Emileigh New Orleans Bonus

Okay. Yay. Do-do-do-do. Oh, that's turned down very low. Do-do-do-do. Ba-ba-da-ba-ba-ba-da. Okay. That's better. Ba-ba-na-na-na. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to, okay, those are my notes. These are your notes. I'm going to kind of follow along with you a little bit. I think might be the best way. Okay. Tell me when to sign us in. Welcome to Illequipped History. Oh, shit. I went for the whole thing. Welcome to bonus episode, bonus episode. Yay. How are you? Yeah, I was getting the Snapchats. What did you do? Oh, no. Well, it is a very stressful game. I can see that. Yeah. Good. Happens to the best of us. I'm very proud of you. We went to the in-laws house. We had dinner and you're going to be very proud of me, Morgan. I watched a movie and it was the Barbie movie. It was so good. It was so good. Yeah, Nancy and I were like laughing the whole time and we made our husbands watch it with us and yeah. They were, they were good sports about it. Definitely good sports about it and Nick was telling William to, he was like, please don't act like Ken. Please don't do that. Don't do that. I am Knuff. Oh, I loved it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It looks like it would feel how a golden doodle would feel. Cool. Yeah, I, I was like, Nick, do you want the hoodie? And he was like, please no. He's like, I liked it. Not that much. Nice. Nice. Yeah, I, I'm just impressed that I, we watched it and then after, after we watched the movie, the weird Barbie was my favorite because I, I had multiples of those weird Barbies. I played with them too hard and so we left and went home, but because it takes us so long to get in the vehicle with children, we ended up live streaming the ball drop, the New York ball drop. And when midnight hit, we were sitting at a stop sign and you're supposed to kiss at midnight. So we just like leaned over and kissed and then just kept driving down the road. Yeah. Only encountered one drunk driver. Thankfully did not get hit, but yeah, we did pass one. So if that was you in your, I don't remember what it was. Please don't do that again. That sucked. Yeah. Okay. That's, that's a good mom right there. Good. Yeah. Good. Good. All right. Are you ready to get into the, yeah. Okay. So shout out to Sarah. She is one of our patrons and because of who we are as people, my husband bought a Jeep in Louisiana and I know for a fact that we cannot set foot in Louisiana without going to see our lovely Sarah and her husband. So we, Nick and I took a long weekend and went and picked up the Jeep and then went and saw them and explored New Orleans because that's, you know, they live in that area. So we hit up a few places and thought it would be a really good topic for a bonus episode because it is rich with history and culture and, you know, cool things, spooky things, all sorts of things. And of course we did for research purposes, go down Bourbon Street and yeah, that was a lot of fun for like an hour. That's all we did. It was like an hour in the middle of the day, but it was still fun. Nick almost, because we're behind a paywall, I'm going to say this, Nick almost saw some titties, almost. He turned around too late. He was a second too late. It's like, babe, you got to be quicker than that. Yeah, yeah, but that girl got a lot of beads. Like, man, it is a, it is a, it's 3 p.m. on a Friday. Could you chill? There is no chill in New Orleans. You go to drink or you go to do the history. And I was there for maybe both of it. Yeah, it just depends on what you want to do. Technically, four now. I went about six months before Katrina hit, but I was like 10 years old, 11 years old at the time. We only stayed for one day. We were, it was a group family vacation. We went and saw the other families, extended family down in Biloxi, Mississippi, and then shot over to New Orleans, spent one night in New Orleans and then came back home. So because my brother and I were kids, we got to babysit the other kids in the hotel room while mom and dad and their friends went out on Bourbon Street. But then about six months later, Katrina hit. So I'm sure it's changed a lot since that first time, and I only have kind of shoddy memories of it. So then Lou and I went right after I turned 21. She wasn't quite 21 yet, and Bourbon Street is wild. I would literally just walk into a bar, get two beers, walk outside, hand her one, and go on down the road. No one would question it at all. And let's see, a couple of years after that, Sarah got married, so I flew down there to make her wedding cake. Turns out I was drinking and I was pregnant with my son and had no idea. I just thought I was really jet-lagged. I was like, why am I so tired? I was knocked up. And then this past time. So yeah, four times. Yeah, and you've gone once, just once. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I am so jealous that you went around the Halloween time, because I was supposed to, had the plane tickets bought and everything, and then Nick was in that car accident and I couldn't go down. Yeah, jealous. It's on my bucket list. Yes, always. Yeah, the French Quarter is really cool to walk around. And like, we got, I think it was our palms read on one of those trips. I think it was when it was Lou and I that drove down there to see Sarah. We got our palms read in the quarter. And it was a weird experience. I was like, at first, I was like, I don't know about this. But then she hit on some things that turned out to be true. And I was like, I don't like how you did that. Like, how? So yeah. And I actually found out about those things later on. So it wasn't like she was just guessing. I was like, no, none of this is true. What are you talking about? And then I went home and actually found out some of those things came to fruition. And I was like, this is the weirdest thing I've ever experienced in my life. Wow. But she also looked at Lou and said, pregnancy surrounds you. And we were all panicking. And she was not pregnant. I think it was like a warning, maybe. I don't know. Wrap it up. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Maybe, maybe. I mean, Lou's cousin had a baby, had had a baby. I mean, not that much before that. So and other people around us had been getting pregnant and stuff. So yeah, you never know. You never know. Never know. Okay. Morgan, I think you have some facts. Boring people. Sorry. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Did you see like why that they were like that? Because what I found was they coincided in like in like 18, 1700s, 1800s with the church parishes. So like the and that's how the name parish came around. And in 1807, the territorial legislature officially adopted that term. And it's kind of stuck ever since. So it coincided with the churches in the different areas, which makes sense to me why it would develop like that. Yeah. Okay. That's all I had on parishes. Yeah. Concentrate. Yeah, concentrate. You go ahead and talk about the levees and then what I'm going to get into is part of the levee system. I think that would make sense. So go ahead and get into the levees first. