Today in New Orleans History

November 14


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The Market Theatre Closes
 November 14, 1915

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Photograph from the New Orleans Public Library

The Market Theatre, located on Teche Street near Foto's Market, provided Algerines with silent movies and vaudeville acts. The theater's farewell performances took place on November 14, 1915. The next day, the owner, Philip Foto, opened a new movie house, Foto's Folly Theater which was later affiliated with United Theaters, Inc. Foto, a New Orleans native also managed Panama Ice Company. He resided at 1801 North Broad, where he died on Wednesday, May 2, 1956 at the age of 85. Mr. Foto is buried in Metairie Cemetery. (From the New Orleans Public Library)



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On November 14, 2011, Carl Barbier, Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, ruled that British Petroleum, the company that leased the Deepwater Horizon oil rig which polluted the gulf with millions of barrels of spilt oil, must face federal maritime lawsuits by Alabama and Louisiana.

On November 14, 2008, the new slot-machine facility opened for operation at the Fair Grounds.

Nov. 14, 2004 - RB Deuce McAllister set a personal career mark with TDs in four straight games as the Saints beat Kansas City, 27-20 in the Superdome

Jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and occasional singer and flugelhorn player Theodore (Teddy) Riley, born in New Orleans on May 10, 1924, the son of Amos Riley (c. 1879 - 1925), a New Orleans trumpeter and bandleader.  Known for playing jazz, he also worked and recorded with various Rhythm & Blues bands and artists including Louis Cottrell, Jr., Fats Domino, Champion Jack Dupree, The Dookie Chase Orchestra, Roy Brown's Band, The Onward Brass Band, The Olympia Brass Band, The Williams Brass Band, and The Royal Brass Band.  In 1971 Riley played on the cornet used by Louis Armstrong in his youth for the New Orleans ceremonies marking Armstrong's death. He made a guest appearance on Wynton Marsalis' 1989 release "The Majesty of the Blues." He performed both leading his own small band at hotels and clubs as well as in various brass bands until just weeks before his death on November 14, 1992.

WLPN-LP was a low-power television station in New Orleans, Louisiana, broadcasting locally on UHF channel 61 was founded on November 14, 1986. In 1989, the station affiliated with Channel America. The station's license was cancelled on August 17, 2010.

When Amtrak assumed operation of U.S. passenger train service on May 1, 1971, the train's Chicago to New Orleans service was operated as the City of New Orleans on the traditional daytime schedule. Amtrak changed the route so that no connections with other trains at either New Orleans or Chicago existed; Amtrak moved the train to an overnight schedule on November 14, 1971 and renamed it the Panama Limited.

R.D. Farnsworth submitted plans for an addition to the Jung Hotel at 1500 Canal Street on November 14, 1962.


TodayInNewOrleansHistory/1961November14FloristsClaiborneOaks.gifThe designated route of Interstate 10 through New Orleans called for it to run along North Claiborne Ave. On November 14, 1961, city officials met on the avenue's neutral ground at Dumaine St. to mark its oak trees that were to be "saved." They are, from left, Herman Farley, president of Parks and Parkway Commission; Wilson S. Callender of New Orleans Floral Trail; Mayor Victor Schiro; Felix Seeger, commission superintendent, and Max Scheinuck, chairman of the ground committee. Only 51 of the 253 trees from Canal St. to Elysian Fields Avenue were deemed salvageable in a move The Times-Picayune editorialized was "indispensable to general progress." Removal of the trees did not occur until February 1966. Many cite the destruction of this leafy boulevard and its vibrant community life as start of Treme's downward spiral. Removal of this stretch of the interstate has been suggested in several post-Hurricane Katrina plans. (From the Times-Picayune)

Bodman, Murrell and Smith submitted plans for the Provincial House of the Sisters of St. Joseph at 1649 Mirabeau Avenue on November 14, 1956.

Photo of NORD football player Leonard McLannen on November 14, 1955.

