The crevasses at both Morganza and Bonnet Carré have since been repaired, and, in 1931, the Army Corps of Engineers built giant concrete floodgates, which now prevent a breach on either levee, but which can be opened if a flood crest approaches, allowing surplus water to pour into Lake Pontchartrain. The Bonnet Carré Spillway has been opened several times since it was built, but the Morganza Spillway very rarely, in particular for the record-breaking floods of 1973 and 2011.
The Bonnet Carré Spillway and the levees make it possible to divert three million cubic feet of water per second into Lake Pontchartrain, and eventually, into the Gulf of Mexico.
During and After World War II: The Lakefront
World War II not only brought a shortage of labor, materials, and, consequently, a moratorium on residential building; but also it cut a striking design into the lakefront area, making it the fringe of a mobilized city.
Lakefront during World War II. Most military installations existed from 1942-50. (Map by Mary Lou Widmer)
From West End to the airport, the lakefront was lined with military installations beginning in 1942. At the western end, near the lighthouse, was the Coast Guard Station. This is the only installation that remains today. Moving eastward, in what are today the West and East Lakeshore subdivisions, were the US Army (Largarde) General Hospital (west of Canal Boulevard) and the US Naval Hospital (east of Canal Boulevard). Continuing eastward, after 1942 on the lake edge of the Lake Vista subdivision, which had been cut in 1938, was a second Coast Guard Station. Situated on the eastern bank of Bayou St. John, between Robert E. Lee and Lakeshore Drive, was a building housing the US Maritime Commission.
The Naval Reserve Aviation Base occupied an area on the lakefront between the London Avenue Canal and Franklin Avenue, Lakeshore Drive, and Robert E. Lee Boulevard. Included in this area were an Aircraft Carrier Training Center and a Rest and Relaxation Center, a tent city from which the amusements of Pontchartrain Beach were within walking distance.
On Lakeshore Drive, on the western corner of Franklin Avenue, the War Assets Administration condemned a 750-foot tract of land, had it appraised, and bought it from the New Orleans Levee Board. Here the Navy Assembly Plant was situated, according to maps of the period in the files of the New Orleans Levee Board. Some of the its engineers, however, recall the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Company, which existed on the spot in the war years, with its ramp that allowed sea planes to be launched. At that time, there was a fence crossing Lakeshore Drive, and no vehicular traffic was allowed along the lakefront. After the war, the federal government sold the property to Nash-Kelvinator, and it was later acquired by American Standard. The property now belongs to the New Orleans Levee Board, whose offices are there.
Continuing eastward, between Franklin and Camp LeRoy Johnson Road, stretched the barracks of Camp LeRoy Johnson. This area is shown on the maps of the period as the US Army Bombing Squadron. Another interesting feature of this area was the German Prisoner of War Camp on the far western lakefront corner of this area (at Franklin Avenue and the lake).
Today’s New Orleans Airport was Shushan Airport at the time. During the war, it was leased by the United States Government, and it housed a National Guard Hangar and a ramp for launching seaplanes. Also, along its western wall was an area occupied by the US Army Bombing Squadron. Pan-American and Delta Airplanes used the Administration Building jointly with the government for limited commercial activities; Pan-Am moved to Moisant Airport in 1947.
By the late 1940s, after the war, the face of the lakefront was changing to peacetime construction. Military installations were coming down and work was progressing on the residential area, which had been earmarked for residential use by the Levee Board. Lots were then sold to help pay off bonds. Plans had been on the drawing board since before World War II for five residential areas.
Once again, starting at the West End of the lakefront and moving eastward, the Coast Guard Station remains to this day at West End for the protection of boat enthusiasts. The Southern Yacht Club stands on the northernmost peninsula of West End, as it has for over a century. The Orleans Boat Marina has now been built on the west side of the New Basin Canal.
East and West Lakeshore subdivisions, completed in 1953, include 352 residential lots on the sites of the old Army and Navy Hospitals. The Mardi Gras Fountain is situated near the lake on the East Lakeshore subdivision. The East and West Lakeshore are bounded by the lakefront and Robert E. Lee Boulevard, the New Basin Canal and the Orleans Canal.
