Frenchmen Street: The Beginnings

Tracing the origins of Frenchmen Street takes one on a winding path through New Orleans history. It has had many lives and has both benefited and suffered from changes in industry and geographical focus. It was named by Bernard Marigny for the Frenchmen who rebelled against the Spanish in 1769; however, by 1870, the street became a diverse enclave of German, Irishmen, and old Modern Creole elite ¹ .

In the early twentieth century, it bolstered a thriving retail scene. Even referred to as a "miniature canal street." This face of Frenchmen peaked in the early 1950s and began to steadily decline leaving empty store fronts and "crumbling facades." According to Scott S. Ellis, "The mid 1960s found Frenchmen Street a sleepy neighborhood, where the remaining businesses were mostly locked up at night and the sparse bar traffic was mainly college kids, 'bohemians,' and stray sailors from the dives of Decatur Street"

This change can be seen in the slide below. The photo on the left shows the vibrant commercial scene in 1951 with a variety of first floor store fronts along with residential use on the second floor in 500-506 Frenchmen Street. The photo on the right was taken somewhere between 1968 and 1972, and it shows little to no commercial activity in the very same buildings.

Below, you can click around to see old uses of early Frenchmen cornerstones such as Snug Harbor, the Praline Connection, and Café Brasil.

This street is very different from the one we know today, but one bar, the Dream Castle, hinted at what would become. It was situated in 532 Frenchmen Street in the later famed Dream Palace/Blue Nile. Scott S. Ellis says, "The upstairs of the building was occupied by a brothel, honoring the traditional relationship between sexual commerce and musical innovation in Storyville"

The author James Nolan recalled "There was only one club there and it was called The Dream Castle. It was run by an old Creole man of color and it was a black bar, and it was actually the first integrated bar in the city of New Orleans. We would go there with some friends of ours in the Bozo Band, who were some dropped-out kids from across the country who had a little sort of a jug band. They were white. Babe Stovall, who was a black Mississippi Delta blues player, would sometimes play there, so he took us there. I remember very vividly that they [the police] were trying to bust the bar because it was integrated. When the police would come to the door, of course I was underage, so I would run to the bathroom and sit there for about half an hour and do my chemistry homework and wait for the police to leave ² ” 

The bar was short-lived and Frenchmen Street suffered further degradation after Hurricane Betsy in 1965. Nonetheless, there was a resurgence of interest in the Marigny in the 1960s, and a recognition of its value as a historic area.

This led to the creation of a special Zoning designation in 1971, an effort spear-headed by the research and work of Tulane University Architecture professor Eugene Cizek. The Historic Marigny district (sub-divided as Residential/Commercial, known as HMR and HMC) was passed in 1971 as a way of being able to oversee and regulate activity within the area, which is bordered by St. Claude (North), Franklin Avenue (East), Mississippi River (South) and Esplanade Avenue (West). Under Historic Marigny Commercial (HMC) Zoning, live music remained a prohibited use. This fact underlies several of the legal issues relating to music through the years.   

The historic zoning and renewed interest in the neighborhood coupled with cheap rents and a close proximity to downtown set the scene for the beginning of Frenchmen St. as we know it.