New+Orleans+Side+Trips

** New Orleans Side Trips ** Places to Visit During Your Free Time at Annual 2011 toc

Taking a slightly different approach, in recognition of the importance of food and drink to the culture of New Orleans, as well as to collegiality and the forging of new friendships, the "Side Trips" compilers have added the category of **Woman-Owned Restaurants and Women Chefs** as well as listings of cultural and historical sites that highlight those who worked for progressive social change.

** Woman-Owned Restaurants & Women Chefs **

[[image:http://www.upperline.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/joann.jpg width="133" height="128" align="left" caption="JoAnn Clevenger"]]**[|Upperline Restaurant]**
[|Lonely Planet] calles Upperline "an excellent choice for contemporary Creole food in romantic surroundings. Owner JoAnn Clevenger loves her city - its art, its architecture, its cuisine - and Upperline reflects these passions. She plays the charming hostess, making sure each guest feels welcome in her beautiful old house, its walls covered with vibrant paintings. Diners are then treated to exquisite Creole dishes." Clevenger grew up in rural Alexandria where her love of the traditional cuisine of Louisiana was instilled at an early age. "My first paid job was gathering pecans on my grandfather’s small farm. I was 7 years old and thrilled to collect two cents for each pound. Helping with chores on a farm is a beguiling passage to the pleasures of the table." "As a child," says Clevenger, "I loved books and longed to be transported to a land of theater, museums, art, music and literature." She moved to the French Quarter in the late 1950s; although she relished rubbing shoulders with musicians, artists, writers and other bohemians of the day, food remained central to her life.
 * 1413 Upperline Street, 504.891.9822 **

**Aunt Leni’s Café and Market (closed)**
Lurline Amelia “Aunt Leni” Donahue McCloskey was born in 1914 and found her way into the restaurant business, when her eldest sister, Irma Donahue Murphy, opened Irma’s on Patterson Street in Algiers Point in the 1940s. Irma's became known as a community gathering place, friendly to workers and families alike. They eventually opened another Irma’s at the site of the current Old Point Bar in Algiers Point. When a younger sister, Hanna Donahue Eskine, opened the Maticard Restaurant and Bar in Gretna, McCloskey joined her and operated the restaurant with Hannah running the bar. Now owned by McCloskey's daughter, Hillery McCloskey Moïse, Aunt Leni's offers a menu of soups, salads, main courses, sandwiches, paninis, pizzas, frittatas, and desserts. Most offerings are prepared in house and the restaurant takes special pride in the focaccia bread baked daily and their homemade desserts.

**[|Cafe Reconcile]**
A nonprofit restaurant located in the Central City neighborhood Cafe Reconcile, serves as the primary training ground for students seeking to acquire skills in the food service industry. Featuring soul-filled local dishes and some of the city’s lowest prices, the restaurant has earned high praise from local and national critics. By dining at Café Reconcile, you help to train their students and at the same time provide financial support for their training.
 * 1631 Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard, 504.568.1157 **

[[image:http://www.biteofthebest.com/wp-content/uploads/.thumbs/.TB_kerryseaton.jpg width="135" height="134" align="left" caption="Kerry Blackmon"]]**Willie Mae's Scotch House**
Willie Mae Seaton's great-granddaughter Kerry Blackmon took over the kitchen when the Scotch House reopened in 2007 following an extensive post-Katrina repair job. Fried chicken is its raison d'etre and for good reason. The wet-battered chicken with its tight, brittle crust is the main reason the restaurant was the recipient in 2006 of an America's Classic award from the James Beard Foundation. Willie Mae's started as a bar in 1957, and if not for the tantalizing aromas of Seaton's home cooking, it might have remained just that. "My grandmother's customers from the bar said, 'We always smell your good food coming out the house. You should open up a restaurant,'" recounts Kerry Seaton. "And here we are, 52 years later."
 * 2401 Saint Ann Street, 504.822.9503  **

