The Presbytere and the Cabildo

The two similar looking buildings on either side of the St. Louis cathedral are the Presbytere to the right and the Cabildo to the left. Both buildings were built after the great fires. The Presbytere was originally designed to house the priests from the cathedral, but it never preformed this function, serving instead as a courthouse for both the Spanish and the Americans. Today it holds the Mardi Gras Museum of the Louisiana State Museum.

The Cabildo is the more historic of the two buildings. It was where the Spanish council, called Cabildo in Spanish, meaning to run the colony. The front room on the second floor was where the official transfer of the Louisiana Purchase from France to the United States was made. France had regained controlled over the Louisiana colony only 3 weeks before it was transferred to the United States. France’s disastrous loss of the French colony of Haiti from a slave uprising convinced France’s ruler, Napoleon Bonaparte, that Louisiana was not important to his empire. In addition, the Americans were getting frustrated with the government of New Orleans for restricting trade on the Mississippi River and confiscating their cargoes at the port of New Orleans. The American frustration had reached the point that some citizens of Kentucky were plotting to attack New Orleans. In an attempt to head off trouble and to improve trade for the interior United States, President Thomas Jefferson offered to buy the “island of New Orleans” from Napoleon for $3 million. Napoleon surprised Jefferson by offering to sell the entire Louisiana colony for $15 million. Napoleon needed the money to finance his war on England. The United States did not have enough money for the purchase. In an ironic twist, the United States borrowed the money from England to pay to Napoleon, who then used the money to attack England. After Louisiana was transferred to the United States, the Cabildo served as a city hall and Supreme Court for Louisiana before it was converted into a part of the Louisiana State Museum. Today it holds many historic objects from old Louisiana including the death mask of Napoleon.

Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop

There are so many tales about Jean Lafitte that it is hard to know what to believe. Some researchers claim that he was a pirate while others claim that he was a gentleman privateer. The difference between pirate and privateer is a matter of degrees. A pirate was a ruthless murderer that attacked ships and towns, murdering everyone for money and treasure. By definition, privateers sailed on armed ships that carried letters of marque from a nation at war, which gave them the legal right to attacked weaker commercial ships that sailed under enemy flags. The privateer could keep and sell any captured enemy vessel and its cargo. In reality, these “privateers” attacked any weaker ship, regardless of the flag it sailed under, murdered the crew, and sold the cargo. The small Louisiana town of Barataria, 60 miles south of New Orleans, was a favorite home for some of these pirates. The local merchants wanted to buy the very low priced, stolen goods, but they were afraid to deal with the dangerous pirates. Into this illegal mess came Lafitte to act as a middleman. Sometime in 1806 Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre established their blacksmith-shop on St. Philip St. as their “front” to sell the pirated goods. This building dating to around 1772 is one of the few that survived the two great fires of New Orleans in 1788 and 1794. It is also one of the few remaining buildings built by the earliest settlers using soft clay bricks from the Mississippi River. These soft clay bricks must be covered with timber to prevent them from quickly eroding away.

Lafitte was an efficient businessman who changed the pirates’ smuggling activities from unorganized crimes into a well-run criminal business. He had regularly scheduled auctions of the pirated goods in both New Orleans and even directly from the pirates’ warehouses in Barataria. He took customer service to the highest level by organizing his own fleet of barges that made regularly scheduled deliveries of the auctioned goods to their new owners. He profited handsomely from his illegal activities and had mansions both in New Orleans and in Barataria.

Madame John’s Legacy

The building known as “Madame John’s Legacy” was named after a character in a short story by George Washington Cable that described a wealthy Creole man named John who died and bequeathed a wooden home and his fortune to his African-American mistress. This building is very much like the type of Creole style house that would have been common to the French Quarter before the great fires of 1788 and 1794. This building was damaged in the fires but was rebuilt from the original plans. The large doors and windows combined with the building’s high ceiling would allow cooling breezes to flow through the interior rooms. The wide porch on the house would also shade the interior of the home to provide maximum cooling. The house also reflects the design of tropical homes in the West Indies.