Building Antebellum New Orleans: Free People of Color and Their Influence
Tara A. Dudley
The University of Texas Press
The Creole architecture of New Orleans is one of the city’s most-recognized features, but studies of it largely have focused on architectural typology. In Building Antebellum New Orleans, Dudley examines the architectural activities and influence of gens de couleur libres—free people of color—in a city where the mixed-race descendants of whites and other free Blacks could own property. Dudley writes an intimate microhistory of two prominent families of Black developers, the Dollioles and Souliés, to explore how they used ownership, engagement, and entrepreneurship to construct individual and group identity and stability.