(easy going, bluesy piano music) - [Announcer] The following is a stereo presention of WYES-TV New Orleans.

(piano and strings music) (uplifting orchestral woodwinds music) The Uptown That Was is made possible by the WYES Producers Circle, a group of generous contributors dedicated to the support of Channel 12's local productions.

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(slow, easy going bluesy piano music) - For me, going uptown was first of all a magical place with the trees.

(birds chirping) They were just beautiful oak trees everywhere, so you felt like you were living in a magical forest of trees.

- When I think about uptown, I think about the peace and serenity that comes from the stately mansions on St. Charles Avenue.

And just from the general environment, all of the gingerbread cottages.

The architecture in general, is very soothing and comforting.

And it's very nostalgic.

- Tulane, Tulane Stadium ball games, College Inn.

Your whole life almost in front of you, that's the way I grew up, that's why I know everybody.

It was a terrific feeling.

- I would get on the streetcar for seven cents at Philip and St. Charles, and then ride all the way uptown to Carrollton, out of Carrollton to South Claiborne.

And then take Claiborne Avenue to Canal, right back along Canal and then uptown again to Philip and St. Charles, all for seven cents.

It was fabulous, it was the best entertainment that you can imagine.

- Music and food, and culture, and Mardi Gras Indians, and uptown socialites, and aspirations, and dreams, and the center of New Orleans' universe.

- I'm Peggy Scott Laborde.

Uptown New Orleans is a collection of neighborhoods falling on either side of St. Charles Avenue that are a source of rich memories.

In the next hour we'll share some well known, and lessor known stories of The Uptown That Was.

(slow, easy going, elegant piano music) (birds chirping) The actual boundaries of what constitutes uptown might best be described as flexible.

And are greatly influenced by which neighborhood you grew up in.

- Well it depends, it depends on what you mean, like uptown, how far, you know?

According to the Cabildo books, uptown is not the university section, for instance.

Now I thought that was uptown, until whenever they redefined that.

They place uptown between like Calhoun I suppose, and Napoleon Avenue, a little further down.

- Many people say it's that which is beyond going towards Carrollton from Canal Street.

(bells ringing) - (laughs) On the other side of Canal Street is downtown, all the way to the St. Bernard Parish Line.

- There was downtown, then there was the garden district, and then the Irish channel.

Uptown to me sort of started around, my way of thinking, started around maybe Valence Street.

- Well that's where I grew up on Webster Street area in Webster, one house off the corner.

So that little world bounded by Napoleon, Broadway, the river and Pierette Street is what I think of uptown.

That was sort of the range of my bicycle and my friends.

(dog barks) - Well when I was a child I would have said the university area.

That's what I thought of as uptown.

Now they tell me uptown really includes the garden district.

But I never thought of that really.

I always thought of it as up by university.

- [Peggy] Another way of telling where you're from is how you talk.

Some native uptowners claim there's only one way to pronounce the city's name.

- There's no real New Orleans accent.

There's neighborhood accents in my opinion.

- And maybe the dialect wasn't different, but the rhythm was.

And I don't know if I can explain that in terms where people would understand, but the vibe was different on the other side of Canal Street.

- Like my father, for instance, wasn't born uptown, he was born back of town, he would say New Orleans.

And my mother would say New Awlyuns, right?

And she was from uptown.

- It's New Awlyuns, got to be, now that's uptown.

It's A-W-L-Y-U-N-S, you know?

I mean anybody knows that.

You can always tell the pretenders, 'cause they New Orleans, you know.

I don't think anybody says that unless you're a Yankee.

- [Peggy] Another sound associated with uptown was the chorus of street vendors, drifting through an open window.

- We had windows open in the summertime.

And one of my most wonderful memories would be sitting at the dining room table.

And it was my mother and father, and my six brothers and sisters and I, hearing in the distance someone call out.

A street vendor calling out, "Blackberries, blackberries!"

And my father would give us some money and say, "Run out and buy some!"

- There were ladies, black ladies, they would come from Westwego.

The Walnut Street Ferry was in existence then.

And they would come over the ferry, and it landed behind Audubon Park.

And then they would walk up and down the streets with baskets selling blackberries.

- The blackberry lady would come by all the time, "Blackberries!"

With the big bucket on, basket on her head, and you'd buy a jelly glass was a nickel.

A jelly glass of blackberries.

- Well I remember all the way back to the banana man with the wagon and the mule.

I remember him going around and calling out bananas, in a long, long, long, long series of syllables.

I think he said, banananananananana, like that.

- The fruit vendors always came by.

There's still a few of them left.

Gotta, gotta, gotta ripe melon here, you know.

Red to the rind and all that kind of business.

♪ I got watermelon red to the rind, rara here.

♪ You know just similar to a Gregorian Chant in the churches, and later on you know when I became a choir boy, I said, "Well this is kind of related."

Because it was like a sing song chant, and each one had its own particular style of doing.

And you can identify you know, who was coming down the street, if you just listened to the way they sang the song about peddling their wares.

- And of course we had a vegetable man (hammer banging) that came by in a truck.

And he would call my mother, and she'd go out there and argue with him about tomatoes.

That was one of the sounds in the neighborhood.

(laughs) My mother arguing about those tomatoes and what they cost.

(insects chirping) - In addition to the cries of uptown street vendors, there are also sounds of nature.