**Chef Leah Chase**
The owner of Dooky Chase Restaurant, Leah Chase is widely considered one of the greats of Creole cuisine. According to the [|National Visionary Leadership Project], in a town deeply divided by segregation, Dooky Chase’s Restaurant was one of the only public places in New Orleans where mixed race groups could meet to discuss strategy for the local Civil Rights Movement. Although such gatherings were illegal through most of the 1960s, Dooky Chase’s was so popular, it would have caused a public uproar if local law enforcement had interrupted the meetings. Black voter registration campaign organizers, the NAACP, backdoor political meetings, the Nation of Islam and countless others often found a home at Dooky Chase’s, and Leah cooked for them all." After Hurricane Katrina inundated much of New Orleans and left Dooky Chase wading in five feet of floodwater, the restaurant was temporarily closed. But with a collective effort of fundraising, Dooky Chase reopened in 2007.
 * Dooky Chase Restaurant |** [[image:http://www.visionaryproject.com/chaseleah/chase.jpg width="118" height="160" align="right" caption="Leah Chase"]]** 2301 Orleans Avenue, 504.821.0535 **

**[|Commander's Palace]**

 * 1403 Washington Avenue, 504.899.8221 **Ella Brennan is matriarch of one of the most prominent restaurant families in the South, over the course of her career exhibiting a talent for recognizing and developing restaurant talent. Brennan also worked with farmers and the fishing industry to cultivate local markets for their goods and provide her restaurants with the best possible ingredients. From [|KnowLA: The Encyclopedia of Louisiana]: Brennan learned the restaurant business by total immersion, working for her brother, Owen, from the age of eighteen. Initially she paid bills and wrote menus, but soon she was training waiters and hiring cooks. Gradually, she learned food. Though Brennan was not herself a cook (“Who the hell wants to cook?”), she developed terrific food sense and an educated palate. Now semiretired, Brennan lives next door to Commander’s Palace and continues to be involved with her popular Garden District restaurant. Her daughter and niece, Ti Adelaide Martin and Lally Brennan, today run the day-to-day operations of Commander’s Palace.

**[[image:spicer.jpg width="140" height="140" align="left"]]Chef Susan Spicer**
Spicer formed a partnership with Regina Keever and in the spring of 1990 opened Bayona in a beautiful, 200-year-old cottage in the French Quarter. With solid support from local diners and critics, Bayona soon earned national attention and has been featured in numerous publications, such as Food and Wine, Saveur, and The New York Times. Bayona's menu includes hints of the Mediterranean, the Far East, North Africa, France, Italy and the whole of the United States. Bayona is also sensitive to the needs of vegetarians, vegans and those with other specific diets; a daily vegetarian special is always available. Spicer's latest project is a casual, family style restaurant in her Lakeview neighborhood. Spicer says "Mondo is the restaurant I've been wanting to open for years — a comfortable, neighborhood place with friendly, professional service, a variety of great food and unique but moderately priced wines, beers and spirits. We'll always bring you the best of our local harvest and reach across the globe for authentic ingredients in our quest to make simple, delicious food that's accessible no matter what neighborhood you're from."
 * [|Bayona] | 430 Dauphine Street, 504.525.4455 **
 * [|MONDO]** **| 900 Harrison Avenue, 504.224.2633 **
 * [|Wild Flour Breads]**, co-owned with partner Sandy Whann, grew out of Spice, Inc., a specialty food market with take-out food, cooking classes and artisan bakery. Wild Flower Breads "capture the essence of Old World baking" using traditional methods and only all-natural ingredients. Find Wild Flour Breads @ Zara's Food Store, 4838 Prytania Street, or Langenstein's Grocery, 1330 Arabella Street.

