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to Burgundy), Vendome (changed to Dauphine), Bourbon (family of the king), Royal, Condé (an extension of Chartres, later changed to Chartres), and Rue de la Levée (changed to Decatur).
    Map of the Vieux Carré
    The Place d’Armes fronts the church, jail, and the priest’s house, (now the Cathedral), flanked by the Cabildo and the Presbytère. Barracks were on either side of the square, moved by a later governor to a location beyond the Ursuline Convent on Barracks Street.
    New Orleans was a city bounded on three sides by swamps and on the fourth by the river. A levee was built on the river side, and drainage ditches were dug to allow the water from the river to drain around the city to “Back of Town.”
    A description of eighteenth century New Orleans, from History of Regional Growth:
    At high tide, the river flows through the streets. The subsoil is swampy. New Orleans becomes famous for its tombs. Buried coffins must have holes so that they do not float to the surface when the land is flooded. Dikes have to be built along the river . . .
    Those living in the city dedicated to the Duke of Orleans feel as if they were living on an island in the middle of a mud puddle. (New Orleans Regional Planning Commission 1969, 5).
    Alongside the river were high banks covered with great cypress forests, occasionally broken by the home of a concessionaire or an Indian village. Buildings were constructed of thick wood with sloped roofs like Norman houses in Canada. Galleries were later added for cool comfort and the protection of the exterior against decay.
    The French in Louisiana, gregarious by nature and possessing a remarkable ability to adapt, settled in groups instead of seeking solitude, as much for social ability as for safety. They were predominantly traders, not farmers. Unlike the American frontiersmen, they built large and comfortable substantial houses of hewn timber or brick. They were survivors, and they were here to stay. Their attitude is reflected in the types of homes they built.
    The Code Noir of 1724
    In 1719, the Company of the West brought an influx of slaves into Louisiana. By 1724, there were so many slaves and free people of color in the colony that the French government enacted a set of laws called the Code Noir, or Black Code, whose purpose it was to protect the slaves and the free blacks and to define and limit their activities. It governed the treatment of slaves by their masters. Slave owners were ordered to have their slaves baptized Catholics. They were not to work their slaves on Sundays or holidays, except for marketing.
    The Code was not as cruel as it is often made to appear. It provided more lenient treatment of slaves than could be found almost anywhere else in the south. It was the basis of Louisiana slave laws until the late 1820s, when the state adopted parts of the much more severe slave codes of the southeastern states (Taylor 1984, 12).
    New Orleans, the Capital of Louisiana
    Bienville had tried as early as 1719 to have the Louisiana seat of government moved to New Orleans, but the Superior Council argued that it should be transferred back from Mobile to Biloxi. The Council won. Biloxi, however, had just burned down and was abandoned for the other side of the bay. In 1722, three commissioners arrived in the colony, charged with the administration of the Company’s affairs after John Law’s failure. In 1723, the commissioners allowed Bienville to make New Orleans the capital of Louisiana.
    The Ursuline Nuns Arrive
    It was Bienville who had laid the groundwork for the coming of the Ursuline nuns, although he was “between terms” and not in the colony when they finally arrived. A school for boys had already been started by a Capuchin monk, Father Cecil , where the Place d’Armes Motel stands today on St. Ann Street across from the Presbytère . Bienville tried to get the Soeurs Grises (Gray Sisters) from his native Canada to come to New Orleans to teach the girls, but he failed. He