Que la fête commence!
The French Influence on the Good Life in New Orleans

Advertisements from Years Gone By

Michel Antoine, a native of France, operated the bakery at 24 Dumaine Street until his death in 1887. His wife carried on the family business at the same location after his passing. [Business Guide of New Orleans and Vicinity (Baltimore, 1889)]

This advertisement for Hypolite Begue's saloon appeared in the 1903 Souvenir Program for the International Association of Chiefs of Police convention in the Crescent City.

Whether the frogs in Martin J. Leroy's advertisement were intended to underscore the establishment's French atmosphere is unknown. They do make for a humorous touch in an otherwise dry business directory. [Business Guide of New Orleans and Vicinity (Baltimore, 1889)]

The Hotel and Restaurant de la Louisiane was founded by Louis Bezaudun in 1881 at 107 & 109 Customhouse Street (now 725 Iberville) in a building constructed in 1837 as the residence of James Waters Zacharie. Later the restaurant was managed by Bezaudu n's nephew, Fernand Alciatore (brother of Jules Alciatore of Antoine's) and by succeeding generations of Alciatores. Famed not only for its cuisine but for its decor (the magnificent leaded glass doors and Baccarat chandelier), in its heyday, La Louisian e entertained such luminaries as Sarah Bernhardt, Al Jolson, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Houdini, William Jennings Bryan and Rube Goldberg. An early guest, George Washington Cable, wrote in the restaurant's guest book, "La Louisiane is one of the most begu iling and satisfying spots in all my native city." [Business Guide of New Orleans and Vicinity (Baltimore, 1889)]

Lucien Lebrun operated bars and restaurants at various locations around the Vieux Carre during the 1880s. This advertisement from 1889 encourages New Orleanians to, for lack of a better translation, "pig out." Two doors down from the Lebrun establishme nt was the building left to the city in 1845 by Abijah Fisk. That bequest was the beginning of the New Orleans Public Library. The site is now occupied by a modern store built for the F. W. Woolworth company in the 1940s. [Business Guide of New Orleans and Vicinity (Baltimore, 1889)]

This advertisement for the Sazerac appeared in the 1903 Souvenir Program for the International Association of Chiefs of Police convention in the Crescent City.

This 1889 advertisement documents a little-known, and probably short-lived, establishment on Magazine Street operated by members of the same family that founded Commander's Palace in 1880. According to the 1888 city directory, Anthony Commander worked at least for a while as a bartender at the Sazerac Saloon. Interestingly, the Bon-Ton advertised here was only a few doors down Magazine Street from the original location of the present-day Bon Ton Cafe. [Business Guide of New Orleans and Vicinity ( Baltimore, 1889)]

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