6 GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES 
This and the Cabildo are now part of a free museum and the home of 
the Louisiana Historical Society. Not far distant is the house built 
for Napoleon, who was to have been rescued from St. Helena by one 
of Lafitte’s pirate crew had he not died before the expedition could 
start. Many other buildings near by have great historic interest and 
also present peculiarities of construction not seen elsewhere. The 
city was largely destroyed by fires in 1788 and 1794; in its rebuilding 
the Spanish influence has affected the architecture. The French 
market (shown in part in pl. 3, A), on the site of the market built by 
the Spaniards in 1791, attracts many tourists. Not far away (1727 
Chartres Street) is the Archbishopric, erected in 1734 for an Ursuline 
convent, said to be the oldest building now standing in the Mississippi 
Valley. Rampart Street is on the outer line of the city defenses, 
built in 1793 by Baron de Carondelet, then Spanish governor, and the 
Terminal Station is on the site of Fort Burgundy. The old ceme- 
teries are filled with vaults, many with three tiers of niches for caskets, 
for originally the water level was so near the surface that burial in the 
ground was impracticable. (See pl. 3, B.) The Spanish fort where 
Bayou St. John joins Lake Pontchartrain marks the place where 
the first colony landed. The Chalmette Monument, in the lower 
end of the city, commemorates the battle in which Gen. Andrew 
Jackson and his 5,000 backwoods militia routed a good-sized British 
army under Sir Edward Pakenham in 1815. The mint, erected in 
1821, the oldest one in the country, was built on ramparts of General 
Jackson’s old fort. The Pontalba buildings, still in use, were erected 
in 1849 and were long used as high-class apartment houses. In 1862 
New Orleans was captured by Gen. Benjamin Butler and held by the 
Union forces until the end of the Civil War. 
New Orleans is built on the “Isle d’Orléans” (no longer an island) 
in a great crescent-shaped bend of the Mississippi 107 miles above its 
mouth (South Pass). It lies on the slope of a natural levee, or low 
ridge built up by the river, and comprises an area of 44 square miles. 
Most of the city is below the high-water level of the river, and parts 
of it are below the level of the Gulf of Mexico. The first levee, built 
*The land slopes down from the 
river bank into two basins 1 foot or 
under New Orleans are sand, silt, and 
clay, probably of the overflow or levee 
more below sea level—one north of 
Claiborne Avenue and another in the 
neighborhood of Earigny and Elysi 
Field Avenues. North of these basins 
there is a ridge with crest 3 to 5 feet 
above sea level that was probably built 
of this ridge the land is less than 1 foot 
above sea level and slopes gently to 
Lake Pontchartrain. The sediments 
deposits, though they may have been 
deposited in the Gulf in front of an off- 
shore bar. In the sediments are unde- 
cayed cypress stumps, some as deep as 
12 feet below sea level. At depths of 
more than 43 feet below sea level recent 
marine shells are found (Trowbridge). 
It has not been definitely determined 
how much true delta material underlies 
New Orleans, 
