title: Mardi Gras: A Pictorial History of Carnival in New Orleans
author: Leonard Huber
description: Leonard V. Huber (1903-1984) was one of Louisiana's leading historians and experienced a lifetime's worth of Carnival and Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama. A businessman and an author, he was active in many local historical organizations around New Orleans and wrote many books and articles based on his experiences with Crescent City culture. He acted as president of the Louisiana Landmarks Society, Orleans Parish Landmarks Commission, and Keyes Foundation. He was also a founding member and a president of the Friends of Tulane Library, and the library holds this and other titles of Huber's.
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  Turn the page to continue reading from the Gourmet Detective Mysteries
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![cover](../Images/teaser.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # CHAPTER ONE
  
  
  
  
  
  IT WAS MY FIRST visit to New Orleans but I felt I knew it. Unforgettable
  images of black bands swaying through the street playing jazz music as they
  followed a funeral were largely responsible. The dazzling and colorful abandon
  of the Mardi Gras with its spectacular costumes, its nonstop music and its
  floats that had escaped from the world of fairy tale had to be held
  accountable, too. Delicately lacey wrought-iron balconies came into my
  slightly hazy memory, too, though these tended to have elegant ladies with
  shawls gazing down with casual disdain as they sipped mint juleps. This
  probably came from an earlier period although the balconies remained.
  
  
  
  
  
  I had lunched in a veritable museum of classic New Orleans cuisine, Arnaud’s.
  The restaurant spreads over an entire city block, twelve buildings all
  connected by hallways and stairs. It h