Pontchartrain Park

From New Orleans Wiki

Pontchartrain Park is an important neighborhood in New Orleans because it was the first suburban-style subdivision built for the African American middle class. The neighborhood is modeled after Gentilly Woods, which was an adjacent white subdivision developed in the 1950s. Of late, residents have begun referring to "Pontilly", a word that references both the Pontchartrain Park and the Gentilly Woods subdivisions, and which describes the neighborhood encompassing both. Unfortunately, Pontchartrain Park was devastated by Hurricane Katrina-induced levee and floodwall failures, but people are trying to return to an area that they have grown fond of and spent so many years in raising families and forming social networks with neighbors and local businesses. As I have found (late 2006) on the online Times-Picayune (www.nola.com), many older residents are either returning or want to return, because their homes are paid off; many cannot afford to start over again. On nola.com there was a retired woman named Jessie Perry, who stated more or less that she likes not having a house note to pay, and at age 74 it would be impossible to start over. This seems to have been the logic for many of the older adults wanting to return, which is totally understandable. This is a great neighborhood with some very patient and determined homeowners pursuing all the steps in the Road Home rebuilding process. Along some of the main streets the grass has been maintained, some businesses are back up and running, the park along Press Drive looks to be in pretty good condition, and some churches are back open again. My neighborhood contact, Mr. Wells, speaks with great enthusiasm for the area and for its return. Nola.com also has some pretty good neighborhood forums to check and see what has been going on, chat amongst residents, and find listings of important meetings posted by neighborhood residents. This neighborhood needs to come back because of the great things it has to offer, such as the nice parks and greenspace, Southern University in New Orleans, Joe Bartholomew Golf Course, and many other amenities - and let us not forget about the great people! I mean, this is New Orleans - and it is like no place else! Many people move away or out of state, but many return because they miss it. The city really does grab hold of you, and make you want to return. On npr.org, a Ms. Gwendolyn Thompkins noted, "What has kept New Orleans together for nearly 300 years is neighbors doing the best they can. People like to say that good fences make good neighbors. But if you ask the folks of Pontchartrain Park, Gert Town and Back o' Town, of New Orleans East, Gentilly and Lakeview, they'd say something different. In New Orleans, good levees make good neighbors. Always have. Always will."

[edit] History of the Neighborhood

The neighborhood of Pontchartrain Park was first advertised in the Times-Picyaune in 1954, and the neighborhood's first inhabitants arrived in 1955. The city of New Orleans sold a two-hundred acre plot to the New Orleans Lakeshore Land Company to accommodate the development, and the subdivision was developed by Edgar Stern of Pontchartrain Park Homes. The neighborhood was built by the Crawford Homes company. It is a very important neighborhood in the history of the city, because it was one of the first subdivisions to provide home ownership opportunities to middle- and upper-income African Americans. The homes were built on one hundred and eighty-five acres of the two-hundred acre subdivision. Pontchartrain Park was one of the last neighborhoods to be developed in the Gentilly area.

[edit] Maps

The Pontchartrain Park neighborhood is one of seventy-three neighborhoods designated by the New Orleans City Planning Commission. You can locate this neighborhood in the map below. [1] The neighborhood is located in Planning District Six. These planning districts were designated by the New Orleans City Planning Commission. You can locate this planning district in the map below: planning districts.pdf .

[edit] Neighborhood Institutions and Landmarks

[edit] Churches

St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church 

The church is located off of Press Drive on 4700 Pineda Street in New Orleans. Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 it has been the center for neighborhood meetings to discuss the ongoing rebuilding of the Gentilly Woods/Pontchartrain Park area. The church hosts meetings of the neighborhood association. The church is being rebuilt due to Katrina damage.

Holy Cross Lutheran Church 

This church is having problems rebuilding, from what my contact has told me. The church is located at 6154 Press Drive.

Bethany United Methodist Church 

The church is located off of Press Drive on 4533 Mendez Street, and from what my neighborhood contact tells me it is looking good on the rebuilding process. Bethany had eleven feet of standing water after Hurricane Katrina, but I am glad to say that the church is back open and "bigger and better" as Rev. Hadley Edwards put it. [2]. The church reopened on October 22, 2006.

Baptist Church 

No updates at this time.

[edit] Schools

Mary Dora Coghill Elementary 

This public school was built in the late 1950s for the kids in the neighborhood to attend. The school is located at 5514 Piety Street in New Orleans, and there is a proposal to tear down the existing school a build a senior village in its place.

Parkview Fundamental School 

The school is located at 4617 Mirabeau Avenue in New Orleans. It is the elementary school for the Pontchartrain Park area, though it's actually located in adjacent Gentilly Woods. It was a public magnet school which enrolled pre-k through sixth graders before the hurricane. A current proposal seeks to tear down the buildings and rebuild the school for grades kindergarten through six.

Southern University in New Orleans 

SUNO opened in 1959, to all regardless of color or race, and gave out its first Bachelor's degrees in May of 1963. Over the next ten years the university grew tremendously. The school offers a range of degrees in many fields of study and has a graduate program in social work. In 1973, the school became part of the Southern University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in Baton Rouge. Southern is located at 6801 Press Drive in New Orleans, and from what my contact has told me, classes are being held in some of the buildings on the second floors. The faculty is living in the FEMA trailers behind the school. Over Thanksgiving 2006 I noticed that they have pre-registration at the FBI building located on nearby Leon C. Simon Drive.

