A forbidding name belies its function as one of the five historic New Orleans landmarks owned and operated as a museum by the State of Louisiana. Built next to the Cabildo in 1839 by architect James Dakin, and considered part of that site, the Arsenal took its name from its predecessor, an arsenal built here by the Spanish in 1769. What some New Orleanians would rather forget is the civil strife that made it a symbol of the city’s growing pains.

Today the Arsenal contains special exhibits on state and local history, plus a permanent exhibit entitled Louisiana and the Mighty Mississippi. The theme is transportation, but this is not dry stuff. It is a Gone Width the Wind pageant of ambitions, wealth, and adventure played out in Louisiana’s odd melding of raucous frontier life and effete European sophistication.

Among the prints and paintings are images of flatboats scudding down the river, of opulent saloons and dining rooms aboard paddle wheelers, and the Currier and Ives print depicting The Great Mississippi Steamboat Race between the Natchez VI and the Robert E. Lee in 1870.