History of New Orleans’ Marlyville-Fontainebleau Subdivision

by Tim Garrett (2013)

THE LOCATION

Plan of New Orleans and Environs (1845)

New Orleans in the late 1800s was a poorly-drained, under-developed city in which a notoriously inhospitable climate, inadequate sanitation, scarce habitable land, seasonal flooding and widespread disease all conspired to thwart expansion. Despite having been ranked as America's third-largest city in 1840, New Orleans’ population growth thereafter remained lackluster, while more vibrant urban and industrial cities like Philadelphia, Boston and Cincinnati forged ahead.

New Orleans population 1820-2010 (in thousands of people)

The Southeast Louisiana region’s failure to diversify commercially in response to the Reconstruction Era dismantling of the plantation system contributed to a period of fiscal stagnation.  With so few natural resources available to compensate, the local New Orleans economy, for a century reliant on the cotton industry – the Tchoupitoulas district alone comprised 26 cotton presses in 1873 – became ever more dependent on textiles, tourism, entertainment, shipbuilding and river trade.

Interior view of a cotton press along Tchoupitoulas

By contrast, the early 1900s brought surprisingly rapid development to New Orleans, owing in no small part to the advent of electric lighting, a modern sewer system, improved water purification and drainage technology (founding of Sewerage & Water Board, invention of Wood screw pumps), massive earthworks (landfill, reclamation from Lake Pontchartrain), new road-building methods (concrete and asphalt paving replaced wood, brick and stone) and the proliferation of mass transportation (ferries, buses, New Orleans & Carrollton Railroad and streetcars).  Residential neighborhoods could finally expand beyond the limits of high ground earlier afforded by natural levees and ridges. In this way, former cotton, sugar, indigo and tobacco plantations were ultimately transformed into desirable subdivisions, extending the cityscape inward, into vast low-lying areas where swamps, marshland and woods had long held sway.

Hagan Canal (left) extended south from Carondelet Canal, near Bayou St. John (1938)

Within a few decades, shallowing vestigial Mississippi River distributaries, having sculpted the local geography (Metairie Bayou and Bayou Gentilly) for centuries, were completely filled in, just as any remaining drainage ditches (Carrollton Spur, Hagan Avenue Canal) were enclosed. The elimination of stagnant waters helped ward off mosquito-borne diseases such as yellow fever. A grateful citizenry, accustomed for generations to living surrounded by water – and therefore oblivious to the negative long-term impact its containment would have on soil subsidence – quickly acclimated to the convenience and predictability of terra firma.

Old Metairie Bayou once flowed past Metairie Cemetery toward City Park (1953)

Former service canals – dug by immigrant laborers prior to the age of steam power – were now unceremoniously abandoned, to be overlaid with roads (New Basin Canal became West End Boulevard) or repurposed as covered drainage conduits (Carondelet Canal with its Turning Basin), alleviating fears that they might again channel hurricane flood waters into the city proper. Thus ended an era when mule-drawn flatboats and steamship commerce reached the city center via the placid waters of Lake Pontchartrain.

The New Basin Navigation Canal ran from Loyola Avenue to the Lake (1895)

Likewise, strengthening of the city’s flood protection system (Bonnet-Carré Spillway, levees, storm walls) provided much-needed respite not only from perennial inundations that had so often rendered roads impassible, but also from the seasonal risk of devastating river flooding – such as Sauve’s Crevasse in 1849 or the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 – which threatened life, livelihoods, property, indeed the very existence of New Orleans.

A levee breach at Sauve’s Crevasse (lower left) flooded much of New Orleans (1849)

Concerted efforts to eliminate a multitude of railroad grade crossings and to convert several major outfall canals (Orleans, Broad, Claiborne) into underground box culverts, begun in the 1930s WPA era, allowed the improvement and widening of major east-west thoroughfares (Earhart, Broad, Claiborne, Gentilly), encouraging outward development and interchange with nearby communities. Parallel moves by city planners to formalize residential zoning laws throughout the 1920s resulted in more uniform land use and building practices across town.

