New Orleans, Louisiana 作者： 来源： 发布时间：2021-11-05
I.Population and Area
₋Area
Land: 169.42 sq mi (438.80 km2)
₋Population
Total: 343,829
Density: 2,029/sq mi (783/km2)
II.Natural Geography
City Overview
₋New Orleans is a consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of Louisiana. With an estimated population of 390,144 in 2019, it is the most populous city in Louisiana. Serving as a major port, New Orleans is considered an economic and commercial hub for the broader Gulf Coast region of the United States.
₋New Orleans is world-renowned for its distinct music, Creole cuisine, unique dialect, and its annual celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras. The historic heart of the city is the French Quarter, known for its French and Spanish Creole architecture and vibrant nightlife along Bourbon Street. The city has been described as the "most unique" in the United States, owing in large part to its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. Additionally, New Orleans has increasingly been known as "Hollywood South" due to its prominent role in the film industry and in pop culture.
₋Founded in 1718 by French colonists, New Orleans was once the territorial capital of French Louisiana before being traded to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. New Orleans in 1840 was the third-most populous city in the United States, and it was the largest city in the American South from the Antebellum era until after World War II. The city has historically been very vulnerable to flooding, due to such factors as high rainfall, low lying elevation, poor natural drainage and location next to multiple bodies of water. State and federal authorities have installed a com plex system of levees and drainage pumps in an effort to protect the city.
₋New Orleans was severely affected by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, which flooded more than 80% of the city, killed or displaced thousands of residents, causing a population decline of over 50%. Since Katrina, major redevelopment efforts have led to a rebound in the city's population. Concerns about gentrification, new residents buying property in formerly closely knit communities, and displacement of longtime residents have been expressed.
₋The city and Orleans Parish (French: paroisse d'Orléans) are coterminous. As of 2017, Orleans Parish is the third most-populous parish in Louisiana, behind East Baton Rouge Parish and neighboring Jefferson Parish. The city and parish are bounded by St. Tammany Parish and Lake Pontchartrain to the north, St. Bernard Parish and Lake Borgne to the east, Plaquemines Parish to the south, and Jefferson Parish to the south and west.
₋The city anchors the larger New Orleans metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 1,275,762 in 2017. It is the most populous metropolitan area in Louisiana and the 46th-most populous MSA in the United States.ke
III.ECONOMY
₋The average salary in New Orleans, LA is $59k. Trends in wages increased by 0.2 percent in Q1 2020. The cost of living in New Orleans, LA is 2 percent higher than the national average. The most popular occupations in New Orleans, LA are Operations Manager, Project Manager, (Unspecified Type / General), and Executive Director which pay between $36k and $107k per year. The most popular employers in New Orleans, LA are Tulane University, Ochsner, and Ochsner Medical Center.
₋Website: https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Location=New-Orleans-LA/Salary
IV.Industrial Characteristics
₋New Orleans operates one of the world's largest and busiest ports and metropolitan New Orleans is a center of maritime industry. The region accounts for a significant portion of the nation's oil refining and petrochemical production, and serves as a white-collar corporate base for onshore and offshore petroleum and natural gas production.
₋New Orleans is also a center for higher learning, with over 50,000 students enrolled in the region's eleven two- and four-year degree-granting institutions. Tulane University, a top-50 research university, is located in Uptown. Metropolitan New Orleans is a major regional hub for the health care industry and boasts a small, globally competitive manufacturing sector. The center city possesses a rapidly growing, entrepreneurial creative industries sector and is renowned for its cultural tourism. Greater New Orleans, Inc. (GNO, Inc.) acts as the first point-of-contact for regional economic development, coordinating between Louisiana's Department of Economic Development and the various business development agencies.
V.Attractions
1.St. Louis Cathedral (New Orleans)
₋The Cathedral-Basilica of Saint Louis, King of France, also called St. Louis Cathedral (French: Cathédrale Saint-Louis, Roi-de-France, Spanish: Catedral de San Luis), is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans and is the oldest cathedral in continuous use in what would become the United States. It is dedicated to Saint Louis, also known as King Louis IX of France. The first church on the site was built in 1718; the third, under the Spanish rule, built in 1789, was raised to cathedral rank in 1793. The original St. Louis Cathedral was burned during the great fire of 1788 and was expanded and largely rebuilt and completed in the 1850s, with little of the 1789 structure remaining.
