New Orleans City Planning Commission
Planning District Three
Audubon Park and Zoo, Tulane and Loyola Universities, the Office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the cargo-handling facilities of the Port of New Orleans, as well as stately mansions, upscale shops and quaint bistros can all be found in Planning District Three. Land use in the district is predominantly residential, with a multitude of public uses and supporting commercial activity. Neighborhood commercial services can be found on Magazine Street, Tchoupitoulas Street and Carrollton Avenue, as well as less intense activities on Maple, Oak, Leake and Freret Streets. Two areas of relatively intense commercial development include Uptown Square at Broadway and Magazine Street, and the Riverside Market on Tchoupitoulas Street between Octavia and Bellcastle Streets. These areas offer limited regional-scale shopping to the district. One of the city's major institutional uses, the New Orleans Water Board Carrollton Water Plant, is also located in the district. Planning District Three offers a variety of land uses that serve the surrounding community. The proposed land use plan seeks to preserve the district's residential character by reducing conflicts between commercial/institutional properties and residential areas. The Plan encourages mixed use development in depressed commercial corridors, reduction of industrial areas and an increase in park and recreational space.Uptown and Carrollton
Section I: Boundaries
Planning District Three roughly includes the area bounded by Napoleon Avenue/Toledano Street (above South Claiborne), the Jefferson/Orleans Parish line, and the Mississippi River. The northern boundary follows many streets, producing a jigsaw effect between the northern end of Toledano Street and I-10. The district of approximately 4,800 acres includes the following eleven neighborhoods: Leonidas/West Carrollton (9A), Black Pearl (9B), East Carrollton (9C), Hollygrove (9D), Dixon (9E), Audubon/University (10A), Marlyville/Fountainbleau (10B), Broadmoor (11A), Freret (11B), Uptown (11C), and West Riverside (13A).
Section II: Development History
The following discussion of the District's development history is broken down into three sections to address different patterns of historical development within the district. While referred to generally as Carrollton, Audubon/University, and Broadmoor, the discussion encompasses all eleven neighborhoods.
Carrollton
St. Charles Avenue, from Napoleon Avenue to the Riverbend, is considered to be one of New Orleans' most historically significant areas. Once the heart of the city's suburbs, the neighborhood today maintains a physical cohesiveness and character warranting a 1988 listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Carrollton neighborhood emerged from a plantation originally owned by New Orleans' founder, Sieur de Bienville. Breaks in the levees, referred to as "crevasses," caused extensive flooding in 1816 and again in 1832, but resulted in higher, nutrient-rich ground as the silt-laden waters receded. The area became known as Carrollton in honor of General Carroll and his Kentucky militia who encamped nearby in 1814. Although there were already some 200 families in the area, the first real surge of residential development occurred roughly between 1835 and 1845, with a core of new houses near the natural levee around Carrollton, Short, Huso, and Fern Streets. The influx of new residents brought with it an emerging commercial district at the riverbend. New railway lines linking downtown with the Carrollton suburb provided the key to growth. By 1845 the area incorporated as Carrollton and opened its first public school at Dublin and Hampson Streets. Some 19th Century cottages around the New Orleans Country Club remain from early development along the Old Shell Road to West End (now Pontchartrain Boulevard).
The city built a new levee in 1853, from Monticello Avenue to Fern Street. By 1862 commercial districts in Carrollton were established; Dublin Street served West Carrollton and Hampson; Maple Street served East Carrollton with a blacksmith, tinsmith, bakery, doctors, druggists, and dentists.
Audubon/University
Although roughly contemporaneous with the growth of the Carrollton area, this neighborhood was among the last to be developed along the upper riverfront. The area consisted of six plantations. Rickersville was the first to be subdivided; the portion of the plantation below Jefferson Avenue was actually a part of the City of Jefferson. The Hurstville subdivision created a confusion of mismatched cross-streets at Joseph Street, a common problem which came with the development of very narrow plantations. The adjacent plantation, Bloomingdale, was so small that its development in 1834 only contained one thoroughfare -- State Street. At the upriver end, in 1836, Greenville was platted, displacing the Belle Point of Eclipse Racecourse indicated on an 1834 map. In 1854 development of Burtheville carried residential areas up to Exposition Street. Bouligny boundaries were Upperline, General Taylor, Clara and the Mississippi River.
