New Orleans City Planning Commission
Planning District Two
Home to a wealth of historic structures and alive with architectural character, Planning District Two offers a comfortable mix of residential and commercial activity. While residents enjoy the diversity and sense of community existing in the area today, the district lacks recreational open space and suffers severely from blighted buildings and vacant properties as well as from such non-land use issues as crime, litter, and neighborhoods with household income well below the national poverty level. Declining industrial use along the riverfront and old, economically depressed commercial corridors present opportunity for redevelopment and revitalization of surrounding neighborhoods. The district also faces the challenge of redesigning its three major public housing developments to alleviate the isolation and poor living conditions of residents. Future development of the riverfront near the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, continuing commercial pressure in historic areas, the need for green space and access to the Mississippi River, and the need to provide habitable housing for the area through the revitalization of public housing developments are concerns which dominate discussion of the district's future land use pattern.Central City/Garden District
Section I: Boundaries
Planning District Two covers a wedge-shaped area extending upriver from the Pontchartrain Expressway to Napoleon Avenue, with the Mississippi River as its base and the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Toledano as its point. The district is made up of eight individual neighborhoods: Milan (11D), Touro (11E), Garden District (11F), Central City/Magnolia (12A), Irish Channel (13B), St. Thomas Area/Lower Garden District (13C), East Riverside (13E), St. Thomas Project (13F). (See the map facing page 56. This map removes the Warehouse District from Census Neighborhood 13C, a correction suggested during the neighborhood workshops. The Warehouse District has been formed as a new neighborhood, 14C, and appears in Planning District 1.)
Section II: Development History
Planning District Two was originally part of the land grant given to Bienville during his period as governor in the early 1700s. This area included the territory bounded by Claiborne Avenue, Canal Street, the Mississippi River and Nine Mile Point in Jefferson Parish. The area nearest to Canal Street, given to the Jesuits by Bienville when he departed for France, became Faubourg St. Marie, changed to St. Mary by the Americans who settled there after 1803. Faubourg St. Marie's first upriver boundary was Felicity Street. As most Americans chose to settle upstream from Canal Street, the area became the Second Municipality of the City of New Orleans, or the American sector.
The neighborhood upriver from Faubourg St. Marie was settled in the mid-1700s as five plantations: Livaudais, d'Hauterive, Broutin, Darby, and Carriere. Eventually three communities developed-Livaudais, Nuns and Lafayette, which were incorporated in 1832 into the City of Lafayette. In 1843, the City of Lafayette annexed a small area, formerly the Faubourg de Lassaiz, which extended its boundaries to Toledano Street. In 1852 Lafayette was incorporated into the City of New Orleans and became the City's Fourth District. Residential settlements, as faubourgs (suburbs), continued upriver from incorporated areas to the town of Carrollton.
Early on, residents of the district worked to maximize the industrial potential of the area. As the City of Lafayette, the district began its life as an active commercial center, where New Orleans merchants traded with British ships in cloth, cutlery and farming equipment. Gretna, across the Mississippi River, received cattle from Texas and shipped the stock to local slaughterhouses. The riverfront became a development area for second generation activities including hide tanners and merchants, tallow renderers and soap makers. Cotton became a competing dock activity in the 1840s and by the 1850s was a major good exported from the city. Magazine Street developed supporting services for the nearby port activities, and was named to signify warehouses ("magazin" in French) which lined the street for storage of tobacco and other goods awaiting export. Commercial services were also available on Magazine Street. These early land uses, along the river and on Magazine Street, set the stage for continued development of industrial and commercial activities evident today. These early uses greatly differed from those found slightly down river in the Central Business District and the Vieux Carré.
Construction of the New Orleans Navigation Canal (New Basin Canal) in the mid-1800s, supported port activities as it connected Lake Pontchartrain with trade areas on either side of Canal Street. The construction of the canal attracted large numbers of laborers, who began residential settlements near industrial activity on the river and near the New Basin Canal. A large percentage of these laborers were Irish, and their residential development in the district later became known as the Irish Channel. At first Irish immigrants resided in the area near the turning basin of the New Canal near Diamond and Julia Streets (currently considered part of the Warehouse District), but later the population moved farther upriver, to the area around Adele and St. Thomas Streets, and then to the area roughly between Jackson and Louisiana Avenue, following the spread of industrial development up Tchoupitoulas Street.
The original Irish Channel area, near St. Thomas and Adele Streets, was razed in 1938 for development of the first public housing development in Louisiana, called St. Thomas. The Irish Channel, as defined today, lies approximately from Jackson to Louisiana Avenue between Magazine Street and Tchoupitoulas. Wealthier American residents settled farther back from the river near Coliseum Square and St. Charles Avenue. In contrast to the courtyard-style housing favored by the French and Spanish, Americans built ornate mansions, many in the architectural style of 19th Century Greek Revival, with large front lawns or "gardens," giving the area its current name, the Garden District. These early activities set the stage for current land uses, which evolved from the first industrial and residential developments.
Central City, which includes the area north of St. Charles Avenue/Carondelet Street to South Claiborne Avenue, also developed in response to immigration. Along with Irish immigrants, working class Germans moved to the area, attracted by plentiful rental housing. Immigrants constructed churches and synagogues, and commercial activity located on Dryades Street. This mixed land use pattern continued in the area until the mid-20th Century, and by this time the neighborhood had evolved into a primarily African American community.
At the turn of the 20th Century, many of the older riverfront industrial structures were demolished and new warehouses for cotton, coal and other bulk items were constructed as part of a Dock Board plan to revitalize the Port. This project also included the consolidation and reconstruction of rail lines to serve the warehouses and to increase the port's efficiency and competitiveness. In the late 1950s, a high-span interstate bridge was constructed across the Mississippi River called either the Pontchartrain Expressway or Greater New Orleans Bridge, bisecting the district along Calliope Street and presenting land use problems for the area beneath the Interstate and Pontchartrain Expressway. Development of the high-span interstate coincided with declining industrial activity in the area. The historic industrial use associated with the port between the Bridge and Jackson Avenue has almost entirely disappeared, leaving abandoned or underused warehouses and vast areas of vacant concrete lots.
Public housing developments in District Two were made possible by passage of the United States Housing Act in 1937, known as the Wagner Bill, which established the United States Housing Authority within the Department of the Interior. The St. Thomas and Magnolia Street (renamed C.J. Peete) Developments were the first proposed for New Orleans, and their loan application was the first signed by President Roosevelt in 1937. Initially, the St. Thomas development included 120 apartment buildings constructed between 1938 and 1941 in the area bounded by St. Thomas, Laurel, Josephine and Felicity Streets. An additional 52 buildings were added between 1951 and 1954 in the area bounded by St. Thomas, Religious, St. Andrew and Josephine Streets, for a total of 1,450 units. The Magnolia Development initially included 723 units, with the later addition of 680 units for a total of 1,403 units in the area bounded by Louisiana Avenue, South Claiborne Avenue, La Salle Street and Washington Avenue. Guste Homes, bounded by Simon Bolivar, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Clio Street and South Robertson Street, was constructed in 1963 as the city's first high-rise housing development, and included 528 units. Later, 465 low-rise units were added. With declining populations and blighted conditions, public housing in District Two is expected to undergo significant change. Tentative plans are summarized in the section below on Current Land Use.
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.