Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans (32 page)

During 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.

The new administration strove to deal with the city’s fiscal problems on a long-term basis. Landrieu named the first black to head a department of city government. He chose qualified personnel, regardless of race. He was also responsible for the advancement of women in high places in city government. He promoted the growth of tourism through public improvements and renovation projects.

The Moonwalk
, named in his honor and built during his administration, stretches out on top of the levee at Jackson Square
, and gives the visitor an unparalleled view of both the river and the Cathedral.

From 1975 to 1976, Landrieu served as president of the US Conference of Mayors, and he was nominated by President Carter as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development on September 24, 1979, an office that he held until the end of the Carter administration.

Mayor Ernest “Dutch” Morial: Trailblazer

Mayor Ernest “Dutch” Morial
blazed trails and made history for his race as the first black mayor of New Orleans. In 1965, Morial was made the first black assistant in the US Attorney’s office. In 1968, he became the first black man in the legislature since Reconstruction. In the 1970s, he became the first black juvenile court judge and the first black elected to the State’s Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. He served as mayor from 1978 to 1986. Few people can claim such a collection of firsts.

Morial tried to bring a greater stability to the city’s economy. During his administration, major improvements were made in the port’s docking facilities. He also attempted to improve existing job training and vocational programs and to create new ones where they were needed.

His efforts to expand tourism included a $88 million Convention and Exhibition Center (now called the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center) and offering the city as host of the World Exposition and Fair in 1984. Morial died on December 24, 1989.

Mayor Sidney Barthelemy: Mayoral Landslide

Mayor Sidney J. Barthelemy
won the race for mayor of New Orleans in 1986 by the largest landslide of a non-incumbent in the city’s history. The mayor had served as the Director of the City Welfare Department. He was the first black Louisiana State Senator elected since Reconstruction. During his first year in office, he was elected president of the National Association of Regional Councils and was on the board of directors for the US Conference of Mayors.

Mayor Marc Morial: Sweeping Victory

Marc Morial,
at age thirty-six, became the youngest mayor in our city’s history and the second half of a father-son mayoral team with former mayor “Dutch” Morial.

Morial served from 1986 to1988 on the board for the Louisiana American Civil Liberties Union and served as a state senator from 1992 to 1994. He was elected to his first mayoral term on March 5, 1994. In his campaign, he promised a “safe” city and work opportunities. His achievements in reducing crime and police reform won him reelection 1998.

He expressed his desire to run for a third term and petitioned for a change to the city charter to allow him a third, but the effort was defeated by the voters.

After leaving office, Morial was selected as President of the National Urban League, beginning in 2003.

Mayor C. Ray Nagin

Clarence Ray Nagin Jr.,
a consultant, entrepreneur, author, and public speaker, served as mayor of New Orleans from 2002 to 2010. He gained national exposure in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

On August 28, 2005, Nagin received definitive word from the Hurricane Center that Hurricane Katrina was making its way to New Orleans. Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city, resulting in ninety-five percent of the city being evacuated by that evening.

In the aftermath of Katrina, Nagin worked feverishly to get the city the disaster assistance that it needed. He was very vocal in his criticism of the slow federal and state response to his pleas.

Nagin was reelected to office in 2006, even though the election was held in the city with approximately two-thirds of its citizens still displaced after the storm.

Mayor Mitchell “Mitch” Landrieu

Mitch Landrieu,
son of former mayor Moon Landrieu, had a successful law career for fifteen years before being elected to the state legislature in 1987, in which he served for sixteen years.

Landrieu was elected Lieutenant Governor in 2003. He received fifty-three percent of the vote; thereby avoiding a general election.

He ran for mayor in 2006 against C. Ray Nagin, but lost the election. Landrieu said that he would not run for mayor in 2010, however, late in December of 2009, he changed his mind and won approximately sixty-one percent of the vote.

CHAPTER XI

New Orleans Today

Aerial view showing the river, the Central Business District, and the Superdome (now the Mercedez-Benz Superdome).

Waterways still play an important role in the story of New Orleans. The Mississippi River and the business it brings are vital to the existence of the city, and so, the US Engineers work to keep the river running past our door on its familiar route. The lakes and bayous used by the explorers are still important to commerce as well as recreation; for this reason, the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation works to keep these waterways free of pollution and inviting to human and wildlife habitation.

A contemporary French Quarter balcony.
(Courtesy Kathy Chappetta Spiess)

The Vieux Carré remains the city’s chief attraction. More pedestrians cross Jackson Square and its bounding streets each year than any other area of equal size in the entire United States. What keeps the attraction alive and existing aside from the beautiful architecture of the Jackson Square area? It is the fact that the French Quarter’s buildings, while not a living museum such as those of the city of Williamsburg, have retained that European city look and that ancient Bohemian essence that makes it sui generis in North America.

New challenges and needs are being met it as moves further into the twenty-first century and overcomes obstacles and disasters. From the days when cotton was king to the rise of the global economy, the port of New Orleans evolves with the changing face of the world, and its trade remains one of the busiest ports in the United States.

The Port of New Orleans

The Port offers shippers modern facilities—the most modern intermodal connections in the country and efficient, experienced labor. Every imaginable cargo crosses the Port’s wharves, from sugar and textiles to steel and soybeans. The Port continues to make gains in niche cargoes with increased tonnages in coffee, forest product exports, and natural rubber imports.

In 1962, the
Port Authority of Greater New Orleans
(also known as the Dock Board) began a project of rebuilding that was scheduled to take three decades. This was made necessary by a change in the technology of shipping: the use of container vessels and barge-carrying ships. Container docks require large, alongside assembly areas; huge stuffing sheds; large yards for assembly of trucks and railroad cars; and cranes for moving containers from ship to vehicle.

