LOUISiana DIGITAL LIBRARY

The LOUISiana Digital Library is an online library of more than 84,000 digital materials about Louisiana's history, culture, places, and people. The Historic New Orleans Collection has the four following collections available for searching on the LOUISiana Digital Library.

Charles L. Franck / Franck-Bertacci Photographers

Charles L. Franck was a commercial photographer in New Orleans whose individual career and successors covered all but the first decade of the 20th century. In 1955, his studio was purchased by Albert Bertacci, who continued to operate within the same scope of assignments as Franck had done. Tens of thousands of photographs and negatives from the Franck and Franck-Bertacci studios, held at The Collection, chronicle the face and growth of Louisiana, and New Orleans in particular, during the 20th century. The change of the city through its photographed character focuses on major industries (the port, construction, transportation) during a period of racial integration, labor disputes, and urban growth. Social and cultural events–Mardi Gras, weddings, private parties–all feature in the collection as well. As the Franck Collection approaches the present day, the photographs of major building projects (the Louisiana Superdome, bridges across the Mississippi River, nuclear power plants, and petrochemical complexes) touch on issues of suburban and exurban expansion, and environmental issues.

Alfred and William Waud Collection

The London-born Wauds' specialty was producing drawings–from quick sketches to finished works–of places, people, and events assigned to them by editors. These drawings were the basis for wood-engraved illustrations in the periodicals published by their employers. Alfred Waud was hired by the New York Illustrated News in 1860, and he remained with the News for nearly two years covering the opening months of the Civil War before joining the staff of Harper's Weekly in early 1862. William Waud worked as a special artist during the Civil War for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. The Waud Collection presents a visually fascinating history of America in the mid-19th century, covering subjects as diverse as the reconstructed South and the townships that dotted both banks of the nation's largest river system.

Painting in Louisiana from The Historic New Orleans Collection

Painting in Louisiana from The Historic New Orleans Collection consists of several hundred paintings, including oils and watercolors by Louisiana and Southern artists, owned by The Historic New Orleans Collection. The paintings held by The Collection have a pronounced historical interest, documenting persons, places, and events in Louisiana and by implication, the Gulf South. As a whole, the painting collection at The Historic New Orleans Collection forms a visual narrative of the origins and development of art and society in Louisiana.

John T. Mendes Photograph Collection

Between 1916 and the mid-1930s, John Tibule Mendes (1888–1965) was a consistent and curious observer of life in New Orleans. The 609 gelatin dry plate negatives that form the Mendes archive were donated to The Historic New Orleans Collection by Waldemar S. Nelson in 2003. Waldemar and Opal Nelson were Mendes's neighbors and ultimately purchased his house, finding there a box containing his negatives. Mendes appears to have been purely an amateur photographer; his photographs capture children at play, Mardi Gras, street scenes, the demolition of historic buildings, and news events of his day. Although a handful of the negatives are signed by Mendes (as one would do in order to identify authorship upon publication), no records indicate that these photographs (or any others he made) were published in his lifetime.

The photographer's unillustrated self-published memoir, Dogs in My Life (1964), emphasizes the canine pets that served as Mendes's companions over the course of six decades, but also provides background information about his life. Photographs of dogs appear throughout the range of Mendes's work but are no more prevalent than his depictions of everyday life in early 20th-century New Orleans. The posthumously published Dogs in My Life: The Photographs of John Tibule Mendes (University of New Orleans Press, 2009) juxtaposes Mendes's autobiographical writings with photographs taken over the course of his career.

Louisiana Biography & Obituary Index

The Louisiana Biography and Obituary Index references obituaries and death notices published in New Orleans newspapers from 1804-1972 and biographical information published in older Louisiana collective biographies. It is a joint endeavor of The Historic New Orleans Collection and the New Orleans Public Library