- Well before the great spraying, before they started spraying for mosquitoes, there was more of a concentration of cricket sounds, you know the katydid sound was immense.

Like a late afternoon, I'd be lying in bed during the summer for instance be taking a nap when I was a kid.

And all of a sudden the thing would (makes slurping noises) would start, and it was this huge sound of all these insects.

But uptown you forget is this huge forest, essentially and it's filled with all this wildlife.

(bell dinging) (motor roaring) (brakes squealing) - But the real sound, of course, the dominant sound was the street car.

And sometimes I still hear that street car in my head.

I think I'm hearing it pull to a stop and then go on.

You know the sound is a haunting sound.

I used to go to sleep with that sound, (bell dinging) right outside.

And I really grew to love it.

(cars whooshing) (bright piano music) - [Peggy] For many New Orleanians, oak tree lined St. Charles Avenue has become associated with the Mardi Gras experience.

- It's a great feeling to watch a parade on St. Charles Avenue, because you can actually feel the vibrations from all of the spirits of the past.

'Cause know that St. Charles Avenue was like the primary route for most of the parades.

- Living on a parade route was terrific!

You can't top it, I mean it was just great.

I can remember the first Mardi Gras I was ever conscious of, and I think it was the first Mardi Gras after the Second World War.

And I remember the sound of people gathering in the streets, of voices out there.

And I went to my mother and said, "What is that?

"Why are those people out there, what's happening?"

And she said, "It's Mardi Gras, there's gonna be "a parade tonight."

- It's something wonderful, and something very New Orleanian.

There's a magic to it, there's a thrill to it.

- And I remember being very frightened by the night parades.

I was very frightened by the flambeau carriers, and very frightened by that flickering fire.

In those days the flambeau carriers were the only light that the parades had.

It was almost lurid, that flickering light under the tree branches.

- Well it was great, because we would have dinner.

And at a certain point when we would hear the police sirens, we'd all run out and see the parade, and then come back and have dessert.

So, (laughs) I got to see every, just about every single parade that was on St. Charles Avenue.

- But I was too frightened.

And I would frequently stay inside while everybody else was outside.

But it was beautiful, at the same time, it was a frightening beauty, it really was.

And as I got older, of course I became much more accustomed to it, and I had a lot of fun on Mardi Gras day.

- [Peggy] Part of the fun of the uptown experience was devising creative ways of watching a parade.

- And there was a big oak tree with one of those branches that come down, and we used to get in and sit in the branch.

And it was perfect because you could see really well, and the maskers could see you.

They liked the idea of trying to hit the kids on the branch in the tree.

And so we caught a lot.

- My father did a lot of business with what was Skyride Motors, which was on St. Charles, in the same block as the Pontchartrain Hotel.

My dad is big Mardi Gras nut, I mean he loved it.

He never missed a parade.

(amusing piano music) And, (laughs) my mother didn't like it at all.

I remember one funny thing at Skyride it was a auto school, so you could go on the second floor and it was all glass.

And you could bring your car to the second floor on one of those old elevators.

So she'd sit in the car, (laughs) and watch out of the car window for about three hours while my dad and my sister and I went down and caught everything.

Then we'd come back and come home.

She wasn't too big on Mardi Gras.

(crowds cheering) - [Peggy] For Anne Rice, early memories of the Rex parade coming down St. Charles Avenue, in particular the king's float, remain vivid.

- Oh when I was a child I would always, especially as I got older and less frightened, I would always go out and lay my hands on that float.

That was part of the ritual was to get through the crowd and put my hands right on the side of it.

(crowds cheering) Just that I had touched the float, that I'd touched the magic with my own hands that I'd really seen Rex pass.

But now I don't do that, (laughs) because I don't wake up in time to do it on Mardi Gras day.

But that was the ritual.

(crowds cheering) - Oh gee, Mardi Gras day.

We'd park our car on Felicity Street and walk over to St. Charles, St. Charles Avenue, and watch the parade there.

And then we knew Zulu was coming around would walk back to Dryades Street to see Zulu.

And that was the most popular parade in those days.

(nostalgic piano music) - [Peggy] The rich history of Dryades Street encompasses far more than Mardi Gras.

Today the retail section of the street is known as Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard, named after the civil rights activist.

But memories linger from when it was still called Dryades.

During the late 1800s the neighborhood was home to descendants of Irish and Italian immigrants, along with black families.

By the turn of the century the Dryades Street area welcomed a wave of mostly Orthodox Jewish immigrants, who escaped persecution in Russia and Eastern Europe.

- It was a social hub of the Jewish community, as well as the business hub of the Jewish community.

- Good neighborhood street were people came from all over to shop.

We had had every kind of shop that you could think of on Dryades Street.

- [Peggy] Shoe stores, department stores, drug stores, children's clothing stores, and even a Kosher delicatessen lined the street.

Among the department stores was Kaufman's.

- Well Kaufman's did have bargains in clothes.

It was a good place to find good cotton dresses and things like that.

- Handelman's and Kaufman's, 'cause we lived right near there.

You know they had these big department stores, but they were old time department stores with the wooden floors, you know?

- [Peggy] Maurice Handelman's father, Charles, opened Handelman's Department Store in 1923, showed here on opening day.

- And especially on a Saturday was the busiest day of the week.

The sidewalks were always so crowded, that if you were in a hurry to get from one corner to another corner, you had to get out into the street and walk.