WPA workers converting Broad Street Outfall Canal to a box culvert (1939)

View of Broad Street, after covering and paving, west from Howard Avenue (1940)

THE PEOPLE

Although the population of New Orleans grew steadily to its historic peak by 1960, an abrupt outflux toward the suburbs ensued upon the completion of the Interstate Highway System, the opening of the first Mississippi River Bridge in 1958, and the ready availability of land in neighboring parishes. Monied families were enticed to take up residence far from the aging city center, leading to an erosion of the now-prospering city's tax base, and leaving behind a relatively immobile labor class to live elbow-to-elbow with their more affluent employers. In newly desegregated but nevertheless stratified Orleans Parish, the complete spectrum of prosperity could now be sampled across a swath of just a few blocks.

Pontchartrain Expressway connects Orleans to surrounding parishes

Marlyville-Fontainebleau neighborhood today is a typical example of this layered framework. For example, a four-block westward journey along Grape Street reveals the generally downward socio-economic gradient from Vendome Place – a broad, tree-lined boulevard that is home to professionals and thriving business owners – past staunchly middle-class Vincennes Place, followed by an increasingly mixed and rental duplex-heavy State Street Drive, to the sparse and comparatively forlorn service alleys of Panama and College Courts, where descendants of skilled laborers reside in rows of humble shotgun houses.

THE SUBDIVISIONS

Situated centrally among the better-known neighborhoods of Gert Town, Broadmoor, Carrollton and Uptown, Marlyville-Fontainebleau is an unassuming amalgamation of numerous historic subdivisions, also known as “Faubourgs” among locals.  With names like Hurstville, Bloomingdale, Burtheville, Marlyville and Friburg, these slender tracts derive their characteristic wedge shape from the converging boundary lines – once known as the “upperline” (upriver) and “lowerline” (downriver) extents – of family plantations radiating away from a curving Mississippi River, whose signature meanders bestow the moniker “Crescent City” upon New Orleans.

Diagram of Marlyville/Fontainebleau Neighborhood in City Archives (1978)

With State Street as its backbone, Bloomingdale subdivision was laid out in 1836 on land purchased by developer John Green two years earlier. Realizing that New Orleans’ westward expansion portended the absorption of several intervening municipalities (the cities of Lafayette, Jefferson and Carrollton), clothier and noted speculator Bernard Fellman acquired sizable portions of still-rural Bloomingdale and Rickerville in the 1870s, expanding the portfolio of his family’s holding company, Bernard Co. This $10,000 collection of parcels came to be known as “The Fellman Tract” and stretched downriver beyond Jefferson (then Peters) Avenue. Long considered wasteland prior to being drained, the property for many years remained farmland, where grazing animals shared the pasture with circuses, baseball diamonds, even a makeshift airfield.

The bomber Andalusia visiting to promote Liberty Loans (1919)

Upon Bernard Fellman's death in 1892, the property passed to his 14-year old son, Leo, who would eventually leave New York to take the helm at Bernard Co.’s headquarters.  The company’s roster over the years has included Bernard’s brother Leon, co-founder of Krauss Co.; Leo's late wife, Alice; their children John Henry and Mary Anna; as well as a number of descendants who still own and manage property throughout New Orleans over a century later.

Leo Fellman’s listings in the City Directory (1950)

Notwithstanding the successful annexation of mile-long State Street Drive in 1914 and a flurry of home-building activity along Jefferson Avenue and Octavia Street in the early 1920s, broader development of Marlyville-Fontainebleau almost immediately slowed due to the Great Depression's stymying effect on investment. Indeed, by the time of Leo Fellman's passing in 1934, significant portions of Bloomingdale and adjacent Broadmoor remained undeveloped and his vision for these subdivisions unfulfilled.  

Leo Fellman (1878-1934)

Nevertheless, the Fellmans’ stewardship of these fledgling residential parks eventually paid dividends; improved drainage, wider and better-aligned streets, modern pavement, safer sidewalks, and pockets of commerce. For families hoping to find affordable housing near the center of town during the economically booming and progressive age following World War II, the neighborhood of Marlyville-Fontainebleau represented an appealing destination.

THE STREETS

Disjointed planning and capricious naming schemes were dogged hallmarks of the early municipal roadway system. New Orleans’ steady – sometimes forcible – absorption of existing upriver communities throughout the nineteenth century meant, whenever formerly distinct areas were incorporated into the city map, confusion arose. Compounding the problem was the haphazard way that streets approached from different angles, due as much from surveyors’ fancy as from bends in the river.