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And on Lake Pontchartrain, parts of the kind of infrastructure they have on, you know, controlling those floodwaters is incredible. So in the 1930s, the New Orleans Levee Board built a seawall as part of the levee protection and land development projects. And not only did they build this seawall that looks like just a set of steps, but it created 2,000 extra acres of land behind that wall. So let's take a step back and see why they did that. So the people didn't really live on the edge of Lake Pontchartrain in the 1800s since it was so prone to flooding, the rising waters during different seasons. They would just have seasonal camps or they lived on very small communities, you know, kind of house on stilts kind of thing. And some people would go there for the day just to bathe, swim, hunt fish, you know, guide boats, stuff like that, then go home even same day or the next day. So in June of 1971, I think that's supposed to say 1871. So in June of 1871, the Mississippi River Levee breached and the plantations at Bonnet Carre. Carre? Is it C-A-R-R-E? It's like a normal car. I don't know. It is French, yeah. Hold on. How to say French C-A-R-R-E. Yeah, but how do you say it? It's not giving me anything. Why is it like this? Okay, whatever. We'll move past it. I can always put something in later. Okay. So it breached the plantations at Bonnet Carre, which sent excess water into Lake Pontchartrain. At the same time, an unusual eastern wind kept the water from dumping into the Gulf of Mexico, which caused the lake to flood the surrounding areas. And this is one of the catalysts for them deciding to do this. The Mexican Gulf Ship Canal Company built an integrated system of canals and pumps, but that ultimately failed. So they were like, we need something better than what we're doing now. So in 1873, city surveyor W.H. Bell came up with the idea of a seawall. And he decided that the wall could support land growth while also stopping the flooding at the same time. So Bell's idea was to build 1,000 feet off the shore and then fill the ground in afterwards. And it also included harbors built behind it with gates that would prevent floodwaters from penetrating up the canal. So he was building, his idea was like a wall and then harbors with integrated grates that would trap the water before it got too far behind the wall. But that was in 1873. It wouldn't be until 1895 before they actually did something. And that being a full-scale drainage effort. So they started draining Lake Pontchartrain instead of just like building walls and stuff. So by the early 1900s, neighborhoods started to spring up in the now-drained lake. And these are the Lakeview and Gentilly areas. The Orleans Parish levee board built the earthen levees because the levees are made of like dirt. And those were around 300 feet inland from the lake shore. But over a while, the soil sank and the levees subsided. Then in 1915 came the Great Storm, which I'm assuming is a hurricane. So this storm pushed a surge in and inundated the low spots with up to eight feet of water. Then they decided they needed to build the actual steps. So that was in 1915. So in 1925, another 10 years goes by, Colonel Marcel Gersaud, an expert in shoreline reinforcement and waterfront land reclamation, and the board unveiled the radical design of the lakefront. That was basically W.H. Bell's design, but what they called more ambitious. So it was considered a lakefront improvement project. The massive levee was fronted by open public spaces, positioned 3,000 to 4,000 feet offshore. And what they did was they were planning to build stepped concrete. So it was like the part facing the water is stepped, so it's like you're stepping into the water. The other part is flat, so then you would fill in the dirt behind it, and then it's flat. The construction began in 1926 with a temporary wooden dam. So they built the wooden dam, and they would pump all the water out of it. And then the sediments were drained, and the dirt and the sediments were pumped behind the wall. Water became mud, mud dried, and then that became land. The entire process took about three years, resulting in, like I said before, 2,000 acres being raised by 4 to 6 feet above sea level, and about 10 feet above the subsiding lowlands of Lakeview and Gentilly. Then in 1930, they finished it off by finishing up the steps, and that was that. But it comes at a price, right? So this project came with a $27 million price tag, and yeah. And to offset some of that cost, the levy board proposed to sell some of that land to private developers, which required changes to the state constitution. And those changes were fulfilled in 1928. The municipal airport was just thrown in there as, quote, almost an afterthought. But it was actually ideal because there's no real estate purchasing required. It's a blank slate. So they built an airport in that area as well. And that section of the expansion was completed in 1933 with a vertical seawall instead of the stepped version. They named it Shoshone Airport in honor of the levy board president, Abe Shoshone. And it is now called the Lakefront Airport, and it played a huge role in training American pilots during World War II. And when Sarah was talking about the steps, she mentioned that they used to do a lot of training on these steps because they really expected, with New Orleans being a major port city and it being, you know, right off the Gulf, that they were expecting it to be attacked. So they were doing training maneuvers on these steps, which actually works out really well. And in 1934, everything was fully completed. There was a little back and forth on the land, what it was going to be used for. Ultimately, half of it recreational, the other half residential. Those residential areas are now Lake Vista, Lake Shore, Lake Terrace, and Lake Oaks neighborhoods, which we did drive through. They're so cool looking. Just the architecture is different, and you can tell all the houses are just, they have this character to them, and it's so cool. Most of these were laid out and developed after the war, though, so it did take a few years to get everything going after the war. So not exactly everything was fine and dandy. Most people were very excited about the new land, but it did come with the destruction of those very small communities that had already sprung up on Lake Pontchartrain, and those being Port Pontchartrain and old Milneburg, and Milneburg itself was basically eradicated by the project. I know, and I might have some maps I can put up. I'll try to put some maps up. And Pontchartrain Beach and its amusement park would come into that area later, but, you know, gone were the days of the raised camps, but this amusement park started to be known as the Coney Island of New Orleans. So another New York comparison right there. But they didn't get it all right. In the design in the 1800s where Bell had those gates to stop the water from coming too far inland, those gates were never built. They just put the steps up and called it a day. So that meant that during Katrina, and I'm sure you're going to get a little more into Katrina later, there wasn't anything to keep the floodwaters that high from actually going over the steps, and it turned out that the artificially raised land was the only land not flooded during that hurricane. That's just wild to me that it was the fake land that they raised four feet above sea level that was the only area. And there's an aerial map that I found of that as well, that it's just that those 2,000 acres were fine, and then the rest of it around it was flooded. And on the area we went to, I will try to post a picture. I think I took one of the lighthouses. There is a lighthouse called the New Canal Lighthouse. We didn't get to go in it. Tours are $10. It serves as a science and history museum, and they do educational programs, field trips, and event rentals. So you can even get married there if you wanted to. Beautiful place. If you're in the area, go check it out. I love lighthouses. It's like a wooden lighthouse, and it looks like kind of short, but it's right on the edge of the water. Oh, it's so cute. So cute. Okay. Yeah. You're welcome. