image source: etsy.com
(first posted 9/19/2014) I stumbled into this on one of my many searches, and it made me stop. It’s not just a great snapshot generally, but obviously, I couldn’t miss the little study in automotive contrasts on the left. An Isetta, and a convertible at that, right behind a ’58 Chevy Bel Air. So when I went back to find the source of this shot, I Googled “New Orelans 1959” and came up with a few other random shots worth sharing.
image: nutrias.org
This one will keep the car spotters busy a bit longer.
image: nutrias.org
Another similar one.
image: old-new-orleans.com
Is one of the street cars named “Desire”?
image: angelpig.com
The City of New Orleans train, but shot in Covington, TN, in 1959. Looks like E-7s or E-9s. Like these UP units that I shot and wrote up here in great detail.
image: flymsy.com
A bit small, but here’s the airport. Ok you plane spotters, what are the Rampside Classics?
image: indianu.u
A great curbside shot by Charles Cushman.
image: old-new-orleans.com
One more., of the foot of Canal Street. This one is actually dated 1955, and the cars bear that out.
Wow. Planes, Trains and Automobiles (and Gumbo) – 1959 edition.
Love these old pictures. The Plymouth 2 door sedan in the next-to-last picture catches my eye. That 2 tone green doesn’t come off that well. Also, the chrome-free strippo Plymouth Plaza 2 door sedan but with whitewalls and wheelcovers is a really interesting combo. Probably a 2 speed Powerflite, too.
That last shot features a 53-54 Studebaker 2 door sedan. I have never seen one of these with that kind of 2 tone treatment. Maybe someone was trying to copy the 2 tone treatment on the new 55 models? Or some kind of official car?
One wonders if that 1957 Plymouth fared better in the wet, humid climate of New Orleans than in the salt and snow of a northern city.
If you’re talking the red and white one, my first guess is that its a wreck rebuilt using used parts and hasn’t gotten to the paint shop yet. The white section under the rear window has me wondering, though.
This will be answered next week.
Taxi??
That 2-tone green 57 Plaza reminds me of my father-in-law’s 1959 white on green Plaza 2-door that didn’t even have a factory heater in it; some sort of an aftermarket rig was substituted. Like the car shown though, it did have full wheel covers rather than small hubcaps.
The closest aircraft in the airport photo is a Curtiss C-46, probably an ex-Army Air Force plane sold for civilian use and converted to an airliner. Behind it is a Douglas DC-something four-engine, probably a DC-7 because it appears to have four-bladed props. In the background is a Lockheed L-188 Electra. Behind it and partly concealed, another DC-something four-engine.
The closest aircraft in the airport photo is a Curtiss C-46, probably an ex-Army Air Force plane sold for civilian use and converted to an airliner. Behind it is a Douglas DC-something four-engine, probably a DC-7 because it appears to have four-bladed props. In the background is a Lockheed L-188 Electra. Behind it and partly concealed, another DC-something four-engine.
In 1959 that Electra, which entered service in 1958, would have had the structural problem which resulted in aerodynamic vs. structural resonance…flutter…which caused the wing to break off. There were two fatal crashes, in 1959 and 1960, attributed to this cause. One of the aircraft had been in service only a few weeks when it went down. Lockheed designed a fix and retrofitted every L-188 Electra already built, and incorporated the fix in every one built later. A total of 170 were built plus almost 800 modified to the military Orion patrol/bomber, which is still in service after 50 years.
Awesome photos! I’ve always been interested in history and photos. Thanks for posting. 🙂
I love that first photo with the Isetta and Bel-Air, the reflections on the pavement and the woman in the yellow dress covering her head, great shot, it looks so European, especially with the Isetta, if you would have told me that it was somewhere in Europe, I would have believed it.
When I saw the “Ferries to Algiers” sign, for a second I thought it was in the south of France. Though of course the English signage wouldn’t make sense for Marseilles. And then I remembered some long-forgotten Gulf Coast geography.
By the side trim, the ’58 Chevy is a Biscayne.
Which probably came from this place…..
I was thinking of that jingle the other day!
When I traveled to Houston, I was offended that Joe Conte Chevrolet used the same tune. It just didn’t seem right…
In regard to BuzzDog 9/19/2014 post below. Joe Conte started working for Mike Persia Chevrolet New Orleans as a Salesman in 1950, eventually moving up to Sales Manager.
In 1957, Mike Persia purchased Downtown Chevrolet in Houston, Texas and entered into an agreement with Joe Conte to be General Manager and 25% owner of the new Mike Persia Chevrolet Houston. This agreement included a 5 year buyout provision, in which Joe Conte could purchase the remaining stock and own Mike Persia Chevrolet Houston. Joe Conte became the sole owner of Mike Persia Chevrolet Houston In 1962, which included rights to use the Mike Persia Chevrolet advertising jingle at his Dealership in Houston from 1962-1975 and the relocated Joe Conte Chevrolet Dealership on the Gulf Freeway from 1975 to when the Dealership was sold in 1979.
