Authentic New Orleans: Tourism, Culture, and Race in the Big Easy

7 A Repertoire of Authenticity: Contested Space and the Transformation of the French Quarter

A Repertoire of Authenticity Contested Space and the Transformation of the French Quarter Are tourists ruining the Vieux Carre? A lot of people say they are, a lot of people say they already have, and a lot of other people say more tourists should be attracted, made to stay longer, and convinced to spend more. . . . Numerous long-time Quarter business people, residents, and tourists who have visited the city over the years gone by say that the caliber of tourism in the Vieux Carre is changing. . . . They say the French Quarter is becoming an amusement park type tourist trap. —J. E. Bourgoyne, Times-Picayune, December 23, 19731 We can all see it coming already. In a few short years, the French Quarter will be a ghost town of vacation condos, time-shares and bed-and-breakfasts, burned out as a tourist destination. Ads will try to lure locals to “rediscover Quarter living.” Bankrupt T-shirt shops will be artfully restored into corner groceries with Sicilian names. Cheap sunglasses booths will be turned back into fruit stalls at the French Market, artists will be paid to paint on Jackson Square—anything to revive a lost authenticity. But it will be too late. Because that fascinating web of lives that has formed Quarter culture for generations—Creoles, Italians, artists, musicians, entertainers , bon vivants, and bohemians—will have vanished. . . . Soon the transformation will be complete . . . and the vital heartbeat residents gave to the neighborhood will be gone. —James Nolan, local writer, Times-Picayune, May 20, 20012 If it weren’t for the French Quarter, we would not get any tourism or convention business. This is where it all starts. This is the nucleus not only for New Orleans tourism but Louisiana tourism. Statewide we are it. We drive the state economy, and the state could not survive if it were not for the French Quarter. Bourbon 7 142 Street, the architecture of the French Quarter, and Jackson Square —these are the things that people take pictures of when they come to Louisiana. —French Quarter business owner3 The preceding quotes communicate three very different interpretations of New Orleans’s most famous neighborhood and how it has changed over the decades. The first quote, from the 1970s, expresses fears about the French Quarter becoming an amusement park for tourists ; the second quote laments the loss of neighborhood authenticity; and the third quote describes the French Quarter as the economic engine of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana. These quotes reveal the multifaceted nature of the French Quarter, including its status as a specialty shopping area, an entertainment complex, a residential area, and a focus of culture and historic preservation of regional and national importance. These quotes also convey different conceptions about the meaning of tourism and the role it plays in neighborhood life. Complaints about tourism’s effect on the French Quarter and calls for expanding tourism to revitalize the neighborhood span many decades, and there have always been a variety of opinions on how to “improve” the neighborhood . In recent decades, the French Quarter has become a battleground of intense conflicts over commercial revitalization, historic preservation, and neighborhood integrity. During the 1970s, neighborhood groups mobilized to fight the privatization of the historic French Market, the expansion of large-scale hotels, and the building of the retail center, Canal Place. Since this time, residents and businesses have teamed with historic preservationists and other activists to protest the growth of fastfood restaurants, mall-like shops, and chain-like clothing stores that cater almost exclusively to tourists.4 In 1988 and 1989, the National Trust for Historic Preservation identified the French Quarter as one of the eleven most endangered places in the country due to the threat that commercial business growth posed to the residential character of the neighborhood.5 In recent years, residents and neighborhood organizations have lamented the increase of hotels, bed and breakfasts, timeshares , condominiums, and large entertainment clubs.6 For most of its history, the French Quarter functioned as a residential neighborhood composed of diverse groups of people. Since the 1960s, however, the A Repertoire of Authenticity | 143 area has been transformed into an entertainment destination, marketed vigorously by tourism promoters, and redesigned to bring visitors into the city (fig. 7.1). The expansion of tourism and entertainment in the French Quarter over the decades has paralleled the racial and class transformation of the neighborhood. Between 1940 and...