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New Orleans residents have enjoyed the beauty and
scenery of the city's Lakeview area for nearly 200
years.
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Photo by Cheryl Gerber
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Hey Blake,
There is no wagering or anything else
about this question, but since you know most of all about everything concerning
New Orleans, I would welcome your comments about the area now called Lakeview.
Roy Miller
Dear Roy,
Lakeview's boundaries are West End Boulevard, Robert E. Lee Boulevard, Orleans
Avenue and Florida Avenue.
The surrounding area has changed in many ways
since the early 1700s, when it was owned by the Capuchins, an order of Roman
Catholic priests. Then, during Spanish rule, which began in 1763, the Capuchins
sold the land to Don Andres Almonester y Roxas, the Spanish nobleman responsible
for rebuilding the St. Louis Cathedral after the fire of 1788.
In 1790, a Scot, Alexander Milne, arrived
in New Orleans and made a great deal of money, which enabled him to buy huge
tracts of land along Bayou St. John and the lakefront. By the time he died,
he owned most of the New Orleans lakeshore and what is now Lakeview -- 22 miles
of property along the lake extending from the Jefferson Parish line to the Rigolets.
Milne founded the town of Milneberg, which
later became a summer resort on the lakefront. Folks traveled some five miles
down Elysian Fields Avenue on the Pontchartrain Railroad, also built by Milne
in 1831.
An important feature of the Lakeview area
was the New Basin Canal. Dug in the 1830s, largely by Irish immigrants, the
canal connected the lake with Uptown, its turning basin being near the present
Union Terminal. On the west side of the canal was the famous Shell Road, our
Pontchartrain Boulevard, where the thoroughbred owners of antebellum days tested
their horses.
Near the mouth of Bayou St. John, on the location
of the old "Spanish Fort," a grand resort arose in the 1800s, complete with
a casino, restaurants, amusements and a hotel that saw the likes of visitors
such as William Makepeace Thackery, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Oscar Wilde.
People so enjoyed the pleasures to be found
near the lake that another resort, West End, first known as New Lake End to
distinguish it from Old Lake End as Milneberg was sometimes called, had its
inception in 1871. The city took over an embankment some 800 feet from the shore
and raised the 100-foot-wide bank to a height of 8 feet. Soon a large wooden
platform was built over the water, and before we knew it there were a hotel,
restaurant, garden and several amusement spots. It remained a popular resort
for many years.
In 1921, the city constructed a seawall 500
feet further out in the lake and filled in the area in between this and the
old embankment. Then they filled in the space, forming the present West End
Park.
Early in the 1900s, drainage of the Lakeview
area began, and the first house was built in 1905 on Julia Street, later called
West End Boulevard. Within a few years, the swamps were drained and roads were
built, and the New Orleans Land Company, begun by Charles Louque, started to
advertise and sell property. Pretty soon there were houses, schools and churches.
The first public school in the area, Lakeview School, was built in 1915, and
St. Dominic's Church on Harrison Avenue was built in 1923.
Development of the area got off to a slow
start but picked up in the late 1920s, only to be slowed down by the Depression
in the 1930s. Things picked up again, but slowed with the onset of World War
II. However, by the late 1940s, Lakeview was on the way to becoming a prestigious
neighborhood. In 1949 West End Boulevard was repaved, and in 1950 the New Basin
Canal was filled in.
Also, in the 1930s the Orleans Parish Levee
Board filled in the lakeshore and began to develop the whole lakefront between
West End and the Industrial Canal. In 1939, Milneberg eventually became the
site of Pontchartrain Beach Amusement Park, and today the University of New
Orleans Research and Technology Park
