Part 3

The appearance of the Greek Revival mansions now rising from the vicinity of Nayades and in toward Magazine supported the claim that at this time, New Orleans had more per capita wealth than New York.

It appears from the best sources that the first house of consequence to be built in what is now the Garden District proper was that of Thomas Toby in 1838. He came from Philadelphia, and his father's ships brought some of the materials for the house from his native city. This house is still standing at Prytania and First Streets. Others who built in the same general neighborhood in the following decade were F. B., T. B., and Charles Conrad, P. N. Wood, Judge R. F. Ogden, Captain Thomas Ivey, and Charles Briggs. The Fifties saw the greatest activity of construction of the great houses of the Garden District.

This section, peopled as it was chiefly by those who conducted their businesses in New Orleans, but who enjoyed the shaded gardens for their residences, rapidly developed a life apart from the teeming waterfront of Lafayette City. Inevitably a rivalry began. The catalyst was the constant annoyance of pounding hooves and the odors of the slaughterhouses and tanneries. Eventually, the early residents of the Garden District were instrumental in getting the Lafayette City Council to pass restrictive measures which removed the cattle landing. The important commerce of this trade moved upriver to the neighboring town of Jefferson, which caused the fiery editor of the _Spectator_, the outspoken champion of the city's growth, to howl from his columns that the city had lost a million and a half dollars in trade a year by this act.

He belabored particularly the aldermen from the "rear of the city" who "turned up the whites of their eyes and stopped their delicate noses as they passed by with their white gloves on and exclaimed, 'What a nuisance!'"

Despite these earmarks of a brewing donnybrook, one couldn't exactly blame the owners of the fine gardens for objecting to "the great numbers of horses and mules running at large, particularly at night, occupying the sidewalks to the danger of the passers-by and racing up and down streets, disturbing the rest of the families." Not only horses and mules, but goats, too! "If a gate is left open for a minute, choice rose bushes suffer and the rare plants of the most careful training are ruined. Our feed stores are compelled to keep an extra clerk to protect the corn sacks and bales of hay from these bold plunderers." At least there was a law passed in 1841 which prohibited the keeping of bears in Lafayette City.

In the early days of Lafayette and the Garden District, "the war" referred only to the very real and fresh memories of Jackson's battle with the British at Chalmette hardly twenty years previously. In the Forties, it referred to the War with Mexico, in which many Lafayette citizens took part. Troops were encamped and trained on some of the vacant lots. The Rev. Jerome Twichell held Presbyterian services for them, and a government warehouse near the river on Washington dispensed supplies to troops coming down the Mississippi for Mexican service.

Then, in 1861, "the war" took on a present and terrifying meaning. Although no actual fighting was reported in or around the Garden District, the coming and going of troops, the warships passing on the river, the shortages because of the blockade, the restrictions of the occupation, the loss of sons, brothers, husbands and fathers, the surrender of proud homes for quartering of Union officers--these and other tangible evidences left deep scars.

Perhaps the Garden District's most distinguished and colorful figure to wear the gray uniform was Bishop Leonidas Polk, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana and rector of Trinity Church. A West Point graduate, he answered the call to the priesthood in 1831. When war came, after repeated urgings from his former West Point classmate, Jefferson Davis, he "buckled the sword over the gown", as he phrased it, and accepted a commission as major general. In June, 1864, while he was reconnoitering near Etowah, Ga., this gallant figure was stilled by a cannon ball, leaving memories at Trinity which persist to this day.

After the war two other prominent figures in the Confederacy were closely associated with the Garden District. Jefferson Davis often visited his friend Judge Charles Fenner and died in the Fenner house on the corner of First and Camp Streets. General John B. Hood, "The Gallant Hood", had his family home on the corner of Third and Camp.

Calvary Episcopal Church's resolute minister, the Rev. John Fulton, was one of the three Episcopal ministers who defied General Benjamin "Silver Spoons" Butler. In morning prayer this trio omitted the prayer for the President of the United States and all in civil authority. They instead invited their congregations to join in silent prayer. This enraged Butler, and after several verbal altercations with them, he exiled the group to a New York prison.

Butler quartered officers in several Garden District houses, including that of General Wirt Adams on Chestnut and Josephine, now owned by Trinity Church and called Copeland House. For his own use Butler cast his covetous eye on the fabulous Washington Avenue "Italian villa" built by James Robb and later owned and occupied by John Burnside, wealthy merchant and planter. It is told that Butler and his retinue approached the front door, to be met by Burnside. The Union general not only was refused use of the house but was not even admitted. And the refusal stuck. The reason: Burnside was a British citizen. So Butler took the lovely home of Confederate (late U.S.A.) General David E. Twiggs, on Camp near Calliope Street, which still stands today as St. Theresa's school.