Born in New Orleans on November 14, 1945, Donald Boesch is Professor and President of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and Vice Chancellor for Environmental Sustainability for the University System of Maryland.  He grew up in the Ninth Ward, experienced the flooding resulting from Hurricane Betsy, and graduated from Holy Cross and Tulane -- earning a B.S. in Biology.  He completed his Ph.D. in biological oceanography at the College of William of Mary in Virginia, after which he was a Fulbright-Hays Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Queensland in Australia. After returning to the the United States in 1972 he served as a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. In 1990 he moved back to Louisiana to become the first Executive Director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, where he was responsible for building its marine center at Cocodrie, Louisiana and two research vessels, the Pelican and the Acadiana. During this time, he was also a professor of marine science at LSU. In 1990 he became head of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and served on the Maryland Governor’s Chesapeake Bay Cabinet. In 2010, he was appointed by President Barack Obama as a member of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling to investigate the root causes of the blowout at the Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico. Boesch has conducted research on coastal and continental shelf ecosystems along the Atlantic Coast, the Gulf of Mexico, eastern Australia and the East China Sea. He has published two books and more than 90 papers on marine benthos, estuarine and continental shelf ecology, wetlands, effects of offshore oil and gas development, nutrient over-enrichment, environmental assessment and science policy. While in Louisiana, he initiated the research that documented the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone and identified its principal causes. His current research focuses on the use of science in ecosystem-based management and on assessments and adaptation strategies related to climate change.  He  has served on numerous committees advising federal agencies and the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, where he is presently chair of the Ocean Studies Board and a member of the Committee on America’s Climate Choices. He also serves on the Ocean Research and Resources Advisory Board, the external committee providing technical advice to the National Ocean Council. In 2007 he was given the Award for Lifetime Leadership in Ecosystem Restoration by the National Conference on Ecosystem Restoration. He is a member of the governing boards of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Chesapeake Research Consortium, the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, and the Town Creek Foundation.  (From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Boesch)

Born in New Orleans on November 8, 1876, Arthur Joseph O’Keefe, Sr., was the 48th mayor of New Orleans.  A graduate of St. Aloysius High School, he operated his own coffee import company.  Before becoming mayor, O’Keefe was a prominent member of the Regular Democratic Organization, the political machine that had dominated New Orleans for decades. He served as the RDO's Tenth Ward boss, the city’s Commissioner for Public Finance from 1925 to 1926, and after long-time mayor Martin Behrman died in office O’Keefe was elevated to serve the remainder of Behrman’s term. O’Keefe’s term in office (1926 through 1929) was marked by a controversy over whether two bridges over the Rigolets and Chef Menteur Pass would be toll-free bridges as advocated by Public Service Commissioner Huey Pierce Long, Jr., or toll bridges operated by a firm controlled by the mayor's political allies. O’Keefe also fought a bitter battle with Huey Long over piping cheap natural gas into New Orleans; an ally of the New Orleans energy monopoly NOPSI, O'Keefe unsuccessfully opposed the plan. Under O'Keefe's administration construction was begun on the Municipal Auditorium and plans for the Criminal District Court Building and Orleans Parish Prison were drawn up. He also served as president of the RDO's Choctaw Club.  In July 1929, O’Keefe resigned as mayor for health reasons; he was succeeded by T. Semmes Walmsley.  He was also vice-president of the American Bank and Trust Company and director of the Lafayette Fire Insurance Company and the Mutual Building and Loan Association.  O'Keefe died on November 14, 1943.

Several photos of Elysian Fields Avenue taken on November 14, 1938.

Drummer Joseph "Smokey" Johnson, born in New Orleans on November 14, 1936, is considered one of the musicians, session players, and songwriters who have served as the backbone for New Orleans' output of jazz, funk, blues, soul, and R&B music during the mid-twentieth century.  Raised in  Treme, he attended Craig School and Clark High School. He was Fats Domino's drummer for 28 years in the 1950s and 1960s.He has also worked with Wardell Quezergue , Earl King, Joe Jones,  Eddie Bo, Sugarboy Crawford, Red Tyler, Johnny Adams, and Dave Bartholomew to name just a few.  He said. “I used to work for Carlos Marcello at the Sho-Bar on Bourbon Street playing behind Rita Alexander, the Champagne Girl. She used to dance to that tune ‘Goldfinger’ with two champagne glasses on her titties. I was the only brother in the band. We had Don Seward on alto, he used to sound like Charlie Parker. He was a hell of a player, he was bad. That was some fightin’ hours way back then. Bourbon Street ain’t the Bourbon Street I remember. When I was playing down there, they had the dancers out on the street. If a black dude walked by the joint the barkers closed the door where he couldn’t see in there. I mean, I’d be goin’ on my gig but the cats would close the door when I passed by! Man, that was some crazy stuff."

