March 13, 2026 • 35 mins
New Orleans is one of the most charming and unique cities in the United States… but 300 years ago, it would've been hard to see that potential. In this episode, Will and Mango dig into how French the French Quarter really is, why the local graveyards look like little villages, and whether the Peacemaker sandwich really can keep an angry couple together.
This episode originally aired on August 26, 2019.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Guess what Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:12):
What's that? Will? All? Right?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
So you know how New Orleans is famous for being
this kind of wild party town. I hope you've heard
this before, right, like sort of the Vegas of the
Gulf Coast.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I like that, the Vegas of the Gulf Coast. I
actually just went to New Orleans for the first time
this year, and I loved it, but I was kind
of thrown off by the fact that you can just
drink on the streets there. It's kind of amazing.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well, actually, what's weird about that is technically it's only
in the French Quarter that you're allowed to do that,
you know, as long as your drink is in a
glass or a metal container. But you know, if you
go into other areas that are pretty close by, it's
not a law that really gets enforced that often, as
I think you probably saw when you were there. And
this is a city where the official motto is let
(00:52):
the good times roll A pop quiz for you? Do
you know how to say that in French? Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
No?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I do not, okay me either. I think it's something
like lesse Les bon temp Roulet. Maybe I just butchered
it completely, Like I can't even imagine for all those
who speak French, and for even for those who don't,
they just know that I butchered it.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I feel like you were just saying, like the line
from that Lady Lady Palm song.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, or maybe from the Little Mermaid, one of these.
I just stole the line.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
But you know, it is kind of amazing that like
New Orleans, it's such a good times town. But I'm
curious that, like, are you just telling me that like
New Orleans likes to drink? Is that? Is that what
it is all about? Now?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I'm pretty sure the drinking is common knowledge at this point.
It was you know, the thing that caught my attention
when we were talking to Gabe about the research for
this week was that it's really more like what the
residents used to treat the hangover that comes after all
the drinking. And that's a big steamy bowl of yaka
Maine soup, as you know, also known as old Sober.
(01:53):
It's a soy sauce flavored broth with noodles, beef, chicken, shrimp,
hard boiled eggs, and chopped onions. It actually sounds that's
pretty good, isn't it. And the amazing thing that sets
this hangover cure apart from all the others is that
it actually works. So there were some researchers that looked
into this from the American Chemical Society, and what they's
found is that the traditional soup contains all the right
(02:14):
ingredients to help the body recover from a hangover. So
the hard boiled eggs have this compound that helps expel
toxic substances, the salty broth helps replenish sodium and potassium,
and the beef and shrimp helps slow down the absorption
of alcohol. So it's like a one stop shop for
this hangover cure.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
So how did a dish called yakamane with all this
soy sauce flavor. How'd that ended up becoming a signature
dish here? Like it doesn't sound super southern, Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
And actually, according to local legend, the dish came to
the Big Easy by way of local soldiers that had
been stationed in Korea. This was back during the nineteen fifties,
and so when the war was over, they brought this soup,
this yakamine soup back home with them and it's been
the city's surefire hangover cure ever since.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
That's pretty neat. I've definitely heard before that New Orleans
is one of the most culturally diverse cities in America,
and it's kind of fun to see how it extends
into food as well.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, it's definitely true, and it's always been this huge
cultural melting pod, going all the way back to the
beginning of that highly unusual three hundred year old history
and all of those years mingling cultures. It's really turned
New Orleans into this super fun and very unique American city.
And that's why I thought we should focus on this today,
like this, all of these one of a kind customs
(03:30):
and traditions that make the city unlike any other out there.
So with three centuries of stories to pull from, there's
obviously a lot to talk about, So let's dive in. Hey,
(04:00):
their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
mangesh Hot Ticketer. And then the other side of the
soundproof glass, dressed to impress as always, that is our
friend and producer lol Berlanti. Now he's picked up this
mantle from where Tristan left off, of course, and he's
wearing a shirt with a crawfish on it. He's really
(04:22):
stepping up his game to try to keep up with Tristan.
And for some reason, the crawfish has one claw in
the air and he's asking where you at? You know,
it's why apostrophe at. I'm not sure what that means, but.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
That's what the shirt said, So I do think the
crawfish is probably self explanatory. But that phrase where we're
at is actually something I was reading about this week.
Apparently it's a pretty common greeting in New Orleans, kind
of a how are you doing? Of the region. But
one of the best things about the region has to
be the way that people talk. It's kind of this
hodgepodge of different languages and dialects, and you can go
(04:57):
into any given neighborhood and you're half a dozen different
accents and idioms depending on who you're talking to and
where you are in the city. And then there's the pronunciation,
like according to the official New Orleans website quote, we
say the street name Burgundy, not Burgundy, just because that's
the way it is. As for Calliope, say Calliope and
you'll pass for a local. So they're giving all this
(05:19):
advice on the site. And you know, this happens everywhere,
right Like in Chicago people call Gotha goth Ye Street,
and in New York Houston Street it is called Houston.
But you know what's interesting about New Orleans is how
so many little French idioms wound up kind of endearingly mistranslated.
(05:39):
For instance, in New Orleans, they don't say I gotta
go grocery shopping. They say I gotta make groceries, which
actually comes from the French expression for a grocery shopping.
It's fair la marche. I guess the verb fair can
I either mean to do or to make, and you
wouldn't include that in your translation normally unless you're in
New Orleans. And another fun pull from the French language
(06:02):
is lanyap, which I guess basically means a little something extra.
So maybe you go out to eat and the waiter
brings you a free dessert, or maybe the hotel you're
staying at upgrades you to a riverfront view, and in
either case you were given a lannap, which is an
old New Orleans way to foster friendship. And maybe some
return business as well.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Actually, you know, since we're talking about the way French
has woven into the language and the culture of the city,
I do feel like we should talk a little bit
about how that influence got there in the very first place. So,
as you mentioned upfront that New Orleans has a three
hundred year history, and that's true. The city was founded
in seventeen eighteen by the French governor of Louisiana, a
guy named Jean Baptiste Bienville, and it was named for
(06:42):
the French head of state at the time, this was
Philippe de Orleans. But of course, and I'm sure I'm
saying all of these words wrong, but that's what it says.
But the reality is that the French settlers were far
from the first people to live there. So Native American
communities called the place home at least six hundred years
before being got there, and many of them are said
(07:02):
to have lived right where the French quarter sits today.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, it's funny that that word I mentioned a minute ago,
which I probably also mispronounced land yapp It's technically considered
Louisiana French, but it's actually barred from the Spanish language,
which had taken it from Quetchua, which is spoken by
Native South Americans. So I feel like that's exactly the
kind of like dense cultural overlap that you find in
almost every aspect of New Orleans. They are all these
(07:27):
different ethnic groups that have called the city home over
its long history, and every one of them left its
mark in ways that you can still see today. That's right.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
And they don't call it the most haunted city in
America for nothing, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
That's not exactly what I meant. But you know, after
reading up on New Orleans history this week, I could
definitely see how the city got such a spooky reputation.
It sounds like it was a pretty rough place to
live in during the colonial era.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, you know, Banvilla and his men certainly had their
work cut out for him, and France had claimed that
Louisiana territory in sixteen ninety nine, but then didn't do
that much with it for at least a decade or so.
So you had the War of the Spanish Secession, which
began just a couple of years after the French colony
was established, and the fighting kept most of the country's
resources tied up for I guess it was the next
(08:13):
thirteen years or so, and so by the time the
war finally ended, France's outposts in Louisiana were pretty much
empty by that point.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
What was the mood like in France during all of this?
Were they so cash strapped after the war that they
couldn't fund their own colony?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
I mean, they sort of were. Yeah, I mean, it
turns out that thirteen years of war can be quite
a drain on the old treasury. And you know, when
you also lose that thirteen year war, it's even worse.
That tends to drain the morale, of course, and that's
exactly the problem France was facing back in seventeen fourteen.
