Warehouse District

This guide to the Warehouse District in New Orleans starts at a fountain shaped like the boot of Italy, which pours water every March nineteenth while the plaza fills with the smell of fried dough and roasted fava beans. It traces the story behind that ritual back to a punishing drought in Sicily, the promise farmers made to Saint Joseph, and the altars of bread, cookies and blessed fava beans that Sicilian immigrants carried across the Atlantic into New Orleans. You'll hear how the city dedicated this fountain to them in 1978, on the saint's own feast day. Listen for the water starting up each spring, right at the center of the plaza.