Lafayette Square, as seen in this circa 1905 photograph by the Detroit Publishing Company, was to the Central Business District what Jackson Square was to the French Quarter in colonial days. It was an outdoor park where local residents strolled, celebrated holidays, attended festivals, or protested government actions. By the mid 1800s, the square stood at the center of political life in New Orleans political.
Lafayette Square was the first park in the city’s first suburb, Faubourg Ste. Marie, now today’s Central Business District. Based on a 1788 design by Carlos Laveau Trudeau, surveyor general during the Spanish colonial era, what would become Lafayette Square bore the name Place Publique. The city changed the name to Lafayette Square in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette’s 1825 visit to New Orleans.
One of the many historical incidents that took place in the square happened during the city’s 1858 mayoral election between the American Party candidate Gerard Stith and the self-organized political group “Independent Voters of New Orleans” who put up P.G.T. Beauregard as its candidate. Supporting Beauregard was the “Vigilance Committee,” a band of citizens who seized the state armory on St. Peter Street and set up a barricaded armed camp at Jackson Square. Stith’s supporters fortified their camp at Lafayette Square. Though threats volleyed back and forth, only four members of the Vigilance Committee were killed and they were mistakenly shot by their own people as they returned to Jackson Square after scouting out the enemy camp. The New Orleans Bee described politics during those years as “the despotism of faction.” Stith won.
Moving forward, the columned building located at center right is Gallier Hall, designed in the Greek Revival style by James Gallier, Sr. and constructed between 1845 and 1853. The prominent building served as City Hall from 1853 to the mid-1950s when city government moved to its current location in Duncan Plaza. The building just to the left of Gallier Hall is the old Soule Business College, founded in 1826 by George Soule. Described as one of the preeminent “practical” business colleges in the South, the school drew students from across the nation. Listed among its alums were former Louisiana Gov. Jimmie Davis and Supreme Court Justice Walter Hamlin. The college moved to Jackson Ave. in 1923 and closed in 1983.
Standing to the left is the First Presbyterian Church, the second oldest Protestant church in New Orleans. Founded in 1818, the first building, located on St. Charles Ave., burned to the ground in 1854. By November 1857 the new church was up and holding services on Lafayette Square. Its most famous pastor was Dr. Benjamin Palmer, the ardent secessionist and driving force against the 19th century’s corrupt Louisiana Lotter Company. Tragedy struck once again in 1915 when a hurricane destroyed most of the building. Once again it was rebuilt but without the towering spire. In 1938, the federal government purchased and demolished the church to make way for a federal office building that stands there to this day. First Presbyterian rebuilt uptown on South Claiborne and Jefferson avenues.
A close look at the photograph’s center also reveals a large statue of the “Great Compromiser” Henry Clay that towered over Canal Street until 1900 when the city moved it to the square as it began to interfere with increased streetcar traffic.
