Plus Ça Change – August 24, 2026
I tossed a chapter completely. My assessment is, I don’t need it. I’m moving one I had planned for a few years downstream into this slot. The narrative elements I had planned for the ditched chapter can be a few lines of dialog in what’s about to happen. Economy of words, of characters, of scenes. The one I’m keeping is much more important to the final story arc in the novel.
The time is circa 1840 (I can move it around by perhaps a year if I want). So I’ll pick a date, imagine some weather, etc. The location is Lafayette Square in New Orleans. Before the tall modern buildings ringing the square, at least four church steeples are visible. Our characters will be walking across the square. What did it look like?
The Odd Fellows Hall isn’t built yet. Neither is the old city hall (Gallier). The Second Municipality city hall is across Lafayette (then Hevia) Street. I find engravings of “Soules Business College” from 1900, before the original building was torn down in 1903. Sweet, I got it: three story brick, gabled roof, etc.
The steeple of Catholic Saint Patrick’s exists today, so that’s easy. It’s a half block or so off the square. This is what started me down this rabbit hole: can you see it from Lafayette Square? Not today, but you could in 1840.
There’s a Presbyterian Church on the west side of the square. I know from maps right where it was. Was. It is gone, replaced by a modern office building. Back into the time machine, there it is, nice steeple. Later on, it was rebuilt and much fancier. I can ignore that. There’s a Methodist church a couple blocks away, and The Stranger’s Church next to the Saint Charles Hotel ( a block east, in back of the viewer in this imae). Oh, and the Saint Charles Hotel, which was a gigantic building. I’ve got engravings or paintings of all but the Methodist church (also long gone).
Many chapters downstream the fictional Henderson’s Restaurant will be important. I have it facing the Square on the lakeside of Saint Charles Avenue, next door to what will become City Hall. For Henderson’s I have the 1885 fire map of the city. I have no idea if that building was there in 1840, but it will be in the novel, configured as it was in 1885, brick, etc. Henderson’s is going to show up two or three times. This is the first time my readers will see it.
All of this to know what it looked like, even though all of this ambient local color is likely to be a couple of sentences. It is the action and the dialog (fiction of course) that is the meat. This is the sauce, but boy do I have fun tasting the sauce.
EDIT: After I finished this little piece, I found a view of New Orleans from the steeple of Saint Patrick’s Church. This was already in my research files, but that was long before the story moved into this neighborhood. Now this view makes perfect sense to me. It is looking downriver, ~1852, and in the opposite direction from the Harper’s Weekly. And here it is.
