Preservation Hall

This guide to Preservation Hall in New Orleans starts with the hand-lettered price list by the door, where a jazz standard costs a dollar but one particular song costs five. It traces the room from its start as an art gallery in the 1950s through Allan and Sandra Jaffe taking over in 1961, and the deliberate discomfort they kept: no air conditioning, no bar, elder musicians on worn benches. Under Jim Crow, when Louisiana law still barred integrated bands, this room quietly put black and white musicians on the same stage.