Residents of New Orleans have probably passed the old S&WB pump station on the edge of the Treme neighborhood a million times without giving its existence much thought. The historic building faces St. Ann Street and is tucked between two famous landmarks – the Mahalia Jackson Theatre and Armstrong Park. The land has been reserved for the pumping station since 1894, but in a city as old as New Orleans, you know that’s not where the story of this tract starts.
In 1726 the very first brick buildings in New Orleans began to appear due to the enterprise of Chevalier Charles de Morand who was the founder of the city’s first brickyard. Operated using slave labor, the brickyard was located on the land now known as the Treme neighborhood. Morand was the man who first superintended cutting that land from the swamp and put it to industrial use. After his death, the land changed hands several times until Claude Treme acquired it through marriage in 1783. Treme had no desire to operate a brick plantation and in 1798 he subdivided the land and sold the lots. In 1810, the city of New Orleans purchased the remaining lots and by 1818, it sold one of those lots to a wealthy New Orleans landlord and planter – a transaction the city would soon come to regret.
Blineau Soap Factory
The plot of land was little more than a back-o’-town marsh with few surrounding residents when Olivier Blineau set up his factory. The desolation of the area suited his purposes just fine. I don’t know where he came up with the idea, because nothing in his background or future accomplishments suggests that he knew anything about it, but Blineau built New Orleans’ first soap factory on this plot of land. In fact, the Blineau Soap Factory was one of the first commercial soap manufacturers in this country.
It wasn’t long before the soap factory was declared a nuisance by neighbors old and new, and by the city who had sold the land to those neighbors. For one thing, the soap making process stunk to high heaven back then. The main ingredient in soap of yore was tallow which was made by the putrid process of rendering animal fat. It is said that the stench continued to linger for years after Blineau was forced to close his operation. It also seems that the building was in a permanent state of disrepair, but this is according to the city, who had their sights on the property as the location for the new city prison. Threatened with compliance or negligence fines of 50 dollars a day, Blineau opted to shut down the factory and sold the plot of land back to the city for the grand sum of 15,000 dollars in 1831.
Orleans Parish Prison
Clik here to view.
Old Orleans Parish Prison built in 1834.
In 1834 the land became home to the Parish Prison. The builder, James Lambert, also built the now historic Beauregard-Keyes House on Chartres Street. The prison had two Spanish bell towers and was built of brick and iron and stood three stories high with its main entrance facing Orleans Avenue. It was divided in the middle by an enclosed alleyway on top of which the gallows hung until public execution was banned in 1858. Prior to the ban, masses of people gathered to witness these hangings on the Orleans Avenue sidewalk and neutral ground. Citizens crammed themselves into neighboring doors, windows and even onto rooftops – wherever a glimpse of the gruesome scene could be had.
Clik here to view.
Old Parish Prison Interior Courtyard for Whites.
The prison was built to accommodate 300 inmates, but could uncomfortably squeeze in another 100 when necessary. Prisoners were separated by sex and skin color. Petty juvenile-delinquents were thrown right in with hardened adult criminals. There were no beds and prisoners slept on the damp floors of their cells. The prison also lacked chairs and tables; to dine on their twice-daily meal of soup and bread, the prisoners squatted on the floor. One-time prison superintendent Captain French defended the accommodations at the prison with an ill-humored joke in which he claimed that, “we treat them pretty well, I should say, for many of them come back to us again and again.”
White prisoners of some means were able to slightly improve their situation by paying 50 cents a day board to be taken upstairs to reside in the boarder’s apartments. The African American inmates of the prison suffered far worse beginning in the antebellum days, when the public space allotted for them was home to the Parish whipping post. Because it was illegal for slave owners to whip their slaves in New Orleans, refractory slaves were sent to the prison to receive legal whippings. The punishment was administered by a jailer who also had the authority to confine slaves to the prison dungeon with stocks on their feet. The stocks and the whipping post were done away with after the Civil War, but the dungeon remained and the treatment of African Americans was little improved.