₋Saint Louis Cathedral is in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, on the Place John Paul II (French: Place Jean-Paul II), a promenaded section of Chartres Street (rue de Chartres) that runs for one block between St. Peter Street (rue Saint-Pierre) on the upriver boundary and St. Ann Street (rue Sainte-Anne) on the downriver boundary. It is located next to Jackson Square and facing the Mississippi River in the heart of New Orleans, situated between the historic buildings of the Cabildo and the Presbytère.
₋Three Roman Catholic churches have stood on the site since 1718, when the city was founded. The first was a crude wooden structure in the early days of the French colony. As the French were Catholic, their church was prominently located on the town square. Construction of a larger brick and timber church was begun in 1725 and was completed in 1727. Along with numerous other buildings, the church was destroyed in the Great New Orleans Fire (1788) on Good Friday, March 21, 1788. The cornerstone of a new church was laid in 1789 and the building was completed in 1794. In 1793 Saint Louis Church was elevated to cathedral rank as the See of the Diocese of New Orleans, making it one of the oldest cathedrals in the United States. In 1819, a central tower (designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe) with a clock and bell were added. The bell was embossed with the name "Victoire" in commemoration of the Battle of New Orleans victory in 1815.
₋Enlarging the building to meet the needs of the growing congregation had been pondered since 1834, and J. N. B. de Pouilly was consulted to design plans for a new building. De Pouilly also designed St. Augustine Church in Tremé, the first church building dedicated as a parish church outside the French Quarter. (The Mortuary Chapel on North Rampart had been dedicated in 1827 as a chapel, and St. Vincent de Paul was established in a little frame church in 1838 but not dedicated.) On March 12, 1849, the diocese contracted with John Patrick Kirwan to enlarge and restore the cathedral, using De Pouilly's plans.
₋These specified that everything be demolished except the lateral walls and the lower portions of the existing towers on the front facade. During the reconstruction, it was determined that the sidewalls would have to be demolished also. During construction in 1850, the central tower collapsed. De Pouilly and Kirwan were replaced. As a consequence of these problems and reconstruction, very little of the Spanish Colonial structure survived. The present structure dates primarily to 1850. The bell from the 1819 tower was reused in the new building and is still there today. During the renovation, St. Patrick's Church served as the pro-cathedral for the city.
₋Bombing
₋On April 25, 1909, a dynamite bomb was set off in the cathedral, blowing out windows and damaging galleries. The following year a portion of the foundation collapsed, necessitating the building's closure while repairs were made, from Easter 1916 to Easter 1917.
₋Visits of popes
₋The cathedral was designated as a minor basilica by Pope Paul VI in 1964. Pope John Paul II visited the cathedral in September 1987. Today the parish has over 6,000 members.
₋Hurricane Katrina
₋The high winds of Hurricane Katrina displaced two large oak trees in St. Anthony's Garden behind the cathedral, dislodging 30 feet (9.1 m) of the ornamental gate. The nearby marble statue of Jesus Christ was damaged, losing a forefinger and a thumb.
₋The winds tore a hole in the roof, allowing water to enter the building and severely damage the Holtkamp pipe organ. Shortly after the storm, the organ was sent back to Holtkamp to be rebuilt. An electronic substitute was used until June 2008, when the organ was reinstalled in the Cathedral. Originally installed during the cathedral's extensive renovation in 2004, the organ was donated by longtime choirmaster and organist Elise Cambon.
₋Address: 615 Pere Antoine Alley, New Orleans, LA 70116, United States
₋Opened: 1794
₋Website: https://www.stlouiscathedral.org/
2.National WWII Museum
₋The National WWII Museum, formerly known as The National D-Day Museum, is a military history museum located in the Central Business District of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, on Andrew Higgins Drive between Camp Street and Magazine Street. The museum focuses on the contribution made by the United States to Allied victory in World War II. Founded in 2000, it was later designated by the U.S. Congress as America's official National WWII Museum in 2003. The museum is a Smithsonian Institution affiliated museum. The mission statement of the museum emphasizes the American experience in World War II.