** Culture and History **

[|Iron Rail Book Collective][[image:http://ironrail.org/img/logoX.gif width="142" height="140" align="left"]]
New Orleans "only anarchist bookstore and library" reopened at its new French Quarter location in May, following a controversial eviction from its former location in the ARK at 511 Marigny. Founded in December 2003, the Iron Rail is committed to anarchist, anti-authoritarian, feminist, anti-racist, queer-positive and class-conscious politics, and to providing alternative literature and information to the people of New Orleans. Iron Rail is a collectively owned and operated, all-volunteer, non-profit reading room, lending library, bookshop, and community space with over 7,000 titles for free borrowing. This collection includes volumes on anarchist action, anarchist theory, and the histories of overlooked groups, struggles, and individuals. Other strengths include feminism, gender, race, class, sexuality, sex work, as well as "a hell of an impressive fiction section to boot". The lending library is one of the largest collectively-run radical libraries in the country. The first library in metro New Orleans to re-open after Hurricane Katrina, the Iron Rail was for several months the only functioning library in the city.
 * 503 Barracks, 504.383.3284 **

**Gordon Sisters Memorial**
A stained glass window pays tribute to the philanthropic work of Jean and Kate Gordon. As president of the newly formed Woman's League for Sewerage and Drainage, Kate Gordon and a number of prominent suffrage leaders took advantage of the only voting right women had (taxpaying women could vote on tax matters) and rounded up enough signatures on a petition to force an election on the issue of city sewerage. One first-time voter that day was state suffrage leader Caroline Merrick, who told a reporter, "It was only for sewerage and drainage, but ... I am satisfied ... our votes will soon be wanted in other praiseworthy reforms." Jean Gordon made her mark by spearheading the drive to pass child labor laws; she became the city's first factory inspector in 1906. First Church restored the window, which was re-dedicated in 2009 in its new location in the church Sanctuary. Church board co-president Mary Jo Day said, "It has been a long time, but I think that the sisters would be so pleased that they are honored by this church that we kept on until the window was in its rightful place."
 * In the Sanctuary of First Church New Orleans (Unitarian Universalist) 2903 Jefferson Avenue, 504.866.9010 **

**[|Laura Plantation]**
Laura Plantation is significant for its raised Creole plantation "big house" and its rare collection of outbuildings, including six slave quarters, that illustrate the development of a sugar cane plantation from the antebellum period well into the 20th century. The Laura Plantation web site asserts that "Creole Louisiana was a place where class, not race, determined social status, where rural life conformed to rigid disciplines, where human bondage created wealth, where adherence to the family business and tradition was paramount, where women ran businesses and owned property, where democratic ideals and individualism were held in contempt and where, until the 20th century, people spoke French and lived this way, separate from the dominant White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant American culture." Disney storyboarders and animators took a trip to the Laura Plantation to learn what life was like for women in 1920s Louisiana for //The Princess and the Frog//. Blogger [|Catherine Shoard] writes, "this explains a lot. The women at the Laura plantation redefine formidable. For four generations, they took over the running of the place from their fathers and husbands, often when they were only just into their teens." The plantation is on the National Register of Historic Places and is included on the [|Louisiana African American Heritage Trail]. The Heritage Trail listing describes the plantation tour as one of the intriguing along Louisiana’s River Road, with its focus on the white and black Creole families that lived at this place in the nineteenth century: "Built in 1805, this French-Creole style plantation displays some of the exceptional work of the West African slaves that once lived there. In addition to the “big house,” Laura has preserved several of the original slave cabins, once so common, but now incredibly rare. These serve as portals for understanding life in the “quarters.” Laura is also where American scholar Alcée Fortier, the famed Louisiana historian and folklorist, first recorded the West African stories of Compair Lapin, known today as the Br’er Rabbit stories. First recorded in the 1870s, these stories are virtually indistinguishable from those told to this day in West Africa. The present owners have made good use of the historical record to recreate the sites, sounds, and smells of this lost rural world."
 * 2247 Highway 18, Vacherie, Louisiana 888.799.7690 **

**Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson**
Noted for her short stories and poetry, Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935) was also a teacher, a journalist and an activist who worked for the causes of women’s suffrage and racial equality in the early 20th century. She was fired from an 18-year teaching position in Wilmington, Delaware in 1920 for participating in a social justice conference and engaging in other activist causes. Later she would be a strong supporter of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. Alice Moore was born in New Orleans in 1875 and grew up, according to The Booklover’s Guide to New Orleans, at 56 ½ Palmyra Street in the Carrollton neighborhood of New Orleans; she was educated at Straight College, which later became [|Dillard University] and taught in the public school systems in New Orleans before leaving for the north in 1897.

