Art and Photography Blog

Images of New Orleans Neighborhoods Part Seventeen: Lower Ninth Ward

This is the seventeenth in a series of images of New Orleans neighborhoods taken in February 2010 the weekend before the Super Bowl victory and two weeks for Mardi Gras. I certainly did not have time to cover them all but this series will provide a glimpse of the city that I hope you will want to visit.

I have been moving clockwise around the city in this series, starting in the French Quarter. The initial areas I covered were along the Mississippi River and received relatively little damage from Katrina. Then as I moved away from the river to the West End and City Park the damage was much greater.  The Lower Ninth Ward was the hardest hit and remains an area that is in need for more support to finish its recovery. It is also an area that many well known people such as Fats Domino grew up and still live. The first record I ever bought as a kid in the 1950s in New Orleans was a Fats Domino record and I remain a strong fan. My father was pleased that I picked a local artist. 

I visited the Lower Ninth Ward in April 2006 and March 2007.  On the first visit the area still looked much like it did right after Katrina. There was destruction everywhere. Large areas look like the aftermath of a war, with blocks and blocks of empty shells of homes or completely flattened buildings. The messages painted on the sides of homes after the initial searches about the status of the people and animals inside remained on many homes.

At first I was not planning to go to the devastated areas as I did not want to “tour” other people’s misery. But then after talking to so many people affected, I decided that I should see these areas first hand. The people that we talked with afterwards appreciated the fact that we took the time to do this and see the state of their city. It certainly had an impact as the vastness of the destruction cannot be conveyed through television or pictures. I was appalled, ashamed, angry, and saddened that a city in this country was allowed to remain in this condition for so long.

On the 2007 visit there was some minor improvement but most of the damage remained.  The pictures below are from the 2007 visit. I had many more pictures from this visit but my hard drive crashed and I lost them. I wrote about these visits in two posts: New Orleans Update Part One: the Paradox of Two Cities and New Orleans Update 2007 Part One: the Paradox of Two Cities Remains.

According to the Wikipedia, “As of March 2009, hundreds of houses have been rebuilt and dozens of new homes have been constructed. While there is a long way to go residents are returning home.”  Even with this progress there remains a long way to go.  Build Now is one of the organizations that is working to help people rebuild homes but there needs to be more government help to address the massive scale required. 

     

New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward After Hurricane Katrina site shows many pictures including Fats Domino’s home.  David Metraux's site shows Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans, LA: Hurricane Katrina Aftermath in Photographs - January 2006. The site, Rebuilding the 9^th Ward has a slide show with narration.

 
 
 

Photos of New Orleans Neighborhoods Part Sixteen: City Park

As mentioned in the wikipedia, City Park is a neighborhood of the city of New Orleans. A subdistrict of the Lakeview District Area, its boundaries as defined by the City Planning Commission are: Robert E. Lee Boulevard to the north, Bayou St. John to the east, Orleans Avenue, North Carrollton Avenue and Toulouse Street to the south and City Park and Orleans Avenues to the west. The neighborhood is named after and dominated by City Park (New Orleans).

This post covers City Park, the park itself. City Park covers 1,300 acres and is the 6th-largest and 7th-most-visited urban public park in the United States. I used to go there a lot as a kid. I took Saturday morning art classes at the Delgado Museum (now known as the New Orleans Museum of Art).  

I also spent second grade at the Sam Barthe School for Boys located in the area at the time but now out of business. It was housed in the mansion of Texas oil millionaire William H. McFadden. My parents sent me there when we got re-districted in the public school system while living on Short Street (see Part 12). The next year we moved across from the Lusher School (see Part 13) and I went back to public school.  In the late 50s, after I left, the school was located in Jefferson Parish until Sam sold the school to École Classique.  This sale is ironic to me as Sam Barthe was known for tough sports teams and École Classique was very much the opposite, at least in my time in the city.

Below are pictures from the botanical gardens in the park. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused nearly total destruction of the garden's plantings but they have been restored. The pictures below were taken a few months before Katrina. I had a number of post-Katrina pictures of the art museum and the park taken in 2007 but I lost them when my hard drive crashed. 

