 New Orleans Public Library
Image of the Month
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| This postcard, sent from New Orleans to Liverpool in 1908, shows the Ursuline Convent on the Mississippi River more or less where it now intersects with the Industrial Canal. The postcard used a photograph taken some years earlier by Mother Marie de la St. Croix, one of the nuns residing at the Convent. It shows just how close the Convent buildings were to the River. By 1909 Levee Board plans called for another expansion of the levee in between the Ursuline property and the River. This work would have seriously compromised the peace and privacy that the nuns and their Ursuline Academy students needed in order to be able to pray, teach, study, and live. So the Ursulines, who had been at that locations since 1824, elected to purchase property at the corner of State and Willow Streets in the Uptown neighborhood. The nuns left their old home towards the end of August 1912 and classes began in the new school on September 18 of that year. It was not until 1918, though, that actual demolition of the old buildings commenced. By that time, construction had begun on the locks for the new Industrial Canal.
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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. |
11/1/2011
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