Barthelemy Lafon

Who was Barthelemy Lafon?

Barthélemy Lafon was a notable creole architect, engineer, city planner and surveyor in New Orleans, Louisiana. He appears to have had a double life, as a respectable architect, engineer, and citizen but also as a privateer, smuggler, and pirate. In later life, his association with piracy, specifically with Jean and Pierre Lafitte became public knowledge.

Lafon was born in Villepinte, France and travelled to New Orleans c. 1790. He designed several public buildings, including public baths and a lighthouse, and numerous private homes.

After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, with the Mississippi River open to free trade, landowners upriver from the Vieux Carre realized that the old quarter dominated by the Spanish and French could not contain the hordes of Americans who were now flooding the city, and they retained Lafon to subdivide their property to create an American suburb. From 1806 to 1809 he was Deputy Surveyor of Orleans County, and prepared elaborate plans for what is today known as the Lower Garden District. His designs crossed the barriers of five plantations to include all properties up to Felicity Street. A lover of the classics, Lafon named his streets after the nine muses of Greek mythology: Calliope, Clio, Erato, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Euterpe, Polymnia and Urania. His sophisticated plan featuring tree-lined canals, fountains, churches, markets, a grand classical school and a coliseum, but few features were ever realised. However, the grid pattern of streets survives, as do some of the street names leading to Coliseum Square. Parts of the Bywater and Bayou St. John neighborhoods were also planned by Lafon.