Join us for a very special Vino on the Bayou—Thursday, March 30, 5:30–7:30 p.m., at Pitot House.
The Board of Trustees of Louisiana Landmarks Society invite you to our first Vino on the Bayou of 2023 at Pitot House, 1440 Moss Street.
Please mark your calendar for Thursday, March 30, at 5:30–7:30 p.m.
Join us for wine, special guests, delicious bites and great tunes by John Rankin as you await the gorgeous sunset over Bayou St. John.
The Board will be introducing our exciting new Executive Director, Stacey Pfingsten. Stacey brings many years of experience in the non-profit sector focusing in the areas of architecture and historic preservation. Most recently, at the helm of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) of Illinois, advocating on state policy initiatives on behalf of 4,200 architects. Prior to that, she was the executive director of the Louisiana Architecture Foundation (LAF), where she organized the South's first-ever annual Architecture & Design Film Festival: NOLA, as well as spearheaded LAF's first documentary "Unexpected Modernism: The Wiener Brothers Story," which aired on LPB and WYES. She also lived in Chicago for a number of years and served as the communications director for Preservation Chicago, worked for several City of Chicago aldermen, and even ran once, albeit unsuccessfully, in 2015 for 2nd Ward Alderman of Chicago. Stacey was born and raised on a farm in Crescent City, Illinois.
We will also have with us award-winning author Peter Wolf, signing copies of his new book about his great-great-grandfather, The Sugar King: Leon Godchaux: A New Orleans Legend, His Creole Slave, and His Jewish Roots. Synopsis: A penniless, illiterate Jewish boy leaves his native France and crosses the Atlantic alone. Landing in 1837 in raucous and polyglot New Orleans, the third largest city in America, he starts out as a peddler of notions to plantations along the Mississippi. He will never be able to read or to write; nevertheless, by the end of his intrigue-filled life, Leon Godchaux will be known as the "Sugar King of Louisiana," the owner of fourteen plantations, the largest sugar producer in the region and the top taxpayer in the state. He refuses to enter the sugar business until the end of slavery. Unsympathetic to the Lost Cause, caught up in the Civil War, and negotiating Reconstruction and Jim Crow, Godchaux simultaneously builds an esteemed New Orleans clothing empire.
And we’ll be selling copies of our own Gateway to New Orleans: Bayou St. John, 1709 to 2018, recently reprinted by UL Press. Gateway traces the history and architecture of the historic Faubourg St. John in New Orleans from pre-colonial days through its evolution from a glorious semi-rural village into a popular suburban neighborhood. Although published to commemorate the tricentennial anniversary of the founding of New Orleans, the volume has its inception years ago in the work of the late preservationist and writer Mary Louise Christovich. Her research and vision of recording the history and architecture of New Orleans' first European settlement comes to fulfillment in this handsomely illustrated and thoroughly documented work.
Editors: Mary Louise Christovich, Florence M. Jumonville, Heather Veneziano
Authors: Hilary Somerville Irvin, R. Stephanie Bruno, Heather Veneziano, S. Frederick Starr
Photographers: Robert S. Brantley and Jan White Brantley
Preface: Richard Campanella
Tickets are available for sale at the door.
Members, $10
Non-members, $20
We look forward to seeing you at Pitot House.