculpted figure. Perhaps the best-known Lucky Dog vendor is Ignatius J. Reilly, protagonist of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces. The Lucky Dog is a highly iconic hot-dog pushcart, and these carts, combined with their inimitable vendor-operators, have been a presence in the Vieux Carré for decades (Fig. 2.23). In the late 1940s, brothers Stephen and Erasmus Loyacano first wheeled their
unique vending carts out onto the streets of the city. By 1949, the brothers decided to market their popular invention nationally. At a national convention, when hundreds of delegates asked them for more information, the brothers decided to forgo sales and branch into franchising instead. Their advertisement read, “Cruise the midway. Get around town. You and Lucky Dog follow the crowd. A red-hot steam job that will roll up profits everywhere you go. Steam cooks 100 dogs, buns, and chili. Stores everything for 300 more. A fleet of eight carts now successfully operating in New Orleans.” But by 1952 they had given up on the franchising concept, and after twenty-three years they sold the business. The new owners, Doug Talbot and Peter Briant, purchased Lucky Dogs Novelty Cart, Inc., in 1970. Its original location was 1304 St. Charles Avenue. Imagine how hard it must have been to push a fully loaded seven-foot-long hot-dog cart from there to the Vieux Carré, almost a mile.28 Pre-Katrina, the carts were rolled only a few blocks from a kitchen located on Gravier Street in the central business district. Post-Katrina, the Lucky Dog carts have been far fewer in number.