An Iron Fence Cast as a Cornfield

The fence in front of 915 Royal Street is cast iron made to look like a field: cornstalks with ripening ears, morning glory vines twisting through them, and posts rising from pumpkins. The pattern came from Wood & Perot, a Philadelphia ironworks whose New Orleans branch, Wood, Miltenberger & Co., supplied much of the city's ornamental iron; it appears in the firm's 1858 catalog. Only a few complete examples survive: this one, another at the Short-Favrot house on Fourth Street in the Garden District, and a third in Wilmington, California. The story told at the gate is that a doctor put the fence up in 1856 for a wife homesick for the cornfields of her native Iowa. A similar tale is told about the Garden District fence, so it is best taken as legend. The house behind it is now the Cornstalk Hotel.