Historian and journalist Marcus Christian reveals how African Americans were the true artists behind New Orleans’ classic iron architecture.

When people think of New Orleans, they envision the complex ironwork of balcony railings in the French Quarter or the delicate lacelike gates of the city’s cemeteries. It is the city’s florid ironwork that gives New Orleans its unmatched, memorable beauty. But few people realize that most of this ironwork was created in the antebellum South—the golden age of Southern culture—by black slaves.

Negro Ironworkers of Louisiana, 1718–1900 examines the history of African American ironworkers in Louisiana. It is the first in-depth study of the sophisticated blacksmith skills for which most Negro ironworkers were not appreciated. Marcus Christian examines the development of agricultural and metallurgical technology in Africa, the slaves who brought those technologies to the United States, and the ironworkers’ roles in the making of New Orleans.