Wilkinson Row

by Phillip Collier

August 18, 2020

Looking out of our Wilkinson Row studio window at a block party 1978.

I returned back to New Orleans in 1977 to work as the senior art director for Jim Pertuit and Associates that soon afterwards became Pertuit and Alford Advertising. The agency owned by Robert Alford and Jim Pertuit was on the one block long Wilkinson Row in the French Quarter near the Mississippi River. The studio was on the second floor of a nineteenth century building built as a stable for horses and beer wagons for the Jax Brewery that been at the end of the block. The building had been converted in the 1950s into a studio used by the advertising art department of Jax Beer. Our work space was enormous with 20 foot ceilings with skylights, exposed brick walls and massive cypress beams.

Design and illustration for self-promotional ad for the agency.

It was as much a design studio as an ad agency and our client list was varied with everything from bars, restaurants, music clubs and acts, a zoo, fight promotions, a limousine service, hotels, a museum, oil companies and alternative newspapers.

Hand-painted billboard for the newly renovated Audubon Zoo.

Poster design and illustration for the first run of the musical revue, in New Orleans and later on Broadway, One Mo’ Time.

Hand-painted billboard design for the New Orleans Hilton.

Everyone who worked there, including artist Hugh Ricks, copywriter Karen Olivier, and a revolving door of designers, were competitive and obsessed with creating award winning work. The atmosphere was loose with everyone helping each other while at the same time trying to outdo each other. In those days before computers everything was still done by hand and art directors actually had to know how to draw, we did almost all of the illustrations used in the materials we created.

Logo design for Pete Fountain’s music club with commissioned caricature by Al Hirschfeld.

Almost everyone working there was in their twenties and the camaraderie of the staff was strong and usually didn’t end with the work day. After all it was the swinging seventies and we were in walking distance to numerous bars and music clubs in the French Quarter. Some how even after many a late night we were always back creating the next day. Years later watching the series Mad Men I would relate to and remember our reserved table at Paul Prudhomme’s new K-Pauls Restaurant around the corner, the expense account at the Royal Sonesta Hotel’s restaurant and rooftop pool bar, limo rides to concerts in the Superdome, ringside seats for heavyweight fights, comped hotel rooms and many 5 martini lunches. I moved on in 1983 to my next job from what was now Alford Advertising. The five years I worked on Wilkinson Row were definitely the most prolific and fun days of my career.

The annual company Christmas party was legend. The event got so big over the years that it outgrew the large space on Wilkinson Row and was moved to the massive arts complex on Camp Street of our client, The Contemporary Arts Center. At that time the arts district was yet to be developed in New Orleans and it was still considered to be a skid row area of the city.
Pertuit, Collier, Alford, Robertson and Ricks at an awards ceremony 1978.