way of securing their own freedom.
The Vieux Carré and Beyond: The Layout and Expansion of the City
Throughout the period of this study, most of New Orleans’s population lived in the confines of what is today called the French Quarter and was then called the Vieux Carré, or old quarter. The Vieux Carré “was spread out in the form of a parallelogram extending, roughly speaking, some 1300 yards along the river front with a depth of 700 yards, or thereabouts.”64 Its borders were the Mississippi River, Le Chemin Derrière de la Ville (present-day Rampart Street), the plantation of Madame Delachaise (Esplanade Avenue), and the commons (Canal Street). Perched atop a natural levee created by centuries of the river’s flooding over its banks, the Vieux Carré was (and still is) some of the highest ground in the area, though still only twelve to fifteen feet above sea level.65 The Place d’Armes, now known as Jackson Square, occupied a strategic location front and center at the peak of the natural levee in New Orleans’s Vieux Carré. As the name suggests, this piece of land is where the militia and the regular army drilled. The St. Louis Cathedral and the Cabildo building, both constructed in the 1790s, face the square, symbolizing the three prongs of Spanish monarchical authority over its subjects, laws, church discipline, and military might.66
By the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the cost of real estate in the old city was rising due to the city’s population and economic booms, and “lots of ground in the principal streets [were] very high for so new a city.”67 Houses facing the river on Levee Street ranged from 4,000 to 6,000 pesos (a peso roughly equaled a dollar in value), those on the second and third streets (Chartres/Conde and Royal) cost 3,000 to 4,000 pesos, and lots in the back of the city sold for 1,200 to 2,000 pesos. These prices represented a three- to fivefold increase over the period of a decade. Most of the buildings were new, even in the established part of town, because the city had twice within a few years suffered severely by fire. In March 1788, fire destroyed more than 850 houses, leaving only about 200 remaining. Then, in December 1794, an additional 212 buildings were burned to the ground, mostly warehouses, government structures, stores, and barracks. Most of the new buildings were built of brick with tile roofs pursuant to regulations enacted after the second fire.68
Whites, slaves, and free people of color lived side by side and in some of the same households on every occupied street in the old city. According to the 1805 city directory, the most populated streets were Bourbon, with 697 residents, and Royal, with 645. Rue Dauphine du Nord, with 51 whites, 115 free people of color, and 83 slaves, had the highest percentage of free people of color of any street. By contrast, Rue Dauphine du Sud had 122 whites, 59 free people of color, and 76 slaves. As a commercial rather than an industrial city, New Orleans had few districts where only one ethnic or economic group lived and worked. Although some neighborhoods had distinguishing characteristics, in general, blacks and whites, natives and foreigners mingled in the city’s shops, streets, and residential areas.69
As the metropolitan area grew in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the city of New Orleans developed distinct suburbs. In 1778, Bertrand Gravier and Charles Trudeau laid out the plan for what would become New Orleans’s first suburb on part of the land Gravier owned just upriver from the city. This land on the other side of the commons (Canal Street) became Faubourg St. Marie. In 1796, Trudeau expanded it back from Nayades (St. Charles Avenue) to Phillipa St. (Dryades). This part of Faubourg St. Marie is what is today the Central Business District. After Bertrand Gravier died in 1797, his brother Jean expanded the survey back to Circus Street (now Rampart). Americans began moving into the suburb as soon as it was developed and came in droves after the Louisiana Purchase. There were around a thousand residents of Faubourg St. Marie in 1805, most of them Anglo-Americans.70
Less than two years after the Louisiana Purchase, Bernard Marigny subdivided his plantation to create New Orleans’s first suburb downriver from the Vieux Carré, the Faubourg Marigny. At twenty years of age, Marigny was a minor according to Louisiana law and thus had to first get permission from the government. In April 1805, the territorial legislature authorized Marigny “jointly with Solomon Prevost, his guardian, … to lay out his said plantation into such lots, streets, and squares as they with the consent of the city council of the city of New Orleans may deem proper.” It further authorized Marigny, “notwithstanding his minority status,” to sell or lease any of the lots so created.71 Marigny then commissioned two men who had been architects and engineers under the Spanish administration, Nicolas de Finiels and Barthelemy Lafon, to draw up plans and design the streets for the new suburb. Marigny created hundreds of lots from his former plantation. The lots varied in size, but typically they were 60 feet in width and 120 feet in depth. The price of the lots depended, in part, on whether or not they had been improved with buildings. Unimproved lots could go for as little as $450, while lots with buildings on them could go for as much as $900.
