re: How Powerful was Carlos Marcello?

It absolutely was. It was literally called that. It was the third largest city in the US and the largest in the South. A major financial capital and, in the days before rail, EVERYTHING came through New Orleans.

Read Rising Tide by John Barry if you don’t want to sound like a dipshit when the subject comes up again.

He kicked out Al Capone and Frank Costello’s men trying to set up gambling in NO. That’s directly from Lucky Luciano’s biography. So he definitely had some major clout.

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It absolutely was. It was literally called that.

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So was Cincinnati, San Francisco, Montreal, and even fricking Denver. NOLA homers can call it whatever they want, it doesn't make it true.

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It was the third largest city in the US

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.. in 1840, and only because urban parts of Philly were separate cities and not incorporated yet.

The Marcello family didn't rise to power until the mid 1940's. NOLA stopped being a top 10 city by 1890.

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A major financial capital

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The mafia wasn't skimming off legitimate corporate finances. They skimmed off gambling, drugs, construction, etc along with extortion and protection rackets.

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sound like a dipshit

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Myopic NOLA homers sound like dipshits. NOLA was left behind by human progress. NOLA was not the ONLY city in the Americas that considered itself to be the Paris of the West. Cincinnati was moreso considered that than NOLA, and Montreal surpassed NOLA bigtime by the 1900's.

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NO downfall is due to three factors: demographics, backward thinking elite, and the rise of of other Southern cities. The ascent of Houston was probably unstoppable,

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This has been posted before but this 77 article spells out New Orleans pretty well. It’s honestly a hilarious read

LINK

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New Orleans: I Have Seen the Future, and It's Houston For many who love New Orleans, the changes that accompany commercial growth inspire fear—but in the meantime the city's economy stagnates and its population declines

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For the past century or so, New Orleans has been a city that has gotten by on charm alone. Very few people here seriously consider New Orleans part of the "New South" or of the "Sunbelt" or of any other geoeconomic entity conjured up in the past two decades. And, until a few years ago, hardly anyone in New Orleans minded being left out. New Orleans might be poor, but it is happy. In fact, during last year's mayoral race, one of the candidates ran TV commercials that showed a bustling skyline with a voiceover ominously intoning, "Do you want New Orleans to become another Houston?"

Despite the fact that New Orleans has perhaps the finest natural location in the country for commerce, the city's economy has stagnated for at least twenty years. Population has declined; unemployment is among the highest in the South; and New Orleanians have remained among the poorest in the nation. Little has changed since the 1970 Census, which showed that out of the fifty largest cities in the country, New Orleans had the highest percentage of families living below the federal poverty level: 21.6 percent, against 18.4 percent for second-place Newark. New Orleans also ranked last among the fifty cities in percentage increase in median family income between 1960 and 1970, and forty-third in median years of education per adult.

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I love this bit

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The Superdome did not, however, turn out to be the greatest building in the history of man, or even the second greatest. It was beset with cost overruns and political scandals. Voters in 1966 were told that the Superdome would cost $35 million, the same as Houston's Astrodome, which it would dwarf; instead, the final figure was $165 million. The Dome was supposed to make an operating profit its first year; instead, it has shown a large deficit for each of its three years of operation, and no one today seriously thinks the Dome will ever come close to paying for itself. Last year's operating loss was $5.5 million, not including debt service, which runs to $10 million a year. In fact, the Dome costs $50,000 a day to keep open—whether it is used or not.

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Who told you that? What was his name?

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Gino Marino

Life Magazine wrote an article in 1970 about how Marcello allegedly had a man in the state department of revenue and could get you a tax abatement for a price. The revenue guy sued Time Life for slander. I haven't been able to find how it turned out. Won't mention his name because he still has family in BR.

Never heard of this fella. Anybody got book suggestions?

By whom? All I see is a book about judges

Very interesting story.

1959 - US govt starts investigating organized crime. The committee - led by the Kennedy’s - went after Marcello. He refused to testify, invoked 5th Amendment.

1961 - US govt deports Marcello to Guatemala. Like dropped him there with nothing but the clothes on his back.

Shortly after this stuff was going on JFK was killed in 1963.

His old restaurant Moscas is still open in Avondale. Great food.