Ellis Louis Marsalis, Jr., born in New Orleans on November 14, 1934, is the son of Florence Robertson and Ellis Marsalis, Sr. (who was a businessman, hotel owner,  and social activist) and the father of musicians Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo and Jason.  Active since the late 1940s, Marsalis came to greater attention in the 1980s and '90s as the patriarch of a musical family, with sons Branford Marsalis and Wynton Marsalis rising to international acclaim.  He played with fellow modernists including Cannonball Adderley, Nat Adderley, and Al Hirt, becoming one of the most respected pianists in jazz. He has recorded almost twenty of his own albums.  As a leading educator at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, the University of New Orleans, and Xavier University of Louisiana, Ellis has influenced the careers of countless musicians, including Terence Blanchard, Harry Connick Jr., Nicholas Payton; as well as his four musician sons.  In May, 2007, Marsalis received an honorary doctorate from Tulane University for his contributions to jazz and musical education. On December 7, 2008, Ellis Marsalis was inducted into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame. The Ellis Marsalis Center for Music at Musicians' Village in New Orleans is named in honor of Ellis Marsalis. In 2010, The Marsalis Family released a live album titled Music Redeems which was recorded at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC as part of the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival. All proceeds from the sale of the album go directly to the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.  Marsalis and his sons are group recipients of the 2011 NEA Jazz Masters Award.

BIEVER, Albert H., clergyman.  Born in Luxemburg in 1859; entered the Society of Jesus in 1875 at Grand Coteau, La.  Studied philosophy and theology at Stonyhurst and St. Beuno's, England; ordained a priest, member, Society of Jesus; gifted in languages, preached in French and German as well as English. Assigned, 1898-1904, to Jesuit church on Baronne St., New Orleans where he was a noted preacher; risked his life in the yellow fever epidemics to minister to the sick; in 1904 the story has it that the Jesuit provincial, Fr. William Power, gave him a nickel for carfare and told him to go uptown and start a university; what was to become Loyola University had inauspicious beginnings but by 1912 a university charter had been obtained from the state; by 1913 with the help of the Marquette Association, its Ladies' Auxiliary, Mrs. Louise Thomas, and Kate McDermott he had raised money for Marquette and Thomas Halls and the Church of the Most Holy Name of Jesus; 1913-1921 preached missions and retreats throughout the South; one technique was to perform a chemical experiment with appropriate sounds and colors to draw a crowd; used magic lantern slides to illustrate his discourses; 1921-1931 worked at Baronne St. and supervised the construction of the new church in the exact style of its predecessor.  Died, November 14, 1934.  L.A.N.  Source:  Thomas H. Clancy, ed., Our Friends (1978).  From http://lahistory.org/site19.php

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Dottie Lambour won the 1931 Miss New Orleans contest wearing a blue bathing suit and a blue linen dress she had bought on Canal Street for $2.98. Miss Lambour is seen here in an advertisement for Club Forest (407 Jefferson Highway) on June 7, 1931.  She did, in fact, go on to the 1931 Galveston pageant but failed to take a crown.  She attended Spencer Business College and took a job in the real real estate business but still dreamed of fame.  According a 1974 interview with local writer David Cuthbert, Dottie bought two tickets to Chicago, left one along with a note to her mother, and left New Orleans for a bigger city.  Her mother arrived the following day.  They took jobs in a restaurant, with Carmen in the kitchen and Dottie waiting tables.  She said the trays were too heavy for her to carry so "I walked into Marshall Field Department Store.  I had a terrible inferiority complex but when you do you put up more of a front."  "I want to see the supervisor" she said, to which the response was "Which one?"  "Well that stopped me. At D.H. Holmes and Maison Blanche all they had was one.  In those days at Marshall Field they had nine. All I could get out was 'I want to ride an elevator'. She got the job.While performing at a night clubs she was "discovered" by orchestra leader Herbie Kay who hired her to sing for his band. 
 
On November 14, 1932 she was back in New Orleans and back at Club Forest performing with Kay's "nation-wide famous band" featuring Dorothy Lambour (Miss New Orleans 1931)".  She later said that a Dallas sign painter left the "B" out in her name on a hotel display announcing the band's performances and that Herbie Kay adivised her to let it be, and so she became "Dorothy Lamour".  She also became Mrs. Herbie Kay/Mrs. Herbert F. Kaumeyer on Monday, May 13, 1935. "Without Herbie, I don't think I'd be in show business", she said.
 
