Rachel is the Digital Marketing Coordinator at the New Orleans Public Library, as well as the author of middle grade novels Rougarou Magic and Grandpere's Ghost Swamp.
When you walk into the grocery store and buy a banana, you might not think about Tulane University, Lil Wayne, Honduran immigrants, or New Orleans’ cruise terminal. But you should.
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the banana industry transformed New Orleans, along with the Caribbean and Central America. Its lasting impacts can still be seen, heard, and tasted throughout the city today.
The banana trade in New Orleans kicked off with two competing companies which still run the banana industry to this day.
First came the Vacarro brothers, recent Sicilian immigrants to New Orleans, who got their start selling citrus in the French Market. After a freeze wiped out the local citrus crop in 1899, they expanded to bananas. They bought land in Honduras to grow the crop, as well as all of New Orleans’ ice factories to refrigerate the fruits during shipping, giving one of the brothers the distinctive nickname Joseph “Ice King” Vacarro. They opened the Standard Fruit and Steamship Company in 1925. Today, you know the brand as Dole.
Competing with the Vacarros was Sam “the Banana Man” Zemurray, an immigrant from the Russian Empire who came to New Orleans by way of Alabama. Like his competition, he bought land in Honduras; however, he also escalated his influence in the country to create the first banana republic. He built Honduras’ first railroad and postal network, and in 1911 he also financed his first regime change, overthrowing Honduras’ elected president to reinstall a former one—in exchange for more land on which to grow bananas. (Zemurray later partnered with the United States government to force violent regime change in Guatemala as well, and his company ships were used in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba.) Zemurray’s company began as Cuyamel Fruit, he later bought the United Fruit Company, and today you know the brand as Chiquita, renamed for the company’s popular spokeswoman, Miss Chiquita Banana.
Neither Dole nor Chiquita are headquartered in New Orleans anymore, and most of their bananas are imported through Mississippi and Texas today. However, their lasting influence across the city is not hard to find. Here’s where to start looking.
Located at the corner of St. Charles Avenue and Union Street in the Central Business District, the United Fruit Company building was built in 1920. It served as the global headquarters for Zemurray’s United Fruit Company until 1964, three years after Zemurray’s death. The headquarters were subsequently moved to New York.
The building is known to passersby for its ornate entryway, decorated by a terra cotta sculpture of urns, flowers, and of course, baskets of fruit. Inside, the lobby boasts an ornate chandelier and a floor patterned with twelve different marbles, which you can see pictured in the real estate listing. On the market since July 2025, this cornerstone of New Orleans banana history could be yours for a price in the $10 million range.
You might know the columned white mansion as the official residence of the chancellor of Tulane University. For fifty years, however, No. 2 Audubon Place was home to Sam Zemurray and his family.
Originally completed in 1908, the building has undergone significant changes, some of which have been chronicled by nola.com. For example, Zemurray converted the third-floor attic into a ballroom complete with a pipe organ, which was later converted again into living quarters for the Tulane chancellor and his family.
The Zemurrays donated the building to Tulane after Sam’s death in 1961, and it was far from their only contribution to the university. The Banana Man helped launch Tulane’s Latin American Studies program in 1924, with a gift to endow the Department of Middle American Research, and the Zemurray Foundation continues to support the Roger Thayer Stone Center, one hundred years later.
Lots of universities have public health schools, but have you ever wondered about the tropical medicine half?
In the late nineteenth century, as Central America and the Caribbean were being turned into banana republics, mosquito-borne illnesses like malaria and yellow fever contributed to thousands of deaths. In 1870s Costa Rica, for example, another future United Fruit Company founder, Minor Keith, built a railroad under such poor sanitation and health conditions that over 5,000 Central American workers died on the project. Keith imported prison labor from New Orleans to complete his railroad.
Years later in 1905, United Fruit found itself butting heads with New Orleans city government when all banana imports from Central America were suspended during a massive yellow fever outbreak.
The disease was a problem for the banana industry, so the banana industry decided to solve it. In 1911, Sam Zemurray donated $25,000 toward the establishment of a tropical medicine school in New Orleans.