- The kids would get, the mothers would give them a nickel or dime, and they'd run up and down Dryades Street stopping at the five and tens, the Woolworth's.

We had a Woolworth's and there was a Scotts.

It was a nice street, a real family street.

- Everybody was out in the streets and people cruised by foot, and they socialized and they visited, and they went into every store.

Stores stayed open late.

As long as there were customers there were no closing hours.

- From 8:00 in the morning, until the last customer walked out.

(laughs) And sometimes 10:00, sometimes 9:00.

- [Peggy] So you wouldn't close the door until-- - 'Til the last customer left.

(easy going piano music) - [Peggy] For almost 50 years, Silvia Gerson and her husband Lester ran The Vogue shop.

- I would quote him and say, he can't tell you what color your eyes are, but he sure can tell you what size brazier you wear.

That's what we specialized in, large size underwear, braziers particularly.

- [Peggy] The way Lester Gerson treated some of his customers, could best be described as direct.

- Well if they were very large, there were times when my husband could not fit a size 60.

They would be very large.

And he would tell them to go to the circus.

- [Peggy] Silvia Gerson's brother-in-law also had specialty shops.

- Irving had two stores, the Jo-Ann Kiddie Shops.

I told you my husband specialized in large size women.

And my brother-in-law specialized in chubby children.

So they both had specialized shops.

The Jo-Ann Kiddie Shop was named for a boy and a girl, Jo dash Ann.

- He was kind of ornery sometimes, but yeah, but he was nice sometimes, he was nice too.

He really, you know he had a real strong personality, but he really kind of took care of everybody.

I remember the ladies in my family talking about the Jo-Ann shop when one little girl needed a dress especially.

That's where they got it from.

- If you ever shopped at the Jo-Ann shop, as a lot of us have, for school uniforms.

I went to Catholic school, and we had to wear uniforms.

(chuckles) The girls wore navy skirts with the white blouses, and the boys had to have khaki pants and shirts with the black ties.

And later on I bought clothes there for my children when I moved uptown.

Of course there was Venus Gardens grocery store.

It was actually Venice Gardens, but the people in the area, we all called it Venus Gardens.

Earl King had a record shop on Dryades Street.

And it was like a big meeting place for the musicians.

We all used to go to Earl King's record shop.

And it was like the place for the gossip column.

You know we'd all talk about each other, who was doing this, who was doing that.

He had room in the back with a piano in it, and Earl would be writing songs, and people would come over and he'd play them songs he'd written for them to be recorded.

That's where he wrote Big Chief, a perennial Mardi Gras favorite.

- [Peggy] Dryades Street was also the source for certain carnival essentials.

- But the main attraction with Dryades Street, around carnival time, we'd go to Hellman's Spear Wig Store, that was the big destination, to buy wigs.

(laughs) And mustaches and crepe hair and stuff like that for our costumes.

- [Peggy] By far the most popular item for sale on the street was shoes.

- Most of the young Jewish boys growing up in New Orleans had weekend jobs at the shoe stores.

That was usually their first job during high school, make a few bucks.

- [Peggy] After a busy day of shopping, time to eat.

One popular spot was the Kansas Delicatessen, open from the early 1900s until the Second World War.

- It was a Kosher delicatessen, and it was the only one in the uptown there.

Actually I think it was the only one in the city.

They used to have a big barrel of pickles.

And the deli itself was so delicious, you know the corned beef and the pastrami, they were very aromatic.

It had a special odor that only a Kosher delicatessen could have.

- [Peggy] In 1941, Jackie Gothard's parents opened a deli uptown.

- And then I lived above the store.

And my dates came to pick me up and bring me home, we had to walk through that Kosher deli to pick me up (laughs) and deliver me back.

And they loved it, because a lot of the Tulane boys were from the New York area, and they were starving for Kosher foods.

My parents would come down and whip up corned beef, and salami sandwiches, and the guys would dig their hands in to the pickle barrel, and it was wonderful.

(rabbi chanting prayers in foreign language) - I recall when I was walking around, I was very young, and there were many people, some standing out on the streets talking either in Hebrew, or in Yiddish.

I would imagine it was funny stories, because they used to laugh a lot, too.

(chuckles) - [Peggy] For the Orthodox Jewish community in the Dryades area, there were two synagogues.

Beth Israel, which later relocated, and Ashe Sfard still in the old neighborhood.

(rabbi chanting and singing in foreign language) - The synagogues were full, especially on the high holy days.

The young people from Beth Israel, and the young people of the families of Ashe Sfard, knew each other and we went to school together, and we socialized.

But, we went to our respective synagogues for services.

But during the day, of a long day of services, like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when we'd take a little break from the service, we would walk back and forth up to visit.

I would go to Ashe Sfard to visit my friends, my friends would come over to Beth Israel and share some of the services with us.

So it was sociable thing for the young people, too.

(bluesy piano music) - Dryades Street wasn't just important to uptown, it was important to the people in the ninth ward, and seventh ward, sixth ward, Gert Town that was the retail center.

- [Peggy] Along with symbols of a once vibrant Jewish community, in the neighborhood are structures that remain a rich part of the heritage of black New Orleans, such as the Dryades Street YMCA.

- In the late 1800s a group of black men got together, and starting around the early 1900s, to form a Young Men's Christian Association for African Americans, blacks, or colored, or negroes, what they were called in those days.

In 1907-1908, it officially became the Dryades Y, or the black YMCA.

