Find Your Story
HNOC’s Williams Research Center is a site for discovery—a place where everyone can find their story. Support continued free public access with a gift today.
Dear Friends,
HNOC's Williams Research Center offers students, scholars, and history buffs alike free public access to explore a vast collection of rare and vital historical materials. This living archive deepens and develops as we acquire artifacts, books, photos, artworks, oral histories, and more.
Maintaining, expanding, and providing access to our collections are the most important things we do for posterity, requiring extraordinary resources. Expenses associated with storage and conservation add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
Digitization, for example, requires a team of dedicated photographers, specialized equipment, and extensive digital storage capacity. These investments protect precious objects from degradation, mitigate risks associated with natural disasters, and make our history and culture available to anyone with internet access.
Our collection is not just an assemblage of objects. It is a site for discovery—a place where everyone can find their story.
The Williams Research Center’s stewardship of cultural resources is only possible because generations of supporters have invested in our mission. Your generosity will ensure our materials remain accessible now and in the future.
Sincerely,
Daniel Hammer
President and CEO
A Word from a Local Legend
“Read the acknowledgements, the citations, or the credit lines of just about any serious book or article about New Orleans, and what do you see?
I’d like to thank the Historic New Orleans Collection…, I express my gratitude to the staff of the HNOC Williams Research Center…, Courtesy of HNOC, ...archived at HNOC, accessed at HNOC’s Williams Research Center.
For more than half a century, the Historic New Orleans Collection has been the city’s premier curator of primary sources and the birthplace of countless scholarly treatises on city, state, and regional history. For nearly 30 years, the HNOC Williams Research Center has been the single best place to do serious regional research. Since its opening in February 1996, I have logged hundreds of hours there, including as the first returning patron following the Hurricane Katrina shutdown. HNOC materials predominate in most of my books, to the point that much of my work would have been impossible without the WRC. How fortunate we are to have this extraordinary institution and resource in our city.”
Geographer, author, and associate dean for research
Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment
The WRC Makes International News
On any given day, you might find HNOC’s Family Historian Jari Honora assisting researchers or working quietly at the back of the WRC’s reading room, but in May 2025, you were more likely to see Honora on television or in publications worldwide when he made international news.
Shortly after Robert Francis Prevost was announced as the first American pope, Honora uncovered a surprising New Orleans connection, revealing the pontiff’s maternal grandparents to be Creoles of color from the Seventh Ward.
Honora discovered Pope Leo XIV's Creole roots hours after the papal announcement was made public. What happened next was a flurry of flashbulbs and phone calls as media outlets around the world reached out to interview Honora, the only Certified Genealogist in Louisiana. While other genealogists have explored the pontiff’s roots in the months since, Honora was undeniably the first to break the story.
Read more about Jari’s incredible discovery in our First Draft blog post.
History Lives Here
With your help, HNOC’s team of curators, historians, reference staff, photographers, and more ensure the WRC is a place where anyone can find their story. Please consider making a tax-deductible gift today. Thank you!
Your Support In Action
Explore resources the WRC offers to the public free of charge—made possible by donors like you.
Online Catalog
Search or browse through HNOC’s vast collections of manuscripts, artifacts, books, artwork, and more in our online catalog.
Research Pathfinders
Subject-based guides to primary and secondary sources in our holdings
Vieux Carré Survey
Begun in 1960 to bolster local historic preservation efforts, the survey contains detailed property data about every building and lot in the French Quarter from the French colonial period to the present.
Oral History
HNOC’s oral history program preserves diverse personal narratives, fostering a richer collective memory through interviews and vignettes.
Lost Friends Database
A database of more than 2,500 advertisements placed in the decades following the Civil War chronicles individuals searching for loved ones lost in slavery.
Decorative Arts of the Gulf South
HNOC’s ongoing research project dedicated to the material culture of the Gulf South
New Orleans Cemetery Database
Explore data contained in the Survey of Historic New Orleans Cemeteries, which covers St. Louis No. 1 and St. Louis No. 2 in New Orleans.
Support the Williams Research Center
The collections held at the Williams Research Center are at the heart of HNOC’s mission to steward the history and culture of our region. Your gift will support expenses for conservation, acquisitions, storage, and digitization to keep these collections accessible to all.
