New Orleans Incorporated
200 Years of the City Charter
The city charter is to New Orleans what the constitution is to the State of Louisiana. It is the legal document that created the municipal government and defines its purposes, duties, and privileges. On February 17, 1805, Governor William C. C. Claiborne approved An Act to Incorporate the City of New Orleans that had just been passed by the Legislative Council of the Territory of Orleans. New Orleans thus had its first charter seven years before Louisiana had its first constitution, and was now officially an American city after serving for eighty-three years as the capital of a vast European colony in North America.
Over the ensuing 200 years the Louisiana Legislature amended the original charter hundreds of times and replaced it altogether six times. In 1950 the Legislature made it possible for New Orleans to adopt a new home rule charter, an option that the city fathers quickly took advantage of.
This exhibit explores the 200-year history of city charters in New Orleans using original manuscripts, maps, and books from the City Archives & Special Collections. It focuses on the geographical changes effected by several of the charters, on the structural changes to the municipal government that each charter brought about, and on some of the personalities involved in this history.
New Orleans’ first charter was granted by the territorial legislature of 1805, and went into effect the following year. It established a mayor-council form of government with a mayor appointed by the governor for a term of one year. The council consisted of fourteen members-two from each ward of the city-who were elected for two year terms, one-half the membership being elected each year. The mayor was a justice of the peace and superintendent of the city police. There was also a recorder, who was a kind of assistant mayor, appointed by the governor for the same term and who served both as a justice of the peace and president of the council without vote. Generally speaking, the mayor was fairly strong, having the power to veto ordinances and appoint his subordinates. This charter, with certain changes, lasted until 1836. The most important of these changes occurred in 1812, when the mayor was made elective and given a two-year term. The following year there were similar changes in the office of the recorder. The size of the council was reduced to ten in 1827, all of whom were elected for a term of one year.
William Kenner and Julien Poydras were two of the members of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Orleans, the body that adopted the city’s first charter in 1805. Kenner was a prominent merchant and planter. Poydras was also a planter and merchant, but is probably best remembered as an early New Orleans philanthropist.
James Pitot (1784-1831) was mayor of New Orleans when the city’s first charter was adopted by the Legislative Council in 1805. A native of France, Pitot found his way to New Orleans after being forced to flee his homeland following the French Revolution. Governor Claiborne had appointed him as mayor in 1804 and resigned the office in the middle of 1805. Claiborne then appointed him to serve as the first judge of the Court of Probates in New Orleans, a post that he held until his death.
The Louisiana Gazette printed the full text of the 1805 Charter in its February 22, 1805 edition, five days after the law was adopted by the Legislative Council. The Gazette was New Orleans’ first English-language newspaper of any significance. It was published throughout the period 1804-1926.
The four documents below illustrate the immediate effects of the 1805 Charter on the City of New Orleans, in the form of disputes. The first two involve property disputes, the third an ecclesiastical dispute, and the final document is from a Count Court lawsuit which cites the 1805 Charter in a dispute over non-payment for the laying of a sidewalk. More information about each document is provided below.
Section 13 of the 1805 Charter confirmed municipal ownership of all lands that had belonged to the city under the Spanish and French dominations. It was thus necessary for the Mayor and Conseil de Ville to investigate Bernard Marigny’s claim to property on the eastern side of the city before giving him final permission to subdivide those lands into the Faubourg Marigny. Displayed here is the report of a committee appointed by the Conseil de Ville to conduct that investigation.
[Ordinances and resolutions of the Conseil de Ville, 1805-1815]
Five months after adoption of the 1805 Charter Daniel Clark questioned the city’s right to demand that he prove ownership of lands, comprising a rope walk, needed for the extension of several streets. Clark asserted that his reading of the charter left doubts as to the validity of the resolution that directed him to produce valid title to the property in question.
[Conseil de Ville. Messages from the Mayor, 1805]
On adoption of the 1805 Charter New Orleans was officially an American city after having existed as a European outpost on American soil for the better part of a century. It is rather ironic, therefore, that within a month the Conseil de Ville was asked by the Roman Catholic Vicar General, Rev. Patrick Walsh, to intervene in an ecclesiastical dispute with Pere Antoine. Father Walsh’s letter suggests that the Conseil should suppress, or at least discourage, a meeting to be held on the following day to elect a pastor for the New Orleans congregation. One day after the meeting, though, three members of the Conseil de Ville—Nicolas Girod, Charles Poree, and Paul Lanusse—reported that the meeting had taken place and that Pere Antoine had been chosen to be the pastor. For more information on this complex situation, see Stanley Fay’s article, “The Schism of 1805 in New Orleans,” published in the Louisiana Historical Quarterly, v. XX (1939), pp. 98-141.
