Upriver from New Orleans, the lower Mississippi runs through a stretch of land called the German Coast — named for German immigrants who settled and farmed it. Samuel Hermann, born in Rödelheim, arrived in 1804 and settled the German Coast before moving down to New Orleans. He worked as an agent and broker for plantation owners and merchants, expanded into mortgages, stocks, and real estate, and by 1831 had become one of the wealthiest men in the antebellum city. That year he hired architect William Brand to build a residence on St. Louis Street — the only American Federal-style house in the French Quarter, with balconies and galleries grafted onto the symmetrical Federal form to suit the climate. The German wave never had the cultural visibility of the French or the Spanish, but the place name persisted: the German Coast is still the German Coast.
