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
Katrina which 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.
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