And then, of course, to make matters worse, there was
(08:47):
this stretch of bad weather that led to food shortages
and it sent many of the rural residents there scrambling
the cities in order to try to find work. And
as a result of this, Paris was flooded with desperate people,
so the country's capital city, it really became this kind
of den of crime and poverty at the time.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
So it sounds like things are pretty dire in France.
The Louisiana colony is kind of a wash, So how
does the monarchy end up turning all of this around?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Right? So the French king looked at everything going on
and he realized a couple of things. For one, the
colony in Louisiana could and should be making him more
money than it was. After all, Spain was rolling in
the dough thanks to its colonies in Mexico, so he thought,
why not France. But the biggest obstacle at that point
was that barely anyone was left in the Louisiana colony,
(09:34):
and very few people were lining up to live there,
no matter how much gold or how much land they
were promised. So second, he noticed that the prisons were
getting pretty full at the time, and this was thanks
to all the homeless citizens and petty criminals and some
prostitutes that had been just rounded up there in Paris.
And that's when the king hit upon what he hoped
(09:55):
would be the solution to both of his problems. He
would just force the prisoners to go and settle the
land in Louisiana.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah, which is kind of taking a page from England, right, Like,
isn't that what they did in Australia?
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah, but this was actually a good seventy years or
so before England had turned Australia into a prison colony,
so if anything, they were the ones copying the French.
So at any rate, this is ultimately how New Orleans
was founded. It was a punishment for prisoners. Yeah, and
so in January of seventeen nineteen, the king issued a
royal policy to the effect saying, we believe that we
(10:28):
can do nothing better for the good of our state
than to condemn convicts to the punishment of being transported
to our colonies.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Which is not exactly a ringing endorsement for Louisiana.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
No, I think they've changed the motto at this point,
and the word had gotten around about how grueling it
was to live in such an inhospitable region. It was
surrounded by these swamps and these marshes that we sometimes
think of with the region, and stories of the heat
and the stench and the threat of all this disease.
You know, it made it so like this trip was
(11:01):
a death sentence, and it sort of was, since most
of the people sent there didn't live past the age
of forty. But it's not like these people had a
choice in the matter. So they were forced onto ships
and sent over a few hundred at a time, And
it wasn't until months later that someone realized they had
only been sending over male prisoners, which obviously wasn't the
(11:21):
ideal way to establish a thriving colony.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yeah, but to be fair, like, no part of this
sounds ideal. It isn't just not having women there.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
It does not sound ideal in any way. But as
bad as things were, they only got worse from there.
So pretty soon France started sending shiploads of orphans and
female convicts to Louisiana, with many of them forced to
marry male convicts in these mass wedding ceremonies.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
It sounds so weird, that's horrible. So how long did
this forced immigration go on for?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Till seventeen twenty two, so about three years total. And meanwhile,
the Louisiana governor, that Binville guy that we talked about before,
is trying to keep this experiment from flying completely off
the rails. But he's obviously having a tough time keeping
a city of convicts and check and he's not exactly
thrilled about the kind of settlers that France is sending him.
(12:12):
In fact, there's a good quote from his journals. That
really shows how frustrating it was even for those at
the top. So Bienvil writes, it is most disagreeable for
an officer in charge of a colony to have nothing
more for its defense than a bunch of deserters, contrabands,
salt dealers, and rogues who were always ready not only
to desert you, but also to turn against you.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Both. Like having people who are ready to desert you
and turn against you sounds pretty awful. But I'm guessing
most of those people stayed right. Well, yeah, they didn't
really have much of a choice. I mean, these were
convicted criminals, they were broke, they were stranded in the
middle of a swamp and unknown country. It's hard to
even imagine, so leaving wasn't a real option. So most
people just tried to make the best of staying, and
(12:56):
being a stranger in a new world did have some advantages.
So for example, nobody knew their names there, which meant
settlers were free to reinvent themselves in whatever way they
wanted to, and some people made up complex family histories
for themselves or added flourishes to their names to make
themselves seem maybe higher class. I guess, and there was
(13:16):
no way to prove or disprove any of this. So
these false personas just stuck and kind of became the
new reality for these people, which is kind of strangely
fitting when you think about some of the things that
have gone on to characterize New Orleans.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Like, I was actually skimming a book this week. It's
called The Accidental City, Improving New Orleans, and there's one
part where the author, who's a native, is talking about
what a fresh start this experience was for so many settlers,
and this is what he writes, quote, we were a
city of impostors in a way. That's why Marty Graft
fits so well with our identity. We could always put
(13:49):
on new masks.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
That's pretty interesting. I actually hadn't really made that connection before.
All Right, well, we're just scratching the surface of New
Orleans long storied history, so I feel like we should
take a quick break and then we'll jump right back in.
(14:16):
You're listening to part Time Genius, and we're talking about
the chain of events that turned a French penal colony
into one of the most amazing cities in America. All Right, Mengo,
So what's the next piece of New Orleans history you
want to touch on.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
So we've talked a lot so far about the French
influence on the city, but there's one part of the
city they really can't claim credit for, and strangely enough,
it's the French Quarter. So despite what the name suggests,
most of the buildings in the famous neighborhood were actually
influenced by Spanish architecture, not French.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
So you're saying that the French Quarter didn't exist when
Bienville founded the city.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
It did, but it wasn't called that at the time,
and it also looked a whole lot different. So as
the city took shape under French rule, it gradually organized
around the highest patch of dry land in the area,
which was still only about ten to fifteen feet above
sea level. But what I'd kind of forgotten was the
sway that Spain had over New Orleans. So following the
Revolutionary War, France actually gave the Louisiana territory to Spain,
(15:11):
mostly as a way to keep England from taking control
of it. I mean, it's kind of a long story,
but you can look up the Treaty of Fountain Blue
if you're interested. But you know, Spain took possession of
New Orleans in seventeen sixty two, and they held onto
it for just under fifty years, and then in eighteen
oh one a different treaty placed Louisiana back under French
(15:31):
rule until two years later when Napoleon sold the whole
thing to the US as part of the Louisiana Purchase.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
All Right, so you're saying New Orleans has changed hands
a lot over the years, and it definitely tracks with
the cultural mishmash, and you know that you kind of
think about when you think of the characterization of the city.
But what it does in do Mango is explain how
the French quarter got so Spanish Like? Could we get
to that part?
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Basically, nearly all of the original French colonial buildings in
New Orleans were destroyed during Spain's rule in the late
seventeen hundreds. They weren't knocked down on purpose, though. Basically
there were these two massive fires that laid waste to
the city. And the first fire took place in seventeen
eighty eight, and it actually might not have been that
bad except that it happened to occur on Good Friday,
(16:15):
and because of that, the city's priests wouldn't allow the
church bells to be rung as fire alarms, which made
it nearly impossible to organize, like, you know, help during
all the chaos. So the fire burned unchecked, and within
five hours it had consumed eighty percent of the city.
Good Lord, and you're saying the same thing happened just
a few years later. Yeah, I mean, it didn't happen
during Good Friday this time. But after six years of rebuilding,
(16:38):
they had another fire and it was extinguished a little
bit faster, but it still took out I guess two
hundred buildings. I don't know. It's still a terrible thing,
but not as bad as the first one.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah, that's tough luck for Spain there. And it sounds
like their entire rain in Louisiana was just fires and reconstruction.
It was like burn, build and repeat.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
But you know, span left a deep impression on New
Orleans in the little time it took over. So after
that second fire, the Spanish government started handing out loans
for his citizens to rebuild their houses. But the only
catch was in order to get the money, you had
to agree to build according to the government's newly developed guidelines.
And so this was really smart. The idea was to
make the city a little more fireproof, including the switch
(17:18):
to brick and plaster town homes instead of those wooden cottages.
