For more than 100 years, the Mangin name was well-known in the French Quarter and across the city. Mangin’s Iron Works, located at 621 Bourbon St., crafted many of the wrought iron balconies, fences and railings in the French Quarter from 1832 until 1920.
Charles A. Mangin was born in New Orleans in 1854. He worked in the family business with his father and grandfather. The business, established in 1832, was on the first floor and the family lived upstairs. The building was later inherited by Lindy Boggs, who made it her New Orleans home from 1972 until Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
In a 1920 Times-Picayune article, Mangin detailed his family’s history in the ornamental ironworks business. “I hardly had to learn at all. It was born in me,” he said. “I have worked around a forge since I was fourteen.”
Mangin explained the difference between wrought iron and cast iron produced from a mold. “Wrought iron is like an oil painting — every stroke is put on by hand, and there is only one copy in the world. Cast iron is like printing — once you have the plate, you may run off millions of copies.”
In 1920, Mangin closed his business. “I can get no workmen. Today, they want things turned out by machine, quick, cheap. Art does not matter to them,” he told The Times-Picayune. “There is no one to whom I can teach my trade; all the boys nowadays would rather be merchants and get rich than be apprentices for years at a difficult art and earn little.”
Mangin died in 1924. According to his family, one of his anvils and a large key that hung in front of the shop were donated to the Louisiana State Museum.
In 1960, Oretha Castle co-founded the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality.
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