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ACQUISITIONS
RECENT ADDITIONS
Riverbank Fantasy, a Traveler’s Tribulations, and a Freemasonry Find
1796 riverfront bathing facility proposal
2014.0180
A petition dated July 19, 1796, documents a New Orleans hotelier’s proposal to create a public bathing facility on the banks of the Mississippi River. In this recently acquired document, Bernardo Tremoulet, proprietor of the Tremoulet Hotel, located at the corner of St. Peter and Levee (now Decatur) Streets, tells Baron de Carondelet, then governor of Louisiana, that he will provide separate facilities for both sexes to accommodate year-round bathing in the waters of the Mississippi, in the shade of a grove of orange trees known as Alameda. Tremoulet also seeks to open a cafe across from the facility, on Levee Street, to serve refreshments to “decent persons” who traverse the thoroughfare. In the left-hand margin of the first page is a response from Governor Carondelet, dated July 27, 1796, approving the petition
unless the site is deemed necessary for the fortification or defense of the Plaza de Armas (now Jackson Square). A hand-drawn plan of the bathhouse and the surrounding area shows the neighboring streets and four property lots to the northwest, as well as the orange grove, the outlines of the proposed structure, and the banks of the river. A pair of small drawings below the plan illustrates the exact slope of the riverbank within the structure. The proposed building site, 42 by 80 feet, straddles the Mississippi’s bank between present-day St. Louis and Toulouse Streets. The plan is attested with the signature of surveyor Carlos Trudeau.
Tremoulet sold his rights to the project to architect Barthelemy Lafon in August 1796. However, the proposed bathhouse was never constructed. —ROBERT TICKNOR
“Account of Voyages to St. Domingue and Louisiana ...
2014.0025
Based on the travel journals of a junior officer of the Company of the Indies, this first-person account of the New World recently joined THNOC’s collection of original 18th-century French manuscripts. The anonymous “Chevalier de L***,” who served in the company’s army, wrote the travelogue—comprising four volumes, with the last two unfinished—upon his return to France, 1722-23.
Beginning just before his departure from Lorient, France, in August 1720,
and continuing until the end of his stay in Louisiana, in May 1722, the chevalier describes every aspect of his endeavor in great detail and with a certain (at least would-be) literary flair. He covers the political and economic situation in France and the company propaganda that encouraged him to undertake the journey; the long sea voyage (and exceptionally long layovers en route) that brought him to Biloxi; his occasional tete-a-tetes with Governor Bienville; and the generally miserable life of French soldiers and settlers in the colony. The chevalier’s travels took him to New Orleans and the Illinois country, where he encountered and, on occasion, lived with various Indian tribes.
Both at land and on sea, the author is forever ill or recovering. He suffers multiple illnesses over the course of his two-and-a-half-year journey, some life threatening, some less serious. One severe case occurs shortly after his arrival in Biloxi, and he is sent to live with the Pascagoula tribe for upwards of a month as they cure him “through the use of certain herbs unknown to Europeans,” he writes.
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