And as you probably guessed, this is when the French
Quarter started to look a little more Spanish, you know,
even if the streets were still named for French royalty
and nobility. And the transformation proved to be a real
turning point in New Orleans history. And that's something this
author Lyle Sason touches on in his book Fabulous New Orleans.
(17:39):
As he puts it, quote, the city that fell before
the flames was a congested French community of wooden houses,
badly arranged and irregular. A stately Spanish city rose in
its stead. Large fan shaped windows looked down into courtyards
which held banana trees and oleanders, and balconies railed with
delicately wrought iron overhung the street.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
You know, it's interesting because I actually never really noticed
how non French the French Quarter is, But when you
break it all down, it's like, yeah, of course these
are all Spanish architectural features, I guess.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah. And that Spanish style wasn't only limited to where
people lived. It also influenced how the city's dead were
laid to rest. So when settlers first came to the region,
they had a tough time getting their dead to stay put.
Because the water table in the area is so high,
all the burial plots had to be dug shallow, otherwise
the grave would fill with water and the coffin would
just pop out of the ground. And they tried everything
(18:33):
to keep the coffins in place right, like they would
bore these holes into the lids to make them less buoyant.
It was a huge problem. They didn't like, tried weighing
down the lids with heavy stones. But you know, if
a rainstorm was bad enough in the area, which if
you know the area, they have terrible rainstorms, the coffins
would still float right out of the graves. So all
(18:53):
of that changed during the Spanish period when the city's
current system of these burial chambers was introduced. So you know,
New Orleans starts stacking their vaults and using these more
ornate tombs and crypts for I guess the wealthier families.
But when taken all together, the new cemeteries kind of
looked more like miniature cities, and they were complete with
these like houselike tombs and almost like avenues or streets
(19:17):
for pathways. And while it might seem a little macabre
to have so many reminders of death and plain view
like that, these so called cities of the dead were
so much better than you know, stepping outside in a
storm and having to walk over your your late grandfather's
coffin or whatever it was floating down the street, so.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Morbid. So these fire codes and graveyards, you know, they
definitely improved under Spanish rain, but I mean, from everything
I've read, the space and sanitation issues were still pretty
major concerns, because you know, you got to keep in mind,
like the entire city was still pretty much confined to
the French Quarter at that point, and everything beyond that
was seen as uninhabitable, like swamp and marshlands, and so
(19:59):
to make the land usable, the city would need to
build these levees and canals and pumps to drain the
water and the soil beneath all of that. And so
that really took more than a century to get this
system up and running properly. So in the meantime, all
the residents of New Orleans just had to squeeze together
on this only patch of upraised terrain that they had, yeah,
(20:20):
which is all surrounded by a horrible swamp. Yeah, and
that later proved a problem in itself. So the city's
poor sanitation and lack of running water proved to be
this perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes, who quickly developed a
taste for human blood. And so it wasn't long after
that horrific yellow fever epidemic broke out and the city
claiming the lives of more than forty one thousand residents.
(20:41):
And this happened between eighteen seventeen and nineteen oh five.
So yeah, not a lot of love lost between those
living in New Orleans and the local wetlands in those days.
And in fact, I came across this amazing quote that
one observer made about the region. This was back in
eighteen fifteen, and I sort of think it captures the
spirit of what most residents would have thought of the
(21:02):
place during its first two centuries or so. So he says,
the boiling Fountain of Death is one of the most dismal,
low and harrid places on which the light of sun
ever shone, and yet they're under it lies the influence
of a tropical heat belching up its poison and malaria.
The dregs of the seven vials of wrath covered with
(21:23):
a yellow, greenish scum. How bad is that?
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Yeah? It makes me think spring Break, New Orleans exactly.
It does make you wonder, like, how did the Native
Americans mag live there so long if the conditions were
as bad as everyone makes it out to be.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. But if you
stop and think about it, their lifestyle was a little
more flexible than that of the European colonists, so when
the floods came, a tribe could simply move to higher
ground or maybe build a couple dams to keep the
village dry. And things got a little bit more complicated, though,
like when you start trying to establish a permanent city
for tens of thousands of former prisoners. So life in
(22:00):
the swamp was exceptionally hard for settlers, but that's largely
because they were asking more of the region than anyone
before them had, so the civilization they wanted it It
did come together, little by little, but it took a
lot of time and a lot of trial and error
just to get there.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
All right, Well, now we have the history, but I
feel like we should cover some more of the only
in New Orleans things, So why don't we do that?
For first to quick break and.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Welcome back to part time genius. All right, Mago, So
before the break we talked about why New Orleans is
a terrible place to be a grave digger. So I
didn't know that before. It's water table is so high
that above ground and tournament is really the only safe option.
And you know, as you might guess, that kind of
concern extends beyond the cemetery, so forends, you'd be hard
(23:00):
pressed to find an underground basement in New Orleans for
very much the same reason, like it would flood anytime
it rained. But again, just like with the above ground tombs,
residents solve the dilemma by getting pretty creative. So in
the early twentieth century, these new raised basement houses started
appearing throughout the city. So these homes consisted of these
(23:21):
low ceiling basements built at ground level and a higher
ceiling living space on top of those. So if you've
ever seen a house in New Orleans with an unusually
long staircase leading up to the front door, that's probably
what's going on there, like these stairs go straight to
the second floor because the first floor is actually just
the basement.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
You know, it's neat to see all the different workarounds
residents have come up with over the years, like that
first floor basement setup. That works great for a private home,
but it's a little less practical for a shop in
the city, right, So customers need to be able to
pop in easily without having to climb a steep set
of stairs or navigate through the storre's basements. And that's
why if you look look up some of the older
row homes in New Orleans, the ground floor is taken
(24:03):
up by a retail space and the basement is actually.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
In the ceiling. Wait, isn't that just an attic?
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yeah, I mean it sounds like it the way I
put it, but actually that's not the case. So it's
actually more like a crawl space between the first floor
and the second story. So you'd open a trap door
in the floor, and rather than climbing up into the
ceiling like you would in an attic, you'd actually like
sneak down into the space between the store and your
first floor of a home. And it's a pretty clever
(24:29):
way to sneak some extra storage space into a rowhouse
without having to go all the way up to an attic.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yeah, I guess that's true. So if you ask me,
the real historical must have for your New Orleans home
is a floor level mirror. So apparently a lot of
the plantation homes in and around the city at the
time featured these long mirrors, and they were mounted flush
with the floor, and that was so that women could
check the links of their dresses to make sure that
their ankles weren't showing. Because mego, if you know this, like,
(24:58):
the ankle is the gateway to all impure thoughts and deeds,
I think, So.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
It does seem strange that people actually freaked out about
seeing an ankle in public, considering that, like the summers
in New Orleans are so hot, it is.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Tough to imagine like how unbearable that would be. And
in addition to ankle coverings, folks in the region had
another way to prevent scandals. They would use this architectural
quirk called the Romeo catcher. So if you've ever spent
time in the French Quarter or seen pictures of it,
you're likely familiar with the second and third floor balconies.