That's where prominent African Americans got together, as well as people from all walks of the community.

- [Peggy] For Oliver Thomas' family, the Dryade's Y has strong connections.

- My parents and family members went there to be educated.

My mom had been going to Dryades Street, gosh, since she was a little girl.

She learned trades at the Dryades YMCA, tapestry, sewing, basket weaving, ceramics.

My dad used to play ball there.

Like I said, my uncle was president of the board of Dryades Y.

- [Peggy] After a recent disastrous fire, the Dryades Y is moving towards recovery.

In recent years, there have been efforts to revive the former Dryades neighborhood, that is still full of memories.

The building that was once Kaufman's Department Store, and later Venice Gardens Supermarket, now contains upscale apartments, along with an arts complex.

One of a few hopeful signs that Dryades is a street with not only a past, but a future.

(easy going piano music) One of New Orleans lost landmarks was located on the edge of uptown, the original main branch of the New Orleans Public Library.

Facing Lee Circle, it was built in 1907 through the generosity of Philanthropist Andrew Carnegy.

He paid for the construction of public libraries nationwide.

- Oh I was so sorry when that building was torn down.

I mean there's so much to weep for, and that's one of the things that I weep for is that building, it was great.

It was grass outside, you know it was part of, it was built up, you had to walk up steps to go in it.

And you could sit out on that grass and read too.

And we would skip the children's department altogether, we would go upstairs.

And there was an enormous reading room with great big windows where you take books out of the stack and you could come and find a table and sit there and read without ever checking a book out.

- [Peggy] Those visits to the library inspired a passion that resulted in her life's work.

- We would go back in the stacks, and the stacks had green glass floors.

And I would just sit down on the floor and go through book after book.

And I remember reading a lot in that library.

I read horror stories, English horror tales, which later very much influenced my writing.

We checked out a lot of books and I was often painfully overdue.

I would go in there and I'd give these long excuses about what happened, and so forth.

(laughs) I think I was able to strike some bargains.

And every now and then, every now and then, it's like, you don't belong up here, you belong in the children's section.

So we'd get banished to the children's section for a little while, but then we'd get back upstairs.

- [Peggy] The library, considered too small was demolished in 1959.

Today, K&B Plaza occupies the site.

- Just about everything that I could do at Valencia I did, I loved it.

- [Peggy] In the late 1940s, a group of parents got together to provide a place for their children to go after school and on weekends.

Valencia's early years continue to hold fond memories.

- We had a real good independent basketball team.

They had great swimming teams at Valencia.

They had pool tournaments all the time.

Every Saturday they had movies.

It was just where you'd go hang out.

- And why I thought Valencia was so special, number one, it gave a lot of people a way of meeting kids from other schools.

There was a swimming team that I was on, I was on the newspaper.

I was in all the dramatic productions, practically.

We had our own Rockettes here, and we would put on dance acts.

- [Peggy] For many uptown teens, Valencia provided their first exposure to some local music legends.

- It was not unusual to see Irma Thomas, Deacon John and the Ivories, Benny Spellman.

- It was several of us who used to play there on a regular basis.

Deacon John and the Ivories was another group that played Valencia.

In fact, we've even shared billing there, he backed me up a couple of times when I played Valencia.

- Valencia was like no other place, because it had an auditorium with a real stage, with a proscenium and drapes and all.

And there was a swimming pool.

It's like the ultimate recreation center.

That's the only word could think, or epitomize what the Valencia was on the inside.

And you know they had nice floors, they had a sound system.

It was like state of the art at all times.

- It was the little place to play for the local crowd.

- Well we felt like we grew up with Irma Thomas.

As well we did.

- Well, they were a very, very appreciative crowd at Valencia.

These were, and I don't mean it in a derogatory way, these were the little rich kids country club.

And they appreciated the fact that we would come and play for them there.

Because this was still a segregated time.

And they knew that we were going through times when people would be very nasty to us.

And we had to deal with that in our own way.

But they would go out of their way to really treat us very fairly, and not say anything to us that would make us feel that we were not wanted.

- When I started playing at Valencia, well that was like the hub of the social register.

All the kids they went, they had debutant parties.

And they would get me to play for the debutant parties, and the birthday parties, the anniversaries, the school proms.

And lo and behold as the years went by these same people grew up to my music, and they started calling me to play weddings for their children.

- The ones we still love nowadays, Deacon John, Irma Thomas, The Nevilles.

And so I grew up dancing with all of them, and they're still going strong, hallelujah.

(bluesy guitar music) (synthesizer music) - [Peggy] Another part of the uptown experience was attending football games at Tulane Stadium.

A more than 80,000 seat arena rising above the stately homes on Audubon Boulevard.

During its almost 50 year history, the stadium hosted the Sugar Bowl and three Superbowls, and was home to the Tulane Green Wave.

- The first time I went was right after the war.

I was six or seven years old.

You could buy a child season ticket for $1.25.

And we all sat in the end zone.

And Eddie Price was the big start for the Tulane Green Wave, he's a hell of a player.

But as a child I remember my parents, every Saturday had a cocktail party, a pre-game party.

And all our friends would come in.

And everybody wore coats and ties to the game.

You didn't go to the game without a coat and tie.

My mother would be downtown buying a dress to go to the football game.

And the kids sat, the only thing I remember was buying candy apples and throwing them at each other.

I couldn't (chuckles) tell you the score of the game.

