For the last two decades The Historic New Orleans Collection has methodically built one of the most extensive Tennessee Williams collections in the world, and thanks to a generous endowment from the late Fred W. Todd, the holdings continue to increase. Hundreds of items chart the development and influence of Williams’s classic play A Streetcar Named Desire.

Over the course of its existence, New Orleans has frequently endured disastrous flooding and devastating outbreaks of disease due to the insufficient infrastructure of the water system. In 1896, after decades of unsuccessful attempts to drain the city, the New Orleans Drainage Commission was formed to create a water management plan for the city, and by 1899 the Sewerage and Water Board was established. Within a few years, one of its engineers

When she died in June 2019 at age 96, Leah Chase was celebrated as a New Orleans legend, icon, and inspiration.

Storyville was New Orleans’s legal red-light district that operated between 1898 and 1917. For most of its brief existence, visitors to the District, as it was known, could navigate the neighborhood and its services with the help of special guidebooks that contained directories of sex workers listed by name, address, and race, as well as advertisements for individual establishments and luxury products.