The Creoles-that is, the locally born descendants of early inhabitants, many with French blood-created a sophisticated and cosmopolitan society that stood apart from nearly every other American city.
In 1800, the Spanish retroceded Louisiana back to France, only to have Napoleon sell the entire Louisiana colony, including New Orleans, to the United States as part of the $15 million Louisiana Purchase, finalized on December 20, 1803.Īlthough no longer a French colony, residents in the new American city of New Orleans held tight to their Francophile ways, including language, religion, customs, a complex social strata, and a penchant for the epicurean.
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The Spanish also liberalized policies governing slavery, which enabled the dramatic growth of a caste of free people of color Other Spanish contributions include wrought-iron balconies, patios (courtyards), above-ground cemeteries, and the city’s earliest expansion, the Suburbio Santa Maria, today’s Central Business District. New architectural codes were introduced shortly thereafter, resulting in splendid Spanish Colonial-style buildings such as the Cabildo fronting today’s Jackson Square. Catalyzing the change were two disastrous fires, in 17, which together destroyed over a thousand old French buildings. It was during the Spanish colonial era that New Orleans transformed from a village-like environment of wooden houses to a city of sturdier brick buildings with urban infrastructure, largely due to the unpaid labor of enslaved people. For the remainder of the 1700s, Louisiana was a Spanish colony, and Nueva Orleans functioned as an important trading and cultural partner with Cuba, Mexico, and beyond. That same year, France ceded Louisiana to Spain, to keep it out of the hands of the British, victors of the recent French and Indian War. The nascent outpost became the capital of the French Colony of Louisiana in 1723. Engineers laid out a grid of streets with a Place d’Armes (today’s Jackson Square) that would become known as the Vieux Carré (“Old Square”), or today’s French Quarter. Claimed for the French Crown by explorer Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle in 1682, La Nouvelle-Orleans was founded by Jean Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville in 1718 upon the slightly elevated banks of the Mississippi River approximately 95 miles above its mouth. Indigenous people called it Balbancha, “land of many tongues,” and they inhabited the rich delta lands between the Mississippi River (“Father of Waters”) and Okwa-Ta (“Big Water,” Lake Pontchartrain) for the same reasons that would later attract Europeans: abundant ecological resources and a convenient network of navigable rivers, bayous and bays.
Discover a little about the sweep of the city’s history. In New Orleans, history can strut as loudly as a Carnival walking krewe, or creep as softly as a green lizard on a courtyard wall. House after house, street after street, indeed entire neighborhoods, exude a rich sense of place, and serve as touchstones for fascinating history and complex culture. No other city in America keeps its history as vital and accessible as New Orleans.