Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2008 - (Page 47) Corporation of New York in 1964. The city’s major street landscaped lots [that] look out onto paved, lighted streets, plan was changed to accommodate the new Lake Forest with all utility conduits underground. Storm drainage is plan, and in 1965 the States-Item said, “A great part of New excellent. There’s a very special pride of ownership in a Orleans’ future is inextricably tied to the undeveloped Lafitte Place address make it yours.” Some families did eastern reaches of the city.” Six years later the Times— 360 lots were sold in Village de l’Est by 1967. Nearby Picayune called it the “boom place for in-city residents there was Nine Flags Park with rental duplexes along with desiring quality suburban living. Lake Forest has been new apartment complexes. called a ‘treasure chest’ of better living for New A former head of New Orleans city planning said to the Orleanians.” Times-Picayune in 1991 “Village de l’Est was the first step. This was another planned “city-within-a-city” where Everything was done deliberately and knowledgeably. At architectural and land-use restrictions covered the time, it was very exciting. It was a cradle-toboth residential and commercial grave environment of the new planned lives. properties, but were designed to afford The eventual hope was that if you lived an entirely residential atmosphere. out there, you’d have a place to be “You As its name suggests, Lake Forest born, a place to work and a place to laces has large lakes which offer play. They even had cemeteries know, they’ve had p twenty lakefront properties as well as planned, so you could die out California for like this in improved drainage. They were there, without even having to been Orleans has created from giant pits excavated leave.” rs I guess New ame.” —quoted yea during construction of InterstateWhile New Orleans East was es. It’s a sh behind the tim 10, the forests were another matter, emerging from the marshes, Magazine, 1974 one not in evidence. another planned community, Lake from New Orleans With the height of the oil boom, Forest, came into being west of Paris metropolitan New Orleans population Road. The widow of Joe W. Brown sold was growing, and Lake Forest was a 5,000 acres to Marvin Kratter’s LaKratt beneficiary. By 1972 there were 14 individual Slab-based construction in New Orleans East mirrored the 1960s trend toward modernism. Virtually every property in the area east of the Industrial Canal was flooded following levee breaks in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION Spring 2008/LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 47
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