Whether it was Marigny’s intent or not, the vast majority of people who bought land in Faubourg Marigny were francophone. Contemporaries referred to Faubourg Marigny as the “Creole quarter” because few Anglo-Americans lived there.72 Dozens of free people of color purchased lots in the faubourg. Because the development and rapid expansion of Faubourg Marigny coincided with the arrival of the refugees from Cuba in 1809–10, one might assume that the suburb was populated by refugees. A comparison of the names on deeds to lots in the Marigny with the names of known refugees, however, produced few matches, suggesting that the refugees were not themselves an important group of early purchasers of property in the Faubourg Marigny.73 Nevertheless, the presence of dozens of “Creole cottages” represent a West Indian influence on the architecture in the quarter. These small houses with high slate rooftops built close to the banquettes (sidewalks) resemble houses built in the cities of the French West Indies. Perhaps some of the builders in Faubourg Marigny were refugees even if few of the purchasers were. In any event, a rivalry developed between the Anglo-American quarter located upriver in Faubourg St. Marie and the French “Creole” quarter located downriver in Faubourg Marigny. The antagonism between the sections lasted for several decades and got so heated that in 1831 the legislature amended the city charter to divide the city into three municipalities, the Vieux Carré, St. Marie, and Marigny.74
While Faubourgs St. Marie and Marigny developed on high ground along the river, other suburbs emerged in the territorial period as a result of New Orleans’s relationship with Lake Ponchartrain. For decades, hundreds of people, mostly slaves working the land, had lived along Bayou St. Jean leading into the lake. In 1785, there were 91 whites, 14 free people of color, and 573 slaves living either along the road leading from the Vieux Carré to the bayou or along the bayou itself. After the Louisiana Purchase, however, this plantation land was slowly but surely subdivided and urbanized. In 1804 and 1805, Daniel Clark bought plantation land that bordered Bayou St. Jean and hired Barthelemy Lafon to draw up a plan for Faubourg St. Jean. The suburb had a fanlike formation with a focus at Place Bretonne (where today Bayou Road meets Dorgenois Street, just below Broad) resulting in thirty-five irregularly shaped blocks. Then, in 1810, the city purchased the plantation of Claude Tremé, partly out of the necessity to provide housing for refugee immigrants. The plantation was subdivided by Jacques Tanesse with a plan similar to that of the Vieux Carré. Faubourg Tremé bordered both the back of the Vieux Carré and, on its upriver side, the newly formed Faubourg St. Jean. It also bordered, on its downriver side, the Carondolet Canal, providing water access to the bayou, Lake Pontchartrain, and, eventually, the Gulf of Mexico.75 While St. Jean and Tremé did not develop as early or as rapidly as St. Marie or Marigny, they did, within a few years, provide an irregularly shaped but continuous urban area connecting the river to the lake.
New Orleans in the Age of Revolution was a very cosmopolitan and active city. In the daytime, the levee was “lined with its forests of masts and sooty cylinders, - the products of a foreign and domestic world crawling with warehouses and shops.”76 At night, the city was teeming with activity. Whites, enslaved blacks, and free people of color gathered in homes, in taverns, and on the streets to dance, drink, and gamble. By the late 1790s, Spanish officials and some planters had become concerned about the “dens
