The Historic New Orleans Collection

The Collection operates a museum, which includes the Williams Gallery, Louisiana History Galleries, the Williams Residence, a house museum, and a museum shop. The Williams Research Center, which opened in 1996, makes The Collection’s holdings available to researchers. The holdings consist of some 35,000 library items and approximately 350,000 photographs, prints, drawings, paintings, and other artifacts. Notable collections include the largest private collection of Tennessee Williams materials anywhere in the world. The William Russell Jazz Collection of jazz memorabilia includes instruments, records, piano rolls, sheet music, photographs, and books, the William C. Cook War of 1812 in the South Collection, representing Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson, U.S. Army and militia documents, as well as materials describing the participation of southern Indian tribes in the war. The Williams Research Center contains an abundance of materials relating to New Orleans’ German settlers, organizations, music, businesses, and rural German enclaves. The collection includes an assortment of prints, photographs, postcards, letterheads, maps, sheet music, and other objects. The J. Hanno Deiler Papers contain handwritten and typescript drafts of the historian’s major books, articles, and speeches, as well as a number of genealogies of Louisiana-German families.