Riding back from the Quarter through the Central Business District today I actively saw the New Orleans Board of Trade building for the first time. I am surprised that I haven’t noticed it before, because surely I’ve ridden past it on one of my many trips up Magazine from downtown. It stopped me today because I was tuning in to how the CBD is such a different scene from the Quarter which, at least on the surface, has that sheen of having its shit together. Just these few blocks over from Canal, buildings still have their windows blown out. Others are abandoned and boarded up. This is strange for a downtown, except insofar as it isn’t. I remember driving through downtown Little Rock many years ago and feeling the same way I felt today: where is everybody? But then there’s a building like this, with its stately columns, its fancy iron fencing, its fountain. A beautiful building, so out of place in the neighborhood. There are lots of places like this in New Orleans. I am perpetually surprised by the contrasts here.
After I took this photo the chain popped off my bicycle. I leaned it up against the main post office building, sat down, and frustratingly threaded it back on. When I got back on my bike to continue Uptown, in my skirt and tight tank top, flirty heels and newly-pedicured shiny red toes, gripping the handlebars with my blackened hands and straining to see through the sweat in my eyes and my smeared glasses, I enjoyed my own set of contrasts.
What I Saw Riding My Bike Around Today 
Hi Kate, I’m putting a tour together for the Society of Architectural Historians–we’re having our 64th Annual Meeting in NOLA in April. Would it be possible to use this photo you took of the board of trade building? I could credit you and link to your blog. Thanks!