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Edison Park, an oasis of calm amid the frenzy of Bourbon Street, was formerly owned by New Orleans Public Service Inc. and was named for inventor Thomas Alva Edison.
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Photo by Eileen Loh-Harrist
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Hey Blake,
I was wondering if you could give me any information about a park in the Quarter called Edison Park. I'm mainly interested in its location. Also if there is any general history you could give me on it, I would greatly appreciate it.
Stephen A. Booth
Dear Stephen,
In 1970, the property at 311 Bourbon St. was owned by New Orleans Public Service Inc. and was the former site of an electric distribution substation. But since the property was no longer needed by NOPSI, it was donated in 1973 to the City of New Orleans to be developed as a "mini-park." The donation was used as a partial match for federal funds under the "Legacy of Parks" program.
The park was named Edison Place after Thomas Alva Edison, the great inventor. He was a founder and board member of the Edison Illuminating Co. of New Orleans, the first company to make incandescent electric illumination available to this city in 1886. The Edison Co. was a predecessor to NOPSI.
The property at 311 Bourbon St. was privately owned for many years, and title records can be traced back to 1787. In 1908, another predecessor of Public Service acquired the property; the building, constructed in 1922, became a familiar landmark until it was demolished.
The park, completed in 1976, has been in the news for the last few months. A group of local musicians and city officials are raising money to fix up the long-closed park and put up a statue of Al Hirt. The nonprofit group, New Orleans Musical Legends Inc., also is planning to add plaques and statues of other great jazz musicians.
Hey Blake,
Can you please tell me whatever happened to the personalized bricks that were laid in the sidewalks during the 1984 World's Fair? Some people have told me that they were torn up when the Riverwalk was built. Is this true?
Barbara Kirn
Dear Barbara,
I guarantee that the bricks are still where they've always been -- on the river side of Fulton Street between St. Joseph and Julia streets.
When New Orleans was preparing to host the Louisiana World Exposition, the city ordered 165,000 bricks and reserved 10,000 of them for the Preservation Resource Center (PRC). Under the direction of Bonnie Conway -- project director for the PRC's World's Fair exhibit Living in New Orleans -- the organization tried to sell the bricks to raise money for their Creole cottage exhibit in the Great Hall.
Each brick could be had for $25, and the price was tax deductible. According to the PRC, buying a brick meant "insuring a measure of immortality to yourself or to the friends and business acquaintances you elect to honor with the gift of a PRC brick." The bricks, we were told, would be used to pave some of the sidewalk on Fulton Street and would remain indefinitely after the fair closed.
The PRC managed to sell about 7,500 bricks, but some of the brick buyers were disappointed to discover that the letters were only a quarter of an inch high, even though the group made it clear in advance. "It said a quarter of an inch in all our fliers," said the PRC executive director. "We never said you'd be able to read them long distance." Anne Farmer, owner of the company that imprinted the bricks, said that bigger letters would have cost more, and fewer people would have been able to afford them.
The small letters and the fact that the bricks were laid in four directions to accommodate the sidewalk pattern made it very difficult indeed to locate your "measure of immortality." So before the fair opened, a task force of 15 PRC workers spent two weeks crawling about on hands and knees writing down the location of each and every brick. Next they typed up a 75-page list with the names in alphabetical order by first name. Finally, the group created maps by dividing the sidewalk into 25 areas and dividing each area into four quadrants. When you visited the PRC's Creole cottage at the fair, you could get information on the quadrant and direction and a map to find your brick. -->
