Free previewStop 7 of Garden District Walking Tour: Mansions and Lafayette Cemetery
The Wheelwright Who Got Here First
You're on Prytania Street, at its corner with First Street, and the Greek Revival house on this corner has a name older than most of the neighborhood around it. Locals call it Toby's Corner. Take a good look at it, because by most accounts this is the oldest house still standing in the Garden District.
The man behind the name was Thomas Toby. He wasn't a planter or a banker. He was a wheelwright, a man who built and repaired wheels for carts and carriages, and he was a merchant too. In 1817 he came down to New Orleans from Philadelphia.
That made him one of the newcomers. New Orleans was still a Creole city then, French-speaking and Catholic, and Americans arriving from the North and East didn't always fit into the old quarter downriver. So many of them looked upriver instead.
That's the opening. The rest plays at stop 7 of Garden District Walking Tour: Mansions and Lafayette Cemetery (2 min in all). Unlock the tour to hear it all, or try stop 1 free first.
