"...once the banking center of the South"

The older I get the harder it is to explain to people that our little boutique resort and movie set was once a big vibrant city.

The merger in which Whitney will be folded into Hancock, a smaller lending institution, comes as New Orleans, once the banking center of the South, has seen many of its banks get gobbled up by out-of-state financial institutions. Most recently, in March 2005, Capital One Financial Corp. announced the purchase of Hibernia Corp., owner of the then 135-year-old Hibernia Bank.

The central theme of my lifetime in New Orleans has been the dissolution what remained of that city; slowly but surely for a while and then rapidly and surely.