                       
 

 
 

Two Paintings of a Black Back Pack on White

Here are two 24" x 18" acrylic painting of my black leather back pack against a white background. They are separate paintings placed next to each other. 

 
 

Photos of New Orleans Neighborhoods Part Fifteen: West End

This is the fifteenth a series of images of New Orleans neighborhoods taken in February 2010 the weekend before the Super Bowl victory and two weeks for Mardi Gras. I certainly did not have time to cover them all but this series will provide a glimpse of the city that I hope you will want to visit.

These pictures below were taken in 2005 and 2006 as I was not able to get back there in my short stay in 21010. According to the Wikipedia, the boundaries of the West End  as defined by the City Planning Commission are: Lake Pontchartrain to the north, the New Basin Canal and Pontchartrain Boulevard to the east, Robert E. Lee Boulevard to the south and the 17th Street Canal to the west. The area was largely built on land reclaimed from Lake Pontchartrain in the 1920s.

The West End was a popular music venue in the early days of jazz. Joe "King" Oliver wrote the tune West End Blues in commemoration of the area; a recording of the number by Louis Armstrong is one of the most famous jazz recordings of the 1920s. 

In the 1950s we used go often to Bruning’s, a seafood place built on piles over the lake. My parents would always get a dozen hard shell crabs served on a cafeteria platter along with Jax beer.  I had shrimp and would finish much quicker so usually an adult would take me over to play the slot machines. These were illegal but often ignored.  I was told later that if the police did come and there was not time to move the slots, they were throw in the lake and some remain there. There were still music places in the area in the 1950s, as well as a famous female impersonator club, the My O My Club. This club was destroyed on Hurricane Betsy and moved to the French Quarter to be finally close din 1972. There is now a My O My review based on it.   

Burnnig’s (seen first below) was badly damaged by a Hurricane Georges in 1998  and the over water place was closed. They re-opened nearby. The next picture is the house of the owner of Brunning’s and it was used in a party scene in the movie, The Big Easy. The next pictures are of another lake front place pre-Katrinia. 

                
 
The area is adjacent to the site of the levee breach on the 17th Street Canal during Hurricane Katrinawhich inundated and devastated all of West End. The heavy winds and storm surge also destroyed every restaurant and music club built out over the lake. The pictures below were taken post-Katrina in April 2006. Sadly, Bruning's is now closed. There is a post-Katrina write up that includes some pre-Georges pictures of Bruning's. In 2006 there was no evidence that the places on the lake ever existed. 

     
 
 
 

Painting of Red and Yellow Apples in a Blue Ceramic Bowl

Here is a 20" x 24" painting of some red or yellow apples in a blue brown ceramic bowl. It is the second time I have painted this bowl with apples. You can see the first one in this January 2008 post. 

 

Photos of New Orleans Neighborhoods 2010 Part Fourteen: New Orleans Cemetery

This is the fourteenth in a series of images of New Orleans neighborhoods taken in February 2010 the weekend before the Super Bowl victory and two weeks for Mardi Gras. I certainly did not have time to cover them all but this series will provide a glimpse of the city that I hope you will want to visit.

The New Orleans Cemetery is located in the Uptown area off Carrollton Avenue covered in the last post.  Like most New Orleans cemeteries, many of the tombs are raised because of the swamp underneath.  It was one block from my house and served as a major playground for us.  When there were no funerals going on or visits we would re-enact the battles of World War Two in the miniature village created by the raised tombs. We never got too loud because of the feeling of the place. It remains a very quite place. 

                              
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Painting of My Old Art Duffle Bag - Version 2

Here is a second attempt at painting the duffle bag I store my art supplies. The first appeared on April 12. Both are 20" x 24" inch acrylics. I amy do a series with more extreme color variations. 

 

Photos of New Orleans Neighborhoods Part Thirteen: Uptown Off Carrollton Avenue

This is the thirteenth in a series of images of New Orleans neighborhoods taken in February 2010 the weekend before the Super Bowl victory and two weeks for Mardi Gras. I certainly did not have time to cover them all but this series will provide a glimpse of the city that I hope you will want to visit.

