Box 10 - Photographs of the Le Petit Salon

Folder 9 of 11

6 items

Le Petit Salon, established in 1924, November 14, and located at 620 St. Peter Street, New Orleans Louisiana, became Dix’s social heaven. According to the club’s first president Grace King “the club promises to be a most needed and delightful addition to things worthwhile in New Orleans, with its object purely social as well as literary and artistic, which means of course a cordiality and culture that add to the life of any community.”

The Founders of the club were believers in, and preservationists of the arts, the old buildings and the graceful way of life in New Orleans. In 1924 the French Quarter had just begun to be the gathering place of artists and writers – the literate of the day – many of whom were to go to be luminaries of literature and the arts. This was the ethos in which Le Petit Salon was founded and the spirit that pervaded it. (Golden Anniversary Le Petit Salon, A History of Its Fifty Years 1924~1974).

Photographs by Inga Filippo while visiting the Salon in 1992 and 1996.

1. Dedication plaque for the Victor David House where the Salon is located. VICTOR DAVID HOUSE, Erected in 1838 for Victor David, a native of Gascony, France, and his wife Ann Rabassa David Sidle and Samuel Stewart, builders. Purchased and restored in 1925 as its clubhouse by Le Petit Salon a ladies’ literary group one of the first to recognize and preserve the cultural traditions of the Vieux Carre`. This plaque dedicated on April 28, 1988.

2. Front façade of the Victor David House showing the two floors the Salon occupies, 1992 (2 copies).

3. Oil portrait of Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer (Dorothy Dix) reading a newspaper, portrait by Ella Miriam Wood. Drawing Room, Le Petit Salon, 1992.

4. Interior of the Drawing Room at the Salon showing furniture and the oil portrait of Dix, 1992(2 copies).

5. Interior of the Salon showing fireplace and mantel, candelabras and chairs, 1992.

6. Courtyard in the back of the Victor David House, Le Petit Salon, 1992.