Dottie made a total of 50 flims, seven of them in the "Road to..." series.  During World War II she performed for GIs, hosted at USO facilities, was one of the most popular pin-up girls, and was not only the first star to volunteer to sell war bonds but is also  credited with selling some $300 million worth of them.  In later years she toured with theatrical shows and became more active in volunteer service.  Referring to the 1987 film ''Creepshow 2,'' where she played sloppily housewife who is murdered, she said ''Well, at my age you can't lean against a palm tree and sing 'Moon of Monakoora.'' Dottie died on September 22, 1996 in North Hollywood at the age of 81


The day after George Adrian Paoletti passed away on November 14, 1924 the Times-Picayune posted a notice of his death on the front page of its newspaper.  It ran an article proclaiming "We dare assert that no one man during his lifetime has occupied a fuller place in our city's music, or in the sum total has been of more service to the cause of music, or has given more enjoyment to a greater number of citizens".  The article went on the note that Paoletti had dedicated 25 years of winters to the French Opera House (where he also led ballets) and 30 summers travelling with Liberiti's Band and that he was "prominently connected with important musical movements in the city for more than 35 years".
 
His career began after his father Joseph (a musician) taught him and he subsequently studied under Professor Sontag in New Orleans.  In 1888 he was a solo coronetist Sontag's band at old Spanish Fort.  A professor of music at Tulane University, he was also the leader of the West End Band, leader and instructor for Shrine Band and Indivisible Friends Commandary Band.  He instructed the Mexican Petroleum Company Band and was instructor of band and music at Boy's High School. In musically related endeavors, Paoletti organized the fraternal home of the Musician's Union of New Orleans and served at director and board member.  He was president of the Musician's Protective Union, 174 A.F.M. 
 
A native New Orleanian, born January 2, 1867, he died at his home at 1326 St. Andrew Street wher he was also waked.  Survivors included his widow, Izabel Chaery, daughter Mrs. Gilbert Duroc, and son Joseph Victor Paoletti.  He is buried in St. Louis No. 2 cemetery. 

 

Mark S. (Humpty Dumpty) Polhemus, born on October 14, 1860 in Brooklyn, played on the 1889 New Orleans Pelicans team, leading the league in batting average, hits, doubles, and runs scored in the year New Orleans won the pennant.  Polhemus died on November 14, 1923 at the age of 63.

Born in Baltimore on November 14, 1916, Don Ewell was a jazz pianist best known for his work with prominent New Orleans–based musicians such as Sidney Bechet, Kid Ory, George Lewis, George Brunis, Muggsy Spanier and Bunk Johnson.  From 1956 to 1962, Ewell was a leading member of the Jack Teagarden band. Following Teagarden's death Ewell did some European tours, and then moved back to New Orleans and played clubs and hotels until his death on August 9, 1983.

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The origin of the word jazz has had wide spread interest—the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century—which has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. The word began [under various spellings] as West Coast slang around 1912, the meaning of which varied but did not refer to music.
 
The use of the word in a musical context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune.  Its first documented use in a musical context in New Orleans appears in a November 14, 1916 Times-Picayune article about "jas bands" according to Benjamin Zimmer (June 8, 2009). ""Jazz": A Tale of Three Cities". Word Routes. The Visual Thesaurus.  That Times-Picayune article appears on the right.
 
The "Jas Parade" cited in the article was scheduled for November 23, 1916 would include stage workers, actors, and actresses from theaters in town who would be  travelling in in "an automobile affair" (cars had only become available and popular around 1910) which would "traverse the city led by a genuine and typical 'jas band'".  They would end the parade at the Washington Arillery to celebrate their annual masquerade ball.  The Washington Artillery Hall was on St. Charles between Girod and Juila.  It's second floor contained two ball rooms, one of which had also been used by the Krewe of Rex before the building was demolished in 1952.
 
According to the National Park Service: "The Tango Belt (further described later in this document) was in the French Quarter just across Basin and North Rampart streets from Storyville, and there was a symbiotic relationship between the two entertainment areas. The Tango Belt had numerous saloons, cabarets, nightclubs, and three large theaters that employed jazz musicians, including the Oasis Cabaret, the Elite, Butzie Fernandez, the Haymarket and Ringside cafes, and the Black Orchid. The name Tango Belt derived from a 1915 newspaper article that used that name to describe this district. At its peak, the area had one of the highest concentrations of commercial jazz venues in the city. Many buildings in the Tango Belt have been removed or significantly altered, and more research is needed to determine the status of many of the structures related to early jazz."

An ordinance was passed providing a Public Square (later named Tulane Park) created by the intersection of Banks and Common Streets, extending from Galvez to Prieur Streets on November 14, 1896.

