Friends of The Cabildo (FOC) is volunteer organization in service to the Cabildo, a museum in the Louisiana State Museum system. Among their numerous programs is a French Quarter Tour Guide education program. This intensive 100+ hour course of classroom and field work is the most rigorous of all the city tour guide licensing programs. Students in the program master a wide body of well researched knowledge about the the history, culture, architecture and notable people of the French Quarter. Each student, in order to be licensed must pass a test but, more importantly, each must develop her/his own 2 hour walking tour and present it to a mentor. In return for the “education”, guides volunteer two walking tours per month for two years minimum. One of our guides has continued to volunteer for 20 years and another for 5 years. Some guides also work as paid guides for tour companies or lead private paid tours.
Recently I took three FOC tours on three successive days. Each was led by a different guide and each was refreshingly different in route, content and emphasis. All of the guides talked about the early discoverers, the founders, the river and the transitions from France to Spain to France to America. Carol’s ‘down river’ tour emphasized architecture, the Ursuline nuns, termites and termite control (actually very interesting), pralines, po’boys. mufulettas and cajun and creole cooking. Ken’s ‘upriver’ tour added a little botany, the slave exchange, more on the upheavals caused by the transitions of ownership and the tense, even violent, friction between the Creoles (native born New Orleanians) and the Americans who deluged the city after 1815. Ann’s ‘all around tour’ added that most important missing element: the three part structure of New Orleans’ society: Whites, free men and women of color and enslaved people and their institutions.
Each tour was entertaining and informative. Even when each guide covered the same information they did so in their own unique way with their own emphasis. The FOC tours start at The 1850 House on St. Anne St. opposite the St. Anne gate to Jackson Square. Tours are at 10:30 and 1:30 daily except Monday when there is only one tour. Usually there are two guides assigned for each tour time so that the groups do not get too large. If you take tours on successive days, ask if the guide is going upriver, downriver or all around so as not to miss anything.