In its sixty-one years of operation, the prison became the scene of dozens of lively ghost stories. It seems every inch of that place was crawling with the lost or vengeful spirits of criminals and apparitions of Confederate soldiers who lost their lives at the prison after New Orleans fell to the Union. The most famous ghost was that of a deranged woman who hung herself in her cell. She came back at night to harass the inmates by boxing their ears and horrifying them with shrieks and glances of her gruesome face. After years of complaints from prisoners, the cell was locked up and used no more.
The most notorious incident that occurred at the prison was the Italian Massacre on March 14, 1891 which made the prison famous across the nation. An angry mob stormed the iron prison gates and the jailers were helpless to defend the 11 Italians who were confined to the prison on the charge of murdering Police Chief Hennessy. It is one of the most outrageous and fascinating stories in the history of our country and I must insist that you read The Crescent City Lynchings for the full account.
By 1895 the prison was in a sorry state of decay and its inhumane living conditions were an embarrassment to the city. It was shut down and razed for a greater purpose thanks to the persuasion of Dr. Joseph Holt, president of the newly formed Orleans Drainage & Sewerage Company who had a desperately needed plan of action for the city and the land.
Clik here to view.
Old Parish Prison. Robinsons Atlas of New Orleans 1883.
Pump Station A
The fanciest sewage disposal systems in New Orleans consisted of privately owned pipelines that ran directly to the Mississippi River, but most of the residents tossed their waste into earthen ditches, nearby open basins and even more convenient – the street. This archaic practice horrified Dr. Joseph Holt, who more than once labeled New Orleans a “dung heap”. Dr. Holt and his associates at the Orleans Drainage & Sewerage Company set about to not only rectify this city’s sanitation problems, but eagerly anticipated making a tidy profit for themselves.
On April 19th, 1894 Dr. Holt turned the first spadeful of earth in the work of preparing a sewerage system for the city. Holt made an unbelievably long and billowing speech on the occasion of what he described as the, “vast outspreading tree, whose base will be planted where yon dark prison stands.” To sum it up, Dr. Holt was of the opinion that this was a glorious and historic day for the city of New Orleans and somewhere in the middle of that speech, he kindly declared that New Orleans girls, “are the loveliest”. Dr. Holt ended with a vow that he who was, “tendered the conspicuous honor of handling the glittering [surgical] knife” would lead the OD&SC to triumph in the charge to save the city from its unsanitary self.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Dr. Holt was a visionary, an indefatigable man who devoted his life to improving the quality of life in the city of New Orleans. Despite his zeal, the OD&SC quickly became a financial failure. The company had started out with considerable monetary backing and was able to build nearly five miles of sewers in the central part of the city before work stopped due to mismanagement and lack of funds. The company couldn’t rely on the public for help because there was too much hostility towards the privately owned company that intended to tax the citizens for its building and charge for its services. The most difficult residents were the French Quarter Creoles. They flat out refused to pay for anything having to do with such nonsense, deeming the whole enterprise unnecessary and most insultingly – American.
Ultimately, the OD&SC’s downfall was being foolish enough to believe the original price quoted by the contractor – a sum which paled in comparison to how much the work actually cost. In 1895 the corporation went bankrupt and it became the city government’s responsibility to implement a municipal sewerage system, which thank heavens, they eventually did. The new company was formed in 1903 and was named the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board, which should ring a bell to present day residents of the city.
Clik here to view.
The building of Pump Station A circa 1903. Photograph by Alexander Allison.
By 1905 the S&WB completed work on the pump station that presently occupies the land and because it was the first in our city, it was honored with the name Pump Station A.
Pump Station A is still in use today and very little about it has changed since its construction. This makes it one of New Orleans’ most important historical landmarks to people who are fond of paved streets, as opposed to streams of stinky muck, and luxuries such as clean water from the tap and flushing toilets.
The post The long, yet surprisingly interesting story of how one block in the Treme helped shape the city of New Orleans. appeared first on Sweet Olive Soap Works.