The homes of the elite attracted their share of celebrities to the hospitable, high-ceilinged drawing rooms and parlors, and to the dining tables so immaculately set and served with viands to please a nabob. Culture, travel and education were hallmarks of most of the inhabitants of the great houses. Delightful, spirited discussions on a wide variety of subjects kept visiting authors, poets, artists and correspondents for the eastern magazines enthralled.

Strangely, these distinguished writers and authors went back to their offices in the East and proceeded to turn out bales of copy about New Orleans but with only side references to the Garden District. Passing mention was made of the luxury and beauty of the homes of this area, but the French Quarter was the subject of all the sketches and engraved illustrations. Rare is the surviving sketch, tintype or glass plate photo of amateur or professional.

Yet the district captivated the earliest of many visitors who put their sentiments down for posterity. The Rev. Theodore Clapp, beloved parson of the mid-nineteenth century, wrote of his arrival in 1822, before Lafayette was so named:

"On a beautiful morning near the close of February we were landed at Lafayette where the boat stopped to discharge a part of her cargo, about three miles above New Orleans. The passengers, impatient of delay, concluded to walk to the city. Leaving the levee, we took a circuitous route through unenclosed fields, which a few years before had belonged to a large sugar plantation. They were adorned with a carpet of green grass, where herds and flocks grazed in common. Here and there we passed a farm house in the midst of gardens, luxuriant shrubbery and orange groves.... The air was cool, inspiring and scented with the flowers of early spring. The music of the thrush and various other species of singing birds, saluted our ears with their sweetest notes. All things, so far as our eyes could reach, seemed like a paradise. These suburbs, then so radiant with rural charms, are now the site of a large portion of the buildings belonging to New Orleans."

Walt Whitman, a writer for the _New Orleans Crescent_ in 1848, living on Washington Street near the river and travelling to and from his desk in New Orleans by omnibus, must have been impressed by the large live oak trees in Lafayette City. In a later edition of "Leaves of Grass", he refers to the live oak as "rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself."

Commenting on the ways one kept cool in summer, Julian Ralph, in _Dixie, or Southern Scenes and Sketches_, related:

"... when I rode through the Garden District--the new part of the town--my lady friends pointed to the galleries and said: 'You should see them in the summer, before the people leave or after they come back. The entire population is out-of-doors in the air, and the galleries are loaded with women in soft colors, mainly white. They have white dresses by the dozen. They go about without their hats, in carriages and in street cars, visiting up and down the streets. In-doors, one must spend one's whole time and energy in vibrating a fan.'"

Writing of the Garden District, Mark Twain said: "All the dwellings are of wood ... and all have a comfortable look. Those in the wealthy quarter are spacious; painted snowy white, usually, and generally have wide verandas, or double-verandas, supported by ornamental columns. These mansions stand in the center of large grounds and rise, garlanded with roses, out of the midst of swelling masses of shining green foliage and many-colored blossoms. No houses could well be in better harmony with their surroundings, or more pleasing to the eye, or more home-like and comfortable-looking...."

George Washington Cable, who is credited with introducing the French Quarter's charms to the world, was born on Annunciation Square, just below Lafayette City and later grew up and spent many years in various homes in the Garden District. Cable was internationally celebrated in his day for his Creole stories. His house on Eighth Street, between Chestnut and Coliseum, still standing today, was a mecca for visiting authors. Public education had its start in Lafayette City shortly before it was started in New Orleans. However, Cable gives a delightful glimpse of the wild carefree youngsters of Lafayette in the 1830's before the free educational institutions were established:

"... The mass of educable youth--the children who played 'oats, peas, beans' with French, German and Irish accents, about the countless sidewalk doorsteps of a city of one and two-story cottages (it was almost such); the girls who carried their little brothers and sisters on one elbow and hip and stared in at weddings and funerals; the boys whose kite-flying and games were full of terms and outcries in mongrel French, and who abandoned everything at the wild clangor of bells and ran to fires where volunteer firemen dropped the hose and wounded and killed each other in pitched battles; the ill-kept lads who risked their lives daily five months of the year swimming in the yellow whirlpools of the Mississippi among the wharves and flat-boats, who, naked and dripping, dodged the dignified police that stalked them among the cotton bales, who robbed mocking-birds' nests and orange and fig trees, and trapped nonpareils and cardinals, orchard-orioles and indigo-birds in the gardens of Lafayette and the suburban fields--these had not been reached and had not been sought by the educator."