[Ordinances and resolutions of the Conseil de Ville, 1805-1815]
Pierre Seuzeneau cites the 1805 Charter in his lawsuit against Barthelemy Lafon for non-payment of an amount due for laying the sidewalk (banquette) in front of Lafon’s property on St. Peter Street. County Court Judge James Workman ruled in favor of Seuzeneau and ordered Lafon to pay $75 plus court costs. Seuzeneau’s petition is shown below and at right is his bill for the work.
[County Court #218, Seuzeneau vs. Lafon
The charter of 1836 was not a completely new document since it provided for the continuation of the former charter provisions which were not specifically superseded. The basic character of the city’s government, however, was completely changed. The city was divided into three municipalities, each with its own governmental structure but with some overall powers delegated to a central government. There was only one mayor, but each municipality had its own council composed of a recorder and aldermen, the former elected at large and the latter, by wards on the basis of one alderman for each hundred voters and an additional one if the remainder exceeded sixty. The three councils meeting together constituted the general city council.
In 1840 this system was changed to provide for municipal councils of a fixed size and for a general city council of twelve members, four of whom were elected in each municipality at the time the aldermen were elected. The municipal councils possessed all the legislative powers except those specifically delegated to the general council. The latter, however, had certain police powers, as well as the authority to determine the contribution of each municipality to the sinking fund used to liquidate the indebtedness of the city under its previous charter. This authority was transferred to a sinking fund commission in 1840, composed of the mayor and six commissioners, two of whom were appointed by each of the municipal councils. Finally, the charter of 1836 continued the position of recorder, with one for each municipality and one for the city as a whole.
The 1842 City Directory below lists the individuals serving the numerous councils, including the General Council, First Municipality Council, Second Municipality Council, and Third Municipality Council.
Before New Orleans could effectively be divided into three separate municipalities it was necessary to inventory the lands under public ownership. The document displayed here to the right lists thirty-seven properties, from City Hall to a square of land intended for the construction of a hospital for lepers. The most valuable item shown, the Halle des Boucheries, is today the building that houses the Café du Monde and other shops in the historic French Market complex.
Agitation for reuniting the municipalities resulted in 1850 in a proposed new charter and a referendum on consolidation, which failed to pass. In 1852, however, the town of Lafayette in Jefferson Parish agreed to unite with the three New Orleans municipalities, and a new charter was put into effect without a referendum. This charter provided for a bicameral council composed of two boards-a board of aldermen with a term of either one or two years as determined by lot and a board of assistant aldermen with a term of one year. The former consisted of from ten to thirteen members, and the latter, of from twenty to twenty-seven, the size in each case being dependent on the number of registered voters in the areas which were used as the units of representation. In the case of the aldermen, the units were districts which corresponded to the former municipalities; in the case of the assistant aldermen, they were wards within these districts. The boards met separately but their legislative powers were the same. The only officeholders who were elected by city-wide vote were the mayor and four of the department heads, all of whom were chosen for two-year terms. The mayor had the veto power but it could be overridden by a three-fifths vote of the council.
Abdil Daily Crossman (1803-1859) was Mayor of New Orleans when the Charter of 1852 took effect. He had been elected for the first time in 1846 and served through the first part of the year 1854. He is memorialized by Crossman Street in the Vieux Carre and also by A. D. Crossman Elementary School on South Carrollton Avenue.
A major defect of the municipality scheme introduced by the 1836 Charter lay in the difficulty that the several governing bodies faced in retiring their individual and collective debts in the face of fierce competition for limited funding sources following the Panic of 1837. The 1852 Charter provided for the mayor, comptroller, and treasurer, along with the chairmen of the Finance Committees of the two boards making up the Common Council, to act as the Commissioners of the Consolidated Debt of New Orleans. That debt included the debt that was outstanding in 1836 when the city was divided into three municipalities, along with the separate debts undertaken by the individual municipalities during their existence. To this amount was soon added the debt of the city of Lafayette outstanding at the time of its annexation by the city of New Orleans. Shown here is the first page of the Commissioners’ minutes in which the Charter is cited as the body’s authority.