____________________________
BuzzDog
September 19, 2014
I was thinking of that jingle the other day!
When I traveled to Houston, I was offended that Joe Conte Chevrolet used the same tune. It just didn’t seem right…
Thanks, Joe, for the information. It now makes sense why the same tune was used for both dealerships.
How fun! My parents bought a Corvair in New Orleans in the early 60s. (After they sold their little red Isetta…which could perhaps be the one in the photo above.)
And a V8 ’58 Biscayne at that…
The picture here that really did jog my memory was the one featuring an old-fashioned button-operated pedestrian traffic light in the background. Those antique traffic lights used actual solenoids and other moving parts in their control mechanisms, and you could actually hear the mechanisms running in the control box as they changed red after you pressed the button. Don’t find too many of those around nowadays!
Hey, I think I see a fat guy w/a hunting cap w/a Paradise Vendors hot dog cart in one of those pictures 😉
=8-) .
-Nate
He’s vending twelve inches of Paradise. Sounds like a bargain!
His evening at the Night of Joy isn’t going to live up to his expectations. 🙂
I like these photos especially seeing vehicles with real world wear and tear such as the sideswipe damage on this station wagon. I figure those bulging out sides probably got more wear and tear than we realize.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/New-Orleans-1959-c-.jpg
Despite Yankee ancestry, this is the town where I was born. I go back when I can. Loving the pictures! I’d like to ride there on the City of New Orleans…
So, a few years before the photos were taken Louis was there. Would you care for an eg ?
Remember when you could recognise the make and model two blocks away. Today you have to get close enough to read the nameplate on most cars.
Aren’t those streetcars still running? I distinctly remember being on one, but it was a few years before Katrina. I’m sure the routes aren’t as they were back in the day, but the one we took was from the Garden District to somewhere around Bourbon Street IIRC.
It occurred shortly after I wrote that it was probably a wrong assumption. I meant to change it, but forgot. Fixed.
The St. Charles Ave. line was never torn out. It is the longest-operating streetcar line (New Orleaneans never call them “trolleys”) in the world. Canal St. and others were shut down and tracks torn out; as interest in streetcars resumed, the Riverfront Line was inaugurated on an existing conventional rail route. Canal St. was rebuilt and a fleet of new-to-look-old streetcars was built for it. Unfortunately all the new cars were flooded and destroyed in Hurricane Katrina and the St. Charles Ave. line, though its historic cars were saved, had track damage, which was soon fixed. New, replacement cars have been built and all routes are back in service and a new one, Loyola Ave., has been opened.
Yes, they are. Wood and everything.
Along with Ignatious and his hotdog cart, Mrs. Reilly’s 46 Plymouth may be lurking about or even one those scenicruiser buses that traumatised the poor boy.
The Confederacy of Dunces,a very funny book and a tragic story.I saw the stage play at the Adelaide Arts Festival some years ago.One actor,Kerry Shale,played every role and you would swear there were four people on stage almost speaking at once.
I just finished re-reading it, which is my favorite novel. I also read a biography of John Kennedy Toole called A Butterfly In The Typewriter, in which I found out that his father was a car salesman & that they shared an interest in cars.
As a New Orleans native (though now transplanted North), I absolutely love seeing these pictures. My family has been in New Orleans a loooooooong time, and my parents, grandparents, etc. would have been living there when all these were taken. I recognize some of the locations, like the base of Canal Street, though it obviously looks very different today. I am really curious about the streetcar shot. It may be on Canal Street, as there still is a loop that runs there. I believe there were many more lines in the city, mostly dismantled now. The primary original one still runs down St. Charles Avenue, with brief legs on Carondelet and Canal Streets. There is also a tourist streetcar that runs along the river, though that is a more recent addition. Had these pictures come from the 1980s, there would have been a lot more Oldsmobiles, as that was a dominant make in the city
then, along with an increasing number of Japanese cars. When these shots were taken, my grandmother and great grandmother would have shared a Buick Roadmaster, my grandfather would have had a Ford Customline, my parents would have had a an older Buick, hand me down purchased from my grandmother.
Hey, GN…remember when Royal Oldsmobile used to put those HUGE dealer decals on the tail ends of the cars they sold, back in the late ’80s/early ’90s?
Absolutely! Those were everywhere! Hard to believe that Royal is gone and a Whole Foods now stands where there used to be rows and rows of Cutlasses and 88s. My parents got our Oldsmobiles at Mossy on South Broad, so ours had the slightly less oversized Mossy decals on the back.
Don’t forget that the NOLA Oldsmobile dealers supplied Cutlass Supreme Convertibles (’60s thru early ’70s) to carry the maids, captains, and celebrities for each Mardi Gras krewe.
In the lead photo, the dome at the upper left is the Hibernia National Bank building, which for years was the tallest building in New Orleans.