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Geez. Ah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Wow. Well, someone needed to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was horrible. You can easily look it up, look at pictures of the devastation, and whew. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Agreed. Okay. Of course. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So petty. Damn. Sorry, the tea went down the wrong way. I don't know, but they should stop. They could not. Could they not? How dare you hurt their ego by going and finding some land and then, you know, trying to colonize it. I mean, even though people already live there, that's rude in itself. But, like, you can't be outdone by another king, Morgan. Obviously. They sounded great. Ten out of ten. You're welcome. Oh. Oh, Louie's land. Yeah. Yeah, very French. Yes. That sounds sexy. I love French. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Okay. Okay. Okay. So 700 feet back it would have been even lower, but because they pushed it closer to the river, it ended up being higher in elevation. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I do. I do. So the French Quarter is about a half square mile and it's also known as the Vaux Carré. Vaux Carré? Hey, it's Carré. Ha-ha. So the term meaning old square in French, and that was coined around the 1890s when the quarter was evolving into a tourist destination. So the French Quarter has a kind of wild history. So it's located on the banks, like you said, of the Mississippi River, and it's the original, like, where New Orleans was established by the French in 1718, 1717, 1718. And it was selected, okay, okay, going deeper onto the location, not only was it relatively high amid the low-lying swamp lands, but because of its proximity to Lake Pontchartrain and via the Bayou St. John, divided a safer shortcut than the Mississippi for shipping. Yeah. But also I'm just still baffled at the fact that you get closer to the river and the land is higher. What? Okay. Yeah. True. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. That's a good hypothesis. Solid. So because the original buildings were constructed from one wood, only one French colonial building remains, and that is the 1750 Ursuline Convent, now the Archive of the Catholic Archdiocese. Thank you, Jesus Christ. Why have I never seen that word written down? Archive of the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans. So in 1762, Louisiana was transferred to Spain occupancy, ownership, however you want to put it, control. So during its 40-year tenure under Spain, the previously struggling town became quite wealthy. So the Spanish did really good things for New Orleans. Its river trade, you know, exploded particularly from the newly independent Americans living west of the Appalachian Mountains, whose only accessible port was New Orleans. And in 1788, most of the French Quarter was destroyed by a fire. Again, it's all wood. So although the French taste as far as their architecture and their style remained, the Spanish initiated the new regulations that would help prevent the spread of fires. So this included the use of protective plasters on the exterior walls and fire-retardant roofing, such as slate and tile. And this gave the Quarter a more Spanish flair to what's already very French. And that's why you get kind of a melting pot of the two in the Quarter area. So in the late 18th century, substantial buildings like the Cabildo Presbyterian Cathedral and the St. Louis Cathedral was erected, along with a number of other mansions, such as those on Royal Street that are now occupied by Brennan's Restaurant and Waldhorn and Adler. So all these buildings that used to be these big mansions are now, you know, part of restaurants and stores and stuff like that. It's gotten more commercial in the area. So the iconic hand-forged wrought iron was introduced in the late 1790s, but it was very expensive and limited to large, costly buildings, whoever had the money for it. But in the 1830s, mass-produced cast iron was introduced, which is way less expensive than wrought iron. And it took Victorian New Orleans by storm. And that's where you get the lacy, like, French Quarter. Everything's, you know, very opulent, very curly, vine, lace, railings, and posts and stuff like that. That's where you get that in the 1830s. And for about 70 years, the French Quarter was about all that existed in New Orleans. And the expansion due to the plantations being subdivided made the city grow. Eventually the suburbs started to be referred to as part of the French Quarter since they shared the architectural designs. So the older parts kind of started being lumped into the French Quarter as well. And during this time, Bourbon Street, which, fun little fact, was not named after the alcohol. It was named after the 18th century ruling family that resided there. So by this time, by the 1840s, Bourbon Street started to change to become more commercial than residential and evolved into the city's main shopping district. And then around 1850, the surrounding place, Place des Arnais, now renamed Jackson Square, was upgraded and the gardens were redesigned for Andrew Jackson's monument in 1857. So that monument has been around for a very long time. Whether you like it or not, it's been around for a long time. So in spite of these upgrades, the French Quarter saw many years of decline. So at one point it was peak, it was the hub, and then it just didn't get, I guess, the care that it needed for a long time. And many of the large grand houses became rooming houses or warehouses. And starting around the 1860s, railroad tracks, more warehouses and other industries were being built along the riverfront, and the wealthy started leaving in droves, looking for better looking parts of the city. So by the 20th century, numerous quarter buildings were becoming dilapidated and many considered the quarter of the slums that deserved just demolition, just tear them down, right? Just tear down hundreds of years of history, this kind of like beauty and just character that you will never find in anywhere else. So beginning in the 1910s and 20s, there was a growing protection for the quarter, and gentrification brought new businesses and public improvements, but of course there's always a cost to that. Morgan, would you like to explain gentrification? Because I am horrible at it. I'm not good at explaining it. