Cityscapes of New Orleans by Richard Campanella

Author:Richard Campanella
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2017-03-06T16:00:00+00:00

Washington Artillery Hall (1871), an early multi-use exhibition space. The building spanned an entire block from St. Charles to Carondelet, between Girod and Julia. Photograph courtesy Library of Congress.

Part conference center, part concert venue, and part ballroom, Exposition Hall was a success, having landed the 1872 Grand Industrial Exposition and many other major clients. Its size and location also attracted the interest of the Washington Artillery, the famed local battalion which found itself in need of a headquarters and arsenal. Exposition Hall had all the right attributes, and in 1878 the organization purchased the building and renamed it Washington Artillery Hall (upstairs) and Washington Artillery Armory (downstairs). Locals also called the whole outfit the St. Charles Armory.

Under the management of the Washington Artillery, the building had two distinct programs. Upstairs continued to be used for elegant society balls, including for Rex and other Carnival organizations, as well as for reunions, expositions, political conventions, conferences, fraternal get-togethers, and any other clubby merriment able to pay the rent. Downstairs, however, was reserved for the business of war. There the battalion stocked rifles, cannon, uniforms, ammunition, and matériel of all sorts; it even had a live shooting range—in the heart of downtown New Orleans, in this era of rudimentary safety codes and no zoning.

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