Born in born in Seloncourt, France on November 14, 1822, George David Coulon's family moved to New Orleans in the summer of 1833.  Educated in the public schools, he then studied art in the city with Louis David,  Jacques Amans, took drawing lessons with Toussaint Bigot, had lessons in portraiture from François Fleischbein, and studied decorative painting with Antonio Mondelli. In Paris he was a student of Anne-Louis Girodet. Coulon assisted his son-in-law, Leon Pomarede, in painting a copy of Raphael’s Transfiguration on the altar wall of St. Patrick's Church.  He also assisted in frescoing the ceiling of the Old Criminal Court in the Cabildo. In 1840 he took lessons in portraiture from Julien Hudson and more lessons from Bigot in figure and landscape. He painted his first portrait in 1841.  After 1845 he did conservation work by relining and restoring old paintings. In 1848 he painted a large work entitled Worshipping of the Shepherds.   He married Marie-Paoline Casbergue (1831–1914) on March 19, 1850, a New Orleans native and artist known for still lifes of birds and game. They had two children, Mary Elizabeth Emma Coulon (1859–1928) and George Joseph Amede Coulon (1854–1922), who were also well-known artists. Coulon worked as an artist and teacher of drawing and painting in New Orleans for more than fifty years, from 1851 to 1865. He was one of the founders of the Southern Art Union and the Artists Association of New Orleans. Some of his major portrait commissions include: several of Msgr. Antoine Blanc, first archbishop of New Orleans; two of Rev. F. Mullen, founder of St. Patrick's Church; Laurent Sigur, founder of The Delta newspaper; one of Capt. Tos. Fry, the Cuban martyr; two of Col. W. Wright, U. S. Commissioner, and portraits of ten Louisiana Supreme Court justices.  He also painted portraints from masks taken after death. He died in New Orleans on February 28, 1904 and was interred in  St. Louis Cemetery No. 3.

Equal Education for All
November 14, 1960
 
TodayInNewOrleansHistory/RubyBridgesNormanRockwell.gifMost New Orleanians, in fact most Americans, know of Ruby Bridges who, as a six-year-old first-grader, climbed the long stairs to the entrance of William Frantz Elementary School at 3811 North Galvez Street on the day the city's schools ended racial segregation while some of its citizens displayed vehemently and cruelly some of the worst traits in human nature. Norman Rockwell captured the moment when U.S. Marshalls accompanied her amid hate-filled screams of adults and children alike. 
 
Federal agents drove her and her mother,  Lucille, the nine blocks from their home to the school.  Mother and daughter spent most of that day talking with school administrators and U.S. Marshalls.  Some teachers walked out in protest but her teacher remained.  Most students were absent.  At the end of that first day, the Bridges watched themselves on television, their home under 24-hour protection.  Ruby Bridges later recalled that her mother made her lunch that day -- a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (which she didn't particularly like) because "The school was afraid, I learned later, that I would be poisoned".
 
Less well known are three girls the same age and in the same grade who attended McDonogh 19 at 5900 St. Claude Avenue the same day,  November 14, 1960. They were Leona Tate, Gail Etienne, and Tessie Prevost. Tate, Etienne, and Ruby Bridges are picture here at the school in 1981. (Photo from the New Orleans Public Libray Louisiana Division Photograph Collection)
 
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The McDonogh girls were also escorted by Federal Marshalls and remembered chants of "Two, four, six, eight. We don't want to integrate" shouted while eggs were hurled at them.  Etienne later said that she was "terribly afraid...If those people could get to me, they would have killed me". 
 
During the first year all pf the four children were not allowed to leave home alone and after that were not allowed to leave  their neighborhoods unescorted for fear that they might be harmed. All of them remember being the only students at their schools during the early days of desegregation.  
 
When the McDonogh girls entered third grade, they were transferred to T. J. Semmes school, a few blocks away, where a few other black students were enrolled.  Prevost remembered, "Every recess we would crouch under a tree with an overhanging branch".  Etienne recalled that older students spit in their hair, knocked the down, and kicked them.  All four, when they were adults, expressed the feeling that their parents suffered as much, if not more.
 
Years later their parents all agreed that despite the hate mail, threatening phone calls, and lost jobs, they would have made the same decision to allow their daughters to be among the first...Theodile Etienne said of his child, "She achieved something by being a pioneer".  
 
Twenty-three years later, on April 28, 1983, Bridges, Tate, Etienne, and Prevost and their parents were honored at City Hall by Governor John Treen and Mayor Dutch Morial on "The New Oreans Four Day" in recognition of "These children and their parents (Eula Mae and Theodile Etienne, Lucille Bridges, Charles and Dorothy Prevost, and Louise Tate) who exhibited exemplary faith and courage in pursuit of equal educational opportunities for all".

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Abreviations used on this site: NOPL (New Orleans Public Library), LOC (Library of Congress), LDL (Lousiana Digital Library), HNOC (Historic New Orleans Collection), WIKI (Wikipedia).

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