They're called galleries when you're in New Orleans, and these
(25:34):
things line the historic streets when you go visit there,
and along these balconies you'll also see lots of ornate
rod and cast iron railings, as well as some metal
support columns connecting the balconies to the streets below. Now,
on some of these buildings, if you're near the top
of the columns, you'll see what looks like a ring
of spikes or barbed wire going all the way around
(25:57):
the post. And on somehouses, the spikes might look like
nails sticking out in all directions, while other houses might
have spikes that look like coat hooks or thorns or
something like that. But you know, in either case, the
purpose of the spikes was the same. It was to
deter these would be Romeos from climbing up to Juliette's
balcony late at night.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
And I'm guessing those still come in pretty handy during
Mardi Gras, right, Like, if someone has too much to drink,
they'd probably think twice about climbing that balcony once they
see those spikes.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah, definitely. And that's actually where this story takes a
little bit of a dark turn, which seems like what
we've been doing a lot of in this episode. But
because the Romeo catchers weren't really meant to catch the
late night boyfriends on the way up, the hope was
that the side of the spikes would scare the boy off,
but realistically, if he wanted to get around the spikes
(26:46):
badly enough, it wouldn't be too much of a problem
as long as he was sober. The true danger of
these spikes was on the way back down, because even
if a suitor did make it up to the balcony,
there was still a strong chance that the girl his
father would hear the commotion come charging in with a
loaded shotgun. And at that point the boy would usually
make for a break for the railing and trying to
(27:08):
scramble down. And this was happening so quickly, and in
his panic, the Romeo might forget about all the spikes,
waiting to snag whichever parts it might be able to.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
And you're saying these Romeo spikes are still there today though.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Oh yeah, I mean they're all over the French Quarter
and a lot of people never notice them though, So
they're like these little remnants of the city's history. Sort
of hidden in plain sight. It's something worth looking for
when you're there. And it's funny. Before the show, I
was thinking about the crowds on Bourbon Street and thinking
it's not a city for everyone. But the more we
talk about it, it's really more the opposite, Like there's
(27:43):
so many things going on in New Orleans, both culturally historically,
that there really is something for everybody. Like you can
look and do basically any aspect of the city and
come away with some colorful bit of history that ties
together these five different cultures, from.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Food to music to whenever. There's actually so much I
feel like we should do a follow up episode that's
all joyful instead of just disaster stuff. But you know,
it's true. It isn't the case with all American cities.
Like that level of historical scope and kind of the
variety that is in New Orleans is something we almost
exclusively attribute to like cities in Europe where like the
(28:20):
old and newer kind of intermingled and you can see
the different phases of civilization all at once. You know,
New Orleans is kind of an exception in that way
in America. It's an American city that's been shaped by
so many different hands over the years, and it's impossible
to pin down if it's strictly Southern or French or
Spanish or Haitian or Creole. It's like all of that
(28:41):
all at once.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yeah, and I appreciate how innately weird. The result of
that mashup is, like you read about those efforts to
keep Portland weird or keep Austin weird, But you're never
really going to need a public campaign like that in
New Orleans, Like there's no other option. The city can't
help but be itself.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah. Well, I think that's a good place to leave
things right now. But since we've been talking about the
Crescent City, it's only fitting that we end by offering
a little lan yaff of our own. So why don't
we do the fact off?
Speaker 2 (29:17):
All right? I'll start us off. So New Orleans is
the birthplace of a few unexpected inventions, I think you'd say,
and this includes the game of craps, the modern version
of poker, and randomly enough, dental floss. But one thing
that New Orleans can't actually claim credit for is the
Marti Gras Festival. And that's because, believe it or not,
the oldest Fat Tuesday celebration in America dates back to
(29:39):
seventeen oh three, and it took place not in New
Orleans but in my own Mobile, Alabama. I guess I
really can't say my own. I'm from Birmingham, you know,
it's in Alabama. So the Gulf coast of Alabama saw
its share of French explorers and the seventeen hundreds, just
like Louisiana did, and the more free spirited among them
started holding marti gross celebrations just they had back home.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
So I've got another bit of fun. Uh New Orleans
lingo for you, and the words are neutral ground, and
that's the term the locals use for that grassy strip
of brown do you find between two roads. We normally
refer to them as medians, but in New Orleans they're
called neutral ground. And the term apparently dates back to
the mid eighteen hundreds when there were these cultural and
(30:21):
political tensions and it was kind of an all time
high in the city. At that point. Things got so
bad that New Orleans was actually split into separate municipalities.
Like the French speaking Creoles and the supporters were on
one side, the Anglo English speaking populations were on the other,
but the dividing line for these groups was Canal Street,
which had a wide, grassy median running right down the middle,
(30:43):
and residents kind of half jokingly started calling the median
neutral ground, and before long the nickname was applied to
all the medians in the city.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
All right, Well, speaking of ways to keep the peace
in New Orleans, I have to tell you about the
peacemaker sandwich, which is basically the precursor to the city's
famous boy. So according to newspaper reports from the late
nineteenth century, the peacemaker, also known as the oyster loaf,
was pretty much a French loaf stuffed with these hot
fried oysters. But this wasn't a lunchtime staple like the
(31:13):
Poe boy would eventually be, and instead, the peacemaker was
a sandwich for a very specific occasion. So as the
name suggests, peacemakers were usually purchased by husbands as a
way to preemptively smooth things over with their wives after
coming home late from a bar or wherever else. And
this was common and a pretty well known practice in
New Orleans that was actually reported about in a San
(31:35):
Francisco newspaper way back in eighteen ninety three. But the
description of how the whole exchange plays out is too
good not to share, So I'm just going to read
out this excerpt that I pulled from it. When the
sandwich has been wrapped in paper, the buyer flees as
a bird to his home. The little difficulty with the
keyhole overcome, he steps into the awful presence undismayed. There
(31:58):
she stands, grim as but without an apologetic word. The
airing one climbs slowly up the stair and holds forth
the peacemaker. She takes it, puts down the lamp, and
removes the cover. The deliciously flavored theme ascends like sweet
incense until it reaches her rigid nockles, and then her
(32:19):
features relax into something like a smile. When her lord
is banging his shoes and depositing his hat carefully in
the wash basin, she sits on one side of the bed,
eating the spoils of domestic war.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
That is ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
It's very ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
I can't imagine working in my house. But here's another
food related fact. There's a legendary restaurant in New Orleans
called Dookie Chase's Restaurant, and the long running executive chef
there actually served as the inspiration for the Tiana character
in The Princess and the Frog. So when the production
team for that movie came to New Orleans on a
research trip, they met with the chef at a restaurant
(32:57):
and knew right away that she'd be the basis for
the main character. Now, the chef's name is not Tiana,
it's Lea Chase, and after reading about her this week,
she's kind of my new hero. She and her husband's
restaurant served as a crucial gathering place during the civil
rights movement in the sixties. In fact, Mlka and the
Freedom writers frequently met there to discuss strategies in her
(33:17):
upstairs meeting rooms. And we don't have time to go
through her whole life, but it's a really lovely story
about a woman who came from nothing and became this
source of hope and pride for a community. She passed
away in June of this year, but right up until
the end, she was still hard at work in the
kitchen of Doukie Chase, doing what she loved most.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
You know, I don't feel like I can top the
sweetness of that fact, So I think I'm going to
go the strange path instead. All right, So, during the
nineteen seventies, three of the first nine Super Bowls were
played at Tulane University in the stadium there it was
in New Orleans, and each of those games was attended
by two ancient Egyptian mummies who had lived around nine
(33:57):
hundred BC.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
So that is not where I expected that sentence. But
how did two ancient Egyptian mummies go to the Super Bowl?
