Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006 - (Page 39)

1849: Fish, eels and snakes swam through the streets Much business still went on as stores, banks and theaters operated, although the deluge lapped not far from their doorsteps. During the 19th century, New Orleans grew from a population of about 8,000 to nearly 300,000. By the end of those ten decades, population pressure brought settlement off naturally high ground. Anybody living beyond Liberty Street was considered foolish, while those living beyond Galvez were populate areas once considered uninhabitable, like Mid-City. Between 1860 and 1915 New Orleans avoided hurricane hits, although one in 1893 passed south of the city killing more than 2,000 people around the Jefferson Parish barrier island of Cheniere Caminada. Even the 1900 Pontchartrain topped its banks, destroying several lakeside towns. Bucktown, West End, Spanish Fort and Lakeview — then all sparsely populated — were flooded and some people had to be rescued. Overflowing canals inundated areas behind Claiborne and left Mid-City and Canal Street under several feet of water. When pumping resumed, water was quickly removed, but not until many sightseers drove out to see the damage. Pumps were put to task on Good Friday 1927 when more than 14 inches of rain fell in New Orleans. Uptown streets were submerged and the only way to reach Southern Baptist (Memorial) Hospital on Napoleon was by boat. Broadmoor and Mid-City had six feet of water, while even the French Quarter had 2 feet. This occurred when the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was at its height, and some of the world’s press incorrectly blamed the New Orleans flood on overflow from the river. Levees were indeed breaking throughout the Lower Mississippi Valley, and with water reaching the tops of levees in New Orleans, panicked officials ordered the levee at Caernarvon in Plaquemines Parish dynamited to reduce river levels. In 1923, the Industrial Canal became a long dreamed-of navigation link between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain. Like the Carondelet and New Basin canals, this was heralded as a boon for business, but it too inadvertantly directed water into the city. Its levees could not only be breached, but they could also block water movement creating a saucer between the canal levee, Gentilly Ridge and the natural Mississippi levee. In the mid-20th century it was joined by the Intracoastal Waterway and the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet which introduced more water into the expanding urban core. On the Westbank, the Harvey Canal, dating from the mid 19th century, was expanded, and the newly developed Intracoastal Waterway compounded flood risks to that area. (continued on page 42) regarded as fools. By 1880 there were houses in the low lying wilderness beyond Broad Street. In 1899 voters approved a bond issue to finance construction of the city’s first system of sewerage disposal, drinking water and drainage. The new drainage scheme used high powered pumps to dry out swamps, thus allowing for unprecedented acreage for development. Neighborhood patterns, having heretofore run parallel to the river, began to turn toward Lake Pontchartrain and storm that killed more than 8,000 in Galveston, Texas, skirted south of New Orleans. It flooded Lake Pontchartrain’s south shore while reportedly driving countless jackrabbits from their warrens. On September 29, 1915 a hurricane passed over Audubon Park wrecking buildings, tearing away church steeples, and seriously damaging the French Quarter. Rainwater piled up in the streets after power failures halted the drainage pumps. Lake Winter 2005-06/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 39

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005 Contents Letters Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Louisiana State Museum After Katrina: “It’s time somebody woke us us up.” Missing New Orleans On Perilous Ground The Buildings of Louisiana (Architectural History by Karen Kingsley) Historic New Orleans Collection Louisiana Association of Museums Back to New Orleans Diary of a Displaced Person Jazz Notes (Music History by Bruce Raeburn) Cradle of the Stars The Terrible and the Brave Bookstand (Book Review by Thomas Uskali) Sound Advice (Music Review by Ben Sandmel) Forum (Commentary by James Lee Burke)

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006

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