In Building Antebellum New Orleans: Free People of Colour and Their Influence, Tara A. Dudley painstakingly undertakes an investigation of two families, each deeply rooted in the local community of gens de couleur libres, as case-studies to explore legacies in property ownership, engagement and entrepreneurship. This population of people captivated the imagination of contemporary travellers to New Orleans, and a skewed mythology developed about them that has persisted even in scholarship. Tapping into a rich historiography, Dudley joins the ranks of historians – like Virginia Meacham Gould, Shirley Elizabeth Thompson and Emily Clark among others – who have corrected key scholarly misperceptions regarding free people of colour and afforded them their due in contributing to the vibrant culture of the city. In her thematic exploration of the craftsmanship exhibited by the builder-architects as native sons of the city, who distinguished themselves from immigrants from Saint-Domingue, Cuba and elsewhere in the Caribbean by their perfection and usage of traditional forms, especially the Creole cottage, Dudley argues that they incorporated their own flairs into what was a quintessentially American architecture.
Dudley shows how the Dolliole and Soulié families, both headed by free mothers of colour and French fathers, left their imprint on the city in multiple ways. She divides the book into three parts – ‘Ownership: possessing the built environment’, ‘Engagement: forming and transforming the built environment’ and ‘Entrepreneurship: controlling the built environment’ – to map out the origins of both families and the processes by which they acquired, improved and managed property, and became pillars of their local communities. The family trees provided offer a helpful supplement to the text to showcase the sometimes-complicated web of relationships. The persuasively argued text is also enhanced by the many images of the people, maps and buildings that provide ample visuals to illustrate the legacies the families left behind. By delving into a wide-ranging assortment of primary sources – notarial, will and probate, city directories, sacramental and other records, but particularly the extant buildings members of the two families constructed – she demonstrates the expansion of their properties within different sectors of the city.
Location, as she maintains, was critical in the evolution of both families’ property holdings, but also mirrored the larger demographic trends of the ‘Americanization’ of New Orleans after it absorbed waves of Anglo-Americans. She charts the city’s Creole suburbs (faubourgs) and the subsequent American sector, and shows how these developments influenced the choices both families made in moving throughout the city to stay within those areas more heavily inhabited by French-speaking Creoles and free people of colour. The maps of neighbourhoods, and the charts that list the addresses of properties, dates of acquisition and sale and the family members involved, are incredibly useful in showing both families’ considerable real estate activities. As free people of colour who increasingly had to compete with the Americans who flooded the city, as well as Irish and German immigrants, they had to adjust to the realities of a contraction of opportunities and increased marginalization, especially in the mid-nineteenth century.
Due to the nature of the building trades and the labour it employed, the book, by necessity, centres heavily on the activities of free men of colour. However, it also acknowledges the long history of property ownership that free women of colour had in New Orleans and highlights the roles of the Dolliole and Soulié women, beginning with the matriarchs of the families, in working with their white partners to leave property to their children. Dudley also discusses the extensive real estate transactions conducted by the women, and their level of involvement with their male siblings and other family members in making key decisions regarding development, sales and leasing. Although formal architectural education – when it was undertaken – and training to become a builder fell under the purview of boys and men, Dudley points out that free women of colour, by bringing in partners and husbands who were skilled in the trade, expanded this knowledge system within their family circles. They also made provisions for the training and apprenticeships of their sons and other male relatives to become builders. Thus, the men and women in free families of colour worked in tandem to sponsor later generations and build partnerships with other members of the local community of gens de couleur libres.
In sum, Building Antebellum New Orleans goes well beyond architectural history. Dudley deftly interweaves family, social and economic strands within her analysis of the ways in which gens de couleur libres acquired substantial properties throughout the city by birthright or contract, trained generations of builder-architects and shaped its cultural milieu with their Creole sensibilities. Despite the considerable challenges to them in later decades, free people of colour like the Dollioles and Souliés distinguished themselves with their accumulation of wealth, status and influence, more so than in many other places in the United States.