This unofficial area runs on either side of Carrollton running north from River Bend (see Part Twelve for River Bend. This area includes the East Carrollton neighborhood on the east side of Carrollton Ave, and the Leonidas area on the west side.  Within the Leonidas neighborhood, there is the Oak Street shopping area with the Maple Leaf Bar for great live music and Jacques-Imo's for funky Creole cooking, as well as nearby Mat and Naddies’ s for modern Creole cooking. I lived on the other side of Carrollton after living in Riverbend (see at bottom for pictures and more description).  My friends and I would go the Oak Street area to see the Saturday matinee at a theater that does exist now and spend our allowances as a toy store.  You can click on any image to make it larger.

                              

THe last three pictures above show the elementary school that I attended, The Lusher School, and two banners the school children created for the Super Bowl that were hanging on the school fence. The four before the school were in my immediate neighborhood.  A friend lived in the purple house and we created a vast city in the dirt in the crawl space under the house. It was not purple then. 

 Below is the house we lived in in the late 1950s. It was my parents first house and was three stories. We lived in the middle floor and rented out the top and bottom floors. My parents said it was a raised bungalow. This meant it was originally two stories and was raised to add the bottom floor.  We used to play baseball on the intersection shown below. The street signs embedded in the four sideway corners were the bases (see second base on the left). Passing cars stopped the game but traffic was not too heavy.  The New Orleans Cemetery was a block away and this was another playground.

The first black and white picture shows the house at the corner of Jeannette and Lowerline when we lived there in the 1950s.  It was white with grey front steps. The next one shows it pre-Katrina in the Spring of 2005. It had been painted a maroon color and the front steps were also painted maroon.  The next three pictures show the house as it was being repaired after Katrina, as well as the destruction to the sidewalk in front. The last one shows it in 2010. It is now a bright yellow with white trim and they returned the front steps to grey which I think is much better. The owners restored it to its original condition and did not seem to make any exterior changes. 

 
            
After really big rains, my friends and I played with our toy boats by the side of Lowerline Street as the poor drainage formed a lake next to the curb.  Sometimes we would toss Cherry Bombs at the boats. These fireworks were illegal then but we got them at a shop on the Orleans Parish line without our parents knowledge. It was a shot gun house and the story was that they would move the fireworks to the Jefferson Parish end when the Orleans Parish police showed up and then the reverse when the Jefferson Parish police came. This might be a myth but the Cherry Bombs were real. One day the city decided to fix the drainage on the street.  They sent a crew of seven armed with one pickaxe to take on the problem.  Six supervised while one swung the axe. Fortunately, the lake returned after the next big rain. 

 

Images of New Orleans Neighborhoods 2010 Part Twelve: Uptown – River Bend

This in the twelfth in a series of images of New Orleans neighborhoods taken in February 2010 the weekend before the Super Bowl victory and two weeks for Mardi Gras. I certainly did not have time to cover them all but this series will provide a glimpse of the city that I hope you will want to visit.

The Rover Bend area gets its name from the bend the Mississippi River takes at this point. St. Charles Avenue turns to the right to follow this bend and become Carrolton Avenue. The St. Charles Avenue street car continues up to Claiborne Avenue. It is part of the site of the village of Carrolton started in 1833 and annexed by New Orleans in 1874 and part of the Carrollton neighborhood. The Camillia Grill is great for breakfast (see below)

 I lived here in the 1950s. We had an apartment that was on the right side of the real estate office seen in the first picture after the map.  You can see my father, my dog and I on the left in our small front yard. We had just returned from a fishing trip to the bayous.  My father would rent a pirogue and we would catch a lot of fish, all of which were eaten. My father cleaned them, my mother cooked. The real estate office has now taken over the whole building. When I lived there, a pottery studio was on the left side.  You can see the bend of St. Charles as it becomes Carrolton Avenue in the next picture after our building. Then the next picture looks the other way up Carrolton Avenue.  Like the Uptown area south of Magazine Street there are a lot ofshotgun houses. 

Like many areas in the city there are blue on white tiles on the street corner side walks that designate the streets. I lived at the corner of Maple and Short and you can see the tiles below. By some accounts, the tiles started being planted in New Orleans sidewalks in the 1870s.