The charter of 1852 was extensively revised in 1856 without changing, however, the basic pattern of the city’s government. The bicameral council was retained but both boards were given a fixed size and the number of members was reduced. The three-fifths majority required to override the mayor’s veto was changed to two-thirds. Reorganization of the administration was provided for through the abolition of certain boards, the creation of others, and council rather than popular election of two department heads. This charter remained in effect throughout the Civil War period, although there were a number of changes in the city’s government. During the period of military occupation the mayor was appointed by the military authority, and after the restoration of civilian government in 1866 the reconstruction legislature actively controlled the city. The city’s police force, for example, was replaced by a metropolitan police force under the control of the governor, which, although established for Orleans, Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes, had police powers throughout the state.
The Charter of 1870
The city was given a new charter in 1870. This provided for what was in effect a commission form of government. Seven administrators and a mayor were elected by city-wide vote for a term of two years. Each administrator served as the head of a city department, being elected to that particular position. The departments were finance, commerce, improvements, assessments, police, public accounts, and water works and public buildings. The mayor was not the head of any department but served with the administrators as a member of the legislative body. He had no vote except to break a tie, but possessed the veto power, which could be overridden by five of the seven administrators. Even under the new charter, however, the state legislature continued its direction of city affairs until federal troops were withdrawn from the state in 1877.
Record of the meeting to organize the new Council established by the Charter of 1870. The document, in a published series of the body’s Official Proceedings (1870-1873), identifies the seven men who would serve as Administrators of the city of New Orleans.
[City Council. Official Proceedings, 1870-1873]
The 1870 Charter (Act #7 of the 1870 Louisiana Legislature) in its first two sections effected the city’s annexation of Jefferson City, formerly part of Jefferson Parish. The law also for the first time included the right bank (now known as the West Bank) of the Mississippi River as part of the city of New Orleans. Prior to 1870 the right bank, comprising the community of Algiers, existed as part of unincorporated Orleans Parish, and was governed by a Police Jury.
[Acts of Louisiana, 1870]
Benjamin Franklin Flanders (1816-1896) was mayor of New Orleans when the Charter of 1870 went into effect. A native of New Hampshire, Flanders came to the Crescent City in 1842 to pursue a career in politics, journalism, and the law. He was appointed mayor by Governor Henry Clay Warmouth and was later elected under the terms of the new charter. Flanders remained in office until November 29, 1872.
[Jewell’s Crescent City Illustrated (1873)]
The legal significance of the city charter is demonstrated by these pages from the published report of the Louisiana Supreme Court’s opinion in the matter of the City of New Orleans vs. Louisiana Savings Bank and Safe Deposit Company. Justice Robert Hardin Marr’s opinion makes direct reference to the 1870 Charter as the authority for a subsequent New Orleans license ordinance. Ruling in favor of the city Justice Marr also wrote “that the city had the power and authority, by the express terms of the charter, to require the bank to pay the license tax. . . . ” [Reports of cases argued and determined in the Supreme Court of Louisiana during the year 1879 (New Orleans, 1880)]
The city returned to the mayor-council form of government in 1882 with a mayor elected for four years and a council of thirty members, all of whom were elected by districts. Four department heads were also elected, with the remainder appointed by the mayor with council approval.
One of the most striking features of the 1882 Charter was its expansion of the City Council from seven to thirty members. The size of the pages needed to record the new body’s roll call votes had to grow as well in order to display all of the members’ names on a single page. Earlier record book pages of this type measured only 7” x 12.5” rather than the 9.5” x 15” example shown here. It is unlikely that anyone in city government during the 1880s calculated the increased cost of buying the larger volumes!
Another charter was given to the city in 1896. This one continued the mayor-council form of government but reduced the size of the council to seventeen members. Only two department heads-the treasurer and comptroller-were elected. A civil service system was established, which lasted, however, only until 1900, when the reform government at city hall was turned out of office. The charter itself lasted until 1912.
The charter of 1912 provided for a commission form of government with a mayor and four commissioners elected at large for four-year terms. The mayor headed the department of public affairs, but assignments to the other departments-public finance, public safety, public utilities and public property-were by majority vote of the council. The commission was the legislative body, and its acts were not subject to veto by the mayor. It also appointed other top administrative officials and was responsible for preparing the budget of the city. In 1948 the commission was reorganized to consist of eight members-the mayor and seven commissioners, each of the seven being elected from a municipal district. The number of departments was similarly increased through the addition of public streets, public sanitation, and parks and institutions.