Lakefront after 1964. (Map by Mary Lou Widmer)
The Lake Vista subdivision had been completed in 1938, just before World War II began. It was laid out in the “City Beautiful” design of Radburn, New Jersey, with a central “common,” pedestrian lanes, and cul-de-sacs to provide safe areas for children. Mayor Maestri called it the “poor man’s project,” but prices of land in this area of premium location and planning would prove the slogan absurd. It was to become one of the wealthiest in the city. Lake Vista is bounded by the lakefront and Robert E. Lee Boulevard, Bayou St. John, and the London Avenue Canal.
The next segment of lakefront moving eastward is occupied by the University of New Orleans West Campus. Its boundaries are the lakefront, Leon C. Simon Boulevard, the London Avenue Canal, and Elysian Fields, bringing the total to 195 acres. In 1964, this land was leased to the Louisiana State University in New Orleans (it became the University of New Orleans in 1975) for ninety-nine years at one dollar per year.
Coming eastward, Lake Oaks subdivision has boundaries, which are slightly out of line with the other lakefront developments. It lies between Lake Oaks Parkway, New York Street, Elysian Fields Avenue, and Music Street. Completed in 1964, it consisted of 290 home sites.
Pontchartrain Beach Amusement Park was located on a fifty-acre site on the lakefront from 1939 to 1983, abutting both West UNO Campus and Lake Oaks subdivision.
To the east of Lake Oaks, an additional 195 acres were leased to the East campus of LSUNO (now UNO) in 1964 for ninety-nine years at one dollar per year. It is bounded by the lakefront and Leon C. Simon Boulevard, Franklin Avenue, and Press Drive. On that site is also a multi-purpose indoor sports arena with a seating capacity of sixteen thousand. On the grounds between the arena and the lakefront, a beautiful altar was erected for the Papal Mass said by Pope John Paul II when he visited New Orleans on September 12, 1987.
The New Orleans Municipal Airport, formerly Shushan Airport, is today a facility for privately owned planes. All commercial airlines now operate out of New Orleans International Airport (now Louis Armstrong International Airport) in Kenner.
The seawall at Lake Pontchartrain, built at a cost of $2.64 million is the world’s largest grandstand. Along its five-and-a-half-mile expanse, there is a yacht harbor, boat marina, a university, public recreation areas, and an airport.
The Veteran Candidate
In 1964, when Mayor Maestri once again threw his hat in the ring, he was to find himself opposed by another reform candidate, the handsome, vigorous, thirty-three-year-old deLesseps Story “Chep” Morrison, a product of the silk stocking crowd, who was returning from a tour of duty in Europe as a colonel in the US Army. Before World War II, he had been in private law practice, had worked in the labor law section of the NRA, and had become a member of the state legislature at age twenty-eight. He had been reelected to the legislature in 1944 in spite of his absence. Attractive to both female voters and veterans, he was a natural for politics. He agreed to enter the race, although he thought he had no chance whatsoever of victory. No one was more surprised than Morrison when he defeated Maestri in the first primary (with the possible exception of Maestri himself). Maestri had a saying, “I was shaved without soap,” which meant that someone had gotten the best of him. He undoubtedly made that remark the morning after the primary.
Morrison’s organization was the Crescent City Democratic Organization. He was reelected for a second, third, and fourth term, serving all but the last year of his fourth term, when
he resigned in 1961 to accept the post of United States Ambassador to the Organization of American States, which had been offered to him by President Kennedy.
School Integration
In 1954, the US Supreme Court, in its historical decision of Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, ruled unconstitutional the “separate but equal” doctrine as applied to public education. New Orleans, like most southern cities, had never really implemented this segregationist doctrine, although it professed to do so. The Orleans Parish School Board had maintained for many years a distinctly inferior school system for black children.