It's the first time I ever had cotton candy was at the Tulane football game.

- The couples in the neighborhood with their children would go sit in the south end on Willow Street.

And the women would talk, the men would watch the game and drink a few beers.

And the kids would just run up and down, have a good time.

And it was really a fun place for the neighborhood to enjoy.

- [Peggy] For some enterprising young fans the games were as profitable as they were fun.

- I sold 7UPs as a kid.

It was a great way to make a couple of bucks, and it was a lot of fun.

We used to have a lot of couples that would come with their own little bottles.

And since I was selling 7UP they were making highballs.

- [Peggy] Money could also be made if you lived nearby and had a vacant driveway.

- If you could park cars early and get over there and sell programs, that'd be the biggest payday of the year for you.

You had more money than you had all year, if you could pull that off.

- My kids thought they had gone to heaven, because we were able to park somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 18 cars, on the front lawn, and the driveway and the backyard.

- The whole area up there turned into this Mardi Gras atmosphere.

All the traffic was impacted and there were vacant lots, and vacant lots if any were left that didn't have houses on them.

People would park buses on them, NOPSI buses they would be chartered and be seen crammed on a lot.

- And it was an instant party.

And the house was always open.

If you parked in the driveway, or they were friends, or strangers, it made no difference.

It was party time.

- [Peggy] Through the years Tulane's wins were fewer and farther between.

But there were stellar moments.

There was that Tulane, LSU game in 1973, a game that marked the first win over LSU for Tulane in 25 years.

(crowds cheering) By 1967, New Orleans had a National Football League franchise.

The New Orlean Saints called Tulane Stadium home.

- I thought those were the most fun, Saints games, particularly when Billy Kilmer was here.

You know we were the underdogs and we'd be playing the big time ball clubs, Washington Redskins, Detroit Lions, and we were a ragtag bunch.

It was worse than I knew it was, but we were a ragtag bunch.

(crowds cheering) - [Peggy] After countless prayers offered up by Saints fans, at least one was answered in 1970, in a game against the Detroit Lions, trailing 16-17 with only two seconds left.

The Saints truly needed to perform a miracle.

Saints kicker Tom Dempsey, kicked a 63 yard field goal that still stands as an NFL record.

New Orleans won 19-17.

- At the end of the game it was like the game was over, everybody was leaving, and they were trying a field goal which no one paid much attention to.

All of a sudden they're screaming and yelling.

- I was there through the third quarter and I got mad and left.

(laughs) By the way, I went to Audubon Park to the badger 'cause it was a pretty day and I said, "Oh we're not gonna do anything."

And I went out there and I had the radio on and we had some cold beer and sandwiches when he kicked it.

So I got in the car and went back over there.

But the game was over then.

- Everyone was just proud, that we were all the Saints, that we were a part of the experience.

- [Peggy] The last major football game to be played in Tulane Stadium was a Superbowl in 1975.

An agreement was made that Tulane and the Saints would share a facility, the Louisiana Superdome.

By 1980, Tulane Stadium was dismantled.

The university sold off parts of it as fundraiser.

- I have right now in my den, I have a seat on a chain hanging up there.

- [Peggy] Today on the site of the stadium is the Riley Sports Center, along with student dormitories.

But recollections of the original home of the Tulane Green Wave roll on.

(crowds cheering) While football may have filled autumn days and nights, open for business year round were the neighborhood movie theaters, with names such as the Poplar, Prytania, Napoleon, Mecca and the Fine Arts.

- We went to the Fine Arts a lot.

It was the neighborhood theater, it was one we could go to, and walk to, or get a quick ride to.

I remember seeing "High Society" there with Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong, that was great.

That was wonderful.

We also went to the Prytania, which was probably the fanciest one.

And that was the first theater that I ever went to as a kid.

We went to the Napoleon a lot.

And occasionally to the Poplar in Carrollton, and occasionally the Tivoli in Broadmoor.

And occasionally to the National on Magazine Street, which later became The Plaza.

Each had their interesting characteristics.

The Napoleon had that incredible art deco front.

The front and all of Napoleon was very modern, and the inside was very antique.

The Tivoli was huge, it was a gigantic theater compared to any of the other ones.

And I can remember the Poplar was sort of nice and sedate.

The Prytania had a Spanish exterior, but the interior, inside it had this gigantic Rococo chandelier with lots of exposed light bulbs which looked like the top of the flying horse in Audubon Park.

- [Peggy] The movies shown at the Grenada Theater planted the seed for one of the most famous novels set in New Orleans.

- We used to go all the time.

The Technicolor pictures were on Sundays, and black and white movies were on the weekday nights, including Friday night.

And that's where I saw "Dracula's Daughter," the black and white movie that later inspired me to write "Interview With A Vampire."

it was as a little girl at the Grenada Theater.

(ominous full orchestral music) So, I loved going there and I went there for years, and have very, very vivid memories.

I remember the woman behind the candy counter.

She had curly gray hair, though she was young.

And I remember the manager, he was bald.

And he always wore a blue suit with a red carnation.

And I think he had white socks.

- [Peggy] That's a pretty clear memory.

(laughs) - Yeah I remember him walking up and down the aisles trying to make the boys behave.

Again, it's always the boys that misbehave, just like at St. Alfonzos the boys were noisy.

All of them misbehaved in the Grenada Theater.

(light synthesizer music) - Oh yes indeed movie theaters.