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I think there are ways to do it. That was beautifully explained, by the way. There are ways to do it without taking the character or the culture or the soul out of, but they're going for what's the cheapest way for me to flip this building. And, I mean, these buildings stick out like sore thumbs until the buildings around them follow. And then, yeah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. And it just completely erases all the character. Well, New Orleans was having this problem too in the French Quarter as early as 1911. So in an effort to encourage new construction, the Louisiana State Court built a new building at 400 Royal Street, took up an entire block of previously, yeah, they were crumbling buildings, so I don't know what state they were in in 1911, but so they built this big building and was encouraging other builders, other businesses to do the same, but it was pretty short lived. Not many people wanted to go into the French Quarter. And I don't know if it's because they thought, oh, my God, it's, you know, we won't make any money if we go down there or what. But in 1936, the Louisiana Constitution was actually amended to protect the architecture in the French Quarter. So they realized, thank goodness, they realized what was happening and they kind of put a shutdown to it. So by the 1970s, the city halted all new hotel construction in the French Quarter due to them being a detriment to the original architecture of the area. So now you see if you have a new hotel, it's within a building that already existed and the outside looks, you know, as it should, you know, to match everything around it. So, yeah, like I said, the older buildings are being remade into smaller boutique hotels, bed and breakfasts, stuff like that. So now the French Quarter of today is mostly single family homes, duplexes, condos, you know, residents. The population residents from the 20s to now is staggering with the amount of businesses and stuff that have gone in. The residents in the 1920s was 20,000 people in the French Quarter. Now it is 4,000 people. And I'm sure they are paying a pretty penny to live down there. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Cool. That's so cool. Yeah. That's really cool. One more fun fact about the quarter. You'll love this. I want it to be named this again. So in the early 1900s, there was a section around the quarter known as the Tango Belt where there were many dance halls. The Tango Belt. Prohibition killed it because Prohibition killed a lot of things. And by the end of Prohibition, 1933, Bourbon Street had kind of started to become its own and there were clubs and that was slowly replacing the Tango Belt. Bourbon Street then became a popular destination for the GIs in World War II which led to it becoming one of the most popular streets in the world, which I believe it. And, you know, Bourbon Street really isn't that long. It's really not that long. It's really cool, though. Okay. That's all I have on the French Quarter. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Magazine Street. Oh, yeah. Magazine Street. Do you want to get into the Louis? Okay. So I'm trying to go in like an order by when it happened. So let me see when Magazine Street. I mean 1788. Do you want me to do Magazine Street or do you want to do a little bit more of your stuff? And then I can do Magazine Street before the Louisiana Purchase. Okay. Yeah. Sounds good. Okay. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Wow. That's wild. I love finding things like this. This is so cool. Okay. I'm learning things. I'm like geeking out. Okay. So a little more about the, okay, this is going to get into a lot of like the layout of New Orleans and why it is the way it is. Because why? Why would you do this to us? So we've all heard of magazine, or sorry, we've all heard of Bourbon Street. Everyone knows about Bourbon Street. But a lot of people might know, but I didn't know anything the first time I went as like an adult, had no idea about the street. I didn't know anything about Bourbon Street. I didn't know anything about Magazine Street. So Magazine Street is basically the street all the locals actually go to. It's one of the best shopping you'll find in the city. There's tons of little restaurants and old restaurants. There's a few bars. A lot of fun, more, you know, I guess commercialized, but you'll see why in a minute. But it's so cool because you go from like a really urban kind of feel immediately you're into rows and rows of houses with trees between the yards and the sidewalks and, you know, very residential area. And then you'll get right back into an urban area going along the same street. It's so cool. And I will get into why it is like that, but let's start as to why it's called Magazine Street. So city surveyor Carlos Trudeau created what would become Magazine Street, or at least the initial few blocks of it. So on April 24th of 1788, only a month after the Good Friday Fire, which was a disaster so bad that the Gravier family decided to subdivide their adjacent plantation to help with the rebuilding process. So that fire must have been bad. And they were like, take my plantation, just start building a new city on that. We have people without homes. So Trudeau devised a plan that would be called Suburbio de Santa Maria in Spanish and the Faubourg Saint Marie in French. So we have, you know, Spanish and French names going on, two different ones. And he called one particular block Almazen, or Warehouse, because it started near the fortification, which housed tobacco and gunpowder magazines. So it was called basically Warehouse Street, Warehouse Block. I don't know. Maybe they both need to be dry. I think they had maybe different buildings because it was a block called Warehouse, not just a street, but like a block. So maybe they had different buildings and it's just kind of where they kept the stuff. It was kind of confusing to figure out, but I just know they housed tobacco and gunpowder in that area. Yeah, I know. It's like you're going to set the tobacco on fire. Yeah. Everyone gets a cigarette that night, just pre-lit. So people in the area started referring to it in association with specifically the magazines rather than the warehouse itself. So they would, you know, say it's, you know, the magazine area, the magazine warehouse, the magazine street, whatever. And Kalday al-Mazin appeared on the maps through the late 1790s, where it switched in the late 1790s to Rouday Magasins or variants of that, because maps were not very consistent back in the day. So by the 1800s, Magazine Street prevailed. That's its name. So it is the second street. It was the second street from the river at the time, and that turned out to be very significant. So as New Orleans expanded, its position made Magazine Street too far from the river to be predominantly commercial, but too close to be the Grand Avenue, such as, like, St. Charles Avenue, you know, other that are just bougie residential. So it turned