Great photos, by the way…brings back memories of my childhood.
I also recognized the HIbernia tower. The bank was a customer of mine in the late 1990s. I visited there several times, a short distance from Bourbon street where I enjoyed several great dinners. These great photos caused me to look it up. I did not realize it had sold out to Capital One in 2005. Apparently the building is being converted to condos.
The Hibernia building is being converted to condos, but at least it will be left standing. A great building with a more doubtful future is the New Orleans World Trade Center (not kidding on the name, and it went up before the twin towers in NYC). That building stands right by the foot of Canal street where the 1955 shot was taken, and was built in the early 1960s. It surpassed the Hibernia as the tallest in New Orleans for a short while, until later buildings like One Shell Square took the honors (though no building in NOLA can go much over fifty stories, due to the soft swampy soil below). The World Trade Center was damaged in Katrina and has been closed since, and a number of redevelopment proposals have fallen through. It is a prime site and a really cool Mid-Century Modern tower, so I hope it somehow gets saved.
I worked in the New Orleans World Trade Center for a short while!
Sad to hear it’s closed. Managing the bank on the ground floor was, shall we say, interesting. You saw an unusual mix of foreign business people, local shop owners, and, um, “working girls.”
I worked at a competitor up until the late ’90s, when I moved north to work for another bank. Hibernia struggled for a while, and it seemed that they had just about gotten things in order when CapitalOne came calling.
Working in the Central Business District (CBD) all those years…it now seems surreal. Wearing wool suits, starched white shirts and ties year-round with the horrible humidity, stepping around drunks passed out on the sidewalks as you went to and from the office…
I did the wool suit thing as well when visiting. I recall going to a lower level at the airport to catch a cab. When the doors to the cars would slide open, oh boy, instant sweat. I was stopped by more than a few interesting people in the CBD. I would stay at a nearby Marriott (on Canal?) and walk to the bank building.
BuzzDog & GN
I too worked in downtown NOLA (Baronne St) in the ’80s and ’90s. For summer wear, the suit of choice was poplin or seersucker. For important O&G luncheons, a trip to the Petroleum club was a must.
The 2nd airplane is an Eastern DC-7B. Notice spinners on props.
Can not be sure (it is too poorly defined for me) but the last visible airplane is a Douglas DC-6 or DC-6B from United. That aircraft type makes sense for the time period of about 1960; the unpressurized DC-4s would have been gone from United by then.
“Is one of the street cars named “Desire”?” No, in fact Desire is a street in the Ninth Ward and once was a streetcar line. When visiting NOLA (pre-Katrina) I saw a bus named Desire.
It looks like a movie still from “A Desire for a Streetcar”.
A little late but I immediately thought of the opening credits to Treme.
I believe the second photo is of N Villere St and Orleans Ave facing north west. This would be in the Treme neighborhood confirmed by the “Treme Super Market” sign to the left. Orleans Ave is one of the few boulevards that crosses N Villere.
To the right just above the ’59 Chevy is a JAX beer sign. Jackson Brewing Company (JAX) was a New Orleans brewery up to 1974.
In the background is a row of trees along Claiborne Avenue (another boulevard). In later years, the elevated portion of the I-10 Interstate would run thru the heart of Treme covering Claiborne Ave.
“Good Jax Boogie” by Fat’s Domino’s producer Dave Bartholomew (1918-2019):
I believe the 3rd picture is of the same intersection as noted above, but now looking south east. In the far background just above the street light is the Municipal Auditorium.
Many Mardi Gras krewe balls were held in the auditorium. The official ending of Mardi Gras cumulated with the Meeting of the Courts of Rex (king of carnival krewe) and Cosmos (Mystic Secret Society krewe). If you were invited to this ball, you were somebody!!
After some Google searching, I found the 2nd and 3rd photos as part of a photo archive of NOLA from 1959. Looks like my estimates were very close.
The archive also contains photos of where the trees along Clairborne Ave (2nd photo) were removed to make way for the elevated 1-10 expressway. Interesting viewing for any New Orleanian.
http://archives.nolalibrary.org/~nopl/photos/streets/orleans.htm
I use an IMAC and the “Speak Spell” feature is horrendous and will overpower any word(s) it doesn’t like.
Therefore, it should be the krewe of COMOS, not Cosmos.
Happy Mardi Gras!!
Lots of great memories and historic fact (is that a redundancy ?) here, as usual, and greatly appreciated it is. Evabody loves that ’57 Plymouth, me included.
But no one’s taken on the mystery-mobile in photo three, namely the little car getting away unnoticed on the right. A dark horse of some sort, British perhaps ?
My parents lived in New Orleans from about 1960 to 1965. They owned a red, convertible Isetta. It made them a two-car household for the first time. (Just barely. Ha!) The Isetta pictured in your first photo here could have been their car. If you have any further info about this photo, I wonder if it would clarify.