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By Sarah Baird It can sometimes feel impossible to separate iconic buildings and public spaces from the role they play in the identity of a city and the greater public consciousness. When a typical person looks at the Eiffel Tower, they don’t think about how it once housed both a post office on the first floor and a newspaper, Le Figaro , for six months in 1889. Faire Son Marché (Makin’ Groceries)

T he Sydney Opera House, with its one-enveloping-the-other shell structure, is among the most photographed buildings in the world, but few people remember that the forecourt of the space became a venue for sheep shearing and ski-jumping into the harbor when Australia celebrated its bicen tennial in 1988. Easily recognizable spaces live many diverse lives, most of which are forgotten in the shadow of their enduring grandeur. The same depths of storied — often forgotten — history is true of New Orleans’ French Market, a public space that has bustled and thrived for centuries while reflecting the wants, needs and desires of an ever-changing city. It can be impossible for casual visitors snacking on beignets at Café Du Monde to visualize all the intricate parts that have whirred as part of the French Market’s role as the city’s culinary and agricultural lodestar, not to mention how its position as a living, breathing organism has shifted over time. Long before there were grocery stores, the French Market was the hub for ingredients and wares, and wandering through the market’s (messy, assuredly boisterous) buildings was a live action stroll through the bounty of Louisiana’s rich meat, seafood, vegetables and fruits. Today, it’s easy to see the French Market as the iconic sum of its parts, but by puzzling out the cogs that have made the French Market hum throughout history, we can get a more holistic and enduring picture of what this public space means not just for today, but for yesterday and tomorrow.

INDIGENOUS CULTURE (PRE-FRENCH MARKET)

While the oldest extant French Market building dates back to 1813 and housed the anchor industry of the operation, the Meat Market, the market’s first “official” build-out dates back even earlier. According to the French Market Corporation’s historical archives, the Spanish erected the city’s first open-air food market building around the year 1782 (through some records indicate an earlier date of 1770 for the first market) on the corner of Chartres and Dumaine streets, which was relocated to a site on what is now Decatur Street between St. Ann and Dumaine in 1790. “A series of hurri canes destroyed several early structures at this location,” the record notes, “but the building erected in 1813 as the Meat Market has survived to the present.” Until the restoration and cleanup efforts funded (in part) by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s, the French Market was characterized largely by its grit and chaos, both structurally (the first iteration of the market was built out of cypress wood) and on an active, day-to-day basis. The Meat Market, seafood stalls, fruit stands, flower sellers, vegetable hall and — eventually — coffee purveyors all clamored loudly with their sales pitches, spilling over into one another’s action as groceries were made, and the richness of South Louisiana put on full display. MEAT Before the French Market was given its current moniker, it was known throughout town as Le Halle des Boucheries — or the “Meat Market” — due to the fact that it was the

The history of trading, bartering and selling wares next to the Mississippi River outdates both the French Market and the City of New Orleans itself. As far back as 1675, nearly 100 years before the first “official” iteration of the French Market opened, indigenous groups like the Choctaw, Chitimacha, Ishak, Tunica and Natchez nations traded provisions on the riverbanks, not only among themselves but with exploratory parties from other countries. The native name for the trading post was Bulbancha — meaning “land of many tongues” — in reflection of how many different cultures gathered there to swap necessities. ARCHITECTURE The French Market’s architectural design has been a revolving door of construction styles and bottom-up rebuilds over its lifetime, but one feature has always remained: It is a series of buildings — largely open-air — and not a single structure. “The pile of buildings that composes the French Market consists of several different edifices — the Meat Market, the Bazaar Market, the Fruit Market and the Vegetable and Fish Market. All of these are under different roofs. The medley throng of life that goes on [there] is as picturesque, as unique…as if overhead were the gay tents of Constantinople stalls,” writes journalist Catherine Cole in her 1916 work, The Story of the Old French Market . “What a mingling of people it is!”

24 ROUSES SUMMER 2023