Micaela Leonarda Antonia Almonester y Rojas, Baroness de Pontalba was the daughter and heiress of a wealthy and illustrious Creole family (Andres Almonester, who helped fund the St. Louis Cathedral) famed for being one of the major architects of the current layout and beauty of the French Quarter.
In 1811 at age 15 Micaela entered an arranged marriage with Joseph-Xavier Célestin Delfau de Pontalba, another wealthy Creole, in what has generally been seen as a business arrangement between the father-in-law and her mother. Micaela moved with he husband to France and raised five children. However, the marriage began to fall apart, helped in large part by Micaela's father-in-law, Baron Joseph Delfau a slightly deranged man who coveted his daughter-in-law's fortune in the hope of reviving his family's declining wealth. Years of pressure to turn over Micaela's wealth to her husband led to years of virtual imprisonment in France, and finally culminated in the old baron entering her room and shooting her four times at point-blank range with dueling pistols in 1834. Confident that Micaela's wealth would finally end up in the hands of the Pontalbas, Baron Delfau then shot himself with the same pistols. However, though she lost a breast and several fingers, Micaela survived. Now the Baroness de Pontalba, Micaela successfully separated from her husband and returned to New Orleans (before she left France, she constructed the Hôtel de Pontalba, now the American ambassador's residence in France).
Baroness Pontalba returned to New Orleans in 1848, returning to her place at the forefront of Creole society. She found the French Quarter had declined, the old Place d'Arme a unsightly and squalid tenement quarter. The baroness quickly went to work, obtaining a 20-year tax exemption, and demolishing several old buildings to create the two Pontalba Buildings, flanking the old square on both sides. The two buildings, designed as Row Houses, cost $300000 and were built in the Parisian style of the time. Between them, Baroness Pontalba restored the parade ground, turning it into a formal French Garden and dubbing it Jackson Square, after the War of 1812 hero Andrew Jackson. A local legend states that the general insulted her once by neglecting to doff his hat to her in her presence. In response, the baroness commissioned the statue so that Jackson would permanently doff his hat to her namesake buildings. This is false as the statue was commissioned in 1847, before the baroness' return from France.
French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana
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