into a weird midpoint of both. And I'm not even going to try to say his first name because I'm going to butcher it so bad. Mr. Lafon, who was a French-born surveyor engineer, was commissioned in 1806 by Madame Sylvester de Lourdes Sarpay to subdivide her plantation immediately upriver from the Faubourg Marie or the Suburbio de Santa Maria, that area. And that was immediately upriver from the original plantation that said you can build here. So Miss de Lourdes Sarpay soon sold her land to Armand Duplantier, who had been consulting with his three upriver neighbors, Soleil, Robin, and Lavoisier's families, who all agreed to sell their land, sell their plantations to Lafon as well, to be subdivided and urbanized. So what they're doing is all of these surrounding plantations are slowly selling their plots of land. And then, oh, well, this square, obviously they're not all square. Just bear with me. This square gets subdivided, then this square gets subdivided, then this square gets subdivided. So Lafon devised an elaborate plan, part classical and part Baroque is what the source said, which aimed to extend Trudeau's neighborhood. So the Marie Street grid upriver, while at the same time hinging, it opened to create new streets upon the broader natural levee. So the source said, and if you know New Orleans, or you might want to look this up, how Annunciation Street forks off from Chapitulas and Prytania Street splits off from Camp Street. So it's like to expand it, instead of just going straight like this and then having like a 90-degree grid, right, they branch off from each other. So they're veeing off. They're, you know, doing that kind of a thing. I'm making a lot of hand motions for a podcast, so sorry, guys. Please use your imagination. You're like, this is great, yeah. I'm sorry. Think of like a tree branch instead of like a grid. There you go. So that's kind of how his hinging would work. So the new development had the effect of repositioning the Rue des Magazines, or Magazine Street, which was originally only one block away from Chapitulas and two blocks away from St. Charles, and now is a full six blocks away from both. Things kept getting moved around. So Lafon gave Magazine Street multiple lanes that were slated for heavier traffic because of its positioning. And the new position made it perfect for more commercial stores and less residents. So they were really building up to be this kind of, like, commercial area. And as the city expanded over the 1800s due to landowners subdividing their plantations one at a time, it was not a coordinated effort. So if you ever drive through New Orleans and you're like, why the fuck? That's why, because they were just doing it a chunk at a time. So the street names and such varied from one surveyor to another. Some streets just dead-ended into a field for a very long time until that field got subdivided, too. It just, like, stopped. So bit by bit, Magazine Street got longer and longer and longer over the years. And the only family to not subdivide their land was the Foucher clan. And over time, the land is now the Audubon Park, which we drove through. It is beautiful. It's kind of right. We passed it on our way to the steps, you know, the step seawall. And it's beautiful. They have, like, horse, like, rides you can do. Like, you can ‑‑ it's a really cool recreational area. So why is Magazine Street so popular? It's because of Magazine's multiple lanes and the fact that it goes through all the areas that have been built. It became the perfect spot for public food markets. And because of the food markets creating foot traffic and cash flow, other businesses started to flock there to get some of that business. So it made Magazine Street a place for shops, restaurants, banks, stuff like that. And the food markets were intentionally dispersed as to not to compete with each other. So other businesses would create these clusters around the food markets, and that would leave blocks between these food markets that filled up with residential areas. So that's why you go from, like, urban restaurants, stores, banks, you know, all that stuff, directly into houses, churches, schools, other institutions like that, which made it perfect for growth because everything was in walking distance. You'd be two blocks from the store, a block from the church, you know, two blocks from the bank, whatever. Everything's within walking distance. And there were four market locations called Magazine Street Market, 9th Street Market, Jefferson Market, and Ewing Market. They were all closed by the 1950s, but the buildings still stand, and they are now used as of November of 2020. That's the soonest I could find. Are you being used as an event space, two boutiques, and a school gym? Yep. So there's Magazine Street. I love magazine. I had a po' boy on magazine, and I'm just like, I want to go back. I want a po' boy. I feel like that could be an episode in its own, just the food of New Orleans. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. No. No. I'm glad this is a bonus episode, or it would have been like a two-to-three partner. Right. Okay. Right. Right. Right. No. But not big ones. Right. Right. Okay. Okay. Right. Right. Right. Right. That seems so cheap. Hold on. I want to do — okay. $15 million today. Let's see. Oh, shoot. How did it know that I wanted it from 1803 to today? $1.2 trillion. Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay. So inflation-wise, $15 million would be $322 million today. However, in land value, the purchase would be worth $1.2 trillion in today's land value. Holy crap. They got a bargain. Yeah. Yeah. And for y'all that don't know, the Louisiana purchase went from, like, the bottom of Louisiana to the top of our country. It was like a strip in the middle of the United States. Yeah. Right. I mean, it was a huge amount of land. I mean, a third of our state, at least. Or a third of our country, I'm sorry. A third of our country, at least. Yeah. Yeah. The math wasn't method, but yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right. Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Okay. Mm-hmm. You just cut out. Oh. Okay. Yeah. I hear you, like, you sound different. Oh. Now you sound okay. I think you just leaned back. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. Yes. Yes, I did. Cool. Do they work if you, like, plug them up and then, like, have them connected? Oh, you're good. You're good. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Huh? Okay. So you were talking about that building that is now a museum that you got a lot of info from. Yeah. Wow. Mm-hmm. Okay. There are so many, and we haven't even named them all yet, that, I mean, New Orleans is truly a melting pot of cultures and, you know, like ethnicities and stuff like that. And it is so hard to find that even in the United States where people like to refer to the United States as a melting pot because we're big and we have lots of areas and stuff. But in such a small area, one city, so many different, at this time, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. I am going to get into the Irish hot and heavy later. But, yes, they are a big part of the community there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because it was given, right? It wasn't like conquered or anything. It was like a land trade or something like that. Right. That's right. Okay. Could you imagine the Puritans showing up at Mardi Gras? Could you imagine the Puritans would have heart attacks on the spot? Just they couldn't handle Christmas. They wouldn't know how to handle themselves at Mardi Gras. Oh, my God. That's hilarious. Yeah. Yeah. Is it still running like a thing? Okay. Cool. Of course. Yep. Ugh. Ugh. Yeah. Okay. Agreed. Agreed. Okay. Wow. Damn. