Immaculate Conception Church
Moorish-Byzantine sanctuary with antebellum cast-iron pews and columns, dismantled brick by numbered brick and rebuilt in the late nineteen twenties.
This guide to Immaculate Conception Church in New Orleans opens in 1928, when blasting next door for the Pere Marquette Building split the 1857 Jesuit sanctuary's floor in two. You'll hear how a crew of masons chose an unusual fix: taking the whole brick building apart, numbering every piece, and handing the puzzle to the firm of Toledano, Wogan, and Bernard to reassemble. The cast-iron columns and pews inside tell a separate story, cast in Baltimore foundries in the 1850s and shipped south untouched by the wrecking crew. Listen for how those two histories, one demolished and one never touched, ended up sharing the same frame.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.