 New Orleans Public Library
Image of the Month
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| The building at 4131-4133 St. Charles Avenue housed Sam Latter's tailor shop (we think that he was the grandfather of Milton H. Latter, namesake of the NOPL branch ten blocks farther uptown on the Avenue) and Arthur Palmisano's auto supply business from 1919-1921 during which period this photograph was taken (those are portable gasoline pumps on the sidwalk in front of the building). According to Palmisano, in a letter to the Times-Picayune in 1921, he had demolished the old structures on the site around 1918 in order to erect this commercial building. In later years a variety of businesses operated at the location, including a florist shop, a washeteria, a dry cleaner, a burger restaurant, a delicatessen, a dentist's office, a "Speech-Arts Studio," a children's theatre, and a record store. In the mid-1940s, Stephen & Martin's restaurant opened up around the corner on Milan Street. Some thirty years later they expanded into the building at the corner of St. Charles and Milan, a former pharmacy that had been transformed into a cocktail lounge. This expansion included the development of a new cocktail lounge/disco that became rather famous at the time as Forty-One Forty-One. Some years later the business expanded again, taking in the building at 4131/4133 St. Charles. In 1993, Stephen and Martin's/Forty-One Forty-One bowed out and Cannon's restaurant took over the property. Tha location is presently occupied by a branch of the New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood Company.
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 Click the image to see a larger version. Click HERE to visit our old (1996-2007) Images of the Month Gallery archives. |
12/1/2011
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