Speaker 2 (34:04):
That's pretty easy, Maga. They took the sarcopha bus. I
don't know if you've ever heard this one.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
I feel like that's a terrible joke you stole from
your song.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
No, I totally stole that joke.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Quick.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
But here's the real fact. Two ancient Egyptian mummies were
donated to Tulane University in eighteen fifty and so for
the next one hundred years they were passed from one
museum exhibit to another until they ultimately made it back
to the school's math department. I don't know why, but
that's where they ended up. Then, in the nineteen fifties,
the mummies were put in a storage room beneath the
(34:37):
bleachers of Tulane Stadium, and that's where they stayed until
the mid seventies, when the stadium was torn down. So,
according to an article in the Tulane University magazine Quote,
the Mummies attended every two lane home game from nineteen
fifty five until the last wave appearance in Tulane Stadium
in nineteen seventy four. They were presented all three Super
(34:59):
Bowls and does of New Orleans Saints games waged on
two lane turf, and they never once complained about their
lousy seats.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
You know, I like that football loving mummies story, but
I really love the peacemaker sandwich story, which I think
earns you the victory of this STrenD.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Oh well, thanks for that, and from Gabe, Lil Mango
and me, thanks so much for listening. We'll be back
soon with another episode. Part Time Genius is a production
(35:36):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Guess what Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:12):
What's that? Will? All? Right?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
So you know how New Orleans is famous for being
this kind of wild party town. I hope you've heard
this before, right, like sort of the Vegas of the
Gulf Coast.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I like that, the Vegas of the Gulf Coast. I
actually just went to New Orleans for the first time
this year, and I loved it, but I was kind
of thrown off by the fact that you can just
drink on the streets there. It's kind of amazing.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well, actually, what's weird about that is technically it's only
in the French Quarter that you're allowed to do that,
you know, as long as your drink is in a
glass or a metal container. But you know, if you
go into other areas that are pretty close by, it's
not a law that really gets enforced that often, as
I think you probably saw when you were there. And
this is a city where the official motto is let
(00:52):
the good times roll A pop quiz for you? Do
you know how to say that in French? Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
No?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I do not, okay me either. I think it's something
like lesse Les bon temp Roulet. Maybe I just butchered
it completely, Like I can't even imagine for all those
who speak French, and for even for those who don't,
they just know that I butchered it.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I feel like you were just saying, like the line
from that Lady Lady Palm song.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, or maybe from the Little Mermaid, one of these.
I just stole the line.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
But you know, it is kind of amazing that like
New Orleans, it's such a good times town. But I'm
curious that, like, are you just telling me that like
New Orleans likes to drink? Is that? Is that what
it is all about? Now?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I'm pretty sure the drinking is common knowledge at this point.
It was you know, the thing that caught my attention
when we were talking to Gabe about the research for
this week was that it's really more like what the
residents used to treat the hangover that comes after all
the drinking. And that's a big steamy bowl of yaka
Maine soup, as you know, also known as old Sober.
(01:53):
It's a soy sauce flavored broth with noodles, beef, chicken, shrimp,
hard boiled eggs, and chopped onions. It actually sounds that's
pretty good, isn't it. And the amazing thing that sets
this hangover cure apart from all the others is that
it actually works. So there were some researchers that looked
into this from the American Chemical Society, and what they's
found is that the traditional soup contains all the right
(02:14):
ingredients to help the body recover from a hangover. So
the hard boiled eggs have this compound that helps expel
toxic substances, the salty broth helps replenish sodium and potassium,
and the beef and shrimp helps slow down the absorption
of alcohol. So it's like a one stop shop for
this hangover cure.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
So how did a dish called yakamane with all this
soy sauce flavor. How'd that ended up becoming a signature
dish here? Like it doesn't sound super southern, Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
And actually, according to local legend, the dish came to
the Big Easy by way of local soldiers that had
been stationed in Korea. This was back during the nineteen fifties,
and so when the war was over, they brought this soup,
this yakamine soup back home with them and it's been
the city's surefire hangover cure ever since.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
That's pretty neat. I've definitely heard before that New Orleans
is one of the most culturally diverse cities in America,
and it's kind of fun to see how it extends
into food as well.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, it's definitely true, and it's always been this huge
cultural melting pod, going all the way back to the
beginning of that highly unusual three hundred year old history
and all of those years mingling cultures. It's really turned
New Orleans into this super fun and very unique American city.
And that's why I thought we should focus on this today,
like this, all of these one of a kind customs
(03:30):
and traditions that make the city unlike any other out there.
So with three centuries of stories to pull from, there's
obviously a lot to talk about, So let's dive in. Hey,
(04:00):
their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
mangesh Hot Ticketer. And then the other side of the
soundproof glass, dressed to impress as always, that is our
friend and producer lol Berlanti. Now he's picked up this
mantle from where Tristan left off, of course, and he's
wearing a shirt with a crawfish on it. He's really
(04:22):
stepping up his game to try to keep up with Tristan.
And for some reason, the crawfish has one claw in
the air and he's asking where you at? You know,
it's why apostrophe at. I'm not sure what that means, but.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
That's what the shirt said, So I do think the
crawfish is probably self explanatory. But that phrase where we're
at is actually something I was reading about this week.
Apparently it's a pretty common greeting in New Orleans, kind
of a how are you doing? Of the region. But
one of the best things about the region has to
be the way that people talk. It's kind of this
hodgepodge of different languages and dialects, and you can go
(04:57):
into any given neighborhood and you're half a dozen different
accents and idioms depending on who you're talking to and
where you are in the city. And then there's the pronunciation,
like according to the official New Orleans website quote, we
say the street name Burgundy, not Burgundy, just because that's
the way it is. As for Calliope, say Calliope and
you'll pass for a local. So they're giving all this
(05:19):
advice on the site. And you know, this happens everywhere,
right Like in Chicago people call Gotha goth Ye Street,
and in New York Houston Street it is called Houston.
But you know what's interesting about New Orleans is how
so many little French idioms wound up kind of endearingly mistranslated.
(05:39):
For instance, in New Orleans, they don't say I gotta
go grocery shopping. They say I gotta make groceries, which
actually comes from the French expression for a grocery shopping.
It's fair la marche. I guess the verb fair can
I either mean to do or to make, and you
wouldn't include that in your translation normally unless you're in
New Orleans. And another fun pull from the French language
(06:02):
is lanyap, which I guess basically means a little something extra.
So maybe you go out to eat and the waiter
brings you a free dessert, or maybe the hotel you're
staying at upgrades you to a riverfront view, and in
either case you were given a lannap, which is an
old New Orleans way to foster friendship. And maybe some
return business as well.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Actually, you know, since we're talking about the way French
has woven into the language and the culture of the city,
I do feel like we should talk a little bit
about how that influence got there in the very first place. So,
as you mentioned upfront that New Orleans has a three
hundred year history, and that's true. The city was founded
in seventeen eighteen by the French governor of Louisiana, a
guy named Jean Baptiste Bienville, and it was named for
(06:42):
the French head of state at the time, this was
Philippe de Orleans. But of course, and I'm sure I'm
saying all of these words wrong, but that's what it says.
But the reality is that the French settlers were far
from the first people to live there. So Native American
communities called the place home at least six hundred years
before being got there, and many of them are said
(07:02):
to have lived right where the French quarter sits today.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, it's funny that that word I mentioned a minute ago,
which I probably also mispronounced land yapp It's technically considered
Louisiana French, but it's actually barred from the Spanish language,
which had taken it from Quetchua, which is spoken by
Native South Americans. So I feel like that's exactly the
kind of like dense cultural overlap that you find in
almost every aspect of New Orleans. They are all these
(07:27):
different ethnic groups that have called the city home over
its long history, and every one of them left its
mark in ways that you can still see today. That's right.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
And they don't call it the most haunted city in
America for nothing, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
That's not exactly what I meant. But you know, after
reading up on New Orleans history this week, I could
definitely see how the city got such a spooky reputation.
It sounds like it was a pretty rough place to
live in during the colonial era.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, you know, Banvilla and his men certainly had their
work cut out for him, and France had claimed that
Louisiana territory in sixteen ninety nine, but then didn't do
that much with it for at least a decade or so.
So you had the War of the Spanish Secession, which
began just a couple of years after the French colony
was established, and the fighting kept most of the country's
resources tied up for I guess it was the next
(08:13):
thirteen years or so, and so by the time the
war finally ended, France's outposts in Louisiana were pretty much
empty by that point.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
What was the mood like in France during all of this?
Were they so cash strapped after the war that they
couldn't fund their own colony?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
I mean, they sort of were. Yeah, I mean, it
turns out that thirteen years of war can be quite
a drain on the old treasury. And you know, when
you also lose that thirteen year war, it's even worse.
That tends to drain the morale, of course, and that's
exactly the problem France was facing back in seventeen fourteen.
