Throughout the 19th century New Orleans was the largest port in the South, exporting most of the nation's cotton output to Western Europe and New England. It was the largest city in the South when the Civil War began. The wealth came from moving what grew inland out to the world, and the city built institutions meant to last on the strength of it — Antoine Alciatore founded his restaurant here in 1840, and five generations later his family still runs it, the oldest family-run restaurant in the United States. By 1884, that cotton economy got its monument: the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, six months on 249 acres of swampy Uptown ground, 1.5 million visitors filing into what was briefly the largest building ever constructed. It ran a million dollars over budget and collapsed into bankruptcy. The land became Audubon Park — one of the finest urban green spaces in the South, the legacy of a spectacular failure.
