Welcome to the Shifting Landscapes virtual tour of Gallier House, which focuses deeply on how the house was experienced by the enslaved people—Laurette, Rose, Julienne, and François—who lived and labored there between the house's completion in 1860 and the end of the Civil War in 1865. In addition to exploring the buildings, outdoor spaces, and collections at Gallier House, visitors will be given a glimpse into everyday life on the property and how the enslaved people at the house navigated their environment on the eve of slavery’s abolition in the southern United States. The tour will explore the idea of “Shifting Landscapes”: not only the ways in which the physical spaces of the house meant different things to different people at different times, but also the many ways in which the social landscape shifted for enslaved people during this brief but tumultuous period in history. The tour also challenges us, in the present day, to shift our ways of thinking about the history of the landscapes–both physical and metaphorical–that we experience every day.
NOTICE: Due to Tropical Storm/Hurricane Francine, which is expected to make landfall on the Louisiana coast at 7pm on Wednesday, September 11th, we are postponing the online program for the launch of the Shifting Landscapes virtual tour. We are working to determine a reschedule date with our panelists and will send out updates when we know more. Our apologies for the inconvenience, and for those expecting impacts from the storm, stay safe! Until then, you can visit the beta version of the tour, which features about half of the spaces and locations at Gallier House, by clicking the button above.
Credits
The Shifting Landscapes: Slavery and the Built Environment virtual tour was created by the Hermann-Grima + Gallier Historic Houses (HGGHH) staff together with 11 collaborating scholars and HULLFILM.
Project Director: Dr. Amy Katherine Medvick.
Executive Director: Tessa Jagger.
Curator and Editor: Katie Burlison.
Curatorial Associate: Peter Dandridge.
All image capture and digital assembly by Brandon Hull of HULLFILM.
Volumetric scanning and 3D model rendering by Dr. Bryan Carter, Director of the Center for Digital Humanities, University of Arizona, and Amelia Latania Matheson, Earnest Jerome Walker, and Cosmo Vittorio Brusa Zapellini.
Additional website assistance by Nathan duToit.
Phase I Collaborators: Dr. Anastacia Scott, Project Director, and Dr. Dell Upton, Distinguished Professor of Architectural History, Department of Art History, University of California, Los Angeles.
Content development by Katie Burlison, Tessa Jagger, and Dr. Amy Katherine Medvick, and the collaborating scholars (listed alphabetically by surname):
Dr. Fallon Samuels Aidoo, Assistant Professor of Real Estate & Historic Preservation, School of Architecture, Tulane University.
Fallon Samuels Aidoo is a preservation planner interested in the history and future of real estate that is vital to Black, Indigeneous, and immigrant communities. Her research, teaching, consulting, and public service revolve around the diversity of preservation practitioners, patrons, and practices that contribute to cultural heritage vulnerability and sustainability. At Tulane School of Architecture, Dr. Aidoo teaches real estate development and historic preservation and supervises urban studies. She applies research to practice, and vice-versa, as an advisor to the U.S. Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and the Louisiana Office of Historic Preservation and consultant to National Trust for Historic Preservation, National Park Service, NEH, and Mellon Foundation grantees. Dr. Aidoo holds a PhD in urban planning (Harvard), M.S. in architectural history (MIT) and B.S. in civil / structural engineering (Columbia University).
Dr. Bryan Carter, Professor of Africana Studies, Director, Center for Digital Humanities, University of Arizona.
Dr. Bryan Carter received his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He is currently the Director of the Center for Digital Humanities and an Associate Professor in Africana Studies at the University of Arizona. He specializes in African American literature of the 20th Century with a primary focus on the Harlem Renaissance. Dr. Carter’s research centers on how using traditional and advanced interactive and immersive technologies change the dynamic within the learning space. Dr. Carter has completed his first book, entitled Digital Humanities: Current Perspectives, Practice and Research through Emerald Publishing, and he completed his second manuscript through Routledge Press, entitled AfroFuturism: Experiencing Culture Through Technology(June 2022).
Dr. Clifton Ellis, Elizabeth Sasser Professor of Architectural History, Huckabee College of Architecture at Texas Tech University.
Clifton Ellis earned his PhD in Architectural History at the University of Virginia, focusing on the colonial and antebellum periods of the United States. He has written widely on race and gender in the plantation households of the Antebellum South. He teaches at Texas Tech University’s Huckabee College of Architecture.