A black girl enters first grade in 1961, integrating McDonogh Eleven School in Mid-City, after a judicial order by Judge J. Skelly Wright in 1960. (Courtesy Times-Picayune Publishing Company)
The School Board fought the decision with delays, and the state legislature enacted a number of pro-segregationist statutes, all of which were cut down by the US Supreme Court. Some thought it would be best to close down the public schools completely, as whites had done after the Civil War. Mayor Morrison remained silent on the issue, as he did not feel responsible under state law for the public schools, only for the keeping of law and order.
On November 14, 1960, federal marshals escorted four young black girls as they entered first grade classes at two white schools. Crowds gathered, and some threatened the students and their parents. On November 15, Judge Leander Perez of Plaquemines Parish addressed five thousand New Orleanians at the Municipal Auditorium, exploiting their prejudices and racial fears and urging them to stop the four black children from attending the white schools.
The following day, thousands rioted in the Central Business District, finally forcing action. The New Orleans Police arrested 250 citizens after much violence and vandalism, including attacks on the black community.
In time, the turmoil subsided with the help of church groups as well as the academic and business communities. School integration was, at last, accepted, and there was a return to law and order.
Morrison’s terms in office signaled the end of a half-century of machine-dominated politics. On May 22, 1964, Morrison was en route to Mexico with his younger son, Randy, in a chartered plane on a combined business and pleasure trip, when his plane crashed into a mountain, bringing his career to an untimely end.
The Suburban Explosion
After the Mid-City and Lakefront areas were well settled, the population of the city continued to grow, consuming the land like locusts, especially in the aftermath of World War II. By 1950, the internal area of the city from the river to the lake had been filled.
In the late 1950s, the population rolled like a wave beyond the Orleans Parish line into the East Bank of Jefferson Parish, following the direction of Airline Highway (which ran from Baton Rouge to New Orleans and was built by Governor Huey P. Long between 1930 and 1932). Veterans Highway, which paralleled Airline Highway, now became the main street of Jefferson Parish. Moisant Airport became New Orleans International Airport (later the Louis Armstrong International Airport). In 1957, the twenty-four-mile long Lake Pontchartrain Causeway spanned the lake between Jefferson Parish and St. Tammany Parish. The world’s longest bridge, it offered commuters the opportunity to work in New Orleans and reside in Covington, Mandeville, or Folsom. The second causeway span was completed in 1969.
Shopping centers in Jefferson Parish mushroomed: Lakeside Shopping Center, Clearview Mall, and Fat City in Metairie and the Esplanade Mall in Kenner all held shops and restaurants.
By the 1970s, another vast suburban area was waiting only for the completion of the Interstate Highway 10 to follow the pattern of Jefferson Parish, but this time it was on the opposite extremity of the city. It was New Orleans East, which, in the early 1970s, began to feel the trickle of the first wave of population. As early as the 1960s, houses and businesses had already begun to crop up in New Orleans East in an unorganized fashion along the newly-built Chef Menteur Highway, which cut across New Orleans East in much the same way that Airline Highway cut across Jefferson Parish.
Soon, it was evident to land developers that real estate along the route of the new I-10 would be worth its weight in gold. New Orleans East is fifty square miles and a community where, eventually, 250,000 people would live, which is equal to one-fourth the total area and population of greater New Orleans.
Because of the speed with which this expansion took place and the enormity of the area it covered, New Orleans has become, in the last quarter century, a city within a city. At the center is the old New Orleans. On the outskirts is suburbia. In this respect, it is different than most big, urban communities and is following a national pattern.
Sad to say, much of this newly developed land is sinking, and many of the new subdivisions are subject to flood. Unlike neighborhoods that had developed at a snail’s pace before World War II, each with its individual architectural personality (for example, Gentilly Terrace in the 1920s showed a preference for Spanish mission-style houses of white stucco and red-tiled roofs), the new suburbs seem boring and homogenous.
There was one more direction in which the population could move, and it rapidly did so in the early 1980s. That direction was southward from the west bank of the river in the direction of Bayou Barataria. This may prove to be the largest surge of all.
