Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s

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The End of an Interlude I t may seem odd to attribute transformation and decline to a successful campaign for preservation. But in fact that’s a large part of what changed the French Quarter in ways that largely snuffed out its Bohemian aspirations. The common effort to preserve the Quarter papered over a cultural fault line. Just as Le Petit Salon’s desire to bring back the cultivated life of Creole New Orleans appealed more to Society figures like Grace King and Helen Pitkin Schertz than to Bohemian sorts like Bill Spratling and Ham Basso, so those who wanted to see the Quarter restored to its antebellum elegance were not entirely in accord with those who loved the picturesque place pretty much as it was, with low rents and even dilapidation part of its attraction. Mrs. Schertz was delighted when respectable New Orleanians began buying and fixing up French Quarter properties for their own use (“Women are putting their bridge-winnings into the Vieux Carré and petting the old mansions into beauty, utility, and revenue”), but Basso grumbled that “in the days of its decay, when the houses were ramshackle and falling down,” it was “one of the loveliest places in the world.” While the Quarter’s new haute bourgeoisie took satisfaction from new regulations that meant “hereafter the Italian vendor of garlic will be prohibited from propping an unsightly shed against a century-old building,” other residents felt, rightly, that the vendor’s presence made the Quarter more Continental. The ladies of Le Petit Salon disliked it when “tattered clothes fluttered from the iron balconies of the once proudly fashionable Pontalba buildings,” but Spratling put just such a scene on the title page of Famous Creoles. The two sorts of preservationists didn’t argue in public—in fact, they seldom had to confront the fact that they were in disagreement—because both were opposed to tearing 86 The End of an Interlude | 87 down old buildings and replacing them with new ones, which was the major battle of the day. But the Quarter that had attracted Basso and Spratling and their Bohemian friends was doomed, in part by the success of the uptown ladies ’ vision. What happened in the French Quarter has happened and is still happening elsewhere . Like all living creatures, Bohemias have a natural history, and a life span: (1) Artists and writers discover a place where the living is cheap and the neighbors tolerant, or indifferent—ideally one that gives them material for their art. It didn’t cost much to live in the French Quarter in the early 1920s. An attic room in one of the Pontalba buildings went for $5 a month, and Lyle Saxon rented a sixteen -room house on Royal Street for $16. James Feibleman knew a painter who “got along very well on a quart of milk and fifLaundry day Detail from title page of Famous Creoles Spratling drawing of Lyle Saxon’s courtyard (note cracked stucco). 88 | The World of the Famous Creoles teen cents worth of red beans and rice a day.” And there were less tangible attractions for Bohemians. Feibleman, who saw the French Quarter change as he grew up in New Orleans, said that it offered a “sensually pleasant and socially tolerant atmosphere” like that of Montparnasse and Greenwich Village . The sultry climate and the “Latin population” made for a “leisurely pace” of the sort “so necessary for the contemplative life.” Its inhabitants were mostly “happy to be left alone just to be themselves.” As for material, the Quarter may have offered almost too much. The New York Times observed that it was “a polyglot bottom of the melting pot, . . . redolent of garlic,” with “motley doorways and courtyards whose charms were not entirely erased even by the weekly wash” hanging from the galleries . As we saw, many of the artists had a hard time transcending the merely picturesque—some never did—and writers like Anderson, Faulkner, Roark Bradford, and Emmet Kennedy were fascinated by the local color, particularly the city’s vibrant African American culture. (2) The newcomers fix up decaying houses and apartments, or nonresidential properties like lofts and factory buildings—maybe not to bourgeois standards, but enough to make them places where one can work. As early as 1919, Lyle Saxon had foreseen a sort of domino effect. Fix up the Pontalba buildings for artists, he predicted, and “artists from all over the United States” would converge on the Quarter. “In the trail of...