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The Halle des Boucheries is the oldest building location in the
French Market. (It's unfair to say that this structure is the
oldest building, since they've all been re-built so many times
that they're all about the same age.) The original marketplace
from the 1790s and earlier would have been here, in-between the
town square (what we now call Jackson Square) and the main mode
of transportation, the river. The early market structures were
all destroyed by the time the Americans took control of the city
in 1804, so the city government ordered the a permanent structure
built in 1813. This building was designed by Jacques Tanesse,
who was the city surveyor of the time. (Tenesse's 1815 work,
_Plan of New Orleans, with Buildings_, is an important source
of information about the city in the early 19th century.
)
But you're not all that interested in that, are you? You want
to get to the end of the walk here so you can enjoy the fruits
of your labor, namely a snack at the French Market's oldest tenant,
Cafe' du Monde. The Butcher's Market got its name, obviously
enough, because this was where the meat vendors set up shop.
Most of the butchers in mid 19th century New Orleans
were Italians, and the lilt of the Italian language mixed in with
the French that was still omnipresent, as well as the accented
English of the Germans and Irishmen in the Vieux Carre made for
the kind of scene that is almost impossible for a filmmaker to
reproduce. You can't buy fresh meat in the Butcher's Market these days, but you can still buy lots of interesting items from the various shops in the building.
Cafe du Monde
The coffee's still strong, and the donuts are still too hot to touch. (If you
get that, drop me e-mail and let me know.) I've already had my say on coffee and donuts at CDM, in VNO's New Orleans Coffee and Beignets feature, but there's always just one more story to tell about CDM and the French Market. My most memorable trip to CDM was with a group of three year-olds. There's nothing like re-discovering where you live through the eyes of a child, and this time those eyes belonged to my son, Justin. When Justin was 3, we enrolled him in the pre-kindergarten program at Ecole Classique. I joined the class on a field trip to go buy a pumpkin that they were going to carve into a jack-o-lantern for Halloween. We took the entire walk through the French Market as we've done in this series, and ended up getting donuts and milk at CDM. Sugar-covered donuts and chocolate milk are about as good as it gets for a three year-old, lemme tell ya. Combine that with the "red ladies" of the Riverfront streetcar line going by, along with a small train pulled by a N.O. Public Belt RR switching engine, and these little boys were in seventh heaven! Even the guy who plays the saxaphone out in front of CDM got into the swing of things when he saw the kids. He went into a medley of songs the kids recognized, including the theme from "Sesame Street." What a magical morning!
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