A Preliminary Investigation People have been calling New
Orleans “The City that Care Forgot” since at least 1938, when the sobriquet
appeared in the New Orleans City Guide
produced by the Federal Writers’ Project.
That volume suggests that In one writer’s estimation, Some early authors might have
avoided the “City that Care Forgot” formulation even if they knew of it in
light of their purposes, usually advertising Other terms continued to crop up in
guide books. Still, no printed mention of the
city that care forgot. Even a leading
history of Mardi Gras from the 1930s omits the term, noting that “ As noted above, the Federal
Writers’ Project authors also of the 1930s thought Even so, the City that Care Forgot is inspiring yet other newer and more colorful sobriquets. To pick but one: as t-shirts that began appearing during a still sweltering summer in the late 1990s will attest, New Orleans also qualifies as The City that Air Forgot. [1] Most of the works consulted have introductions setting out the purposes of the publication and giving some background information about the city. The author of this essay perused them with an eye toward discovering use of the term. [2] In addition to works otherwise mentioned, the following works were consulted. Visitors’ Guide to New Orleans, Historical Sketch Book Guide to Hansell’s Illustrated New Orleans Guide,
Strangers’ Guide to Mardi Gras,
The Picayune’s Guide to New Orleans, The Double Dealer, v.1 no. 1, January 1921; v.1, no. 7, July 1921 Guy Manners, Atmosphere, New Orleans, Rob’t H. True Co., 1922 Stephen
Curtis West, French Quarter Guide, City Guide and Commercial Directory, W.G. MacFarlane, The Charm of New Orleans, Chicago, American Autochrome Co., 1928 Mardi Gras Souvenir Program 1938, [3] Jno. E. Land, Pen Illustrations of [4] [5] Souvenir
of New Orleans, New Orleans, F.M. Kirby & Co., 19??. [6] Grace King, [7] New Orleans, Louisiana, Metropolis of the South, Gateway to the Mississippi Valley, New Orleans, Press Club, 1916. [8] New Orleans, America’s Most Interesting City, New Orleans, Federation of Clubs, 1928; see also The New Orleanian, Sept. 20, 1930, at 18; New Orleans City Directory, New Orleans, Soards Directory Co., 1928 [9] [10] [11] T.A. Walters, Historic-Old New Orleans, La., Milwaukee, Wis., E.C. Kropp Co, 1931 [12] The New Orleanian, Sept. 6, 1931, at 14. [13] New Orleans Know-it-All by Blake Pontchartrain, Gambit, Aug. 9-15, 1998 at 2; see also “Big Easy: A nickname from the Dawn of Jazz,” N.O. Times-Picayune, Aug. 27, 1987 at A1. [14] Perry Young, The Mystic Krewe, Chronicles of Comus and His Kin, New Orleans, 1931, at 8; see also Herbert Asbury, The French Quarter, 1936, reprinted St. Simons Island GA, Mockingbird Press, 198, at 264 (New Orleans famed as “the gayest place on the North American continent . . ..”). [15] Edward Larocque Tinker, Steve Ingersoll March 2004
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