Well, during the days of segregation we'd go the Tivoli they had the whites downstairs, and we had to upstairs.

We'd throw popcorn on the white people, and they'd, "Hey!"

(laughs) - And, of course we went to the famous Prytania movie theater.

You weren't anyone if you didn't get bounced out of the Prytania movie theater at least once in your childhood, asked to leave.

- Why?

- Why?

- For making too much noise, of course.

- [Peggy] The management at another uptown movie theater was a bit more lenient than the Prytania.

- The Gallo?

Memories I have of the Gallo, that was a black theater.

It was a place where you could bring your girlfriend, and you wouldn't have to worry about the usher shining the light on you.

(laughs) At that time you could come in the movie with a Po' Boy sandwich, you know.

(laughs) They wouldn't say nothing.

(laughs) You come in there with a oyster loaf, or something.

(laughs) - [Peggy] Speaking of misbehaving, the activity in the audience at the Garden Theater sometimes rivaled the action on the screen.

- It was right up against the channel.

It was literally, it was an Irish channel theater.

It wasn't the fine arts, it was another thing entirely.

You entered this theater from the back of the screen, so that really made it kind of spooky, weird kind of thing.

So when you went there, you really didn't see the movie, all you saw was tennis shoes sailing in front of the screen.

And popcorn boxes, children screaming, young girls having their hair pulled.

And some one little old lady would come through with a flashlight and shine it on the kids and try to calm them down.

But it never worked.

- [Peggy] Did you ever go to the Happy Hour?

- That was out of the question!

Unless we begged, crawled on our stomachs like reptiles, Please, "Quo Vadis" is playing at the Happy Hour!

It had to be something really, like the kid was gonna hold his breath.

He'll never go to sleep Joe, he'll get a fever.

I don't even think theaters like that exist anymore.

(light piano music) - [Peggy] Living in the New Orleans area most likely included visits to Audubon Park, a 150 acre green space built on the site of a sugar plantation.

Much of the park's land is devoted to a zoo, which began as a small exhibit of animals at a world's fair, the 1884 Cotton Centennial Exposition.

Over the years, the exhibit grew into a full fledged zoo, that experienced ups and downs.

(light piano music) - It probably wasn't the very best zoo, a little run down, but for us it was magic.

It was what we had and we thought it was the best, we had a great time.

- It was not the zoo that we know now, it was the zoo of suffering animals.

(laughs) We used to love to go see the polar suffer (laughs) in the middle of summer.

And he'd go over to the shower, this green polar bear.

And he'd go over to a shower, (makes rushing noise) and the thing would (laughs) cool him off.

- I could never understand why polar bears were green, because I would always see them white everywhere else I would see them.

And I finally realized as I got older, it was the only way to keep them cool, they brought big chunks of ice.

And it would melt, it would turn green from the algae.

And the polar bear would be sitting on this green algae, and it would into their coat.

Not a very great memory.

- [Peggy] Among the animals that endeared themselves to visitors over the years, was a very special pachyderm.

Itema was named after the New Orleans Item Newspaper, which was afternoon newspaper.

And we didn't have an elephant at Audubon Park.

When we were in the first or second grade, I remember everybody put in a nickel, or a penny or a quarter.

Nobody really had quarters, nickels.

And the school children raised enough money to buy an elephant.

And Item got him, was the sponsor.

- My grandmother, she had us bamboozled, she had us fooled into thinking that the elephant would do anything she asked, right?

(laughs) And she'd stand in front of the elephant, you know the elephant would be minding its own business in the middle of that pen it was in.

And she said, Itema, Itema!

The elephant would turn around you know, and walk towards us and come up to the gate, not the gate, but the little fence you know.

Railroad irons and stuff, and it would look at us.

And my grandmother would say, "Put your leg up on the fence, Itema."

And Itema would go with her leg.

We just thought that was fabulous.

- [Peggy] The zoo is a menagerie of memories.

- Yeah we could hear the lions roaring at night.

Of course you have all those fantasies of lions roaring at night they'd be coming in your house.

- My grandmother took us to see the monkeys.

There were these monkeys around the outside in the peripheral of the zoos in those days, next to the alligators.

Can you imagine what it must have been like being a monkey and live (chuckles) right next to the alligator pond?

(laughs) But anyway, so she's gonna feed, we're gonna see the monkeys today.

So she got this little paring knife, this knife, you know kitchen knife, and she brought with her in her purse a bunch of bananas, that Uncle Henry brought to her.

So she was standing by the cage.

It was like a baboon, big old monkey.

My grandmother would walk up to the cage, and she'd slice the banana and give the banana, the monkey would go.

And she'd slice another banana, the monkey would.

But it's like these delicate little hands would come out of the cage, take the slice of banana.

Finally, (laughs) after about 15 minutes the monkey grabbed the knife, (growls) and started wielding it around the cage.

(laughs) And we thought that was fabulous the monkey.

(laughs) And my grandmother drew back in horror.

And the guard came and he says, "Madam!

(laughs) "You can't give monkeys knives in the zoo!"

And so they had to get all the, (laughs) they had to disarm the monkey.

This is a baboon, you know (growls) yeah like that.

Finally it had an instrument to get the hell out of the Audubon Zoo with.

- [Peggy] There was more monkey business during the 1970 New Orleans' mayor election.

Candidate Rodney Fertel, made what was truly an unusual campaign promise, to obtain a gorilla for the zoo.

