Blanche Foster Mysing, 91, Quarter Preservation Leader
Submitted by N.O.V.A. July 2005
Times Picayune	07-19-1998


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Blanche Foster Mysing, a longtime French Quarter preservation leader, died Friday at
Christwood retirement community near Covington. She was 91.

Mrs. Mysing was born in New Orleans and lived in Covington for the past two years. She
was a graduate of Newcomb College.

Mrs. Mysing served two terms on the Vieux Carre Commission, appointed by former Mayors
Chep Morrison and Dutch Morial. She also was a former president of the Louisiana
Council for the Vieux Carre.

The council helped lead the fight against installing a sound-and-light show in Jackson
Square in the 1970s.

At the time, Mrs. Mysing was one of those warning about increasing commercialization of
the Quarter.

"Let us hope that the pursuit of progress - or profit, if you will - does not prove to
be the force that erodes the one real attraction for visitors to our city," she wrote
in a 1981 letter to The Times-Picayune.

"The efforts of early preservationists, going back to the '30s, were . . . based on a
desire to preserve that little gem, the French Quarter, and also to provide an
interesting and exciting place to live," Mrs. Mysing wrote in a 1990 letter. For many
years, she wrote, a depressed economy helped to preserve the Quarter because few people
had the money to develop it.

But by the 1960s and '70s, things had changed. Mrs. Mysing and other preservationists
found themselves fighting repeated battles to prevent the development of the Quarter
and surrounding blocks. They defeated the sound-and-light show but failed to block the
Canal Place development one block outside the historic district.

In her 1990 letter, she said she found it sad "that more people in New Orleans do not
realize the value of the Vieux Carre not only as an asset to the economy but as living
history, unique, irreplaceable. Without the preservationists and their untiring efforts
to keep as much as possible for this little enclave, there will be nothing for the
developers to exploit."

Mrs. Mysing was a past chairwoman of the Tulane Foreign Students Association. She was a
member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and Trinity Episcopal Church.

Survivors include a son, August William Mysing Jr., and a daughter, Marian Mysing
Livaudais.

A funeral will be held Monday at 11 a.m. at Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral Home, 5100
Pontchartrain Blvd. Visitation will begin Monday at 10 a.m. Burial will be in Metairie
Cemetery.