**[[image:nolamuseum.jpg width="160" height="209" align="left" link="http://noaam.org"]][|The New Orleans African American Museum]**
Located in Tremé, the oldest surviving black community in the United States, the New Orleans African American Museum is dedicated to protecting, preserving, and promoting through education the history, art, and culture of African Americans in New Orleans and the African diaspora. Current exhibits include Drapetomania, A Disease called Freedom, which moves viewers through a journey reliving U.S. history, with artifacts and objects (pamphlets, pictures, furniture, rare books, and other items) used in the slave trade illuminated in clear relief. The NOAAM web site states that the title of the exhibition is taken from an article in The Georgia Blister and Critic, v. 1, #7 (Sept. 1854), which dealt with the “diseases and physical peculiarities of the Negro Race.” Coined by Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, a Louisiana surgeon and psychologist, the word drapetomania is a combination of the Greek words drapetes for “runaway sIave” and mania “mad or crazy.” Drapetomania thus was used to describe the “mental disease” that “induces the Negro to run away from service, [and] is as much a disease of the mind as any other species of mental alienation, and much more curable, as a general rule.” The exhibit helps debunk the myth of this supposed illness, and illuminates how pseudoscientific methodologies were used to perpetuate racist practices.
 * 1418 Governor Nicholls Street, 504.566.1136 **

**[|St. Augustine Church]**

 * 1210 Governor Nicholls Street, 504.525.5934 **One of the oldest churches in the U.S. for black Catholics, St. Augustine was built at the request of Free People of Color and others in 1841-1842, when about half of the congregation was African American. The Louisiana African American Heritage Trail recounts a a story about the church's founding: A few months before the dedication of St. Augustine Church in 1842, Free People of Color began to purchase pews for their families to sit in. When white people in the area heard about this, they began a campaign to buy more pews than the blacks. The “War of the Pews” was ultimately won by the Free People of Color who bought three pews to every one purchased by the whites. In an unprecedented social, political, and religious move, the free blacks also bought all the pews of both side aisles. They gave those pews to the slaves as their exclusive place of worship, a first in the history of slavery in the United States. This mix of the pews resulted in the most integrated congregation in the entire country: one large row of Free People of Color, one large row of whites and other ethnicities, and two outer aisles of slaves. Historical figures such as Homer Plessy (of Plessy v. Ferguson fame) and Alexander P. Tureaud, Sr., a giant among the civil rights attorneys of the 1960s, were members of St. Augustine Church.

[[image:mollymarine.jpg width="192" height="128" align="left"]]Molly Marine Monument
On November 10, 1943, the city of New Orleans dedicated the first United States monument of a woman in service uniform: “Molly Marine.” A local recruiter commissioned the statue to help recruit women during World War II. Artist Enrique Alferez, an immigrant from Mexican who it is said wanted to be a Marine, donated his services. Due to wartime restrictions, the statue was cast in concrete with bits of marble and granite included in the mix. The model for the statue, former Marine Judy Mosgrove, is a New Orleans native. The inscription “Free A Marine To Fight” is engraved on the pedestal where Molly Marine stands. Replicas of the statue have been erected in in Quantico, Va., and Parris Island, S.C. According to the Women Marines Association, "Gazing up with her binoculars in hand, Molly appears to look to the future ... Like our women Marines, Molly stands tall; she braves the storms and tribulations as the years march on. She is a steadfast example of being a Marine showing that no matter what she faces she keeps on track." Hurricane Katrina damaged the statue's site. The Marine Corps League coordinated restoration and cleanup and many junior Marines also came to the cleanup event. "I like coming out here, I feel like we are doing something good, that we care about our history,” said Pfc. Stephanie B. Jaye, a Headquarters Battalion administrative clerk. ”People see us caring about what is ours,” she said.
 * Intersection of Canal Street and Elks Place Street**

