Enjoy free admission every day. Visit the museum and shop or conduct research at the Williams Research Center.
Immerse yourself in America’s fight for independence in this new exhibition experience designed and produced by French technology firm Histovery. On view until January 17, 2027.
On Friday, May 8, bring your dancing shoes and enjoy classic tunes from the Great American Songbook, including hits by Louis Prima, in HNOC’s historic courtyard at 520 Royal Street.
Dive into the Collection’s holdings with image-rich previews of treasures from New Orleans history.
June 8–12, Curator Camp is a weeklong summer program for teens who get excited by history, artifacts, and storytelling! Daily hands-on workshops and experiences introduce skills that bring history and museums to life.
Captivating true stories that surprise and inspire, written and published by HNOC staff and special guest authors.
On October 29, join us in celebrating six decades of preserving, collecting, and making history. Save the date for music, memories, and more at what is sure to be a fantastic night out in the French Quarter.
“We cannot, Gentlemen, refrain from calling your attention to the sad condition of our treasury. It has been without one sou for some time.”
Louisiana Governor Étienne Périer and Director-General Jacques de La Chaise, to the directors of the Company of the Indies, April 22, 1727
Louisiana suffered from an acute lack of specie, or coin money, throughout the French colonial period (1699–1763). Specie shipments from France were nearly nonexistent, and copper sous created in 1721 and 1722 especially for use in France’s North American and Caribbean colonies were prone to violent fluctuations in value.
Louisiana was not the only colony subject to specie shortages. Much of North and South America’s mineral wealth was controlled by the Spanish, whose mining operations in Peru, Bolivia, and Mexico produced the majority of gold and silver minted prior to the nineteenth century. Spain’s domination of hard-money markets meant that the most commonly circulated currency throughout the Americas was Spanish, with a colony’s access to coinage frequently dependent on illicit intercolonial trade.
The earliest banknotes in this exhibition may seem at first glance peripheral to banking in America, but their circulation by France’s Banque Royale between 1719 and the fall of 1720 helped fuel a speculative fever in the purchase of lands in the Louisiana colony. French investors used these notes—the first national paper money ever used in Europe—to purchase shares in the French Company of the Indies, a company whose theoretical worth was largely premised on promises of Louisiana’s riches.
In late 1720, when word reached France that Louisiana’s prospects had been grossly overblown, investors rushed to cash in their remaining notes, demanding specie in exchange. What followed was a massive economic crash known as the Mississippi Bubble.
This bill of exchange worth 200 gourdes (a French Caribbean term sometimes used interchangeably with piastres or dollars) gives modern viewers a glimpse of the credit economy prior to the widespread use of printed banknotes. Drawn up in New Orleans and issued by Charles Vauquelin, the bill was originally intended as payment of account from Vauquelin to Monsieurs Lauthois and Pitot. Its usefulness did not stop there, however, as the bill continued to circulate, holding its value as it passed through the hands of New Orleans merchant Jean François Merieult (whose house at 533 Royal Street is part of The Historic New Orleans Collection) and Delarbre and Company.
