Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 14.djvu/533

NEW ORLEANS. as a mother tongue, and though there has been much intermarrying and social intercourse with Americans, French customs are still observed, and visitors feel as if they had happened upon an aristocratic faubourg of Paris. Traces, also, of the Spanish régime are to be found in many interesting specimens of the Hispano-Moresque style of architecture, which, with the red-tiled Spanish houses and the exquisite wrought-iron of the balconies, make this portion of the city unique. Above Canal Street the principal residence streets are Saint Charles Avenue and Prytania Street. These stretch for miles through the prettiest section of the city. Here are the most beautiful gardens. The palm, the palmetto, the fig, the orange, and the magnolia grow in tropical abundance, and even in winter the atmosphere is often perfumed with the odor of roses, violets, and sweet olive. Owing to the curve of the river, the streets do not run at right angles; they follow what is sometimes called ‘the line of beauty.’ Between the main thoroughfares of this portion of the city are interpolated a number of small streets, which, seeming to begin nowhere and end nowhere, cause great perplexity to strangers. The total extent of streets is 700 miles, of which only 204 miles are paved at all. The lack of paving, resulting in the disuse of the unpaved streets, which in bad weather become almost impassable, has a tendency to congest traffic on the few streets that are paved. The street railways cover a total mileage of 176. Recently they have been consolidated under one company. A belt line, twelve miles long, extends around the most attractive portion of the city. There is also an electric line connecting with West End, a suburban resort, nearly seven miles from the head of Canal Street.

. The Weather Bureau reports have been carefully kept for the last thirty-two years. They show that the average rainfall is 58.01 inches. In winter there is generally some ice and occasionally snow. The summers are long, but the heat is seldom excessive, and prostrations are rare. The average annual relative humidity is 74 per cent. The large surrounding bodies of water render the climate more equable than in the interior. The annual mean temperature is 69°. In thirty-two years the temperature has never reached 100°, except in 1901.

. Among the secular buildings of New Orleans, the most interesting is the Cabildo (now the Supreme Court building). It was built at the expense of the Government near the close of the eighteenth century, during the Spanish régime. In it the formal transfer of the Province of Louisiana from Spain to France and from France to the United States took place with elaborate ceremonies in 1803. Other notable structures are the Custom House and Post Office building (cost $5,000,000), which is of massive granite, but not beautiful as to architecture; the City Hall, of Ionic order, and modeled after a Greek temple; the new Court House; the New Saint Charles Hotel, one of the most famous hostelries in the South; the Howard Memorial Library; Gibson Hall (a part of Tulane University); the Charity Hospital; the Medical College; the Milliken Memorial Hospital; the Harmony Club (an aristocratic Jewish association); the Cotton Exchange; the Sugar Exchange; the Athenæum; the Jewish Orphans' Home; and the new Tilton Memorial Library

(also a portion of Tulane University). Among the splendid office buildings that are rapidly rising in the business centre of the city may be mentioned the Hennen building, the Liverpool and London and Globe, the Morris, the Masonic Temple, and the Tulane-Newcomb. Of the ecclesiastical edifices the most prominent are the Saint Louis Cathedral (Catholic), in which General Jackson attended services after his great victory at Chalmette in 1815; the Archiepiscopal Palace (1730), the oldest building in the Mississippi Valley; the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Saint Joseph's Church, the First Presbyterian, Christ Church Cathedral (Episcopal), Trinity Church, Saint Paul's, Temple Sinai and Touro synagogues, the Prytania Street (Presbyterian) Church, and the Coliseum Place (Baptist) Church.

. The total park area of the city is 742.66 acres. The two largest and most interesting parks are the City Park and Audubon Park, which are both being rapidly improved. City Park, which is situated on Metairie road, between the city and the lake, contains 160 acres. It was formerly a plantation, and beneath its ancestral oaks, draped with festoons of Spanish moss, occurred nearly all the famous duels which were a marked feature of Creole life before the Civil War. Dueling has now passed away. In this park young men find amusement in golf and polo. Portions of it are still wild. Audubon Park, in the upper portion of the city, contains 249 acres, and was also a plantation in days gone by. It was here that in 1796 the first successful attempt was made to granulate sugar—marking an epoch in the industrial history of the State. Its superb live oaks, its miniature lakes, and its great greenhouse, 300 feet long, and full of rare tropical plants, make this park a favorite resort. It also contains an interesting sugar experiment station, supported by the State. Besides these parks, there are two squares that attract attention on account of historical associations. These are Congo Square (now Beauregard Square) and Jackson Square. The former was in old times the resort of the slaves, and here they assembled for their wild dances to the sound of bones and drums. Jackson Square was not only associated with the exciting events that occurred in connection with the two transfers of the province in 1803, but was also the scene of the triumphal entry into the city of General Jackson after the Battle of New Orleans. The square contains a fine equestrian statue of General Jackson, by Clark Mills. Flanked by the old cathedral and the court buildings on one side and by the fine Pontalba rows on the other two sides, this square is regarded as one of the most symmetrical and beautiful public places in the United States. Near the square is the French market, which is one of the ‘sights’ of New Orleans. Visitors crowd to it early Sunday mornings to listen to the babel of tongues—French, Spanish, Italian, Creole patois, and English—to drink ‘café noir,’ and to buy gombo filé (pounded sassafras) and baskets of the Choctaw Indians, who still frequent it.

. There are a number of cemeteries in various portions of the city. The most interesting are the Catholic cemeteries, of which the oldest is Saint Louis No. 1, and the most curious is Saint Roch's Campo Santo. The handsomest cemetery is the Metairie, which contains, among