Visualize Twain, Cable and Charles Dudley Warner of _Harper's Magazine_ at Cable's Eighth Street home. Add Lafcadio Hearn and Joel Chandler Harris for very good measure. You have the principals of a scene which actually took place, well documented by Cable's children who were also present as youngsters, and described delightfully by Mark Twain in _Life on the Mississippi_. Briefly, Twain, Warner and Hearn had come to join the host in welcoming the famous "Uncle Remus". A literary evening ensued, but to the dismay of the children, not only was "Uncle Remus" white, but he didn't _talk_ the dialect of which he was the undisputed master. Harris was so very shy that Twain read the "Tar Baby" for him to assuage the feelings of the disappointed youngsters. Then the authors read from their own works; Cable played his guitar and sang his celebrated Creole songs. Twain's amusing passage describing the scene has an equally humorous sketch showing himself reading while the others are sound asleep.

Great sports figures knew the Garden District. The Southern Athletic Club, at Washington Avenue and Prytania Street, now Behrman Gymnasium, was a center of athletic endeavor for the elite of the area, and its volunteer military units had headquarters there. Among the sports luminaries who used its facilities was the great Jake Kilrain. He trained there in 1889 for his bout with John L. Sullivan at Richburg, Miss. In 1892 "Gentleman Jim" Corbett trained there for his celebrated fight with Sullivan at the Olympic Club, and to the Southern he returned triumphant for a victory celebration. The S.A.C. had New Orleans' first Turkish bath. In 1878, the Lawn Tennis Club had the city's first tennis court at Jackson Avenue and Prytania.

The most discussed showplace in an area of palatial homes was the Renaissance-inspired house of James Robb on Washington Street, now Avenue. His dream house deserved all the adjectives lavished upon it. The one-story brick and plaster mansion was surrounded by gardens rivalling those of Europe's royal estates. He brought over a German gardener to design and maintain them. Statuary by European and American masters embellished the grounds.

Some contemporary observers found the severe classical exterior a bit plain, but inside there was a lavishness of detail which made even these carpers wax enthusiastic. The house contained frescoes by the celebrated Dominique Canova, priceless European pictures, furniture, rugs and objects. The most famous art work was probably Hiram Powers's _Greek Slave_, the daring marble beauty which had shocked New York. Robb allowed it to be exhibited in several cities before bringing it to his home. Everywhere it aroused controversy. Today it is in Washington's Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Robb, millionaire businessman, president of the first trunk line railroad to New Orleans, the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern (later part of the Illinois Central) lost his fortune and in 1860 the great house which had been dubbed "Robb's Folly" was acquired by another millionaire, John Burnside. Under his ownership the beauties of the dwelling were preserved. The noted octagonal room, decorated in the Pompeian fashion, with its arrangement of mirrors which reflected the scene _ad infinitum_, continued to excite admiration.

In 1890, Mrs. Josephine Newcomb purchased the three-acre square and its buildings for the girls' college which she had endowed some years before. In converting it into a school, great care was taken to preserve the architectural beauty. When Newcomb College moved to its present campus in 1918, the old campus was acquired by the Baptist Bible Institute, later the Baptist Theological Seminary. They used the site until 1955, when they, too, moved to larger quarters. The Baptists extended Conery Street through the square, divided the property into lots, and sold them. Fine new homes have arisen there.

The people of Lafayette were notably deep in their religious faiths and in love for their fellow men. This is shown by their early church organizations, by their solicitation for the welfare of the indigent and the orphans of the immigrants devastated by cholera and yellow fever epidemics, and by their inauguration of public education, lyceum programs and a library.

It is interesting to note that, with the background of Germans and Irish, it was a Protestant church which first was erected for a Lafayette City congregation. In a building on St. Mary Street, near Fulton (now St. Thomas), as early as 1831 the Methodists were meeting. Some 10 years later the same denomination built a new church on Magazine Street out of flatboat gunwales, and this was known for years as the "Flatboat Church". Later it became identified with a young pastor, Elijah Steele, who had died of yellow fever. As Steele's Chapel it united with the St. Mary Street Church and the Andrew Chapel, which had been built on Dryades and Felicity in 1835, to form the Felicity Methodist Church.