Disjointed street layout above Claiborne; State St. intersects lower-left corner (1885)

For instance, following its annexation in 1874, the City of Carrollton had to contemplate renaming First Street to St. Charles Avenue, given the latter’s crossing of another First Street down in Faubourg Livaudais. On July 9, 1894, New Orleans city commissioners accomplished this with the passage of voluminous Act 9411, which further mandated that the rest of Carrollton’s numbered streets be renamed after hardwoods or fruit trees (Maple, Birch, Apricot).

Walmsley Avenue (formerly Apricot Street) before repaving project (circa 1950)

Unsurprisingly, given the strength of tradition (not to mention rampant illiteracy and plain laziness) among New Orleanians – perhaps wishing to perpetuate the memory of bygone benefactors, war heroes, civic leaders, heads of industry and colorful politicians – local residents often clung defiantly to the original street designations. Carrollton’s Seventeenth Street – site of the eponymous outfall canal – remains in the vernacular to this day. Closer by, sections of modern-day Vincennes Place were known variously as Baldwin Court or Richardson (sometimes Richard) Court over a span of only eight years (1915-1923), before finally memorializing the Parisian château along its entire length. (See “List of Streets”, below)

View of Seventeenth Street Outfall Canal, north from Airline Highway (1956)

From the end of World War I through the 1940s, City planners continued their quest for much-needed consistency, under a new set of forward-thinking principles: Streets would be given a unique designation for their entire length; numbering of houses should be uniform; naming streets in honor of contemporary public figures took precedence over those from past eras; sidewalks must be graded and paved; and, wherever possible, roadways would be made to align and conform to modern standards of construction and drainage.

Construction of Jefferson Davis overpass, with view of railroad tracks (1951)

Conveniently for developers like the Fellmans, the City in 1916 passed Act 83, permitting the exchange of property with private landowners pursuant to the widening or realignment of existing streets. Working alongside the City Council of 1923, surveyors thus began opening new streets and closing old ones, trading land for rights-of-way, valiantly attempting to establish an orderly network of roads in nascent Marlyville-Fontainebleau.

Contractor Lazarus Aronson contested the closing of Joseph Street (1929)

Not all of the proposed street changes transpired without controversy. One contractor, who owned property adjacent to the Fellman Tract, unsuccessfully petitioned the court to prevent the 1929 closure of Joseph Street between Rocheblave Street and Fontainebleau Drive. Nor did they always produce the desired effect; segments of former through-streets – Broad Place, Breedlove, York and General Pershing, among others – were left orphaned by such piecemeal exchanges. Similarly, the reversed numbering along Jefferson Davis, “missing” blocks of Fontainebleau, and out-of-order addresses on Calhoun and State serve as a reminder how difficult it must have been to reconcile this new grid with the old one.

Jefferson (Peters) Ave. & Clara St. before (1915, bottom) and after (1923) development

Nashville Avenue, from Fontainebleau toward Hewes, as it appeared in the 1940s

Nashville Avenue, from Fontainebleau toward Hewes, as it appears in the 2010s

♒

LIST OF STREETS IN MARLYVILLE-FONTAINEBLEAU

SUGGESTED READING

“Database of City Streets” at data.nola.gov

“Rising Tide” by John M. Barry

“New Orleans Past” Collection of Memorabilia

“History of New Orleans” by John Smith Kendall

“WPA Photographs Collection” at New Orleans Public Library

“Photographs Arranged by Street Name” at New Orleans Public Library

“Synopsis of City Ordinances: 1841-1937” at New Orleans Public Library

“Frenchmen, Desire, Good Children” by John Churchill Chase

“Streets of New Orleans” by Peter Hickman

“New Orleans History: Lake Pontchartrain” on Pontchartrain.net

“History of New Orleans Drainage” by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

“Gutter to Gulf: Legible Water Infrastructure for New Orleans” at University of Ontario

“Alexander Allison Photograph Collection” at New Orleans Public Library

“Time and Place in New Orleans: Past Geographies in the Present Day” By Richard Campanella

“Louisiana Almanac 2008-2009” by Milburn Calhoun and Bernie McGovern

“The Picayune’s Guide to New Orleans” at Storyville District New Orleans

“Water Planning for Southeast Louisiana” at Living With Water

“New Orleans Flood Protection Systems” by Independent Levee Investigation Team

“NolaWiki” at UptownMessenger.com