[Judy Patsch]

from the DQ Signage thread by Keith:
"I suppose the BIGGEST sign painting that Capt. Doc Hawley ever did was when he painted the NATCHEZ and COTTON BLOSSOM on the side of the Toulouse Street Wharf building, with accompanying signage for the New Orleans Steamboat Company. The old building is now long gone, but Doc, like "Ol' Man River" keeps rolling along!"
Picture 1 Here is that painting, in its last days. I don't know when he painted it, but it was covered over with green paint before the '84 season. In those days, N.O. Steamboat 'owned' the whole Toulouse St. Wharf, including the parking lot (oh for free parking by the boat again!). All our supplies were stored in that shed, along with the engines from the NEWTON and MISSISSIPPI III. Technically, that building was on the Bienville St. Wharf...
Picture 2 A closeup of the NATCHEZ part, sorry I don't have the other half closeup.
Picture 3 Taken in April 1983. There's Doc's painting on the shed, and if you look closely you can see 4 (four) (vier) (cuatro) steamboats in one picture, not easily done these days! Of course, that's the NATCHEZ and those lines are the 'window panes' in her pilothouse. At Lower Bienville is the DQ, and at Upper Bienville is the MQ. Go up past the Canal St. ferry(behind the pane line on the left) and there is the PRESIDENT. Of course she was dieselized by '83(in '78), but in my mind always a steamboat. The parking lot was sold to Southern Parking and the sheds were torn down to make way for the Woldenburg Riverfront Park and Aquarium of the Americas. A little DQ history: Bienville St. is where the DQ and MQ docked back in the '70s and '80s, prior to the Robin St. facility. In the '50s and '60s the DQ docked at Dumaine, which is now where the Moonwalk is, just below the NATCHEZ landing. My first view of the NATCHEZ was in '76 when I came to Bienville to ride the DQ. The first time I ever went aboard and rode the NATCHEZ was after my 1980 DQ St. Louis/NOLA trip which ended at Bienville. Back when they used Bienville, there was a lot of boathopping by both passengers and crew. Capt. Wagner would come over to Toulouse to visit Doc (Big E, little Doc). Of course, Capt. Gabe came to visit his mentor Doc, and there were others who had worked for Doc and Roddy before their DQ days. Also, up at the top end of the Bienville Wharf, really on Canal St., was a marine operations office for the DQ Company in the late '70s early '80s - the precursor to Robin St. I believe its address was #2 Douglas St. or some similar obscure location....