The birthplace of jazz, Creole cooking, the cocktail itself, and the most singular American city
New Orleans is the most unlike-anywhere-else city in America — a French and Spanish colonial past, an African American cultural bedrock, and a Caribbean sensibility that has almost nothing in common with the rest of the United States. Jazz was born here, literally, in the early 20th century in the dance halls and brothels of Storyville and the funeral processions of the Tremé neighborhood; the second-line parade (a brass band funeral that becomes a street party after the body is interred) is a still-living tradition, not a tourist performance. The cocktail was invented here: the Sazerac (rye…
New Orleans was founded by the French in 1718 on a crescent of the Mississippi River (hence 'Crescent City'), ceded to Spain in 1762, secretly retroceded to France in 1800, and sold to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 — all within 85 years. The city was the largest slave market in North America by 1840; the wealth generated by the sugar and cotton plantation system along the Mississippi made it the wealthiest city in the South. The Civil War left it damaged but intact; the yellow fever epidemics of the 19th century killed tens of thousands. Hurricane Katrina (August 2005) f…