**[[image:chopin.jpg width="124" height="176" align="right" caption="Kate Chopin"]][|Kate Chopin]**
Famed writer of The Awakening and other stories which explore women’s freedom and independence, Kate Chopin (1850-1904) lived in New Orleans for part of her married life, and a number of her works are set there. In The Awakening, for example, Edna Pontellier lives with her husband on the fashionable Esplanade Street. According to Chopin biographer Emily Toth, Kate and Oscar Chopin first lived on one side of a double cottage at 443 Magazine Street. Later, says Toth, as their fortunes increased, they moved to the corner of Constantinople and Pitt Avenue in 1874 (no longer standing) and then in 1876 to a home in the Garden District at what is now 1413 Louisiana Avenue. They lived there until 1879, when they moved to Natchitoches.

**[|Amistad Research Center]**
The Amistad Research Center was the first archives created to document the modern civil rights movement, and remains the nation's oldest, largest and most comprehensive independent archive specializing in the history of African Americans and other ethnic minorities. Collections cover the history of slavery, race relations, African American community development, and the civil rights movement; holdings include the papers of artists, educators, authors, business leaders, clergy, lawyers, farmers, and musicians. The collection contains approximately 250,000 photographs dating from 1859, and manuscript holdings contain letters and original manuscripts from prominent Harlem Renaissance writers and poets. The Center holds more than 400 works of African and African American art, including works by several internationally renowned 19th and 20th century African American masters. The current exhibition celebrates the life of Mississippi-born artist Richmond Barthé, who is known for his eclectic and sensual visual language that allowed him to create an oeuvre that defied race and sexual orientation while, at the same time, elevating Black subjects above contemporary caricatures to render them timeless.
 * 6823 St. Charl **** es A **** venue, 504.862.3222  **

**St. Charles Hotel**
(now called the [|Royal St. Charles]), 135 St. Charles Avenue The St. Charles Hotel and the New Orleans Atheneum were the site of the 35th Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, March 15-25, 1903. Among the speakers were Susan B. Anthony, NAWSA President Carrie Chapman Catt, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. According to the [|Proceedings] of the convention, the Association went to New Orleans "in response to an invitation from the Progressive Union, the Bra Club of women, and many prominent individuals. It is especially appropriate that the advocates of this important reform should assemble In Louisiana in honor of the action taken by this State in 1898 when its Constitutional Convention incorporated a clause giving to all tax paying women a vote on all questions of taxation submitted to the electors..." After a reception for delegates and members at the home of Mrs Reuben Bush, 1305 Josephine Street, Bishop Davis Sessums gave a prayer, and attendees were welcomed by New Orleans Mayor Paul Capdevielle and Progressive Union Secretary Richardson. Among the business at the convention, the Association voted to accept a states' rights structure along with permitting southern state organizations to exclude black women.

**Grace King**[[image:grace_king.jpg width="137" height="170" align="right" caption="Grace King"]]
One of New Orleans’ most famous 19th-century writers, Grace King (1852-1932) has been deemed by her biographer Robert Bush as “the patrician voice” of the post-Civil War South and her works are often criticized for speaking from a position of privilege. However, scholar Anne Jones argues that her works are “polyvocal. She wrote, most crucially, as a woman in a patriarchal literary establishment, a fact that contradicted the very conventions of race, class, and language that she otherwise represented.” King was born at 936 Camp Street, which is close to current Lee Circle. The most noted house associated with her is “The Grace King House” at 1749 Coliseum Street (privately owned). Among her many books, readers may find her[| New Orleans: The Place and the People], especially interesting (link is to full text).

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