And then, of course, to make matters worse, there was
(08:47):
this stretch of bad weather that led to food shortages
and it sent many of the rural residents there scrambling
the cities in order to try to find work. And
as a result of this, Paris was flooded with desperate people,
so the country's capital city, it really became this kind
of den of crime and poverty at the time.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
So it sounds like things are pretty dire in France.
The Louisiana colony is kind of a wash, So how
does the monarchy end up turning all of this around?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Right? So the French king looked at everything going on
and he realized a couple of things. For one, the
colony in Louisiana could and should be making him more
money than it was. After all, Spain was rolling in
the dough thanks to its colonies in Mexico, so he thought,
why not France. But the biggest obstacle at that point
was that barely anyone was left in the Louisiana colony,
(09:34):
and very few people were lining up to live there,
no matter how much gold or how much land they
were promised. So second, he noticed that the prisons were
getting pretty full at the time, and this was thanks
to all the homeless citizens and petty criminals and some
prostitutes that had been just rounded up there in Paris.
And that's when the king hit upon what he hoped
(09:55):
would be the solution to both of his problems. He
would just force the prisoners to go and settle the
land in Louisiana.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah, which is kind of taking a page from England, right, Like,
isn't that what they did in Australia?
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah, but this was actually a good seventy years or
so before England had turned Australia into a prison colony,
so if anything, they were the ones copying the French.
So at any rate, this is ultimately how New Orleans
was founded. It was a punishment for prisoners. Yeah, and
so in January of seventeen nineteen, the king issued a
royal policy to the effect saying, we believe that we
(10:28):
can do nothing better for the good of our state
than to condemn convicts to the punishment of being transported
to our colonies.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Which is not exactly a ringing endorsement for Louisiana.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
No, I think they've changed the motto at this point,
and the word had gotten around about how grueling it
was to live in such an inhospitable region. It was
surrounded by these swamps and these marshes that we sometimes
think of with the region, and stories of the heat
and the stench and the threat of all this disease.
You know, it made it so like this trip was
(11:01):
a death sentence, and it sort of was, since most
of the people sent there didn't live past the age
of forty. But it's not like these people had a
choice in the matter. So they were forced onto ships
and sent over a few hundred at a time, And
it wasn't until months later that someone realized they had
only been sending over male prisoners, which obviously wasn't the
(11:21):
ideal way to establish a thriving colony.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yeah, but to be fair, like, no part of this
sounds ideal. It isn't just not having women there.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
It does not sound ideal in any way. But as
bad as things were, they only got worse from there.
So pretty soon France started sending shiploads of orphans and
female convicts to Louisiana, with many of them forced to
marry male convicts in these mass wedding ceremonies.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
It sounds so weird, that's horrible. So how long did
this forced immigration go on for?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Till seventeen twenty two, so about three years total. And meanwhile,
the Louisiana governor, that Binville guy that we talked about before,
is trying to keep this experiment from flying completely off
the rails. But he's obviously having a tough time keeping
a city of convicts and check and he's not exactly
thrilled about the kind of settlers that France is sending him.
(12:12):
In fact, there's a good quote from his journals. That
really shows how frustrating it was even for those at
the top. So Bienvil writes, it is most disagreeable for
an officer in charge of a colony to have nothing
more for its defense than a bunch of deserters, contrabands,
salt dealers, and rogues who were always ready not only
to desert you, but also to turn against you.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Both. Like having people who are ready to desert you
and turn against you sounds pretty awful. But I'm guessing
most of those people stayed right. Well, yeah, they didn't
really have much of a choice. I mean, these were
convicted criminals, they were broke, they were stranded in the
middle of a swamp and unknown country. It's hard to
even imagine, so leaving wasn't a real option. So most
people just tried to make the best of staying, and
(12:56):
being a stranger in a new world did have some advantages.
So for example, nobody knew their names there, which meant
settlers were free to reinvent themselves in whatever way they
wanted to, and some people made up complex family histories
for themselves or added flourishes to their names to make
themselves seem maybe higher class. I guess, and there was
(13:16):
no way to prove or disprove any of this. So
these false personas just stuck and kind of became the
new reality for these people, which is kind of strangely
fitting when you think about some of the things that
have gone on to characterize New Orleans.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Like, I was actually skimming a book this week. It's
called The Accidental City, Improving New Orleans, and there's one
part where the author, who's a native, is talking about
what a fresh start this experience was for so many settlers,
and this is what he writes, quote, we were a
city of impostors in a way. That's why Marty Graft
fits so well with our identity. We could always put
(13:49):
on new masks.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
That's pretty interesting. I actually hadn't really made that connection before.
All Right, well, we're just scratching the surface of New
Orleans long storied history, so I feel like we should
take a quick break and then we'll jump right back in.
(14:16):
You're listening to part Time Genius, and we're talking about
the chain of events that turned a French penal colony
into one of the most amazing cities in America. All Right, Mengo,
So what's the next piece of New Orleans history you
want to touch on.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
So we've talked a lot so far about the French
influence on the city, but there's one part of the
city they really can't claim credit for, and strangely enough,
it's the French Quarter. So despite what the name suggests,
most of the buildings in the famous neighborhood were actually
influenced by Spanish architecture, not French.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
So you're saying that the French Quarter didn't exist when
Bienville founded the city.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
It did, but it wasn't called that at the time,
and it also looked a whole lot different. So as
the city took shape under French rule, it gradually organized
around the highest patch of dry land in the area,
which was still only about ten to fifteen feet above
sea level. But what I'd kind of forgotten was the
sway that Spain had over New Orleans. So following the
Revolutionary War, France actually gave the Louisiana territory to Spain,
(15:11):
mostly as a way to keep England from taking control
of it. I mean, it's kind of a long story,
but you can look up the Treaty of Fountain Blue
if you're interested. But you know, Spain took possession of
New Orleans in seventeen sixty two, and they held onto
it for just under fifty years, and then in eighteen
oh one a different treaty placed Louisiana back under French
(15:31):
rule until two years later when Napoleon sold the whole
thing to the US as part of the Louisiana Purchase.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
All Right, so you're saying New Orleans has changed hands
a lot over the years, and it definitely tracks with
the cultural mishmash, and you know that you kind of
think about when you think of the characterization of the city.
But what it does in do Mango is explain how
the French quarter got so Spanish Like? Could we get
to that part?
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Basically, nearly all of the original French colonial buildings in
New Orleans were destroyed during Spain's rule in the late
seventeen hundreds. They weren't knocked down on purpose, though. Basically
there were these two massive fires that laid waste to
the city. And the first fire took place in seventeen
eighty eight, and it actually might not have been that
bad except that it happened to occur on Good Friday,
(16:15):
and because of that, the city's priests wouldn't allow the
church bells to be rung as fire alarms, which made
it nearly impossible to organize, like, you know, help during
all the chaos. So the fire burned unchecked, and within
five hours it had consumed eighty percent of the city.
Good Lord, and you're saying the same thing happened just
a few years later. Yeah, I mean, it didn't happen
during Good Friday this time. But after six years of rebuilding,
(16:38):
they had another fire and it was extinguished a little
bit faster, but it still took out I guess two
hundred buildings. I don't know. It's still a terrible thing,
but not as bad as the first one.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah, that's tough luck for Spain there. And it sounds
like their entire rain in Louisiana was just fires and reconstruction.
It was like burn, build and repeat.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
But you know, span left a deep impression on New
Orleans in the little time it took over. So after
that second fire, the Spanish government started handing out loans
for his citizens to rebuild their houses. But the only
catch was in order to get the money, you had
to agree to build according to the government's newly developed guidelines.
And so this was really smart. The idea was to
make the city a little more fireproof, including the switch
(17:18):
to brick and plaster town homes instead of those wooden cottages.
And as you probably guessed, this is when the French
Quarter started to look a little more Spanish, you know,
even if the streets were still named for French royalty
and nobility. And the transformation proved to be a real
turning point in New Orleans history. And that's something this
author Lyle Sason touches on in his book Fabulous New Orleans.
