Toby's Corner

Thomas Toby came to New Orleans with no money. A Philadelphia merchant who went bankrupt financing the Texas Revolution, he ended up at Prytania and General Taylor in a raised center-hall cottage built around 1838 — the oldest house in the Garden District, one of the first structures after the Livaudais Plantation was subdivided. This was before the Greek Revival mansions, before the district became what tourists come to photograph. Just a raised cottage with a center hall. Sam Houston reportedly stayed here while Toby lobbied for Texas annexation. What they talked about — whether Toby was still trying to recover his losses, whether Houston owed him, whether either man believed annexation would square the accounts — the house doesn't say. It's a private residence now. You can see it from the sidewalk, which is enough. New Orleans was the largest port in the South through the nineteenth century, shipping cotton and farm products to Europe and New England. Men came here to make money or recover from not making it. Toby's cottage is what modest looked like in 1838, before the district filled in with grander houses. It's still standing. That's the fact worth seeing.