Vieux Carré Commission History
The efforts of Louisiana's early preservationists finally succeeded in the 1930s with the creation of the Vieux Carré Commission. An amendment to the Louisiana Constitution of 1921 (Article XIV, Section 22A) laid the groundwork. This amendment specifically addressed the preservation of the "quaint" traditional architecture in New Orleans' Vieux Carré, the so-called French Quarter, and enabled the creation of a municipal body to safeguard the structures in this old section, which is bounded by Iberville Street, Esplanade Avenue, North Rampart Street and the Mississippi River.
A combination of factors precipitated this early experiment in municipal preservation. Nationally during the 1930s a new concern about the country's historical and architectural heritage emerged. Locally, however, the push for the legal protection of the Vieux Carré began in the 1920s. New Orleans actually ranks as the first city to pass an ordinance which created a historic district. In 1925 the Commission Council of New Orleans, responding to pressure from the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, established the first Vieux Carré Commission. This first commission faltered, however, because the agency was merely advisory in function. {1} The forthcoming successful 1936 legislation derived from the climate that existed in New Orleans in the 1920s. The efforts of a small group of determined activists during this period insured the continuing preservation of the only intact Spanish and French Colonial settlement remaining in this country.
Before the cultural renaissance of the 1920s, the old quarter, the proud Creole's city, succumbed to squalor and poverty. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, increased industrialization and commercialization changed the character of the upper portion of the quarter. Italian immigrant laborers crowded into the lower sections of the quarter, along with their large families, cats, pigs, and perhaps a cow or two. In turn, Creole families scattered from the quarter, out along the Esplanade Ridge and even into the Americanized uptown suburbs. "A pall of poverty and decay hung over the old streets and houses," the preservationist Martha Gilmore Robinson recalled, and "tattered clothes fluttered from the iron balconies of the once proudly fashionable Pontalba buildings."{2} By 1900 the Creole's self-contained city had disintegrated.
Apathy toward the French Quarter was pervasive by the end of the nineteenth century. In 1895 official plans were made to demolish both the Cabildo and Presbytere. Some even suggested that a "good conflagration," was needed to obliterate the old town.{3} The twentieth century began with the city demolishing an entire square of fine old buildings between Royal, Chartres, St. Louis and Conti Streets to make way for a new Civil Courts Building. Despite a general tenor of historical indifference, a small group of local residents retained a consciousness of the uniqueness of the quarter. Throughout the late nineteenth century, authors such as Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner, Grace King and Henry Castellanos romantically described the old area, and as early as 1895 the young architect Allison Owen attempted to form a society to preserve ancient city landmarks. Owen successfully fought the city's plans for the destruction of the Cabildo, the colonial building constructed to house the Spanish governing body.{4}
The 20's
{1}The records and minutes of the short-lived commission of 1925 are located in the Vieux Carré Commission archives, 516 Chartres Street, as are all the minutes from the commission's inception in 1936 until the present. These records served as the major source for this essay.
{2}States Item, New Orleans, June 10, 1977.
{3}Circa 1940 reminiscences by Stephanie Alison McColloster, in which she recalls assessor Victor Mauberret's remarks in 1915, "The section is gone completely. It has no future as a business district and as a residential district; it is undesirable except for the habitation of the Italian immigrants. A good conflagration, such as destroyed this section in its infancy, would be the best solution."
{4}Charles B. Hosmer, Preservation Comes of Age: From Williamsburg to the National Trust, 1926-49 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981), Vo. 1, p. 209. Also circa 1940 interview with General Owen, Vieux Carré Commission archives.