The City Hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, located at the intersection of Camp and Common Streets, was one of the city's major antebellum hotels, but maybe not quite so storied as the older, larger, St. Louis and St. Charles Hotels. [1] As explained by a city historian in 1922, the "social life of New Orleans revolved around its great hotels to a degree greater than was the case, probably, in other American city." [1] As was the case with the St. Charles and the St. Louis, slave auctions were held at the City Hotel before the American Civil War. [2] [3]
The four-story City Hotel was designed by Charles Zimpel, [4] built in 1832 and was originally known as Bishop's Hotel and then as Richardson's Hotel before it became the City Hotel around 1839–1840. [5] [6] [7] The City Hotel was owned and operated for many years by a man named Ruggles S. Morse who had come to New Orleans from Portland, Maine. [5] [8] When the Verandah Hotel burned in 1855, [9] business increased at the City Hotel. [8] During the war Ruggles provided extensive medical supplies and equipment for the benefit of victims of the 1862 Ponchatoula train wreck who were being treated the marine hospital. [10]
Under Ruggles the hotel was especially favored by Texans, steamboat men, and railroad men. [8] Control of the hotel was transferred in 1874 by Col. Morse to W. T. Mumford and Ed. Watson." [11] The City Hotel was demolished in 1888. [12] The Baldwin building was then built on the same site. [13]
New Orleans is a consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 according to the 2020 U.S. census, it is the most populous city in Louisiana and the French Louisiana region; third most populous city in the Deep South; and the twelfth-most populous city in the southeastern United States. Serving as a major port, New Orleans is considered an economic and commercial hub for the broader Gulf Coast region of the United States.
The history of New Orleans, Louisiana traces the city's development from its founding by the French in 1718 through its period of Spanish control, then briefly back to French rule before being acquired by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. During the War of 1812, the last major battle was the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Throughout the 19th century, New Orleans was the largest port in the Southern United States, exporting most of the nation's cotton output and other farm products to Western Europe and New England. As the largest city in the South at the start of the Civil War (1861–1865), it was an early target for capture by Union forces. With its rich and unique cultural and architectural heritage, New Orleans remains a major destination for live music, tourism, conventions, and sporting events and annual Mardi Gras celebrations. After the significant destruction and loss of life resulting from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the city would bounce back and rebuild in the ensuing years.
The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate is an American newspaper published in New Orleans, Louisiana. Ancestral publications of other names date back to January 25, 1837. The current publication is the result of the 2019 acquisition of The Times-Picayune by the New Orleans edition of The Advocate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The Advocate is Louisiana's largest daily newspaper. Based in Baton Rouge, it serves the southern portion of the state. Separate editions for New Orleans, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate, and for Acadiana, The Acadiana Advocate, are published. It also publishes gambit, about New Orleans food, culture, events, and news, and weekly entertainment magazines: Red in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, and Beaucoup in New Orleans.
Charles F. Hatcher, typically advertising as C. F. Hatcher, was a 19th-century American slaver dealing out of Natchez, Mississippi, and New Orleans, Louisiana. He also worked as a trader of financial instruments, specie, and stocks, and as a land agent, with a special interest in selling Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas real estate to speculators and settlers.
James Harrison Dakin was an American architect who designed Neo-Gothic buildings and was the architect for the Old Louisiana State Capitol, Old Bank of Louisville, and other public buildings.
Ánh Quang "Joseph" Cao is a Vietnamese-American politician who was the U.S. representative for Louisiana's 2nd congressional district from 2009 to 2011. A member of the Republican Party, he is the first Vietnamese American and first native of Vietnam to serve in Congress.
Willie Landry Mount is an American politician from Louisiana who served as a Democratic member of the Louisiana State Senate from 2000 to 2012. She represented District 27, which includes parts of her native Lake Charles and the surrounding cities of Sulphur and Westlake. From 1993 to 1999, Mount was the first woman to serve as the mayor of Lake Charles.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.
