Image 7 Verse 2: New Orleans
At the place where jewels abound
Fifteen rows down to the ground
In the middle of twenty-one
From end to end
Only three stand watch
As the sound of friends
Fills the afternoon hours
Here is a sovereign people
Who build palaces to shelter
Their heads for a night!
Gnomes admire
Fays delight
The namesakes meeting
Near this site.
I underlined a key set of lines which has been discussed previously, but never settled as far as the conclusion for what motivated Preiss to make the selection. What is known is it can be found in the book Abroad in America (1976), in the form of a quotation from
Domingo Faustino a former president of Argentina. During a visit in New Orleans he compares the dome of the St. Charles Hotel to that of St. Peter's Basillica in Italy. Has Preiss only selected this obscure reference as a colorful way to talk about New Orleans, or a way to hint at a specific sovereignty? Perhaps it should be taken as a reference to the Superdome (1975). Actually, I don't think it's at all obvious, the most important point of this quotation is to discover how it relates to New Orleans, but to also consider it's connection to South America and it's reference to an Italian landmark. I say it's important, though not really critical, since we've learned that loose approaches to the puzzle and some luck managed to unearth cask's in Chicago and Cleveland.
With all do respect to the OP, I think the approach to these puzzles must be redefined or at least constantly reassessed. As it is in most cases, yes, our assumptions made over generic shapes are likely wrong, so a circle of the moon in image 7 doesn't have to represent the Superdome from an aerial perspective. We know the internet/Google wasn't a resource for Preiss, so we have to always exercise caution as we rely on such tools. I've had some success purchasing historic maps (made and printed in 1980) from eBay just to see if shapes or landmarks like the Superdome are actually presented in the same way as compared to our modern Googlemaps approach.
So we know to be careful about what assumptions we make. The worst assumption though, is to think these puzzles are poorly designed. We don't have to like his methods, but Preiss really had his **** together. People who can't comprehend their own stupidity or have to call their mommy for permission to borrow a shovel and the family car need to stop making excuses about how badly they think this hunt was designed. The conclusions I've made after taking a hard look at what I've been doing wrong have yielded some serious insight about how Preiss made connections. Ultimately he provides a “treasure map”, though his way of doing it requires our strict attention to the details.
In the New Orleans puzzle we see plainly the crescent shaped turqoise resting on the top of the clock face. We know the Litany of the Jewels preamble links the Fays of France to the turquoise and New Orleans is one of the best places to make a France connection, but that's where the cultural context seems to end, because we know an Argentinian talked about a palace like dome in NOLA as it compared to St. Peter's in Rome, Italy. We also have the face of Louis Armstrong, a great Dixieland Jazz musican.
Cultrually, this is all over the map. Compare this to the Cleveland puzzle which skirted many different cultural gardens, included a visual reference to the Italian fountain, and then to small plot inside the Grecian Gardens. In Chicago, we don't see anything especially Celtic about the emerald's location in Grant Park; someone once mentioned that the St. Patty's Day parade goes through Grant Park, so maybe there's that. I use to think the cultural connection for each gem was the main concern, I've since learned it's somewhat important, but not necessarily the dominant or key component in the final piece of the puzzle.
I think image 7 is a lot like Chicago's image where the giant wears a hat. The hat is a castle with a large windmill that looks very much like the Chicago's Historic Water Tower. It's then a main road straight to an intersection next to Grant Park. Image 7 has a hand holding up a face mask. The mask fits the face of a statue of Louis Armstrong in Louis Armstrong Park. Many attempts in the past have been made to find a spot in that park or adjoining Congo Square. Many significant changes to Louis Armstrong Park have rendered it pointless to search there any longer, but that doesn't matter since I'm taken the hunt to adjoining Basin Street in the direction of the Superdome from Louis Armstrong Park where the city places three statues in 1957 in what was called the Gardens of the Americas, a tribute to Central and South American people and commerce. The line “Only three stand watch” fits perfectly if anything about this hunt involves finding statues and the quote from Sarmiento might tie in cultrually to this area as well.
The area near the statue of Francisco Morazan is key. It is across the street from a historic cemetery named after a King of France, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. I've previously outlined some visual correlations comparing the hem of the armsleeve in the image to the pant hem on the Morazan statue. A large circle and triangle inscribed fits the shape of a clock face. A possible connection to a triangle may be communicated symbolically by taking the lat/long number pair and adding in a third number that would make the numbers of a triangle. 90 is well known as a corner of a right triangle. The rule that the other two angles must add up to 90 is also well known. 90 - 29 = 61. I believe the number 19 on the clock is flipped 180 degrees to disguise the fact that it is ambiguously a 61.
The word PRESERVATION is positioned with all both clock hands pointing at the V. I believe this relates to the namesakes riddle. Morazan represents Honduras in Central America. Being central, it is fair to argue that is where north meets south, therefore the namesakes, North and South America meet in the middle at Central America. The Americas are the namesakes of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. V is for Vespucci?
The clock points at the number XII. This is important when looking for a specific rooftop belonging to Tomb No. 12. Tomb No. 12 is the Bergamini family of Italy. This tomb can be easily seen from OUTSIDE the cemetery when standing near the Morazan statue.
The verse lines involving the number 15 and 21 leave it up to interpretation as to what they pertain. Many people have counted lamps, bricks, trees, benches, etc. I thought for the longest time they had to do with tombs. That was wrong. If you look at it most literally, since a row is just a number of things in a row and 15 of those things in a row in this case are paces. The same goes for 21. "In the middle" is the same as saying where two things meet, and so I discovered by using an aerial measure tool to approximate that the perpendicular distance from the wall of the cemetery to a spot in the neutral ground of Basin Street is 21 meters (or paces) and that's also 15 meters away from the Morazan statue in the direction of 3 o'clock. Here's the basic vectors put together,
I may not be explaining every single detail in this image, but I think I've got the verse nailed down. The last couple of things I might have an explaination for are the floating figure and a hidden shape in the clock hands design and what looks like a little contour shape match to the small statue that sits on top of the Bergamini Tomb No. 12. Compare a famous Italian statue of Hermes/Mercury and his caduceus. Note: Hermes is the psychopomp who leads the dead to the underworld.
We don't have the wings of the caduceus to make the partial match a perfect fit, but notice how the top of the clock is cut off in the image. Many grandfather clocks share a design feature that's known as a "swan's neck" which includes the symbolic shape of a bird's wings. This is a standard motif among pediment shapes in architecture. Many of the tomb's in the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 share these motifs,
Gnomes admire and fays delight because this area along Basin Street is the Gardens of the Americas. Wouldn't we also be delighted if some goon's near New Orleans gave this theory a try?