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Ooh, who do the voodoo? You do the voodoo. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right. Okay. Oh. Yeah. Okay. Maria Laveau is a very important person in New Orleans, just history, culture, lore, legends, everything. Absolutely. Oh, show. Wow. Cool. Okay. Right. I can see that. Buckle in, y'all. We got more. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Right. Yeah. Right. There's going to be tension regardless of where you go, so. Yeah, you're doubling the population. Damn. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So they had to make sure they were going to be, like, American enough. Right. Right. Right. That is interesting. What, yeah, what are the chances? Yeah, well. Yeah. I guess it's a one in 365th chance. Yeah. Oh, I did? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Wow. Okay. I could see how it would be easy to be lost to the swamps. Like, live within the swamps, no one be able to find you. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They're terrifying is what you're trying to say. Oh, 100%. And, I mean, technically everything you need is there. There are little pockets of land. You could do a little bit of agriculture. You've got fish. You've got alligators. You've got a whole host of just environment to live off of. Yeah. We're finding a lot of topics based on this topic. Yes. I want to go down the rabbit hole. Yeah. New Orleans part two. All the stuff we didn't cover the first time. Okay. Damn. Get it. Get it. Yeah. Yeah. To do that. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Wow. Okay. Do you want to know a fun little fact? Sharifport is where we bought that Jeep, and then we drove down to New Orleans from Sharifport. Look at our lives like intertwining. Okay. Cool. Well, damn. I wish I'd known that. I would have made Nick drive around Sharifport. Yeah, I know. I'm sure there is. I'm sure there is. So we're going to take a small detour and get into Canal Street, right? So Canal Street is when we're going to talk a little bit about the Irish hand that helped, you know, develop the city. So on Canal Street, it does connect to Bourbon Street. On one end of Bourbon Street, Canal Street connects to Bourbon Street. Canal Street goes the other way, 90-degree angle kind of thing. And it is one of the widest streets in New Orleans, and it is also one of the first streets in the world to have electric lights, and it has become a hub for shopping. So in 1807, a French surveyor, Joseph-Antoine Venache, first thought of a canal linking the Mississippi River, Bayou St. John, and Lake Pontchartrain in an empty green common area. So he wanted to have a canal built to connect all those. Now, that particular one never came to be, but it did lead to Canal Street. So if you're looking at Canal Street, there is a modern daytime. There is a train in the middle of it. There's trains going about the city. And you have one side has roads, the other side has roads, and you have sidewalks, and you have buildings with that train in the middle. So it's a very, very wide road. And in 1831, the Louisiana state legislator granted the New Orleans Canal and Banking Company, not Baking Company. They weren't making pies and building canals. They were banking money to build a new waterway that would connect the American uptown side of the city through to Lake Pontchartrain. So they did that to ship goods from one place to another because in the 1800s, that's just the fastest way to do that. So they decided to build a canal in the middle of this road. So it's hard to imagine that, like, with buildings on the sides and stuff there would just be a canal. But they built the canal, and it cost lives is what it really cost of specifically the Irish immigrants. So they dug 60 feet wide and 7 foot deep canal for miles. And between the cholera outbreak and the malaria and yellow fever problems, from being in the mosquito-ridden, like, swamps while they're digging, 6,000 people died in the first year. Yeah. So Irish actor Tyrone Power visited the excavation site while performing in the city and reported that the laborers were exploited by the contractor, blank, who brings profit from their blood and were, quote, living worse than the cattle of the field is what he said. Yep. So it opened for navigation in 1838, and it ran about six miles north across the swampland to the lake, and it stayed in operation for the next hundred years. Then advancement in the rail and road industry decreased the viability of having a canal there. So after a hundred years and thousands and thousands of people dead, they just started to fill it back in. Mm-hmm. So they began to fill it back in in 1937, and by the 1950s it was completely filled in except for a little bit, let's see, the Pontchartrain Expressway follows the canal's route from I-10, so the north end of the canal is still intact, a little chunk of it, and it can be approached by the New Orleans Marina. But most of it was covered up for the Pontchartrain Expressway, which is the train. So in honor of the Irish laborers who gave their lives to build this canal that was then later filled in, there is a Celtic cross monument in the heart of the Hibernation Memorial Park, and that was erected in 1990, and it was dedicated by the Irish Cultural Society of New Orleans in honor of the Irishmen who lost their lives to help develop the city. And apparently from the article that I read, the Irish were the ones who typically were building, who literally developed the city. They were the laborers who did the majority of that work. Of course there's others as well, but they typically did a lot of the labor, and I think they're kind of undervalued there. So shout out to those people. I know, it was such a bummer. And I think Sarah's husband, what did he refer to it as? Because he's a native, so he knows so much stuff about New Orleans. I feel like one day we need to interview him. But I think he said that they refer to the Canal Street as, like, the Irish Canal or something along those lines, because they're like, well, all the Irishmen died trying to build the canal, so we're going to call it that. Yeah. So that's all I have on the canal. