Premieres on Monday, August 17 at 9pm on WYES-TV. Stream on wyes.org/live, pbs.org and on the PBS app.
Additional showings include Saturday, August 22 at 5pm, Sunday, August 23 at 10am and Monday, August 24 at 9:30pm.
NEW ORLEANS PIECES OF THE PAST highlights some of the city’s most beloved people and places.
Producer/Host Peggy Scott Laborde takes viewers on a visual tour of local history, using rare photographs and vintage archival footage. One feature focuses on photos of New Orleanians taken by 19th Century photographers. Vignettes on Lafcadio Hearn, Mark Twain, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini and Louis Armstrong are featured. Also included are noted lost buildings such as the St. Charles Hotel, the Southern Railroad Terminal and the main branch of the New Orleans Public Library located at what is now Harmony Circle. Fondly remembered is the Pontchartrain Beach Amusement Park.
The program highlights some of the historic but now discontinued streetcar lines and looks back at the literary scene in the 1920s. Remembered are the K&B Drugstores that once dotted neighborhoods. And memories are vivid of Christmas in the 1950s and 60s, especially of Mr. Bingle, originally a tiny snowman plush that was the “mascot” for the Maison Blanche department store chain. Viewers get to experience a “night out” in New Orleans in 1969 and 1974, when Metairie’s Fat City entertainment district was in its heyday.
