The Presbytere and the Cabildo

The two comparable looking buildings on either side of the St. Louis cathedral are the Presbytere to the perfect and the Cabildo to the left. Both buildings had been built soon after the awesome fires. The Presbytere was originally created to home the priests from the cathedral, but it never preformed this function, serving instead as a courthouse for both the Spanish and the Americans. Today it holds the Mardi Gras Museum of the Louisiana State Museum.

The Cabildo is the extra historic of the two buildings. It was where the Spanish council, known as Cabildo in Spanish, meaning to run the colony. The front room on the second floor was where the official transfer of the Louisiana Purchase from France to the United States was produced. France had regained controlled over the Louisiana colony only 3 weeks before it was transferred to the United States. France\'s disastrous loss of the French colony of Haiti from a slave uprising convinced France\'s ruler, Napoleon Bonaparte, that Louisiana was not important to his empire. In addition, the Americans had been finding frustrated with the government of New Orleans for restricting trade on the Mississippi River and confiscating their cargoes at the port of New Orleans. The American frustration had reached the point that some citizens of Kentucky had been plotting to attack New Orleans. In an attempt to head off trouble and to enhance trade for the interior United States, President Thomas Jefferson offered to buy the \"island of New Orleans\" from Napoleon for $3 million. Napoleon surprised Jefferson by offering to sell the whole Louisiana colony for $15 million. Napoleon needed the funds to finance his war on England. The United States did not have enough funds for the purchase. In an ironic twist, the United States borrowed the revenue from England to pay to Napoleon, who then utilized the dollars to attack England. Immediately after Louisiana was transferred to the United States, the Cabildo served as a city hall and Supreme Court for Louisiana just before it was converted into a part of the Louisiana State Museum. Right now it holds countless historic objects from old Louisiana including the death mask of Napoleon.

Lafitte\'s Blacksmith Shop

There are so a large number of tales about Jean Lafitte that it is tough to know what to believe. Some researchers claim that he was a pirate although others claim that he was a gentleman privateer. The distinction between pirate and privateer is a matter of degrees. A pirate was a ruthless murderer that attacked ships and towns, murdering everybody for money and treasure. By definition, privateers sailed on armed ships that carried letters of marque from a nation at war, which gave them the legal right to attacked weaker commercial ships that sailed under enemy flags. The privateer could maintain and sell any captured enemy vessel and its cargo. In reality, these \"privateers\" attacked any weaker ship, regardless of the flag it sailed under, murdered the crew, and sold the cargo. The tiny Louisiana town of Barataria, 60 miles south of New Orleans, was a favorite residence for some of these pirates. The local merchants wanted to acquire the really low priced, stolen goods, but they had been afraid to deal with the hazardous pirates. Into this illegal mess came Lafitte to act as a middleman. Sometime in 1806 Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre established their blacksmith-shop on St. Philip St. as their \"front\" to sell the pirated goods. This developing dating to around 1772 is one of the few that survived the two great fires of New Orleans in 1788 and 1794. It is also 1 of the few remaining buildings built by the earliest settlers utilizing soft clay bricks from the Mississippi River. These soft clay bricks should be covered with timber to prevent them from rapidly eroding away.

Lafitte was an effective businessman who changed the pirates\' smuggling activities from unorganized crimes into a well-run criminal home business. He had regularly scheduled auctions of the pirated goods in both New Orleans and even directly from the pirates\' warehouses in Barataria. He took customer service to the highest level by organizing his own fleet of barges that produced regularly scheduled deliveries of the auctioned goods to their new owners. He profited handsomely from his illegal activities and had mansions both in New Orleans and in Barataria.

Madame John\'s Legacy

The creating known as \"Madame John\'s Legacy\" was named following a character in a short story by George Washington Cable that described a wealthy Creole man named John who died and bequeathed a wooden household and his fortune to his African-American mistress. This creating is extremely significantly like the type of Creole style home that would have been typical to the French Quarter just before the good fires of 1788 and 1794. This creating was damaged in the fires but was rebuilt from the original plans. The massive doors and windows combined with the building\'s high ceiling would permit cooling breezes to flow via the interior rooms. The wide porch on the house would also shade the interior of the household to offer maximum cooling. The house also reflects the design of tropical homes in the West Indies.

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