₋The museum opened as the D-Day Museum, on June 6, 2000, the 56th anniversary of D-Day, focusing on the amphibious invasion of Normandy. As the Higgins boats, vital to amphibious operations, were designed, built, and tested in New Orleans by Higgins Industries, the city was the natural home for such a project. Furthermore, New Orleans was the home of historian and author Stephen Ambrose, who spearheaded the effort to build the museum. Ambrose also wrote a book entitled D-Day in 1994, which describes the planning and execution of Operation Neptune, which was launched on June 6, 1944.
₋Address: 945 Magazine St, New Orleans, LA 70130, United States
₋Phone: +1 504-528-1944
₋Website: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/
3.Audubon Aquarium of the Americas
₋The Audubon Aquarium of the Americas is an aquarium in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States.
₋It is run by the Audubon Institute, which also supervises the Audubon Zoo, Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium and Audubon Park (in a different part of the city). It is located along the banks of the Mississippi River by the edge of the historic French Quarter off Canal Street, at the upper end of Woldenberg Park. It opened on September 1, 1990.
₋In 2005, the facilities were affected by Hurricane Katrina. Though the structure survived the initial hurricane and was on high ground above the subsequent flooding of most of the city, electricity outages continued and the backup power generators were unable to fully operate the sophisticated life support systems needed to keep the animals alive. Aquarium staffers were forced to evacuate the facility only to return four days later to discover that most of the 10,000 fish did not survive.
₋The aquarium reopened on May 26, 2006. Since Hurricane Katrina, more species have been in the Caribbean and jellyfish exhibits, and there has been a large revamp to the Gulf of Mexico tank simulating ocean life below an oil rig platform.
₋Address: 1 Canal St, New Orleans, LA 70130, United States
₋Opened: September 1, 1990
₋Notable animal: Spots white alligator
₋Phone: +1 504-565-3033
₋Website: https://audubonnatureinstitute.org/aquarium
VI.History
₋Beginnings
₋La Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans) was founded in the spring of 1718 (May 7 has become the traditional date to mark the anniversary, but the actual day is unknown) by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, on land inhabited by the Chitimacha. It was named for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who was Regent of the Kingdom of France at the time. His title came from the French city of Orléans.
₋Spanish Louisiana
₋(Spanish: Nueva Orleans, la Luisiana) The French colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris (1763), following France's defeat by Great Britain in the Seven Years' War. During the American Revolutionary War, New Orleans was an important port for smuggling aid to the rebels, and transporting military equipment and supplies up the Mississippi River. Beginning in the 1760s, Filipinos began to settle in and around New Orleans. Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez successfully launched a southern campaign against the British from the city in 1779. Nueva Orleans (the name of New Orleans in Spanish) remained under Spanish control until 1803, when it reverted briefly to French rule. Nearly all of the surviving 18th-century architecture of the Vieux Carré (French Quarter) dates from the Spanish period, notably excepting the Old Ursuline Convent.
₋Native Americans and French Louisianai.
₋As a French colony, Louisiana faced struggles with numerous Native American nations. One of which was the Natchez in Southern Mississippi. In the 1720s trouble developed between the French and the Natchez Indians that would be called the Natchez War or Natchez Revolt. 230 colonists were killed and the fort and homes were burned to the ground.
₋The conflict between the two parties was a direct result of Lieutenant d’Etcheparre (more commonly known as Sieur de Chépart), the commandant at the settlement near the Natchez, decided in 1729 that the Natchez Indians should surrender both their cultivated crop lands and their town of White Apple to the French. The Natchez pretended to surrender and actually worked for the French in the hunting game, but as soon as they were weaponized, they struck back and killed several men, resulting in the colonists fleeing downriver to New Orleans. The fleeing colonist sought protection from what they feared might be a colony-wide Indian uprising. The Natchez, however, did not press on after their surprise attack, leaving them vulnerable enough for King Louis XV's appointed governor Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville to reclaim the settlement.
₋Relations with Louisiana's Indians, a problem inherited from Bienville, remained a concern for the next governor, Marquis de Vaudreuil. In the early 1740s traders from the British colonies of the Atlantic coast crossed into the Appalachian Mountains. The Native nations in between the French colonials and British colonials would now operate dependent on which of the two colonies would most benefit them. Several of these tribes and especially the Chicksaw and Choctaw would trade goods and gifts for their loyalty.
