A vintage illustration of a 19th-century pharmacy interior. The room is filled with shelves of bottles. Several people, including pharmacists and customers, are engaged in transactions and conversations. The ceiling is ornately decorated.

A. B. Griswold and Co. advertisement; by John William Orr, engraver; wood engraving from Jewell’s Crescent City Illustrated; New Orleans, 1874 (detail) HNOC, 1951.41.23

Goods of Every Description

Shopping in New Orleans, 1825–1925

Peer into shop windows of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

September 23, 2016 to April 9, 2017

533 Royal Street

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, New Orleans was at the center of a crisscrossing network of global trade routes. The city’s retail stores were filled with goods from New York, Boston, Cincinnati, England, France, Germany, and other manufacturing centers around the world, making New Orleans a popular shopping destination.

From the china and silver shops on Chartres Street, down Furniture Row on Royal Street, to the colossal luxury and department stores along Canal Street, the world’s latest fashions converged in the shops lining the city’s muddy thoroughfares. Goods of Every Description: Shopping in New Orleans, 1825–1925 invites visitors to peer into 19th- and early 20th-century shop windows and see the variety of goods available in the cosmopolitan Crescent City.