Nobody’s sure yet — and, in truth, we may never be — but there’s at least a good possibility that archaeologists in New Orleans may have found the House of the Rising Sun.
This winter, a nonprofit organization called the Historic New Orleans Collection decided to expand. The organization, which runs a museum and research center, owned seven buildings in the heart of the French Quarter but needed another to serve as a vault. The group bought a one-level, ramshackle parking garage on Conti Street — pronounced KAHNT-eye — and announced plans to tear it down.
The purchase was serendipitous. If just about anyone else had bought the lot, no study would have been conducted. But the organization — dedicated, after all, to Louisiana history — wanted to know the story behind its property. It asked a scholar at the University of Chicago and a New Orleans archeology firm called Earth Search to perform an excavation and document search.
[…]
The archeologists, who plan to launch a more exhaustive study on Tuesday, found that a hotel called the Rising Sun appeared to have operated on the site from the early 1800s until 1822, when it burned to the ground.
In an 1821 advertisement from the newspaper La Gazette, a company called L.S. Hotchkiss explained that it had taken over the hotel but offered reassurance to customers: “No pain or expence [sic] will be spared by the new proprietors to give general satisfaction, and maintain the character of giving the best entertainment.”
The next sentence: “Gentlemen may here rely upon finding attentive Servants.” Similar language, Gray said, was used in old bordello advertisements to make it clear — without explicitly saying so — that extracurricular services were available.
And there’s more in the linked article, of course. Just neat.
Also of note, and a page I want to revisit later: this listing of 250 different recordings of the traditional tune. It’s pretty slow, and would take a while to trawl through, but there’s a wealth of stuff there I’d love to listen to.
(via MeFi)
“Train” by Pigface from the album A New High In Low (1997, 24:18).