₋The economic problems under Vaudreuil would not allow the French to outcompete the British and resulted in many of Louisiana's Native American revolts. In 1747 and 1748 the Chicksaw would raid along the east bank of the Mississippi all the way south to Baton Rouge. These actions supported by the British colonials would force residents of French Louisiana to take refuge in New Orleans.
₋Slavery in French Louisiana
₋Inability to find labor was the most pressing issue in the early French colony. Colonists turned to African slavery to make their investments in Louisiana profitable. In the late 1710s the international slave trade imported enslaved Africans. This led to the biggest shipment in 1716 where several trading ships appeared with slaves as cargo to the local residents in a one-year span.
₋By 1724, the large number of blacks in Louisiana prompted the institutionalizing of laws governing slavery within the colony. These laws required that slaves be baptized in the Roman Catholic faith, slaves be married in the Church, and gave slaves no legal rights. The slave law formed in the 1720s is known as the Code Noir, which would bleed into the antebellum period of the American South as well. Louisiana slave culture had its own distinct Afro-Creole society that called on past cultures and the situation for slaves in the New World. Afro-Creole was present in religious beliefs and the Louisiana Creole dialect. The religion most associated with this period for was called Voodoo.
₋Religion and architecture from across the world
₋In the city of New Orleans an inspiring mixture of foreign influences created a melting pot of culture that is still celebrated today. By the end of French colonization in Louisiana, New Orleans was recognized commercially in the Atlantic world. Its inhabitants traded across the French commercial system. New Orleans was a hub for this trade both physically and culturally because it served as the exit point to the rest of the globe for the interior of the North American continent.
₋In one instance the French government established a chapter house of sisters in New Orleans. The Ursuline sisters after being sponsored by the Company of the Indies, founded a convent in the city in 1727. At the end of the colonial era, the Ursuline Academy maintained a house of seventy boarding and one hundred day students. Today numerous schools in New Orleans can trace their lineage from this academy.
₋Another notable example is the streetplan and architecture still distinguishing New Orleans today. French Louisiana had early architects in the province who were trained as military engineers and were now assigned to design government buildings. Pierre Le Blond de Tour and Adrien de Pauger, for example, planned many early fortifications, along with the street plan for the city of New Orleans. After them in the 1740s, Ignace François Broutin, as engineer-in-chief of Louisiana, reworked the architecture of New Orleans with an extensive public works program.
₋French policy-makers in Paris attempted to set political and economic norms for New Orleans. It acted autonomously in much of its cultural and physical aspects, but also stayed in communication with the foreign trends as well.
₋Post-Treaty of Paris
₋After the French relinquished West Louisiana to the Spanish, New Orleans merchants attempted to ignore Spanish rule and even re-institute French control on the colony. The citizens of New Orleans held a series of public meetings during 1765 to keep the populace in opposition of the establishment of Spanish rule. Anti-Spanish passions in New Orleans reached their highest level after two years of Spanish administration in Louisiana. On October 27, 1768, a mob of local residents, spiked the guns guarding New Orleans and took control of the city from the Spanish. The rebellion organized a group to sail for Paris, where it met with officials of the French government. This group brought with them a long memorial to summarize the abuses the colony had endured from the Spanish. King Louis XV and his ministers reaffirmed Spain's sovereignty over Louisiana.
₋United States territory
₋Napoleon sold Louisiana (New France) to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Thereafter, the city grew rapidly with influxes of Americans, French, Creoles and Africans. Later immigrants were Irish, Germans, Poles and Italians. Major commodity crops of sugar and cotton were cultivated with slave labor on nearby large plantations.
₋Thousands of refugees from the 1804 Haitian Revolution, both whites and free people of color (affranchis or gens de couleur libres), arrived in New Orleans; a number brought their slaves with them, many of whom were native Africans or of full-blood descent. While Governor Claiborne and other officials wanted to keep out additional free black people, the French Creoles wanted to increase the French-speaking population. As more refugees were allowed into the Territory of Orleans, Haitian émigrés who had first gone to Cuba also arrived. Many of the white Francophones had been deported by officials in Cuba in retaliation for Bonapartist schemes.
₋Nearly 90 percent of these immigrants settled in New Orleans. The 1809 migration brought 2,731 whites, 3,102 free people of color (of mixed-race European and African descent), and 3,226 slaves of primarily African descent, doubling the city's population. The city became 63 percent black, a greater proportion than Charleston, South Carolina's 53 percent.
