| 1792 |
The Cabildo authorizes free blacks and mulattoes to use the dance hall facility on Saturday nights. A partnership of J. B. Coquet and Jose Antonio Boniquet received the concession and agree to subsidize the New Orleans theater, El Coliseo. They also receive permission to hold a public lottery. The dances for free people of color soon attracted both slaves and white men, becoming known as tricolor balls. They were a precursor to the famed quadroon balls. Trouble predicted by the Cabildo did not occur until 1796. |
| 1799 |
In 1799 Sindico Procurador General Pedro Barran reports that whites still attend black dances on Saturday nights, slaves used forged notes of permission and stole to dress well and gambling flourished in the municipal dance hall. His petition asks that the hall be closed or tough measures be used to stop abuses. The Cabildo conferred with acting governor Vidal who refused to act on the abuses. The councilors accepted in order to keep the theater open for the last half of the Carnival season believing that the dances would end when Lent began. When they did not the frustrated Barran asked for certified copies of the proceedings as evidence that his duty had been fulfilled. Without Vidal's support the Cabildo could not stop the dances, when they cancel the concession in the city's building J. B. Coquet purchases a building on Conti street where he resumes the dances. |
| 1805 |
Coquet rents his St. Philip St. ballroom to M. Auguste Tessier, an actor and dancer in a local opera company, and moves his dances to the Tivoli out on Bayou St. John. Tessier renames the ballroom the Salon Chinoise and the two locations become the sites of the first true quadroon balls. J. B. Coquet is listed at 27 Rue St. Philipe in the 1805 City Directory |
| 1808January 30 |
La Salle De Spectacle De la Rue St. Philippe is opened by Bernard Coquet who had the original contract with the city in 1792 for the city's dance hall. The St. Philip Theatre continues traditions of the quadroon balls and dramatic productions. He bought the lot at 721 St. Philip in 1795 and builds a magnificent building of Philadelphia brick that will hold 700 people with a parquette and two rows of boxes. The building will be modified in later years to become the Washington Ballroom (1832) site of many masked Mardi Gras balls. In 1931 the site is purchased by the city, the building is demolished and in its place is built the present-day McDonogh 15. |