Name/Title
StereographEntry/Object ID
2023.055.3.0209Description
A black and white stereograph. Image is of a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans - a large crowd is gathered around several parade floats. Above the image "T90 (Star)" is printed, below the image "29589T When King Carnival Reigns in the New Orleans Mardi Gras, La." is printed, to the left of the image "Keystone View Company COPYRIGHTED Manufacturers MADE IN U.S.A. Publishers" is printed, to the right of the image "Meadville, Pa., New York, N. Y., Chicago, Ill., London, England." is printed. On the reverse the following is printed:
29589
MARDI GRAS IN NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
Ever since its founding in 1718 by the Sieur de Bienville, New Orleans has been a place of romance, contrasting dramatically with other American cities. From a village of "a hundred wretched havels in a malarious, wet thicket of willows and dwarf palmettos, infested by serpents and alligators," it has expanded through the years to a great city of 425,000 people. But it still retains the strange mixtures of races and customs and physical characteristics which have always given it individuality. Lying ten or twelve feet below the flood level of the Mississippi, its very existence depends upon the stability of the huge levees which hold back the waters of the miighty river. Yet it is the Mississippi, also, and its alluvial valley, richer than that of the Nile, which pours into the lap of New Orleans in the harvest season the walth of the South and West until "the levee, the wharves and the contigous streets are gorged with the raw staples' - sugar, molasses, rice, tobacco, corn, pork, staves, wheat, oats, flour, and above all else, from one-forth to one-third of the country's entire supply of cotton."
Here on Canal Street, one of the great modern thoroughfares of the city, we are watching the elaborate floats of the parade of Mardi Gras. This is by far the most splendid carnival of the kind held anywhere in the United States and thousands of visitors flock into the city every year to enjoy it. Mardi Gras ("Fat Tuesday," or Shrove Tuesday) has been celebrated with increasing pomp by the French and Creole population of New Orleans ever since 1827 and the various features of the carnival are elaborated by different societies, such as the "Mystic Krewe of Comus," the "Knights of Monus," and others.
Copyright by The Keystone View CompanyCollection
Photograph Collection