The St. Charles Streetcar, which began operation in 1835, encouraged growth of suburban residential areas. As the second street railway built in the U.S., it was originally powered by steam, but by 1893 had converted to electric power. Suburban villages along the rail line including Jefferson City, Rickersville, Hurstville, and Burtheville, along with Carrollton, were all annexed to New Orleans during the 1870s.
The Foucher plantation, first to process granulated sugar, was among the largest of the six plantations. It remained intact until its purchase by the City of New Orleans in 1871 for creation of Audubon Park, with a portion sold for housing and development of universities. In 1884 major improvements to the site were made as part of the World's Industrial and Cotton Exposition. Recreational facilities were gradually added, with the next major improvement being the zoo, constructed by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. The zoo languished over subsequent decades, becoming one of the worst in the country. In 1972, a dedicated property tax was approved and major fundraising undertaken to rebuild the animal park. The batture was improved in 1973 and the upgrading and expansion of the zoo from 14 to 50 acres began in 1978. Today the Audubon Zoo is one of the country's best.
For years subdivisions in the Carrollton and Audubon areas saw only scattered development, usually in the raised Italianate Villa style popular from 1860-1880, and occurring mostly along St. Charles and Broadway. Street paving and construction of sidewalks did not occur in earnest until the 1870s, after which new growth in the area created a fashionable residential district above Napoleon Avenue, and below Carrollton. These improvements also enabled development of the Black Pearl neighborhood, roughly between Lowerline and Monticello Streets. Located on a natural levee, this area of new development provided an alternative to the city's congested, damp, and frequently flooded lower income housing, accommodating freed slaves and jobless whites after the Civil War. Even early on (late 1870s-1880s), it was one of few primarily African American neighborhoods. Isolated by the riverfront, railroad, and Audubon Park, nearly a century later the Black Pearl community remains as the only major African American neighborhood along the uptown riverside of the city.
Toward the end of the 1800s there was an increase of new home construction, especially in the shotgun style. The area's last surge of growth, in the early 1900s, was marked by the construction of larger, more stately homes. Audubon Place, adjacent to Tulane University, developed in 1893, was one of the last subdivisions. It was heavily influenced by the "City Beautiful" movement with residences flanking park areas, an entrance marked by a fifty foot iron arch and a central street for exclusive use of residents.
Broadmoor/Hollygrove
Unlike the Audubon, Carrollton and University areas, portions of the Broadmoor/Hollygrove district remained untouched until the late 1920s and 1930s. The Mississippi River's curve and the long pie-shaped patterns formed by plantations whose boundaries were perpendicular to the river affected the slow rate of development. Following these patterns, major streets (Earhart, Melpomene, Toledano, Napoleon, Nashville) converged, creating many small and irregular lots and blocks, as well as shifts in street alignments. All these anomalies hindered development. Since the area was also very low-lying, construction did not begin until the late 1800s; indeed, most construction occurred after 1927. By that time, some industrial and commercial properties were in place along South Carrollton and South Claiborne.
The Broadmoor neighborhood is characterized by shotgun and Spanish Mission Revival design houses. The Marlyville/Fontainebleau neighborhood suffered the blighting influence by the railroad as well as by the convergence of several streets in one small area, but by 1949 had been cleaned up and filled with one- and two- family homes. Older commercial concentrations at the intersection of South Carrollton and South Claiborne continued.
Section III: Population
The following tables provide demographic statistics
on the population residing within the planning district as well as the
total population of the city of New Orleans. The statistics provide information
on each area for 1980, 1990, 1997 and 2002.