Although a parish was chartered for Lafayette Roman Catholics in 1836, they had no church and no priest until 1843. That year Father Peter Chakert, of the Redemptorist order, gathered the faithful in Kaiser's Hall on Chippewa and Josephine Streets for masses on Sunday morning after the past evening's dance had ceased. The following year saw the start of their first church on Josephine Street, St. Mary's Assumption. This lovely little wooden chapel, with its bell which was cast at Des Allemands, was later replaced by the present structure. However, the first building is still standing, moved to St. Joseph's cemetery on Washington Avenue, where it serves, all white and clean, as a mortuary chapel, 117 years old.

St. Mary's Assumption first served all the Roman Catholics of Lafayette with sermons alternating in German, French and English. In 1850 St. Alphonsus Church was completed across the Street, chiefly for the Irish, and nine years later, this remarkable tri-lingual parish opened a church for the French people on Jackson Avenue. This was taken down in 1925, but is perpetuated in the Chapel of Our Mother of Perpetual Help at Third and Prytania, the old Lonsdale-McStea house.

A SKETCH OF THE PLAN OF THE FAUBOURG LIVAUDAIS, _Drawn at the request of_ Messrs. L. PEIRCE, W. H. CHASE, M. MORGAN and S. J. PETERS, By B. BUISSON, Surveyor for the Parish of Jefferson--March, 1832. PRINTED BY BENJAMIN LEVY, CHARTRES-STREET.

The year 1840 saw the Presbyterians organized in Lafayette City under the popular Rev. Jerome Twichell. Their church, completed in 1843, on Fulton between Josephine and Adele, was also occasionally used by the Society of Friends. Henry Clay attended services once in the church soon after it was opened. The Prytania Presbyterian Church, where George W. Cable worshipped and sang in the choir, was founded in 1846.

Episcopal services began in a room on the corner of Washington and Laurel streets in 1847. Later that year, construction started for the Church of the Holy Trinity at the corner of Live Oak (now Constance) and Second streets. In 1851, the Rev. Alexander F. Dobb, a dynamic churchman, began working for the construction of a handsome new edifice at Jackson and Coliseum Streets. Trinity Church, as its name was shortened, was occupied in 1853. Unfortunately, Mr. Dobb and his wife died in the tragic yellow fever epidemic of that year and never saw the completed church.

Congregation Gates of Prayer, the Jewish synagogue, originally worshipped in a building near the corner of Sixth and Tchoupitoulas Streets, but in 1854 it moved to a building, still standing though no longer used for that purpose, on Jackson Avenue.

Missions for the German Protestants were provided by the Evangelical, Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal churches in various locations.

Lafayette City is no more. Its heritage is two-fold: the sturdy Irish-German stock of its riverfront section; and the great houses and cultural heritage of the Garden District, its fine residential section. Of the former, volumes could be written; of the latter, the following pages will attempt to touch the high spots. If this small book encourages the reader to visit the scenes described, if it provides a setting for the better appreciation of the great houses, the many hours of patient research and writing will be well rewarded.

LOUISE S. McGEHEE SCHOOL 2343 Prytania Street

_The Main Building_

Formerly one of the most lavish private homes in the Garden District, this mansion now serves as the main building of the Louise S. McGehee School, for almost half a century one of the outstanding private schools for girls in the South. Amid architectural surroundings which bespeak a bygone age of leisure, work and study now prevail as the students pursue their exacting college preparatory curriculum.

Designed in the splendid free Renaissance style by James Freret, the mansion was constructed in 1872 for Bradish Johnson, a young man of wealth and discrimination whose family fortune was based on sugar plantations. Its erection marked the second great period of affluence for the Garden District. According to tradition it was built at a cost of one hundred thousand dollars and its furnishings were as lavish as the house itself. Always beautifully maintained by the Johnsons and the Walter Denègre family, its later owners, the architectural features of the building have been carefully preserved by the school corporation. Of undiminished loveliness are the fluted Corinthian columns, lofty ceilings and elaborate moldings embellished with classical motifs. An outstanding feature of the building is the winding staircase which rises at the rear of the marble-floored entrance hall. This stairway of unsurpassed beauty has been frequently honored as a masterpiece of design and craftsmanship.

A curious fact about the building is that neither a marriage, a birth, nor a death has ever taken place within its walls. However, since its acquisition by McGehee school in 1929 it has been the scene of many scholastic triumphs. The school features an honor system and student self government, the first high school in the city to establish this type of government. Nearly all of the school's graduates have gone to college and most of the alumnae are active in civic affairs.