While the voters did not decide in his favor, he nevertheless paid for a new addition to the zoo population.

(monkey squeals) - He brought gorillas in.

He would come every day to interact with these gorillas.

As they got older he wanted to entertain them, so he brought them a TV set.

They actually like The Tonight Show, they like Johnny Carson the best.

Whenever Johnny Carson would come in the gorillas would come running.

Actually Johnny Carson actually reported that on one of his shows one time that his fans in New Orleans the gorilla were there.

(camera shutter clicks) - [Peggy] A photograph was a popular memento of a visit to the zoo.

By the way, that's me with my brother.

For many years, Austrian born Meyer Tischler posed zoo visitors on a stuffed bear.

- He usually dressed like he was on a safari, I think.

And pith helmet on.

I guess he wanted you to think him as being part of the scene with the animals.

And you try to talk to him, he'd kind of shake his hand, and not want you to bother him and all.

And because he had a bag, I guess photographers call it a black bag, and he had his hands in there.

And he was actually doing the developing and mixing the chemicals and developing the film on the spot, so that you could have the pictures.

- [Peggy] While it's hard to resist talking to the animals, during the 1950s, some teenagers gave the animals something to talk about.

- There were a few things you could do at nighttime with your date.

But if you really want to sneak a kiss, you could either go to submarine races out to the lake front.

But most of us didn't have a car to go that far.

Or you could go to the sea lion pool.

And then we'd say, "Let's meet at the sea lion pool."

So you'd go there and there'd be a group of 20, 30, 40 friends.

And it was the romantic place to hold your girlfriend's hand.

And if you're lucky, you sneak a kiss, or a hug.

It was just a fun place to go at nighttime.

So as many memories and probably I can mention names of uptown women today that were kissed first at the sea lion pool.

- [Peggy] But that wasn't the only nighttime activity for adventurous types.

- And you would fan-auk the flamingos.

You would sneak up at nighttime, and again not I, obviously the zoo director would never do this as a young child.

But they would sneak up and they would all yell, "Fan-auck, fan-auck, fan-auck!"

And flamingos on one legs, if they would fall over, it was considered success.

- [Peggy] An uptown activity in the summertime was swimming in the Audubon pool constructed in 1928.

Nearly the length of a football field, it was one of the largest pools in the country.

- We loved that pool, that pool was part of our lives, the great big pool, I was always freezing cold.

I was never warm.

I was one of those pale-skinned children that was never warm.

I would try to go to the baby pool and spend time in the baby pool 'til they kicked me out.

They said, "You're too old to be in the baby pool, "you have to go to the big pool."

- And the baby pool was really fun, even after we got older.

Because there were two huge fountains in the middle.

And the water would squirt up in the air like a geyser and fall down like rain.

Once you got tall enough to go in the big pool, and that's what we called it, the big pool, the slides there were huge.

And it was really scary to go on those slides.

- My sister was in heaven.

She would go up that giant slide and go down it over and over again at the pool.

(water splashing) Just crashing into the water with incredible bravery.

And I would just gaze at that thing with an absolute terror of heights, and really something of a terror of water.

- Then we'd get a little bit older and there'd be the high diving board.

Which also felt like you were diving from the top of a building.

It was just a wonderful place for kids to come.

And in summertime just get out of the heat.

- It was always a good place to go, to meet up with your friends from all over the community.

And it used to always be real packed.

We used to have to wait in line, sometimes.

Didn't have political connections then.

(laughs) So, you'd have to wait in line, man.

- [Peggy] In addition to visits to the pool, the banks of the lagoon were also good places to wile away summer days.

- And we would take out our bikes and ride all the way to Audubon Park to go catch nothing.

(laughs) I don't even remember if we caught anything.

But we'd get our little poles and we'd go all way to Audubon Park to fish.

Worms for bait.

We'd dig a little, we left all kind of holes in Audubon Park digging for worms.

(laughs) - [Peggy] Another park pastime was to take a ride on the Swan Boat.

- The side was (chuckles) painted white.

And up front they had two big swan heads like that.

There as sort of an outboard motor in the back.

And it was almost like getting on a water street car.

You'd walk down the center and they had seats on both sides.

- Swan Boat was what I considered by first job.

I didn't get paid, but I was able to ride free on the Swan Boat.

And my job was to jump off the boat as it got to the dock and tie the boat up.

And my pay was free rides.

So that was kind of neat, and maybe somewhere there there was a symbolic message that I was meant to work at Audubon Park.

(amusing tuba music) - [Peggy] One Audubon Park mode of transportation literally went around in circles.

(bright, amusing tinkling music) - We would ride on the flying horses.

No one ever called it a carousel.

In fact, I don't think I ever heard the word carousel until I grew up.

- And we rode that a lot, and it was wonderful.

It was dreamy, and beautiful and had gorgeous wood carved animals, at least that's how I remember it.

It was really fantastic.

- And you actually felt like you were riding your horse.

And you wanted to sit up tall and feel good.

I'm sure I probably had my cowboy hat on, and probably my guns on my side riding this horse, but it was a magical horse.

- There would be a long arm that would go out and you would be lucky, if you could, you'd grab a brass ring off this arm as you come by, and then you got a free ride.

- Oh we could never do that my grandmother would say, she'd say, "George don't do that!"

'Cause there was a chance you'd just grab the ring and be pulled of the horse.

We were never allowed to try to go after the brass ring.

