THE BIENVILLE At Lee Circle in New Orleans 300 baths Quiet, comfortable surroundings There is some doubt as to the exact date of the founding of New Orleans, but it is generally given as 171S. It was then proposed that John Law’s famous company, which had obtained charter for the territory from France, should move its headquarters from the barren coast country to the new site. New Orleans thus became the capital of the Colony in 1722. At this time the city had but 100 houses and 500 inhabitants. It was laid out in approximately a parallelogram, 4,000 feet long on the river by 1,800 feet in depth, divided into regular squares 300 feet on each side. In 1724 the streets were named, the houses were rude cabins of split cypress boards, roofed with cypress bark. Two squares on the river very near the center of the city were set apart for military and ecclesiastical uses. The front was the Place d’Armes, now Jackson Square; the rear one was early occupied by a church. In 1726 a monastery was erected to the east of the church for the Capuchin monks who had arrived two years earlier. A company of Ursu-line nuns came to New Orleans in 1727. At the same time the Jesuits arrived and received a lprge tract of land from Bienville, the French governor.