The St. Louis Hotel was built in 1838 at the corner of St. Louis and Chartres Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Originally it was referred to as the City Exchange Hotel. Along with the St. Charles Hotel, the St. Louis has been described as the place where the history of New Orleans happened. The St. Louis "flourished at high tide" until the American Civil War, served as the de facto Louisiana state capital during Reconstruction, and then fell into a long slow decline until it was demolished around 1914.
The St. Charles Hotel was a hotel on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana. One of the first of the great hotels of the United States, the original Grecian palace-style building, opened in 1837, has been described by author Richard Campanella as "one of the most splendid structures in the nation and a landmark of the New Orleans skyline". It was some time before it found a rival in the Astor House, of New York City. It was said that the hotel's Parlor P had probably witnessed more important political events than any room or any building in the country, outside of the Capitol at Washington, D.C. During the Civil War, Union General Benjamin Butler seized the hotel to use for his headquarters after the city surrendered. The third incarnation of the hotel was finally demolished in 1974.
Charles E. Slayback (1840–1924) was a grain merchant in New Orleans, Louisiana, and St. Louis, Missouri. He was a founder of St. Louis's Veiled Prophet Organization.
Edmond Ducre Estilette, known as E. D. Estilette, was a politician and lawyer in Opelousas, Louisiana. He served in a number of public positions, most notably speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives at the end of Reconstruction in 1875. Estilette oversaw the creation of one of the most infamous Black Codes of the post-Civil War era, but he was later seen as a moderating force in the turbulent politics of that era.
Shadrack Fluellen Slatter, usually listed as S. F. Slatter in advertisements and often called Col. Slatter in later life, was a 19th-century American slave trader and capitalist. In the 1830s and 1840s he was part of the coastwise slave trade in partnership with his older brother Hope H. Slatter, who bought slaves in Baltimore for S. F. Slatter to sell at New Orleans. It was typical for interstate traders like the Slatters to have a buying location in the Upper South and a selling location in the Lower South. After quitting the retail slave trade, he was a real estate developer and landlord in New Orleans. In the late 1850s he was heavily involved in promoting and funding the freelance invasion of Nicaragua by William Walker. Fort Slatter in Nicaragua was named in Slatter's honor.
John Jenkins Poindexter was an American slave trader, commission merchant, school commissioner, and steamboat master of Louisiana and Mississippi. He served in the Mexican-American War as a junior officer in the Mississippi Rifles. The historic John J. Poindexter House in Jackson, Mississippi, was commissioned for the young Poindexter family and designed in the 1840s by architect William Nichols.
The Verandah Hotel was an architecturally significant antebellum hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The Verandah operated from 1839 to 1855, when it was gutted by a building fire. It was located kitty corner from the St. Charles Hotel. The design of the Verandah apparently started a fad for cast-iron balconies in the Deep South.
John Rucker White was a plantation owner, farmer, and interstate slave trader working out of the U.S. state of Missouri in the 25 years prior to the American Civil War.
Banks' Arcade was a multi-use commercial structure in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The building stood on the block bounded by Gravier Street, Tchoupitoulas Street, Natchez Street, and Magazine Street, in the district then known as Faubourg Sainte Marie, later known as the American sector and now called the Central Business District. The building's central axis, originally called Banks' Alley or the Arcade Passage, is now a walk street called Arcade Place within Picayune Place Historic District.
Calvin Morgan Rutherford, generally known as C. M. Rutherford, was a 19th-century American interstate slave trader. Rutherford had a wide geographic reach, trading nationwide from the Old Dominion of Virginia to as far west as Texas. Rutherford had ties to former Franklin & Armfield associates, worked in Kentucky for several years, advertised to markets throughout Louisiana and Mississippi, and was a major figure in the New Orleans slave trade for at least 20 years. Rutherford also invested his money in steamboats and hotels.