Perseverance Lodge No. 4

The lower floor was rented out for public evenings, while upstairs the brotherhood’s members held rites and dances. Inside, the old staircase and the gallery where the bands were positioned were not replaced. The hall was managed by predominantly white Masons, but Black musicians were invited to play for the dances. St. Claude and Dumaine no longer meet at this façade: the block was redeveloped into Louis Armstrong Park.

A compass and square remain on the pediment of the narrow two-story building. Before us is an old Masonic hall: the lodge was the brotherhood, while this building served as its meeting place. The French word “Perseverance” means steadfastness. The name appeared long before the brotherhood settled in New Orleans.

The lodge was founded in eighteen oh six in Jérémie, in what is now Haiti. Its members were among the refugees leaving the island after the Haitian Revolution. They moved the organization first to Santiago de Cuba, then to New Orleans. Among these émigrés were white and free Black craftspeople who earned their living through construction. In their moves, they lost their hall, but did not dissolve the brotherhood.

In eighteen ten, the members received a new Masonic charter, and two years later, together with four other lodges, they founded the Grand Lodge of Louisiana. Perseverance was then assigned the number four. It is the organization’s number, not the fourth version of the building.

In eighteen nineteen, the Masons bought a lot from the city at the corner of St. Claude Street and Dumaine Street. On April first of the following year, they accepted the completed house. To maintain it, they rented out the lower floor for public events. Upstairs, they held Masonic rites and dances. The lodge was considered predominantly white; however, its managers hired Black bands for the dances.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Vern Streckfus, captain of a family sightseeing-steamboat company, began coming here. He needed Black ensembles for dance cruises, and he recalled often listening to candidates at Perseverance. For a musician, performing here could lead to new paid work beyond the city. In summer, the Streckfus steamboats traveled on the Mississippi River as far as St. Paul and on the Ohio River as far as Pittsburgh, stopping in a new city almost every day. The records do not say which particular band the captain hired after a specific evening; but they clearly show the hall’s purpose: musicians were not only heard and hired for dances here—employers came here looking for them.

In nineteen seventy, the Masons sold the building to the city and moved away. When the blocks were cleared for the future Louis Armstrong Park, the house was to be demolished along with the neighboring buildings. Heritage advocates led by the New Orleans Jazz Club succeeded in having it preserved: the decisive argument was that early jazz musicians had performed there. The streets around it disappeared, but the hall remained on its original lot.

The building’s restoration was completed in December two thousand twenty-four. Inside, the original staircase and the musicians’ gallery are still there. Outside, the old intersection of St. Claude and Dumaine can no longer be found; what remains of it is the house where the captain came to choose bands for the steamboats.