New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary 

The seminary is located at 3939 Gentilly Blvd, and it houses the John T. Christian Library, which is one of the largest theological libraries along the Gulf Coast. The school offers undergraduate and graduate studies programs. The school was quite fortunate in making it through Hurricane Katrina. When I passed by just recently, I could not see any damage to the school, or signs of damage for that matter, but a friend of mine told me that the damage was to the back side of the school, not what one would be able to see from Gentilly Blvd.

[edit] Historic Landmarks

Joseph M. Bartholomew Municipal Golf Course 

The course was re-named after Mr. Bartholomew in 1979; before, it was named Pontchartrain Park Golf Course. Mr. Bartholomew designed or helped to design many of the golf courses in the New Orleans area, including this one, and many others throughout Louisiana and Mississippi. He was one of the wealthiest African Americans in New Orleans, and he was the first African American to be inducted into the Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame. The course was open pre-Katrina, but is currently closed due to extensive Katrina-inflicted damage. The Logview home and garden group is finding ways to re-do the golf course and the greenspace of Pontchartrain Park.

[edit] Local business

Chevron Service Station 

The gas station on Franklin Avenue and Robert E. Lee is back up and running, but many of the other local businesses along Franklin are still closed, though gutted.

Gentilly Blvd./Chef Menteur Highway 

All the local businesses along this road are back up and running. The area is not what it once was, but it is coming around.

[edit] Commercial Areas

Shopping Center 

The Gentilly Woods Shopping Center is located at the intersection of Press Drive and Gentilly Blvd. From what I was told back in September from my contact, nothing was being done with the complex. It was just being used as a parking lot for the dump trucks cleaning up the area. I suppose the owner of the buildings is making good money leasing the space to the trucks, but many of the pre-existing shop owners are forcing the owner to clean up the buildings and re-open. From what I was told from my contact, the stores will be back, and when I passed by around November I noticed industrial-size dumpsters in the parking lot, so I guess they are cleaning out the buildings.

[edit] Housing

Pontchartrain Park was built in the 1950s by Crawford Homes. The homes were essentially 2-3 bedroom starter homes. The predominant architecture throughout the neighborhood is the 1950s Ranch Style - low-slung homes on concrete slabs - but throughout the Indian Village portion of the neighborhood one can find shotgun-style homes with wooden siding. From the information that I found on nola.com, many residents arriving between 1957-1962 paid between $12,000 and $13,000 for their homes. Like almost all of New Orleans, the homes were built on what was originally a swamp, so the land had to be drained prior to its development. The homes were modeled after the (at the time) all-white adjacent Gentilly Woods neighborhood. Some of the housing styles can be seen at [3].

[edit] Pre-Katrina/Rita Demographic Data

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the pre-Katrina/Rita demographics for Pontilly included a population of approximately seven thousand people in 2000, consisting of about eighty percent African American, with the rest being white and Hispanic. The majority of area residents were people in the 34-49 age bracket. Age 18-34 was the second-most populous age bracket, with the 65 and up bracket being the third-most populous. In 2000, the average household income was $45,000 dollars, and nearly eighty-three percent of residents owned their homes.

[edit] Impacts of Katrina/Rita

Hurricane Katrina really hurt the neighborhood and the surrounding area. Everything in the area was flooded due to the breaks in the levee. Many people report having had eight feet of water standing after the storm, and in certain areas more! There are many businesses back up and running along Gentilly Blvd./Chef Menteur Highway, but as you go back towards the Pontchartrain Park neighborhood (head north) there are not so many. Certain areas have a ghost town feel about them, unfortunately, and many of the residents are not back in their homes. I noticed a good bit of activity along Press Drive, with a few back in their homes and many others working on their homes with trailers still outside. There are many trailers throughout the neighborhood. Many of the homes look vacant still and untouched from the outside, with tall grass nearly hiding the front of many homes. There are many cut up trees waiting to be picked up by debris removal contractors, and I finally saw them doing so in November of 2006. They may have been doing so earlier, but that is when I noticed it. Also, I noticed many BellSouth trucks in the area back in October of 2006 trying to restore telephone service. Also, as my contact let me know, prior to Hurricane Katrina the neighborhood had been getting ready for the 50-year anniversary of Pontchartrain Park, but that celebration obviously did not happen, and the following year no one was really in the mood to celebrate the neighborhood anniversary with all the destruction and all.

[edit] Planning and Recovery Post-Katrina/Rita

Much of the planning and recovery can be found at: [4]. The Pontchartrain Park and Gentilly Woods ("Pontilly") area finally has a consulting firm to help rebuild: Hewitt-Washington Architects. They will be working beside the Pontilly Neighborhood Planning Association and some other non-profit organizations. The neighborhood association webpage to link to for further information and updates on the neighborhood is [5]

[edit] Neighborhood Groups and Activites

No updates at this time.