New Orleans Private Tours

03/26/2022

Congrats to Loyola University New Orleans Men's Basketball team! NAIA National Champions!

02/04/2021

Adrien de Pauger was a French engineer and cartographer. Appointed by Bienville, he drew the original map of the city, naming streets such as Bourbon, Royal among others. As a member of the Superior Council, he was an early supporter of creating a deep water port on the Mississippi, to take advantage of the area’s situational advantage. He also designed the layout for the city that would become Mobile, Alabama.
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02/03/2021

Baldwin Wood was a Tulane graduate and engineer who designed drainage pumps for the City of New Orleans. His “wood screws”, built in 1913, are still used today in the constant battle to keep a city below sea level as dry as possible. He also led the effort to convert much of the swamp within the city to buildable land for commercial and residential use. His pumps were so effective he went on to build drainage systems in Chicago, Baltimore, Milwaukee, San Francisco, as well as projects in Canada, China, Egypt, and India.
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01/28/2021

Eli Whitney was born in 1794 and is famous for inventing the cotton gin, a machine that removed cotton seeds from cotton fiber. His invention revolutionized the production and processing of cotton by removing seeds at a rate 50 times faster than a worker by hand.

While the rate of production generated an increased demand for cotton, it inadvertently created a growing demand for slave labor. While slavery is often thought of as a Southern institution, fabric mills in the Northeast and Europe drove demand and profited from slave labor while fueling the Industrial Revolution and creating enormous wealth for some and generational poverty for others.
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Small, custom, private tours of New Orleans and surrounding regions. Offering a safe alternative to large public tours. Plantation~Swamp~City~Driving~Much More

01/26/2021

Today in history: Iberville leaves Pensacola for LA, 1699

01/26/2021

Philippe II, Duc of Orleans was named Regent of France when King Louis XIV died, leaving the crown to his 5-year old grandson. Philippe served as Regent from 1715-1723, until Louis XV attained majority age.

It was during the period of his regency, that the City of New Orleans was founded in 1718 and named after him. It was during his regency that Antoine Crozat was first given a monopoly over trade in Louisiana, followed by John Law’s bursting of the Mississippi Bubble.

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10/16/2020

Henriette Delille was a free woman of color who shunned the placage system and found her calling in faith and charitable work.

She was a founder of the Sisters of the Holy Family, a religious order for women of color that served the elderly and poor and nursed the sick.

In 2010, Pope Benedict declared that she was venerable, a level of sanctity no other local person has reached. If canonized, she will become the first-born black person from New Orleans to be recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

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10/08/2020

Antoine Crozat was a wealthy banker in France and a financial counsellor to King Louis XIV.

France could no longer afford to support the colonization of Louisiana and in exchange for loans made to the king, Crozat was ennobled as the Marquis du Chatel in 1712 and given a 15-year monopoly over trade in Louisiana.

From the beginning, France had an extractive philosophy in Louisiana, meaning that is was focused more or finding valuable resources like gold and silver and gave little support to establishing a permanent settlement there.

Crozat believed that he could extract resources, establish trade and make a profit, where the government of France could not.

Ignoring the vast resources such a lumber, agricultural products and seafood in search for gold and silver only to find none, Crozat relinquished his monopoly and returned Louisiana’s development back to the government of France. A year later, the City of New Orleans would be founded under a new corporate scheme envisioned by John Law.
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09/16/2020

Today in Louisiana History: U.S. Navy attacks Jean Lafitte's stronghold in Barataria, 1814.

09/16/2020

The Cabildo is one of three eighteenth-century buildings on Jackson Square that survive today.
It was built in 1794 to replace its predecessor lost in the fire of 1788. It was used as a jail, parish church, and a rectory. Later, it became the administrative office of the Spanish government. Funding to re-build it after the fire came from Don Andres Almonaster y Rojas, the Spanish notary.

To the surprise of many visitors, New Orleans was owned/controlled by Spain from 1762-1803.
Financially strapped, France gave Louisiana to Spain, only to ask for it back in 1803 in order for France to sell Louisiana to the United States.

The Louisiana Purchase took place on the second floor in 1803 and the building remained in use as city hall, then the Supreme Court, before becoming a state museum.
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09/06/2020

John Law's Company of the West was chartered as a commercial venture, 1717.

09/01/2020

This 1964 Norman Rockwell image titled, The Problem We All Live With” depicts the first day of school for 6-year-old Ruby Bridges. This painting recalls November 14, 1960, when Ruby Bridges was the first African American child to integrate William Frantz school, an all-white elementary school, here in New Orleans.

Her admission was made possible by the case Brown V. Board of Education, which ended segregation by over-turning Plessy v. Ferguson and its separate but equal ruling, decided in 1896.

Today, Ruby lives in New Orleans and continues to be an activist for racial equality by promoting tolerance and change through education.
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