The author, a native of New Orleans, displays his passion for the "French Quarter" of the city in 106 color photographs highlighting Old World architecture, style, and history that has made this section of the city famous throughout the world.

A handbook for discovering the architectural gems in the Vieux Carré of New Orleans

Originally published in 1838, Nouveau Jardinier de la Louisiane, by Jacques-Felix Lelièvre, was the first of only two books on Louisiana gardening to be written in the nineteenth century. The book drew upon the confident spirit of eighteenth-century Enlightenment France, forming a bridge from the writings of French horticulturalists to an American audience. Optimistic, ambitious, and progressive, the guide urged gardeners to manage nature by acclimating new species and constantly improving native ones through the application of innovative scientific techniques. Now available in English for the first time as New Louisiana Gardener, this charming period piece and path breaking work can be enjoyed once again by gardening enthusiasts and historians alike. An introduction by Sally Kittredge Reeves gives historical context to the translation that follows, detailing the author's reasons for coming to America and his struggles to make a new life, his employment at and eventual ownership of a bookstore in New Orleans, and his reasons for compiling Nouveau Jardinier and publishing it in Francophile New Orleans. Written over 150 years ago, New Louisiana Gardener offers today's gardener a refreshing connection with other gardening enthusiasts across time. Here, in this delightful historical gem, modern cultivators can escape their fertilizers and tillers and rediscover for a moment the joy of facing Mother Nature with little more than a well-educated pruning knife and a hoe.

In the years following World War I, the New Orleans French Quarter attracted artists and writers with its low rents, faded charm, and colorful street life. By the 1920s Jackson Square had become the center of a vibrant if short-lived bohemia. A young William Faulkner and his roommate William Spratling, an artist who taught at Tulane University, resided among the "artful and crafty ones of the French Quarter." In Dixie Bohemia John Shelton Reed introduces Faulkner's circle of friends -- ranging from the distinguished Sherwood Anderson to a gender-bending Mardi Gras costume designer -- and brings to life the people and places of New Orleans in the Jazz Age. Reed begins with Faulkner and Spratling's self-published homage to their fellow bohemians, "Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles." The book contained 43 sketches of New Orleans artists, by Spratling, with captions and a short introduction by Faulkner. The title served as a rather obscure joke: Sherwood was not a Creole and neither were most of the people featured. But with Reed's commentary, these profiles serve as an entry into the world of artists and writers that dined on Decatur Street, attended masked balls, and blatantly ignored the Prohibition Act. These men and women also helped to establish New Orleans institutions such as the Double Dealer literary magazine, the Arts and Crafts Club, and Le Petit Theatre. But unlike most bohemias, the one in New Orleans existed as a whites-only affair. Though some of the bohemians were relatively progressive, and many employed African American material in their own work, few of them knew or cared about what was going on across town among the city's black intellectuals and artists. The positive developments from this French Quarter renaissance, however, attracted attention and visitors, inspiring the historic preservation and commercial revitalization that turned the area into a tourist destination. Predictably, this gentrification drove out many of the working artists and writers who had helped revive the area. As Reed points out, one resident who identified herself as an "artist" on the 1920 federal census gave her occupation in 1930 as "saleslady, real estate," reflecting the decline of an active artistic class. A charming and insightful glimpse into an era, Dixie Bohemia describes the writers, artists, poseurs, and hangers-on in the New Orleans art scene of the 1920s and illuminates how this dazzling world faded as quickly as it began.

Hurricane Katrina ravaged much of New Orleans in 2005, but thankfully the city’s most treasured historic homes survived. Plantations & Historic Homes of New Orleans is a poignant tribute of these storied mansions, whose architectural beauty brings a unique flair to the Big Easy’s most famous neighborhoods. From the French Quarter and Garden District to Uptown, Marigny, and Bayou St. John, many of New Orleans’ grandest old homes and nearby plantations are featured in this book, showcasing the massive brick columns, intricate cast-iron balconies, wide verandas, sumptuous parlors, and humble servants quarters that give this area its charm. Open these pages and you’ll travel to Destrehan, the oldest plantation house in the Mississippi Valley, originally built of hand-hewn bald cypress timber using briquette entre’pateaux, mud (clay, river sand, and Spanish moss) between post; the homes artist Edgar Degas and author William Faulkner lived in during their New Orleans’ stays; and the 1850 House located in the Lower Pontalba building on Jackson Square. Learn about the building’s namesake, a baroness with a tumultuous family life who managed to escape murder and was also responsible for building the American embassy in Paris. With lavish photographs of exteriors and rooms of special interest, gardens and curiosities, and detailed information about New Orleans’ diverse architecture and history, this book is both a perfect guide for visitors and natives alike and an enchanting visual tour of one of the greatest cities in the United States.

Over 100 illustrations describe the building styles of each historical era and highlight some 60 buildings of particular importance.

Few nineteenth-century architects ventured far from the pattern-book styles of their time. One architect not constrained by tradition was the Irish-born American Henry Howard, who started as a carpenter and stair builder in 1836 New York and arrived in New Orleans the following year, soon establishing a reputation for distinctive designs that blended American and European trends. His career gained momentum as he went on to design an extraordinarily diverse portfolio of magnificent residences and civic buildings in New Orleans and its environs. Henry Howard is a lavishly produced clothbound volume featuring hundreds of contemporary and archival images and a comprehensive analysis of his built work. The first book to examine the forty-year career of the architect, Henry Howard establishes a clear lineage of his aesthetic contributions to the urban and rural environments of the South. Princeton Architectural Press co-publishes Henry Howard with The Historic New Orleans Collection: a museum, research center, and publisher dedicated to the study and preservation of the history and culture of New Orleans and the Gulf South.