Mayor Martin Behrman (1864-1926) was in office when the 1912 Charter went into effect. He was a native of New York City who came to New Orleans when he was very young. Behrman was in the grocery business before entering politics with the Francis T. Nicholls gubernatorial campaign in 1888. He held numerous positions in local and state government prior to his election as mayor in 1904. He held that position until 1920 when he was defeated by Andrew McShane, but came back into office after being elected for an unprecedented fifth time in 1925. Martin Behrman died in office in 1926.
Mayor Martin Behrman’s message to the Commission Council at its first meeting (December 2, 1912) includes reference to his, and their, responsibility for forming a new government under the terms of the charter adopted earlier that year.
The commission form of government lasted until 1954 when it was replaced by a mayor-council form provided for in a home rule charter authorized by constitutional amendment of 1950. This amendment declared that the city would have “the authority to adopt and enforce local police, sanitary and similar regulations and to do and perform all of the acts pertaining to its local affairs, property and government, which are necessary or proper in the legitimate exercise of its corporate powers and municipal functions.” This grant of power did not apply, however, to constitutional agencies, the Board of Liquidation, City Debt, the civil service system and the pension systems of the Sewerage and Water Board and the fire and police departments. The city was also prohibited from exercising any power which is inconsistent or in conflict with general law, and, without legislative sanction, from decreasing the salaries or increasing the hours of employment in the fire and police departments. The state legislature, in turn, was forbidden to amend or repeal the home rule charter “other than by general law which uniformly applies, both in terms and in effect, to all cities of the state.” The classification of cities for purposes of legislation was permitted only if the classification is based on total population and is made to apply to no fewer than the five largest cities of the state, including New Orleans. Such legislation is not to become effective in New Orleans, however, until approved by the voters of the city. The city can amend or replace its own charter either by ordinance or by petition signed by 10,000 voters, with approval by a majority of the electorate in both instances.
The charter provides for a mayor-council form of government with a chief administrative officer who is appointed by, and is responsible to, the mayor. The council, which is the legislative body, is composed of seven members, five of whom are elected from districts and two at large. The term of office is four years and the salary is $7500 per year. It is the mandatory duty of the council to redistrict the city within six months after each decennial census, and if this is not done the members receive no further salaries. A redistricting ordinance may not be vetoed by the mayor.
New Orleans still operates under the 1954 Home Rule Charter, though it has been amended many times.
Charter Committee
While the home rule amendment was before the legislature, Mayor Morrison issued a public statement in which he declared that, if the amendment was passed by the legislature and approved by the voters, the council would create a non-partisan commission of civic leaders to prepare the draft of a new charter. Shortly after the November election, in which the amendment was approved by a majority of more than two to one, the mayor asked a group of civic organizations and institutions to name three persons from whom the council could choose one. When several members of the council objected to this system, the mayor modified his proposed ordinance to authorize the organizations either to designate one representative on the committee or to nominate two or more persons from whom the council would select one. The ordinance also provided for two additional representatives to be named by the council itself. In this form it was passed, with April 1, 1952 as the deadline for submission of the proposed charter to the council for approval.
The committee hired a small research staff, which was headed by the director of the Bureau of Governmental Research. The staff prepared a total of 111 brief reports on the boards and commissions located in the city, devoted principally to their historical and legal background.” The committee considered the various forms of city government used in the United States and held public hearings to permit interested citizens and organizations to present their views. The proposed charter was submitted to the council by the deadline date and approved by it with some amendments. The voters of the city were given an opportunity the following November to vote either for the retention of the old form of government or in favor of the new. The new charter was adopted and went into effect on May 1, 1954.
The Commission Council passed this ordinance to put the charter revision process in motion. It sets out the legal basis for a home rule charter, affirms the Council’s preference that an independent body prepare the document, and identifies the various constituencies that would be represented on the Charter Committee.
[Commission Council Records]
Record of the organizational meeting of the Charter Committee held on January 3, 1951. The body met a total of ninety-four times, sometimes more than twice a week, until its final session on May 12, 1952. Total expenditures by the Committee during its seventeen months of deliberations amounted to just over $54,000 out of the $76,000 appropriated by the Commission Council. The draft that they ultimately presented to the Council was truly a bargain!