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. Holy crap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, good. Wow. Yeah. I'm sorry. That sounds like murderer shit. Oh, no. Oh, it's giving the vibes that a – is it close to Maryville that there's a cemetery right below the butcher shop? On – I think it's Highway 11. But literally on the top of the hill, it's like so-and-so's butcher shop, and literally in front of the butcher shop is a cemetery. And I laugh every time I pass it. And also, literally next door, down the road, is Benton's hams. Where are they getting the hams? Concern. Concern. Okay. No. They can't have my hams. I'll be cremated just so they can't have my hams. No, my worst nightmare. That was unintentional, and I love how that played out. So, cemeteries. Hopefully not around butcher shops, but I don't know if y'all have ever seen it. If – before I get into this, if you haven't seen what the cemeteries look like in New Orleans, Google it right now. Unless you're driving, don't do that. Use your imagination there. But in New Orleans, they don't bury people in the ground for good reasons. They are just little – what's the word? Crypts. And they're stone, and they look like tiny houses, and multiple people go in there. But why? Why do they do that? This is – okay. So, why? The water table is very high. And because of that reason, it's really hard to bury the dead, because the graves either had to be shallow, or if you're burying into the ground, if you dig too deep, water starts to fill in the grave, and then the caskets float if they're sealed correctly. If they're airtight, they will just float like little dead ships. Yes. It's your great-grandma. That's what's coming up out of the ground. It's not good. So, the early settlers were trying to figure out a way to go about this, you know, problem. And they would weigh down the caskets with rocks and stones, but after – like Morgan said, after a heavy rainstorm, they would still float back to the top. And to this day, heavy rainstorms occasionally pop a coffin up out of the ground every now and then. I know – and this is so morbid and horrible, but I know they were actually having a problem with that in Katrina, because I think the strong winds and stuff might even have opened, you know, a crypt or two, and then they would float out from there as well. So, I know, I could not imagine sitting on your roof and just watching a casket float by your roof line. I – no. My heart goes out to anyone who went through that. Jesus. So, another way that they would try to get around this problem is to drill holes in the coffin so they're not airtight anymore. So, yeah, it's going to fill with, like, water and sediment and stuff, but it's more likely to stay in the ground that way. But this also proved unsuitable, not a very good idea, and they just gave up and started putting them in stone vaults. So, some are in walls like you see in a lot of Catholic cemeteries where you have a wall and there's, like, squares, and you can pull that marble slab off the wall, put either someone's casket in there, or nowadays I know you can put multiple, like, ash remains in there as well, and then you just close the door back up, after you inscribe the new name and the dates, and go on. And – but the ones in New Orleans, they're like small cities because you have these house-looking crypts and you pull the door off, you put someone in there, you close the door, and there's just rows and rows and rows of these cemeteries. And, like I said, multiple people can be placed in these small buildings, and since they look like many houses and there's so many rows of them, this is where one of New Orleans' nicknames, the City of the Dead, comes from. They look like small cities, just walking around, it looks like you're in a small city. So, how can you get more than one family member in each vault? I did not know this. So, according to local ordinance, as long as the previously deceased family member has been dead for at least two years, the remains of that person can be moved to a specially made, and placed at the side or back of the vault. And then the coffin is destroyed, and then the vault is ready for the newly deceased family member. Very, very morbid. So, they just put it in a box, put it in a box, Very, very morbid. So, they just put it in a body bag, and put it in the back, and put the new body in. But what happens if a family member dies within that two-year period? So, generally, local cemeteries are equipped with temporary holding vaults, and the newly deceased family member is then moved into his or her final resting place after that first two years has lapsed. Yeah. Yeah. And when we were looking at the, we walked through a few of these, and some of them would have, like, ten names on these vaults. And they're from the 1700s to 1800s. Like, what did you do back then? Just, I hate to say it like this, but stack them up? Like, what else do you do? Yeah. That had to have been a horrible thing to try to figure out during that time. Like, what do we do with all these bodies? Ah. I know. Okay. On to the next. That is all I have of that. Yeah. You're welcome. Okay. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Okay. Cool. Yes. Oh. Yeah. That makes so much sense. I'm just thinking of, like, Southern Belle. Oh, Lordy. Like, what's the movie? Yep. Thank you. Thank you for that. Brain nailed. Jesus Christ. I don't know how my cat got in here, but he just touched my hand, and I didn't know he was under me. I think I've had a heart attack. Whew. It's like, it's not that. It gets interesting, but okay. Let me let him. I guess the door wasn't closed all the way. Okay. Proceed. Okay. Wow. Seriously. The melting pot, it's shipping and goods, it's developments, railroads, all that. Wow. Damn. Yeah. I mean, think of, like, just doing, like, the plantations, and then when the plantations started being sold for urbanization, that money had to come from somewhere as well to develop the roads and the buildings and, you know, bringing people in. Damn. Yep. Yep. Cool. Okay. Oh. Cool. Okay. We want to do what we want. And enslave people. Okay. Sorry. I'll stop. Yeah. Oh, my God. Okay. Okay. We did. It just, every time it said, I just, yeah. Hmm. Okay. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Oh. Her? Go, Margaret. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Right. Wow. Huh. Huh. Okay. Cool. Okay. Okay. Okay. The first thing that comes to mind is, of course, Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras. But I think, like, the music and the food as well. Yeah. Jazz. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. Jazz. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Get it, kid. Yeah, and you know what? Now that I'm thinking about it, there is, on Bourbon Street now, a place that has statues of these people. So let's see. Antoine, Fats, Domingo. There's chairs in the way. I'm trying to, like. Okay. I think Louis Armstrong is one of them. I'll have to get one of Nick's pictures. Oh, it's the New Orleans Musical Legends Park. So they have statues of these famous people there, and it's right off of Bourbon Street. It's really cool. Yeah. Probably. Yes. Mm-hmm. Well, that's rude. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good God. Yes. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Oh, look at that. Damn. