Quarter Kaleidoscope: A Neighborhood History Project
Colorized French Quarter street scene photographed about 100 years ago by Arnold Genthe, Library of Congress
September 2024This new interactive oral history program mines the French Quarter’s past in an effort to sustain its future.
– by Doug Brantley
Somewhere up in the attic, amid the family Christmas ornaments and mounds of Mardi Gras memorabilia, are yellowing caricatures of my parents sketched by a Jackson Square artist during the early 1960s, with a giant question mark slyly inserted into my clueless father’s oversized ear. The joke may have been lost on him at the time, but it’s one that kept my mother, brother and me laughing for years after.
Anyone who has ever lived in or visited the French Quarter has their own stash of cherished personal memories: being coated in powdered sugar at Café Du Monde, their first peek into a Bourbon Street strip club, a random run-in with Ruthie the Duck Girl. Soon there will be a space in which to share them.
Quarter Kaleidoscope, a collaborative community storytelling project between the Historic BK House and the Vieux Carré Property Owners, Residents, and Associates (VCPORA), kicks off its initial fall series October 9 in the Historic BK House courtyard, with a presentation of eight current and former French Quarterites reminiscing on having grown up there.
A young Ben Jaffe and his friends play at Jackson Square in the 1980s. Jaffe's story recounts his earliest performances as a street musician.
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Borrowing from the popular Moth storytelling program, which couples recollections from well-known personalities with those of everyday individuals, Kaleidoscope is equal parts oral history project, poetry slam, and Our Town – with the aim of not only keeping the ever-endangered neighborhood’s past alive but insuring its future as well.
“In our most optimistic interpretation of this,” says BK House executive director Annie Irvin, “we are hoping it inspires people to understand that the French Quarter is a living, dynamic community of residents and business owners and always has been.
Storyteller Tony Marino resides on Bourbon Street. His story recounts his annual St. Joseph's Day Feast and a Mardi Gras house fire that transformed the celebration to a street party.
“Pessimistically, it’s documenting a dying neighborhood so people can see the consequences of over-tourism and highlighting tourists’ needs over residents’. Because what is the French Quarter if there aren’t people living here?”
Unlike standard oral history projects, which generally provide a broad overview of a narrow topic, with Kaleidoscope, individual recounts aid in illustrating the Quarter’s bigger picture. During the presentation, each storyteller will speak live before an audience for six minutes, with their sessions taped for future use on an in-the-works, public-accessible site.
“It’s like the difference between going to see live theater and watching a film,” says Nia DeCoux, BK House education manager. “When you engage with an oral history archive and can see recorded stories, that’s super impactful.
“But it’s something completely different when it’s live and you have living people standing in your space talking about their lived experiences with this neighborhood. It becomes more real and tangible.”
BK House volunteer Jane Lowrance-Neal, who spearheaded a similar project in Tyler, Texas, spent countless hours over the course of the summer interviewing a broad spectrum of participants (including Preservation Hall’s Ben Jaffe and Creole culture bearer Denise Augustine, among others), then workshopping with them to help shape, narrow, and refine their story’s focus.
“The storytellers in the upcoming show deliver vastly ranging content,” Lowrance-Neal notes, “from dealing with ghosts to losing neighbors during the AIDS epidemic to a house fire on Mardi Gras. The connective tissue, however, is the same: loving and living in the Quarter.
Storyteller Erik Flamm with his brother at their childhood home at 941 Dumaine Street. Flamm will tell his story about the AIDS crisis that swept through the Quarter in the 1980s, photo courtesy Erik Flamm.
“The joy I saw on their faces as we practiced, and they started hearing stories from other participants, was really moving,” she continues.
“People talked about neighbors they remembered – all of these Quarter establishments and characters – and everybody’s faces just lit up, because there are so many memories and shared experiences that happened in this place.”
While October’s program centers on children in the French Quarter (and the lack thereof), November spotlights the loss of neighborhood-facing businesses, with redefining the riverfront the slated focus for December. But it’s the dwindling number of full-time residents that serves as the project’s overarching theme.
Storyteller Batou Chandler (second from left) grew up in the Quarter attending McDonough 15, where she played in their prestigious band led by musician Walter Payton.
Storyteller Batou Chandler remembers a time when she and her family and her friends ruled the neighborhood, roaming the streets and running into Quarter characters. The teen here is the late David Michael Chandler and the young boy is his half brother, Jeanry Chandler.
“The pandemic helped heighten awareness of how tourism has changed the Quarter,” says VCPORA executive director Erin Holmes. “There is an undercurrent when we are looking at the French Quarter as a neighborhood, and the unspoken undercurrent is that it is becoming less so.”
Hence, the groups’ broader mission of establishing an interactive digital Kaleidoscope archive to provide an easy way for the general public to interact, upload their own memories and artifacts, and build a game-changing, Quarter-saving community.
“Our hope,” explains DeCoux, “is that, with us starting the conversation, through social media and their engaging with our archives, other people will start to share their stories as well, creating a larger sustainable conversation.”
“We’re not going to run out of stories,” adds Holmes. “We have 300 years of them.”
94 year old storyteller CJ Blanda has been a resident of the Quarter since the 1960s. His story recalls a time when a walk home from work through the Quarter was a two-hour affair, with multiple chats with friends and neighbors along the route.
If you’d like to share your French Quarter story with the Quarter Kaleidoscope program, please email Nia DeCoux.
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