Augustin de Macarty

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Augustin de Macarty

Augustin de Macarty (sometimes anglicized as McCarty or McCarthy) was mayor of New Orleans from September 7, 1815 to May 1, 1820. He was a member of an influential Creole family allied by marriage to Esteban Rodríguez Miró, one of the last Spanish Governors of Louisiana. He was brought to the mayoralty by the resignation of the previous mayor, Nicholas Girod, but subsequently served two full terms, to which he was elected by landslide majorities; after which he declined further terms.

His tenure was chiefly marked by the first recorded outbreak of yellow fever, and the subsequent creation of the city's first Board of Health in 1817, which among other things provided for systematic garbage removal, and the institution of a port quarantine. In 1816, a comprehensive ordinance regulated theaters. In 1817, house numbering was instituted. In 1818 the city limits were expanded to include what is now the Eighth Ward. In 1819 the city's first public waterworks was built; its execution was confided to Benjamin Latrobe.

During Macarty's tenure, the population of New Orleans grew from 33,000 to 41,000 and commerce, measured by Mississippi boat traffic and receipts, doubled. To the period of Macarty and the next mayor, Roffignac, belongs the expansion of New Orleans into the "American Quarter."