Following the 1905 yellow fever outbreak, United Fruit needed to convince New Orleans leaders that continuing to import bananas wouldn’t spread disease. So, they invited health officials, reporters, and photographers on a “quarantine tour” of Central America, showing off their improved, sanitary operations. It was a huge PR success for United Fruit, and it also laid the groundwork for a fledgling Caribbean cruise industry. By the 1920s, both United Fruit and Standard Fruit began adding staterooms to their banana boats and selling trips to the Caribbean.
In New Orleans, the Thalia Street Wharf was United Fruit’s banana port. Today, American Cruise Lines docks there. From Mardi Gras World to the Julia Street Cruise Terminal, the former banana wharves that once unloaded 50,000 bunches of bananas each year have been replaced with the Caribbean cruises that bananas helped to create and popularize.
With the banana industry controlling so much of Honduras’ land, economy, and government, many children of United Fruit employees were granted visas to come to New Orleans for school. Some returned to Honduras after graduating, but many stayed and were joined by later waves of immigrants. After Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras in 1998, many migrants relocated to New Orleans, and after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Hondurans came to help us rebuild the city. Across the metro area, Hondurans represent the largest group of Latin Americans, with cultural hubs in Kenner, on the Westbank, and in Mid-City.
For a taste of Honduran cuisine in Mid-City, Ian McNulty recommends Tia Maria’s Kitchen, Los Catrachos, and Las Delicias de Honduras. Alma Cafe also recently relocated their Honduran-inspired menu from the Bywater to Mid-City.
Of course, Honduran food is not the only culinary legacy of New Orleans’ banana industry. In the 1950s, as bananas’ cultural cache was at its peak, Brennan’s debuted their signature dessert: Bananas Foster.
In 1957, just a few years after Bananas Foster hit the scene, Harry Belafonte released the famous “Banana Boat Song (Day-O).” Belafonte was the son of Jamaican immigrants, and his father was a galley cook on United Fruit’s fleet. His song was adapted from a folk song about Caribbean workers toiling on a night shift, loading United Fruit boats with bananas.
The “Banana Boat” album, Calypso, was the first million-selling LP in history, but what’s the New Orleans connection? Lil Wayne, of course. In the spring of 2011, New Orleans’ favorite musician from Holly Grove released his hit single “6 foot, 7 foot,” referencing Belafonte and the city’s banana history.
New Orleans’ only famous banana that does NOT seem connected to the Standard and United Fruit companies is the iconic Tipitina’s logo. Opened in 1977, after the fruit companies had moved their headquarters out of New Orleans, Tipitina’s began as a juice bar. Some say it was the ‘70s health craze; some say they couldn’t get a liquor license and went for juice. 64 Parishes reports that the founders used to hand out a free banana with each paid entry fee.
Perhaps the lack of direct connection is a point unto itself. It shows how deeply bananas have ingrained themselves into New Orleans culture. Our food, music, architecture, economy, demographics, and so much more were shaped by this yellow fruit.
It’s a lot to think about next time you’re in the produce aisle.
For further research, the City Archives and Special Collections has a wealth of information about the banana industry in New Orleans. In addition to the photos in this blog post, the Archives’ Mayoral Records have official government communications about the United Fruit Company from the O’Keefe, Morrison, and Schiro administrations. Their Port of New Orleans Collection also includes photographs, annual reports, and newsletters from the Port.
When you walk into the grocery store and buy a banana, you might not think about Tulane University, Lil Wayne, Honduran immigrants, or New Orleans’ cruise terminal. But you should.
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![The back of this postcard is damaged, but roughly reads, "This unusual equipment, specifically [designed] for the loading and unloading [banana b]oats, is of particular [interest to New] Orleans visitors." (Image from the City Archives and Special Collections' Postcard Collection.)](https://i0.wp.com/nolalibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Banana-Docks-Postcard.jpg?fit=382%2C600&ssl=1){kind=link}
1 thought on “National Banana Day: Unpeeling The History Of Bananas In New Orleans ”
This was so interesting! Thanks for writing this; I shared it with my family. I remember reading “The Fish that Ate the Whale” (great book!) about Samuel Zemmuray, but I had forgotten a lot of what I learned all those years ago.
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