You've just crossed Esplanade Avenue into the Faubourg Marigny. This neighborhood exists because a fifteen-year-old inherited the largest fortune in Louisiana and had absolutely no idea what to do with it.
Bernard de Marigny was born in seventeen eighty-five into French Creole aristocracy. His grandfather was a military officer and geographer. His maternal grandfather was the royal treasurer of the colony. His father died in eighteen hundred. Bernard — about fifteen — inherited thousands of acres of prime Louisiana land, urban properties, and the greatest fortune in the territory.
His guardians, unable to control him, shipped him to London hoping life abroad would settle him down. Instead, he discovered gambling. He spent most of his time at a club called Almack's, learned a dice game called Hazard, and came home with an expensive new hobby.
He brought Hazard to New Orleans and popularized a simplified version. French players crouched over the ground when they threw the dice, lookin
g like frogs. The French word for toad is crapaud. The game became crapaud's game, then just craps. Bernard de Marigny introduced craps to America.
In eighteen oh-five, at age twenty, he subdivided his plantation into the neighborhood you're standing in and hired an architect to lay out the streets. He named them like a man who wanted the map to reflect his personality — Desire, Love, Good Childr