The Mayors after 1961
When Morrison resigned in 1961, the City Council voted to make Victor H. Schiro interim mayor. Schiro was, at the time, Councilman-At-Large on the City Council. Born of an Italian father who had been involved in the banking business in Honduras, Schiro spent much of his boyhood in Honduras, where he learned Spanish as a language that was of great value to him when he was traveling in Central America representing the city as mayor.
Aerial view of the city in 1960. Left to right: Civil District Courts Building, City Hall, State Office Building, State Supreme Courts, and the New Orleans Public Library. (Courtesy New Orleans Public Library)
As a young man, he attended Tulane University and graduated from Santa Clara in California, after which he spent three years in Hollywood, working under Frank Capra in movies. In World War II, he served in the Coast Guard for three years. Returning to New Orleans, he worked as a program director and announcer for radio, entered the insurance business for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and then opened an insurance company of his own.
His first effort in politics was his vigorous support of a Home Rule Charter for New Orleans. Mayor Morrison endorsed him in his candidacy for City Council, and in 1950 he was elected Commissioner of Public Buildings and Parks. In 1954, he won a seat as Councilman-At-Large on the City Council, which had been established as part of the Home Rule Charter in 1954. He was reelected in 1958 for a four-year term, but took over the office of mayor when Morrison resigned in 1961.
Mayor Victor H. Schiro: Changes in Racial Tolerance
In the summer of 1961, when Schiro assumed office, he was immediately confronted with the problem of school integration, which was, as yet, far from solved. The episode of the previous fall, with the black children breaking the segregation barriers and the abusive by-standers jeering at and spitting on them, had brought New Orleans to the attention of the nation, and criticism had been strong. Intent up on preventing such an incident in 1961, Schiro instructed the police to set up barricades to keep die-hard segregationists a good distance away from the school children. In this way, additional demonstrations were avoided, and school integration proceeded more smoothly.
Schiro ended the segregation of restrooms at City Hall. He appointed the first black executive assistant to the mayor’s office and was the first mayor since the end of Reconstruction to sanction the appointment of blacks as heads of important boards and commissions.
These changes in racial tolerance and good will were no doubt exactly what the city needed to prevent similar racial upheavals that occurred elsewhere in the 1960s. New Orleans was one of the few cities with a large black population where violence did not erupt during the period.
Du
ring his administration, the Space Program brought thousands of highly skilled technicians, engineers, and administrators to NASA’s Michoud Assembly Factory. This meant new households, growth in retail sales, and an expanded tax base. Schiro also sponsored the initial effort to plan the construction of a domed stadium (the Superdome).
When Hurricane Betsy, the most devastating hurricane to reach the mainland United States prior to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, struck New Orleans on September 9, 1965, Schiro’s prompt and effective coordination of relief efforts played a major role in the city’s recovery. Schiro was, however, a master of malapropos and is unfortunately best remembered during that frightening time for his remark on television (hard hat and all), saying, as the storm gathered force, “Don’t be afraid. Don’t believe any false rumors until you hear them from me” (Haas 1990, 66).
Mayor Maurice “Moon” Landrieu: Principle before Expediency
Schiro was succeeded in 1970 by Maurice “Moon” Landrieu, a lawyer, an army veteran, the father of nine children, and a representative in the state legislature. In the late 1950s, he had become active in the Young Crescent City Democratic Association, an organization aligned with the Crescent City Democratic Association led by the then-Mayor Morrison. It was with Morrison’s endorsement that he had won a seat in the State House of Representatives.
In November, 1960, Governor Jimmy Davis convened a special session of the legislature to consider a package of pro-segregationist bills to circumvent the federal court orders integrating New Orleans’s public schools. The legislature could not nullify the federal judiciary’s integrations judgments, but almost the entire legislature chose the path of least resistance rather than lose the segregationists’ votes. Landrieu was the only member of the Louisiana House of Representatives to put principle before expediency and vote against the bills. At the time, his action was followed by death threats, but in the late 1960s and 1970s, his support for equal rights proved to be an asset. In 1965, he won a seat on the City Council as Councilman-At-Large. In 1969, he was elected mayor.
Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans Page 21