Dr. Walter D. Greason, DeWitt Wallace Professor of History, Department of History, Macalester College.
Walter Greason, Ph.D., DeWitt Wallace Professor in the Department of History at Macalester College is the preeminent historian of Afrofuturism, the Black Speculative Arts, and digital economies in the world today. His work as a viral engagement coordinator for the NEH project with HGGHH expanded the project's public and scholarly impact.
Dr. Erin M. Greenwald, Historian and Founder, The Working Historian, LLC.
Erin M. Greenwald, PhD, is a historian, curator, and founder of the Working Historian, a consultancy supporting museums, publishers, researchers, and cultural organizations in the development and execution of high-quality public history and humanities projects. From 2018 to 2024, Greenwald served as Vice President of Public Programs and Editor-in-Chief of 64 Parishes magazine and website at the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Prior to joining the LEH, she was senior curator and historian at the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Dr. Leslie M. Harris, Professor of History and Black Studies, Department of History, Northwestern University.
Leslie M. Harris is Professor of History and Black Studies at Northwestern University. She has authored or co-edited five books and participated in a number of public history projects, including the award-winning Slavery in New York exhibition (2005-2007) at the New-York Historical Society, and the accompanying book (with Ira Berlin); and the re-interpretation of the urban slave quarters at Telfair Museum’s Owens-Thomas House in Savannah, Georgia, which included the edited volume Slavery and Freedom in Savannah (2013, with Daina Ramey Berry). Harris is currently completing Leaving New Orleans: A Personal Urban History, a book that combines memoir with family, urban and environmental histories to explore the multiple meanings of New Orleans from its founding through its uncertain future amid climate change.
Dr. Louis P. Nelson, Professor of Architectural History, University of Virginia.
Louis P. Nelson is Professor of Architectural History and the Vice Provost for Academic Outreach. He is a specialist in the built environments of the early modern Atlantic world, with published work on the American South, the Caribbean, and West Africa, and is a leading advocate for the reconstruction of place-based public history.
Dr. Arijit Sen, Associate Professor, Department of History, Urban Studies Programs, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.
Arijit Sen is a historian of everyday places and ordinary people. He examines the cultural landscapes of immigrant communities and interprets cities from the bottom up by engaging the voices and histories of urban communities traditionally ignored in official narratives. Sen has directed public history and preservation fieldwork projects in Milwaukee, Chicago, Calgary, and New Orleans. Since 2012 he has directed the Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures field school, a public humanities project that engages students, scholars, and community members in a collaborative exploration and documentation of the history and heritage of Milwaukee’s neighborhoods. The field school is currently partnering with the Newark-based Humanities Action Lab to contribute to “Climates of Inequality," a traveling exhibit on environmental justice.
Ms. Brook Tesler, MPS, Founding Principal & Architectural Historian, Tesler Preservation Consulting, LLC; Adjunct Lecturer, Tulane School of Architecture.
Brook Tesler is an architectural historian and preservationist. Ms. Tesler holds a Master of Preservation Studies from Tulane University's School of Architecture and a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She currently serves as the Senior Historic Preservation Manager for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, leading efforts to maintain and preserve historic structures under the purview of churches and deaneries across Southeastern Louisiana. She previously led the VCC Foundation as Executive Director, established Tesler Preservation Consulting, and created the highly regarded Vieux Carré Virtual Library.
Mr. Leon A. Waters, Historian, Publisher, Social Activist, and Manager of Hidden History LLC.
Mr. Leon August Waters is a New Orleans native, historian, publisher and social activist. Mr. Waters serves as the board chairperson of the Louisiana Museum of African American History. As a licensed tour host, where he directs tours on ‘hidden history’, Mr. Waters is also the manager of Hidden History, L.C.C. – a publishing, touring, and research company. He has published the book On To New Orleans: Louisiana’s Heroic 1811 Slave Revolt, documenting the story of the largest slave revolt in the United States that happened in St. John the Baptist, St. Charles, and Orleans Parishes.
Acknowledgements
The Shifting Landscapes: Slavery and the Built Environment virtual tour is possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH): Democracy Demands Wisdom and the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ Museums for America grant.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this tour do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the Institute for Museum and Library Services.
Media inquiries
Please contact Alyse Mouledoux, alysem@hgghh.org or (504) 274-0744.