Letters to Mayor Martin Behrman
In the 19th and early 20th century, business letterhead featured artistic renderings related to the business or industry. Local buildings, business logos, and intricate lettering were often depicted on business or government stationary. Additionally, the letterhead can provide valuable information about the history of the business, members of the board, and location. Pictured here are letters received by Mayor Martin Behrman from local businesses that showcase some particularly interesting letterhead. The letters date from Behrman’s first administration, 1904-1920 and feature various local businesses including the Louisiana Sugar and Rice Exchange, Merchants Coffee Company, the Krewe of Rex’s School of Design, and several others.
The School of Design is the official corporate name of the Rex carnival organization. The krewe’s letterhead of course feature the Rex colors of purple, green, and gold. This letter to Commissioner of Public Works George Smith is signed by William McLellan Fayssoux, an attorney and former state legislator. We’re not sure what role Fayssoux played in the Rex organization during the 1913 Mardi Gras, but we do know that he served as the krewe’s Captain from 1919 until his death in 1930.
In 1911 New Orleans, along with the larger region of the central United States, attempted to secure a second “World’s Fair” for the Crescent City. The proposed exposition would draw attention to the proximity of the local port, and the Mississippi River as a whole, to the new Panama Canal. Despite best efforts of local and regional promoters, the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition was held in San Francisco, not New Orleans. Presumably it was not due to questions regarding street paving, which is the subject of this letter.
The third letter included here is from Henry Greenwall, owner of Greenwall’s Theatrical Circuit Company, regarding taxes. The letterhead shows the original Greenwall Theater, located on the corner of Dauphine and Iberville in the French Quarter. Built in 1903, it operated as several different theatrical and then movie theaters until the building was demolished in 1962.
New Orleans Cotton Exchange letterhead features the second building (1883-1920) to house the Cotton Exchange. The institution’s third building still stands on the same site, now housing the Cotton Exchange Hotel. The Exchange itself was founded in 1871 to facilitate the trading of the South’s most important commodity. It continued in existence until 1964 when the decline in cotton futures trading made the Exchange unnecessary.
The Columbia Brewing Company was one of fourteen breweries listed in the Soard’s New Orleans Trade Guide of 1911. Only one, Faubourg Brewing Company, formerly Dixie Brewing Company, is still in operation today. Columbia sat on the corner of Chartres and Elysian Fields, its original building pictured in the letterhead. Prohibition brough an end to the company, but the building remained in use until 1951. Most of Columbia’s sprawling infrastructure has been demolished, but a fraction of the original building remains with archways intact along Chartres Street. The letter, whose author is “anonymous” due to the fact that its second page is missing, describes for Mayor Berhman an all too familiar scenario of clogged drainage pipes and the problems they cause for Crescent City neighborhoods.
George Ahrons of the Ahrons-Seibert Company used this eye-catching stationary to call the Mayor’s attention to another problem with the city’s infrastructure. We don’t know how long the Ahrons-Seibert firm remained in business, but we do know that George Ahrons died in 1943. The “Green Heart” pepper sauce firm was selling, by the way, was in competition with the Tabasco pepper sauce made by the McIlhenny company at Avery Island.
The New Orleans Progressive Union, first organized in 1898, later evolved into the New Orleans Association of Commerce, predecessor of the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce, now known as Greater New Orleans, Inc. The organization played a major role in the failed effort to secure a Panama Exposition for the Crescent City, but it did have success in many of its other undertakings. In 1906, as this letter indicates, the Progressive Union hosted the great orator William Jennings Bryan during a visit the New Orleans. It was one of several documented visits to the city by Bryan during the period between his unsuccessful campaign for the presidency and his service as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson.
Merchants Coffee Company of New Orleans, Inc. was one of twenty-four “Coffee Dealers” listed in the local city directory for 1907. The firm merged into the American Coffee Company in 1986. American still produces Union Coffee, one of several brands originally roasted by the Merchants firm. We don’t know much about the baseball game that benefitted the public bath (which opened in 1909 in the former St. Mary School in the square bounded by St. Mary, Rousseau, Tchoupitoulas, and Felicity Streets). The Bamboula mentioned by Ben Casanas was a festival sponsored by the Elks to benefit the Public Bath Commission. It was held at the White City amusement park on Sunday, September 15. The event raised more than $5,000 for the cause.
The Louisiana Sugar and Rice Exchange
While the body of this letter comprises a rather routine bit of local business, the letterhead reminds us of the economically significant and architecturally grand structure that once graced the Vieux Carre riverfront at Bienville Street. The building was demolished during the early 1960s, possibly to make way for the never-constructed Riverfront Expressway. The site is now occupied by one of the parking lots that serves the Jackson Brewery Development and the Aquarium of the Americas.
The Two Hundred Pounder Club
We’re not sure just what this apparently short-lived (it first appeared in the 1912 city directory but was not listed in the one for 1913) organization was all about. Martin Behrman was a big man, so perhaps the group really was made up of relatively enormous men who, as the letter indicates, got together for food and entertainment and a good old time!
Knights of the Maccabees of the World
The impressive structure shown on this letterhead is something of a mystery. It was not the headquarters of the local Knights of the Maccabees, a fraternal organization with roots in Canada; the New Orleans branch of the organization actually met at Odd Fellows’ Hall near Lafayette Square. M. J. Bulger lived at 64 Neron Place in 1912, but the building at that address is not the pictured structure, nor is it on a corner lot. It is not the landmark Maccabees Building in Detroit, Michigan since that edifice dates from 1927. It may be an earlier headquarters building from the period when the Maccabees were domiciled in Port Huron, Michigan.
The images and some descriptions used in this post previously appeared as part of the Image of the Month in August 2005. Reformatted and edited by Brittanny Silva in 2023