Chapter 41 - Page 2

war.
Architecture in America may be said to have been born since the war.
New Orleans, I believe, has had the good luck--and in a sense the bad luck--
to have had no great fire in late years. It must be so. If the opposite
had been the case, I think one would be able to tell the 'burnt district'
by the radical improvement in its architecture over the old forms.
One can do this in Boston and Chicago. The 'burnt district' of Boston
was commonplace before the fire; but now there is no commercial district
in any city in the world that can surpass it--or perhaps even rival it--
in beauty, elegance, and tastefulness.

However, New Orleans has begun--just this moment, as one may say.
When completed, the new Cotton Exchange will be a stately and
beautiful building; massive, substantial, full of architectural graces;
no shams or false pretenses or uglinesses about it anywhere.
To the city, it will be worth many times its cost, for it will
breed its species. What has been lacking hitherto, was a model
to build toward; something to educate eye and taste; a SUGGESTER,
so to speak.

The city is well outfitted with progressive men--thinking, sagacious,
long-headed men. The contrast between the spirit of the city and
the city's architecture is like the contrast between waking and sleep.
Apparently there is a 'boom' in everything but that one dead feature.
The water in the gutters used to be stagnant and slimy, and a potent
disease-breeder; but the gutters are flushed now, two or three times a day,
by powerful machinery; in many of the gutters the water never stands still,
but has a steady current. Other sanitary improvements have been made;
and with such effect that New Orleans claims to be (during the long
intervals between the occasional yellow-fever assaults) one of the
healthiest cities in the Union. There's plenty of ice now for everybody,
manufactured in the town. It is a driving place commercially, and has
a great river, ocean, and railway business. At the date of our visit,
it was the best lighted city in the Union, electrically speaking.
The New Orleans electric lights were more numerous than those of New York,
and very much better. One had this modified noonday not only in Canal
and some neighboring chief streets, but all along a stretch of five
miles of river frontage. There are good clubs in the city now--
several of them but recently organized--and inviting modern-style pleasure
resorts at West End and Spanish Fort. The telephone is everywhere.
One of the most notable advances is in journalism. The newspapers,
as I remember them, were not a striking feature. Now they are.
Money is spent upon them with a free hand. They get the news, let it cost
what it may. The editorial work is not hack-grinding,