(17:39):
As he puts it, quote, the city that fell before
the flames was a congested French community of wooden houses,
badly arranged and irregular. A stately Spanish city rose in
its stead. Large fan shaped windows looked down into courtyards
which held banana trees and oleanders, and balconies railed with
delicately wrought iron overhung the street.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
You know, it's interesting because I actually never really noticed
how non French the French Quarter is, But when you
break it all down, it's like, yeah, of course these
are all Spanish architectural features, I guess.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah. And that Spanish style wasn't only limited to where
people lived. It also influenced how the city's dead were
laid to rest. So when settlers first came to the region,
they had a tough time getting their dead to stay put.
Because the water table in the area is so high,
all the burial plots had to be dug shallow, otherwise
the grave would fill with water and the coffin would
just pop out of the ground. And they tried everything
(18:33):
to keep the coffins in place right, like they would
bore these holes into the lids to make them less buoyant.
It was a huge problem. They didn't like, tried weighing
down the lids with heavy stones. But you know, if
a rainstorm was bad enough in the area, which if
you know the area, they have terrible rainstorms, the coffins
would still float right out of the graves. So all
(18:53):
of that changed during the Spanish period when the city's
current system of these burial chambers was introduced. So you know,
New Orleans starts stacking their vaults and using these more
ornate tombs and crypts for I guess the wealthier families.
But when taken all together, the new cemeteries kind of
looked more like miniature cities, and they were complete with
these like houselike tombs and almost like avenues or streets
(19:17):
for pathways. And while it might seem a little macabre
to have so many reminders of death and plain view
like that, these so called cities of the dead were
so much better than you know, stepping outside in a
storm and having to walk over your your late grandfather's
coffin or whatever it was floating down the street, so.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Morbid. So these fire codes and graveyards, you know, they
definitely improved under Spanish rain, but I mean, from everything
I've read, the space and sanitation issues were still pretty
major concerns, because you know, you got to keep in mind,
like the entire city was still pretty much confined to
the French Quarter at that point, and everything beyond that
was seen as uninhabitable, like swamp and marshlands, and so
(19:59):
to make the land usable, the city would need to
build these levees and canals and pumps to drain the
water and the soil beneath all of that. And so
that really took more than a century to get this
system up and running properly. So in the meantime, all
the residents of New Orleans just had to squeeze together
on this only patch of upraised terrain that they had, yeah,
(20:20):
which is all surrounded by a horrible swamp. Yeah, and
that later proved a problem in itself. So the city's
poor sanitation and lack of running water proved to be
this perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes, who quickly developed a
taste for human blood. And so it wasn't long after
that horrific yellow fever epidemic broke out and the city
claiming the lives of more than forty one thousand residents.
(20:41):
And this happened between eighteen seventeen and nineteen oh five.
So yeah, not a lot of love lost between those
living in New Orleans and the local wetlands in those days.
And in fact, I came across this amazing quote that
one observer made about the region. This was back in
eighteen fifteen, and I sort of think it captures the
spirit of what most residents would have thought of the
(21:02):
place during its first two centuries or so. So he says,
the boiling Fountain of Death is one of the most dismal,
low and harrid places on which the light of sun
ever shone, and yet they're under it lies the influence
of a tropical heat belching up its poison and malaria.
The dregs of the seven vials of wrath covered with
(21:23):
a yellow, greenish scum. How bad is that?
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Yeah? It makes me think spring Break, New Orleans exactly.
It does make you wonder, like, how did the Native
Americans mag live there so long if the conditions were
as bad as everyone makes it out to be.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. But if you
stop and think about it, their lifestyle was a little
more flexible than that of the European colonists, so when
the floods came, a tribe could simply move to higher
ground or maybe build a couple dams to keep the
village dry. And things got a little bit more complicated, though,
like when you start trying to establish a permanent city
for tens of thousands of former prisoners. So life in
(22:00):
the swamp was exceptionally hard for settlers, but that's largely
because they were asking more of the region than anyone
before them had, so the civilization they wanted it It
did come together, little by little, but it took a
lot of time and a lot of trial and error
just to get there.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
All right, Well, now we have the history, but I
feel like we should cover some more of the only
in New Orleans things, So why don't we do that?
For first to quick break and.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Welcome back to part time genius. All right, Mago, So
before the break we talked about why New Orleans is
a terrible place to be a grave digger. So I
didn't know that before. It's water table is so high
that above ground and tournament is really the only safe option.
And you know, as you might guess, that kind of
concern extends beyond the cemetery, so forends, you'd be hard
(23:00):
pressed to find an underground basement in New Orleans for
very much the same reason, like it would flood anytime
it rained. But again, just like with the above ground tombs,
residents solve the dilemma by getting pretty creative. So in
the early twentieth century, these new raised basement houses started
appearing throughout the city. So these homes consisted of these
(23:21):
low ceiling basements built at ground level and a higher
ceiling living space on top of those. So if you've
ever seen a house in New Orleans with an unusually
long staircase leading up to the front door, that's probably
what's going on there, like these stairs go straight to
the second floor because the first floor is actually just
the basement.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
You know, it's neat to see all the different workarounds
residents have come up with over the years, like that
first floor basement setup. That works great for a private home,
but it's a little less practical for a shop in
the city, right, So customers need to be able to
pop in easily without having to climb a steep set
of stairs or navigate through the storre's basements. And that's
why if you look look up some of the older
row homes in New Orleans, the ground floor is taken
(24:03):
up by a retail space and the basement is actually.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
In the ceiling. Wait, isn't that just an attic?
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yeah, I mean it sounds like it the way I
put it, but actually that's not the case. So it's
actually more like a crawl space between the first floor
and the second story. So you'd open a trap door
in the floor, and rather than climbing up into the
ceiling like you would in an attic, you'd actually like
sneak down into the space between the store and your
first floor of a home. And it's a pretty clever
(24:29):
way to sneak some extra storage space into a rowhouse
without having to go all the way up to an attic.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yeah, I guess that's true. So if you ask me,
the real historical must have for your New Orleans home
is a floor level mirror. So apparently a lot of
the plantation homes in and around the city at the
time featured these long mirrors, and they were mounted flush
with the floor, and that was so that women could
check the links of their dresses to make sure that
their ankles weren't showing. Because mego, if you know this, like,
(24:58):
the ankle is the gateway to all impure thoughts and deeds,
I think, So.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
It does seem strange that people actually freaked out about
seeing an ankle in public, considering that, like the summers
in New Orleans are so hot, it is.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Tough to imagine like how unbearable that would be. And
in addition to ankle coverings, folks in the region had
another way to prevent scandals. They would use this architectural
quirk called the Romeo catcher. So if you've ever spent
time in the French Quarter or seen pictures of it,
you're likely familiar with the second and third floor balconies.