The Dock Board decided to start from scratch with a brand new location, establishing the France Road and Jourdan Road river terminals, which have greatly increased the
Port’s general cargo and
bulk cargo capabilities. By the year 2000, twenty-nine existing wharves
in downtown New Orleans retired, and development increased in New Orleans East. For the first time since Bienville landed in the 1600s, New Orleans has a riverfront uncluttered by wharves. Today, the Port of New Orleans remains the only deepwater port in the United States served by six class-one railroads.

First Street Wharf on the East Bank, with 1275 feet of water frontage and a 50- foot wide front apron. Public Belt Railroad front and rear aprons provide direct discharge from boats to rail lines or trucks.
(Courtesy Port of New Orleans)

Since the early 2000s, the Port of New Orleans has invested $400 million in new, state-of-the-art facilities. The Port offices are now located near the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

The Intracoastal Waterway

Why was it built in Eastern New Orleans? The answer goes back to the 1920s, when the Dock Board and the City collaborated to build a
deep water canal between the Mississippi River
and Lake Pontchartrain.
Its name is the
Inner Harbor Navigation Canal
and is referred to by New Orleanians as the
Industrial Canal.
It was later attached to the
Intracoastal Waterway,
which led eastward to Lake Borgne and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. In 1923, the canal was connected to the river by locks. In 1934, on the west bank of the river, the Harvey Canal was finished, linking the Mississippi River, Bayou Barataria, western Louisiana, and the Texas Coast. Both the Industrial Canal and the Harvey Canal became links in the newly finished Intracoastal Waterway, which eventually led from the Rio Grande River to the Florida Coast.

New Orleans is now the
Total Port,
offering every maritime service. It earns the title
Centroport, USA,
and is a part of the greatest port complex in the world, stretching from Baton Rouge to the Gulf.

New Orleans is served by seven major railroads, the US Interstate Highway System, and nineteen thousand miles of navigable water-ways. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, it was also accessible through the Mississippi-Gulf Outlet. More than one hundred steamship lines offer regular sailing from New Orleans to all parts of the world.

Tourism

Tourism continues to be the rising star in the New Orleans economic sky.

Steamboat on the Mississippi river.
(Courtesy Kathy Chappetta Spiess)

The Golden Age of steamboating on the Mississippi is recalled as ships, reminiscent of that earlier era, fill the river, dodging containerized freighters, ferries, cruise ships, ocean liners, and oil tankers, all vying for their space in the river.

Steamboat Natchez.
(Courtesy Kathy Chappetta Spiess)

Excursion boats allow the same view of St. Louis Cathedral and Jackson Square enjoyed by steamboat passengers in the 1900s. The
Natchez,
the largest sternwheeler built in the United States, offers cruises on the river, as do the
Creole Queen,
the
Cotton Blossom,
and
John James Audubon,
names and designs evoking memories of the steamboat era. New Orleans keeps the old and just adds the new.

Casino and Riverboat Gambling

One June 11, 1992, the Louisiana legislature signed the Louisiana Economic Development and Gaming Corporation Act into law. This act allowed a single land-based casino in New Orleans near the French Quarter. Riverboat gambling was also legalized on the Mississippi and other Louisiana waterways in 1991.

Harrah’s casino opened a temporary casino in the Municipal Auditorium in May 2005, while the only approved land-based casino was being built at the foot of Canal Street at the former site of the
Rivergate Convention Center. The temporary casino declared bankruptcy in November of the same year and work on the new casino stopped.

Construction got back on track, and Harrah’s permanent, land-based casino opened near the foot of Canal Street in November 1999.

The Central Business Dictrict and the Poydras Street Boom

The Dock Board’s decision to abandon the riverfront wharves and its plans for building the Superdome were responsible for the revival and restoration of the Central Business District. The
Rivergate Project
came first in 1968 with its thirty-three-story International Trade Mart, now called the World Trade Center.

Following the destruction of the Rivergate Convention Center in 1995 were hotels such as the
Marriott, Hilton, Le Meridien, Sheraton, Windsor Court, Le Pavillion,
and
Westin Canal Place
with the Canal Place Shops mall. Another development was the
International Rivercenter,
now called the
Riverwalk,
with its shopping malls, restaurants, lounges, and parking facilities. Like the Rivergate project, all met with success because of their proximity to the French Quarter, the riverfront, and the Superdome.

Much activity was generated by the building of the
Louisiana Superdome
and the presence of the
Louisiana World Exposition
on the riverfront in 1984, opening this area for future development.

The second span of the
Greater New Orleans Mississippi River Bridge,
completed in 1988, together with its earlier twin, is now called the
Crescent City Connection.
Its construction required elevated ramps, which necessitated changes in the neighborhood. Poydras Street, the center of the area between the bridge ramps and Canal Street, became the new scene of construction and business activity.

Poydras Street: A Monument to the Oil Boom of the Early 1980s

Poydras Street
is a monument to the oil boom of 1981, when a record number of rigs (502) pumped off the shores of Louisiana. By 1986, only 92 were left. The culprit was Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which reduced the price of oil from thirty-five dollars per barrel to as low as ten dollars. The impact was devastating. Oil related jobs disappeared. In 1983, major manufacturers such as Kaiser Chalmette Works, formerly one of the world’s largest aluminum reduction plants,
shut down, causing twenty thousand workers to become unemployed. It has not reopened. The Port of New Orleans lost business to other ports. People left the city. Houses were for sale, but values fell. By the mid-nineties, prices were back up and the oil companies survived. Even so, the future may well be tied to natural gas.