 New Orleans Public Library
Image of the Month
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Not a very beautiful or otherwise visually impressive photograph, but an interesting one nonetheless. Taken by an unidentified photographer almost seventy-five years ago (on August 3, 1934), it shows New Orleans Police Department Superintendent George Reyer and some other fellows outside Senator Huey Long's suite in the Roosevelt Hotel. This was at the height of Huey's "invasion" of New Orleans; the Senator and the Superintendent were on opposite sides in the struggle, so it would be interesting to know just what Reyer was doing at that place at that time. The Roosevelt Hotel, after being shuttered for almost four years after being flooded following Hurricane Katrina (and after forty-four years "in exile" as the Fairmont New Orleans), reopens to overnight guests today, July 1, 2009. It took more than $145 million to restore the hotel to its former glory as part of the Hilton Hotel Corporation's Waldorf-Astoria Collection of luxury hotel properties. The Roosevelt is sure to be one of the hot spots for food, drink, and entertainment for New Orleanians and for visitors to the Crescent City for some time to come. The photograph originally appeared online as one of more than one-thousand images in our Recent Additions to the Louisiana Division Photograph Collection series of photos that don't quite fit anywhere else. Check them out sometime!
 Click the image to see a larger version. Click HERE to visit our old (1996-2007) Images of the Month Gallery archives.
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7/1/2009
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