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Nice. Yeah, that's okay. And think about all the nooks and crannies and things that I couldn't hit. I just hit the places that I visited on this last trip. Yeah. Okay, I see. So fashionable. I see fashionable African American women. Okay. Their dresses are cute. They're cute. Okay. Yes. I see early map of the French Quarter, and I'm assuming that says something Mississippi at the bottom, so I'm assuming that blue is the Mississippi River. Okay. Nouvelle Orleans. Bougie. Yeah, see, downtown is very square, and it's funny that you can see that branching effect, like later on that we were talking about. And the levee. Look at that. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Nice. I'll hit on a few of mine. Noah.com, it's a website, and I think it's called Noah.com, it's the archive, turning water into land, and that was really the Lake Pontchartrain, Science of our Coast, that was for the lighthouse, and then there's a bunch that don't really make any sense. Let's see, I see FrenchQuarter.com, NOLA, HibernationPark.org, ExperienceNewOrleans.com, that was about the dead city, the cemeteries, and then more of the NOLA archive. I got a couple from there, and that's pretty much it. There's some others that branch off of the first and all that, but I would like to put a PSA out that I forgot to say. When we were at the Pontchartrain seawall, they look like steps. Take it from me, do not do the steppy on the steps. No stepping. Because Nick said, I want to step down there, and I said, he said, it looks kind of slick. And I was like, it shouldn't be that slick. My happy ass started walking down there, and I about fell into the Pontchartrain. Sarah yelled at me, Nick said, I told you so, and I got two steps down and almost fell. And there have actually been, when I was doing my research, I was finding a lot of articles saying how people have been seriously injured or died slipping on those steps. So do not step on them. They're for looks only and for, you know, obvious reasons. But like, they're not for you to go running around on. Yes. Do not mess with water. It messes with you. And apparently the water surrounding New Orleans is just out for vengeance, so don't mess with it. It's mad enough. It's like, yeah, it's still really mad at those two brothers who decided to put it there. She was like, that wasn't a good idea. No, was it? Yeah. Fuck you, Andrew Levy. That's what Mother Nature says. Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah. Listen, we love New Orleans. We love what it's turned into. I know within every city you're going to have faults, you're going to have issues, but the culture there is incredible. The food is incredible. Beignets, we didn't even touch on beignets. Let me get that powdered sugar donut. Oh, my God. And gumbo, jambalaya, po'boys. I'm getting hungry. Please, please mail me or just come kidnap me. Oh, no. But in all seriousness, between the rich culture, the people, everything, I love it down there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And what I love, I love that. And you get to see all the architecture. I am an architecture nut. I just love. And you see all these. I love what? I do. I do. But you see all the shotgun houses and they would build those houses because and this has happened not just in New Orleans, but you got taxed for how much road front your house took up. So to get around that, you would make real long, skinny houses so you didn't have to pay so much road front taxes. So you ended up with a house that's maybe 15 feet wide and like 30 feet long. And they're really cool. But like to get from Sarah's old apartment, because we could just walk to Magazine Street. We passed all these really old and you could tell they were from a long time ago, but they just they were so cool seeing these houses. I love it. Also, I can't imagine being in the antebellum days with all those fucking skirts and it being 100 degrees and the humidity I would die. How did they live? Oh, they're so fancy and they're probably sweating their poor asses off. They can't breathe. Yeah, this one's wearing a corset, a dress, probably a couple other layers under that and a shawl and a hat. Yeah, the second one kind of looks like silky almost like it just ma'am, ma'am. And going inside doesn't help. They have no air conditioning. Oh my God, it's just the thought of it. If I get hot now, I am a nuisance to my family. I don't like to be too hot. I get hateful. I also don't like being too cold either because my bones ache because I'm an 80 year old woman trapped in this 30 year old's body. So like I need it to be a solid 70 unless I'm on the boat and then 85 would be great if I could pick the weather, that'd be great. Yeah, just a little dial. Hey, in the winter, if I knew that it was going to rain, I'd crank that bitch down to 32. Get some snow going. Let's go. And then turn it back up when it's convenient for me. Yeah. Okay, well, we're at two over two and a half hours. So you're welcome guys for this in depth, but yet very brief history of New Orleans in some specific areas. We hope you enjoyed it. Yeah. Listen, I did too because I was there and I was drinking a 32 ounce pina colada on Bourbon Street for research purposes. I did. I went, I was lit by the time we went to the grocery store for Sarah's husband to make his gumbo. So shout out. Oh my God. I ate so much. I, yeah, I was, I don't. Oh, oh no, no, no. The, the hand grenades. No, because we got to the pina coladas first and then I was like, it's in the middle of the day. I don't want to ruin my day by getting a hand grenade too, because they will ruin your day. Fair warning. Next time. You touched a parrot? You kissed a parrot? Oh, I, I pet a snake. It was on this random guy's arm. And the second time I went to New Orleans, the time I went with Lou, we were walking up and down Bourbon Street. I was drinking my hand grenade and guys, this was pre COVID time. So don't yell at me. I was also young and drunk, but this lady was standing and she had these little vials, literal vials of, I guess alcohol. And she said, do you want to do some shots? And I was like, yes. So I, um, I was like, yeah, here's my money. And she put, I was so confused. The bottoms of these little vials, they had no lid. She put the bottoms of them in her mouth. So she's holding them up with her mouth, with her head up. And she grabbed my face, squished my mouth open and poured the shots into my mouth with her mouth. And then sent me on my way down the street. Did not know what was happening. It was alcohol. I don't know what was in it. Mystery liquid in a vial. 100%. And to do so, we need to fly down there. Yeah. We are trying to make that happen. Um, so the best place to get gumbo is there in Jeremy's house. So if you know, don't know them, hate it for you. Uh, it's so good. And yeah, there's tons of these little restaurants and bars and stuff that are just really cool. There's like a beer garden down there that we went to that was really cool. Had just great everything. So, okay. I'm ready to go pack your bags. Yeah. Yes. Uh, do we need to do socials? I feel like if they know us by now here, that's what I thought. Yeah. You know where to find this everywhere else. So, right. And you're the best and you guys are making it to where we can keep doing this. So thanks. Yeah. We love you. We should let, as dad would say, we should go to bed and let these good people go home. Yeah. It is, uh, yeah. Almost midnight, but yeah. Okay. Bye.