And there was, I remember it, it was a little ring that came out.

We were rough and tumble enough for my grandmother, "My heart, my heart, you're trying to kill me!"

(laughs) You know this kind of stuff.

- [Peggy] The ride that covered the most ground in Audubon Park, was the miniature train.

(whistle sqeaks) - There was a little train that went around and went through a tunnel.

That was exotic going through the tunnel, and it made a circle and came back.

(train rumbling) - [Peggy] Another railroad landmark in Audubon Park was an old locomotive.

It didn't have to move to attract passengers.

- [Ron] You could jump on it, you could sit on it, you could use your imagination that you were riding on it.

- Kids played on it for a long time and then it got very worn looking, like thousands of monkeys climbing on something.

- That was a fun monument of the park that was also, I guess it was before interactive playground, we made our interactive playground.

(light piano music) (light synthesizer music) - [Peggy] For generations, Audubon Park golfers have had to contend with a legendary, and perhaps, interplanetary obstacle.

- Bright, mysteries stories about that falling down during the World's Fair.

They'd tell you it killed people and all that.

And if you touch it, you'd turn to iron.

- Miracle of miracles it crashed to earth in New Orleans, instead of careening down and killing people, and landing on cars, the streetcars of people, it landed right in the middle of the golf course.

Which was extremely convenient, because then you could go see it.

And there were wonderful stories and all (chuckles) that you could tell about it.

- So all we would do is get the ire of the golfers, 'cause we'd run out to touch it, and they'd be teeing off, they'd (laughs) cuss you and scream at you.

- Then I kept hearing more and more that it probably, maybe it wasn't a meteorite.

- There's another side of the story that goes that in the 1884 World's Fair, there were a lot of interesting pieces of artifacts brought into New Orleans.

And one was a piece of iron ore. And after the World's Fair it was actually left in the park.

But for years and years we all thought, growing up as children, that that was a meteorite that fell from space.

And too, be right still out there.

(bluesy piano music) - [Peggy] Also part of the Audobon Park landscape is something that definitely sticks out in a very flat New Orleans, Monkey Hill.

- Being from Louisiana, that was Monkey Mountain.

- [Peggy] Built by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, it was created to give the children of New Orleans the experience of climbing a hill.

- So you can roll down the hill and run back up, roll down the hill about an hour and a half.

My grandma would just sit there watching this.

It was a cheap ride (laughs) is what it was, you know?

- You could ride your bike down, the big kids side of Monkey Hill.

There were jumps at the bottom, and people would build (dogs barking) these wooden catapults.

So you'd get up speed and hit the catapult and your bike would fly up in the air.

- The boys would ride their bikes down Monkey Hill.

And that was sort of a rite of passage.

When you were old enough, or daring enough, to ride your bike.

And I guess some girls did it, too, but I never had the courage.

- Yeah, I remember going to Monkey Hill and riding a bike down Monkey Hill.

You would try to get on the top of Monkey Hill and see how fast you could get down Monkey Hill.

And it always had terrible ruts in it, and everybody was afraid you were gonna get killed.

And you couldn't tell your parents that you rode a bike down Monkey Hill, because they'd forbid you to go back again to the park.

- We used to have a game that'd be called King of the Hill.

So you go up to the top of the hill, and you'd try to maintain your hill, and somebody might just roll you down.

- [Peggy] Monkey Hill has served as a ski slpe with manmade snow being dumped on it.

And, there have been days when real snow blanketed Monkey Hill and the city.

(streetcar rumbles) - Everything came to a screeching halt.

Growing up by Audubon Park we could go over to, and did go over to Audubon Park to build a snowman.

You'd have to take a lot of the area (kids laughing and playing) to get up enough snow to make the snowman, 'cause it really wasn't that much.

- I remember breaking out the trays so that you could go and, - Sled down, - slide down.

- Monkey Hill.

- Mm-hm.

- I do remember that.

- [Peggy] Tray, tell me a tray?

- A tin tray, I mean nobody had a sled.

- [Peggy] Under snow, or under the sun, Audubon Park has always had animal attraction and much more.

(bear purring) And reliving uptown's past, there are many stops along the line.

Yet uptown is a living, thriving neighborhood with more stories on the way.

(bright piano music) - After school, with my mother's permission, I used to walk all the way home.

And I really loved that walk.

I used to cut over to Palmer Avenue, and past beautiful, leafy trees, more beautiful houses, and go over to St. Charles and then walk home from there.

And I remember those walks vividly.

I mean they had so much to do with my daydreaming and the development of my imagine I think, passing all those gorgeous cut glass doors, and lovely different style houses, it was great.

- Well my grandmother had, it was either a nephew, or she was babysitting this family, with the name, they'd named their child, this little child, Kaiser.

(laughs) They named him after (laughs) Kaiser, his name was Kaiser.

And so my grandmother was babysitting little Kaiser, so she took him to the park.

And she was wandering around the park with this kid, and the kid got lost.

And she was frantic, she couldn't find him!

So she's running around the park shouting, "Kaiser, Kaiser!"

Well somebody called the police, right?

And they came and arrested my grandmother for pro-German agitation in Audubon Park.

Well anyway I mean her relationship with that park obviously, it was very, very close.

(light piano music) (uplifting woodwind music) - [Announcer] The Uptown That Was is made possible by the WYES Producers Circle, a group of generous contributors dedicated to the support of Channel 12's local productions.

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