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built a beautiful summer home in 1788 in Mandeville, a town north of Lake Pontchartrain, which bears his name. His grandson was Bernard de Marigny, a colorful Creole of New Orleans.
    Other names of early settlers were Villère, de La Ronde, and Delery.
    It is interesting to note that most settlers were less than five feet three inches tall. The average height was five feet. The average age was twenty-one years old. There were few over fifty, and few in their teens.
    Before the hurricane of 1721, the city is described by Father Pierre de Charlevoix in one of the first hundred letters written from New Orleans. He wrote that there were a “hundred barracks,” placed in no particular order, a wooden storehouse, and two or three houses “which would be no ornament to a village of France . . .” He also wrote that he felt the city would be the “future capital of a fine and vast country.”
    The city of which he spoke consisted of 470 people living on three streets, which had been laid out by Pauger. The hurricane of 1721 devastated the town and destroyed all the buildings.
    In April 1722, the first complete plan for the city of New Orleans was signed by Pierre Leland de La Tour, who dispatched Adrian de Pauger to supervise the construction of the city. The area on which La Tour planned to build was scattered with wooden houses built by immigrants from Illinois. Pauger cleared a strip of land on the river wide enough and deep enough to put the plan into execution. The hurricane of 1721 had taken care of most of the original buildings, which were not in keeping with the engineer’s plans, and would have had to be removed in any case.
    Then with the help of some piquers, he traced on the ground the streets and quarters which were to form the new town, and notified all who wished building sites to present their petitions to the Council. To each settler who appeared, they gave a plot of 10 fathoms front by 20 deep, and as each square was 50 fathoms front, it gave 12 plots in each, the two middle ones being 10 front by 25 deep. It was ordained that those who obtained these plots would be bound to enclose them with palisades, and leave all around a strip of at least three feet wide, at the foot of which a ditch was to be dug, to serve as a drain for the river water in time of inundation (French 1853, 23-24).
    First parish church of St. Louis, designed by de Pauger. Dedicated Christmas Eve, 1717, on the site of the present St. Louis Cathedral. Drawings reconstituted from plans in French National Archives. (Courtesy Leonard V. Huber Collection)
    The streets were laid out in a grid pattern, and they were straight, not conforming to the curve of the river. The exact site of the Vieux Carré today is the place Bienville chose in 1718, and the spot where the St. Louis Cathedral is today was the location of the St. Louis Parish Church. The wooden church was blown down in 1723, but in 1724, construction of a brick church began on the same spot.
    Map of the Vieux Carré, May 26, 1724, from de Pauger’s city plans of 1721. Shows additional houses constructed after the September 1, 1723, overflow. Shaded houses erected first. By Adrien de Pauger.
    New Orleans, May 15, 1728. From the original map by N. Broutin, deposited in Office of Marine and Colonies, Paris, France.
    Map of New Orleans, 1803.
    The map shows the plan of the city with its limits and its street names. From left to right, vertically, the streets were Canal, Iberville, Bienville, Conti, St. Louis, Toulouse, St. Peter, Orleans, St. Ann, du Maine, Cl ermont (changed to St. Philip), Rue Arsenal (changed to Ursulines), Hospital (changed to Governor Nichols), Barracks, and Esplanade. The original city ended at Iberville Street. (Our present Vieux Carré Commission had no jurisdiction past Iberville.) The streets Conti, Toulouse, and du Maine are the names of King Louis XIV ’s illegitimate sons.
    Reading from top to bottom, horizontally, the streets were Rampart, Bourgogne (changed