They're called galleries when you're in New Orleans, and these
(25:34):
things line the historic streets when you go visit there,
and along these balconies you'll also see lots of ornate
rod and cast iron railings, as well as some metal
support columns connecting the balconies to the streets below. Now,
on some of these buildings, if you're near the top
of the columns, you'll see what looks like a ring
of spikes or barbed wire going all the way around
(25:57):
the post. And on somehouses, the spikes might look like
nails sticking out in all directions, while other houses might
have spikes that look like coat hooks or thorns or
something like that. But you know, in either case, the
purpose of the spikes was the same. It was to
deter these would be Romeos from climbing up to Juliette's
balcony late at night.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
And I'm guessing those still come in pretty handy during
Mardi Gras, right, Like, if someone has too much to drink,
they'd probably think twice about climbing that balcony once they
see those spikes.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yeah, definitely. And that's actually where this story takes a
little bit of a dark turn, which seems like what
we've been doing a lot of in this episode. But
because the Romeo catchers weren't really meant to catch the
late night boyfriends on the way up, the hope was
that the side of the spikes would scare the boy off,
but realistically, if he wanted to get around the spikes
(26:46):
badly enough, it wouldn't be too much of a problem
as long as he was sober. The true danger of
these spikes was on the way back down, because even
if a suitor did make it up to the balcony,
there was still a strong chance that the girl his
father would hear the commotion come charging in with a
loaded shotgun. And at that point the boy would usually
make for a break for the railing and trying to
(27:08):
scramble down. And this was happening so quickly, and in
his panic, the Romeo might forget about all the spikes,
waiting to snag whichever parts it might be able to.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
And you're saying these Romeo spikes are still there today though.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Oh yeah, I mean they're all over the French Quarter
and a lot of people never notice them though, So
they're like these little remnants of the city's history. Sort
of hidden in plain sight. It's something worth looking for
when you're there. And it's funny. Before the show, I
was thinking about the crowds on Bourbon Street and thinking
it's not a city for everyone. But the more we
talk about it, it's really more the opposite, Like there's
(27:43):
so many things going on in New Orleans, both culturally historically,
that there really is something for everybody. Like you can
look and do basically any aspect of the city and
come away with some colorful bit of history that ties
together these five different cultures, from.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Food to music to whenever. There's actually so much I
feel like we should do a follow up episode that's
all joyful instead of just disaster stuff. But you know,
it's true. It isn't the case with all American cities.
Like that level of historical scope and kind of the
variety that is in New Orleans is something we almost
exclusively attribute to like cities in Europe where like the
(28:20):
old and newer kind of intermingled and you can see
the different phases of civilization all at once. You know,
New Orleans is kind of an exception in that way
in America. It's an American city that's been shaped by
so many different hands over the years, and it's impossible
to pin down if it's strictly Southern or French or
Spanish or Haitian or Creole. It's like all of that
(28:41):
all at once.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yeah, and I appreciate how innately weird. The result of
that mashup is, like you read about those efforts to
keep Portland weird or keep Austin weird, But you're never
really going to need a public campaign like that in
New Orleans, Like there's no other option. The city can't
help but be itself.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah. Well, I think that's a good place to leave
things right now. But since we've been talking about the
Crescent City, it's only fitting that we end by offering
a little lan yaff of our own. So why don't
we do the fact off?
Speaker 2 (29:17):
All right? I'll start us off. So New Orleans is
the birthplace of a few unexpected inventions, I think you'd say,
and this includes the game of craps, the modern version
of poker, and randomly enough, dental floss. But one thing
that New Orleans can't actually claim credit for is the
Marti Gras Festival. And that's because, believe it or not,
the oldest Fat Tuesday celebration in America dates back to
(29:39):
seventeen oh three, and it took place not in New
Orleans but in my own Mobile, Alabama. I guess I
really can't say my own. I'm from Birmingham, you know,
it's in Alabama. So the Gulf coast of Alabama saw
its share of French explorers and the seventeen hundreds, just
like Louisiana did, and the more free spirited among them
started holding marti gross celebrations just they had back home.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
So I've got another bit of fun. Uh New Orleans
lingo for you, and the words are neutral ground, and
that's the term the locals use for that grassy strip
of brown do you find between two roads. We normally
refer to them as medians, but in New Orleans they're
called neutral ground. And the term apparently dates back to
the mid eighteen hundreds when there were these cultural and
(30:21):
political tensions and it was kind of an all time
high in the city. At that point. Things got so
bad that New Orleans was actually split into separate municipalities.
Like the French speaking Creoles and the supporters were on
one side, the Anglo English speaking populations were on the other,
but the dividing line for these groups was Canal Street,
which had a wide, grassy median running right down the middle,
(30:43):
and residents kind of half jokingly started calling the median
neutral ground, and before long the nickname was applied to
all the medians in the city.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
All right, Well, speaking of ways to keep the peace
in New Orleans, I have to tell you about the
peacemaker sandwich, which is basically the precursor to the city's
famous boy. So according to newspaper reports from the late
nineteenth century, the peacemaker, also known as the oyster loaf,
was pretty much a French loaf stuffed with these hot
fried oysters. But this wasn't a lunchtime staple like the
(31:13):
Poe boy would eventually be, and instead, the peacemaker was
a sandwich for a very specific occasion. So as the
name suggests, peacemakers were usually purchased by husbands as a
way to preemptively smooth things over with their wives after
coming home late from a bar or wherever else. And
this was common and a pretty well known practice in
New Orleans that was actually reported about in a San
(31:35):
Francisco newspaper way back in eighteen ninety three. But the
description of how the whole exchange plays out is too
good not to share, So I'm just going to read
out this excerpt that I pulled from it. When the
sandwich has been wrapped in paper, the buyer flees as
a bird to his home. The little difficulty with the
keyhole overcome, he steps into the awful presence undismayed. There
(31:58):
she stands, grim as but without an apologetic word. The
airing one climbs slowly up the stair and holds forth
the peacemaker. She takes it, puts down the lamp, and
removes the cover. The deliciously flavored theme ascends like sweet
incense until it reaches her rigid nockles, and then her
(32:19):
features relax into something like a smile. When her lord
is banging his shoes and depositing his hat carefully in
the wash basin, she sits on one side of the bed,
eating the spoils of domestic war.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
That is ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
It's very ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
I can't imagine working in my house. But here's another
food related fact. There's a legendary restaurant in New Orleans
called Dookie Chase's Restaurant, and the long running executive chef
there actually served as the inspiration for the Tiana character
in The Princess and the Frog. So when the production
team for that movie came to New Orleans on a
research trip, they met with the chef at a restaurant
(32:57):
and knew right away that she'd be the basis for
the main character. Now, the chef's name is not Tiana,
it's Lea Chase, and after reading about her this week,
she's kind of my new hero. She and her husband's
restaurant served as a crucial gathering place during the civil
rights movement in the sixties. In fact, Mlka and the
Freedom writers frequently met there to discuss strategies in her
(33:17):
upstairs meeting rooms. And we don't have time to go
through her whole life, but it's a really lovely story
about a woman who came from nothing and became this
source of hope and pride for a community. She passed
away in June of this year, but right up until
the end, she was still hard at work in the
kitchen of Doukie Chase, doing what she loved most.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
You know, I don't feel like I can top the
sweetness of that fact, So I think I'm going to
go the strange path instead. All right, So, during the
nineteen seventies, three of the first nine Super Bowls were
played at Tulane University in the stadium there it was
in New Orleans, and each of those games was attended
by two ancient Egyptian mummies who had lived around nine
(33:57):
hundred BC.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
So that is not where I expected that sentence. But
how did two ancient Egyptian mummies go to the Super Bowl?
Speaker 2 (34:04):
That's pretty easy, Maga. They took the sarcopha bus. I
don't know if you've ever heard this one.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
I feel like that's a terrible joke you stole from
your song.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
No, I totally stole that joke.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Quick.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
But here's the real fact. Two ancient Egyptian mummies were
donated to Tulane University in eighteen fifty and so for
the next one hundred years they were passed from one
museum exhibit to another until they ultimately made it back
to the school's math department. I don't know why, but
that's where they ended up. Then, in the nineteen fifties,
the mummies were put in a storage room beneath the
(34:37):
bleachers of Tulane Stadium, and that's where they stayed until
the mid seventies, when the stadium was torn down. So,
according to an article in the Tulane University magazine Quote,
the Mummies attended every two lane home game from nineteen
fifty five until the last wave appearance in Tulane Stadium
in nineteen seventy four. They were presented all three Super
(34:59):
Bowls and does of New Orleans Saints games waged on
two lane turf, and they never once complained about their
lousy seats.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
You know, I like that football loving mummies story, but
I really love the peacemaker sandwich story, which I think
earns you the victory of this STrenD.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Oh well, thanks for that, and from Gabe, Lil Mango
and me, thanks so much for listening. We'll be back
soon with another episode. Part Time Genius is a production
(35:36):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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