[Records of the Charter Committee of the City of New Orleans, 1950-1952]
Mayor Chep Morrison’s letter to Lester Lautenschlaeger of the Charter Committee suggests the close relationship that existed between that body and the city government. Lautenschlaeger himself served during the period as Director of the New Orleans Recreation Department.
[Mayor deLesseps S. Morrison Records]
Martha Robinson’s letter, written during the first week of the Charter Committee’s deliberations, provides a thumbnail sketch of the movement for a new charter up to that time. Mrs. Robinson had been an early supporter of Mayor Chep Morrison but disagreed with him on several issues that came before the Committee, notably those designed to restrict patronage at City Hall. In 1954 she ran an unsuccessful campaign for the City Council seat held by Morrison ally, and eventual successor, Victor H. Schiro.
[Records of the Charter Committee of the City of New Orleans, 1950-1952]
The Charter Committee hired a professional staff to assist in the work of drafting a new charter. Val Mogensen, Executive Director of the Bureau of Governmental Research, also served as director of the Committee’s staff. Lennox L. Moak, an expert in municipal government finances, was another key member of that staff. The two memorandums shown here testify to the degree of study that went into the preparation of the home rule charter.
[Records of the Charter Committee of the City of New Orleans, 1950-1952]
If this letter from Edgar Stern is any indication, it appears that the members of the Charter Committee took their jobs very seriously. Stern owned a broadcasting company, served as a director of Sears, Roebuck & Company, and was quite active in numerous civic, cultural, and educational organizations, yet he still took the time to list the typographical errors that he found in one of the drafts of the new charter. He did, of course, also make more substantive contributions to the charter deliberations.
[Records of the Charter Committee of the City of New Orleans, 1950-1952]
This July 17, 1951 communication from Clem H. Sehrt, Chairman of the Regular Democratic Organization indicates that there were political implications regarding the makeup of the Charter Committee. It also presents a somewhat different interpretation of charter-making in the twentieth century than the one presented in this exhibit. Interestingly, though, the remaining pages of Sehrt’s report spell out an agenda for charter revision that differed little from the document that was finally adopted.
[Records of the Charter Committee of the City of New Orleans, 1950-1952]
Charter Amendments
The 1954 was not a perfect document despite the improvements that it made in the governmental structure of the Crescent City. By 1960 the Charter Advisory Committee, comprising the same individuals who had drafted the original law, was acknowledging fifty-six proposed changes in the law. The Committee did not, however, deem any of the proposals important enough to warrant an election. There were several charter amendments on the ballot in the following year (1961), but all went down to defeat.
The 1954 Charter limited the Mayor to two consecutive terms in office. After Mayor Morrison lost his third and final bid for the Louisiana Governor’s office (in 1960), he decided to seek a charter amendment that would allow him to run for another four-years in City Hall. A sometimes bitter campaign led up to the April 15, 1961 election with local politicians taking sides pro (1st image) and con (2nd image) on the issue. When the votes were counted the amendment—and Chep Morrison—had gone down to defeat. Within two months of this setback Morrison would resign to become U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States.
In 1983 Mayor Ernest N. “Dutch” Morial tried to accomplish what Mayor Chep Morrison had failed to do twenty-two years earlier. Morial’s attempt to change the charter in order to allow him, and all future mayors, to run for an unlimited number of terms was rejected by the city’s voters in the November 22 election. Two years later he tried again, this time asking only that he be given the opportunity to run for a third term. The electorate voted down that proposal as well. Shown here are examples of pro and con literature from the 1983 campaign along with campaign pins and a photograph from the 1985 effort.
Following an earlier success with charter revision, in 2001 Mayor Marc H. Morial sought the prize that had eluded his father Dutch and Chep Morrison. His effort to have the charter amended to allow him and future mayors to run for three consecutive terms found stiff opposition throughout the city, including from among the members of the City Council. Shown here is a staff member’s summary of a press conference called by four council members to express their views on the matter along with a press release issued by Mayor Morial in response to the council members’ presentation. In the end, the council members were on the winning side as, once again, the charter revision went down to defeat.
New Orleans continues to operate under the 1954 Home Rule Charter; the current charter is available to view on Municode, along with the ordinances passed by the New Orleans City Council.
This digital exhibit was edited and reformatted by Brittanny Silva in 2024.