₋Battle of New Orleans
₋During the final campaign of the War of 1812, the British sent a force of 11,000 in an attempt to capture New Orleans. Despite great challenges, General Andrew Jackson, with support from the U.S. Navy, successfully cobbled together a force of militia from Louisiana and Mississippi, including free men of color, U.S. Army regulars, a large contingent of Tennessee state militia, Kentucky riflemen, Choctaw fighters, and local privateers (the latter led by the pirate Jean Lafitte), to decisively defeat the British troops, led by Sir Edward Pakenham, in the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815.
₋The armies had not learned of the Treaty of Ghent, which had been signed on December 24, 1814 (however, the treaty did not call for cessation of hostilities until after both governments had ratified it. The U.S. government ratified it on February 16, 1815). The fighting in Louisiana had begun in December 1814 and did not end until late January, after the Americans held off the British Navy during a ten-day siege of Fort St. Philip (the Royal Navy went on to capture Fort Bowyer near Mobile, before the commanders received news of the peace treaty).
₋Port
₋As a port, New Orleans played a major role during the antebellum era in the Atlantic slave trade. The port handled commodities for export from the interior and imported goods from other countries, which were warehoused and transferred in New Orleans to smaller vessels and distributed along the Mississippi River watershed. The river was filled with steamboats, flatboats and sailing ships. Despite its role in the slave trade, New Orleans at the time also had the largest and most prosperous community of free persons of color in the nation, who were often educated, middle-class property owners.
₋Slavery and immigration
₋Dwarfing the other cities in the Antebellum South, New Orleans had America's largest slave market. The market expanded after the United States ended the international trade in 1808. Two-thirds of the more than one million slaves brought to the Deep South arrived via forced migration in the domestic slave trade. The money generated by the sale of slaves in the Upper South has been estimated at 15 percent of the value of the staple crop economy. The slaves were collectively valued at half a billion dollars. The trade spawned an ancillary economy—transportation, housing and clothing, fees, etc., estimated at 13.5% of the price per person, amounting to tens of billions of dollars (2005 dollars, adjusted for inflation) during the antebellum period, with New Orleans as a prime beneficiary.
₋According to historian Paul Lachance, the addition of white immigrants [from Saint-Domingue] to the white creole population enabled French-speakers to remain a majority of the white population until almost 1830. If a substantial proportion of free persons of color and slaves had not also spoken French, however, the Gallic community would have become a minority of the total population as early as 1820.
₋After the Louisiana Purchase, numerous Anglo-Americans migrated to the city. The population doubled in the 1830s and by 1840, New Orleans had become the nation's wealthiest and the third-most populous city, after New York and Baltimore. German and Irish immigrants began arriving in the 1840s, working as port laborers. In this period, the state legislature passed more restrictions on manumissions of slaves and virtually ended it in 1852.
₋In the 1850s, white Francophones remained an intact and vibrant community in New Orleans. They maintained instruction in French in two of the city's four school districts (all served white students). In 1860, the city had 13,000 free people of color (gens de couleur libres), the class of free, mostly mixed-race people that expanded in number during French and Spanish rule. They set up some private schools for their children. The census recorded 81 percent of the free people of color as mulatto, a term used to cover all degrees of mixed race. Mostly part of the Francophone group, they constituted the artisan, educated and professional class of African Americans. The mass of blacks were still enslaved, working at the port, in domestic service, in crafts, and mostly on the many large, surrounding sugarcane plantations.
₋After growing by 45 percent in the 1850s, by 1860, the city had nearly 170,000 people. It had grown in wealth, with a "per capita income was second in the nation and the highest in the South." The city had a role as the "primary commercial gateway for the nation's booming midsection." The port was the nation's third largest in terms of tonnage of imported goods, after Boston and New York, handling 659,000 tons in 1859.
₋Civil War
₋As the Creole elite feared, the Civil War changed their world. In 1862, following the occupation by the Navy after the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, led by Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, a respected state lawyer of the Massachusetts militia, Northern forces occupied the city. Later New Orleans residents nicknamed him "Beast" Butler, because of a military order he issued. After his troops had been assaulted and harassed in the streets by Southern women, his order warned that such future occurrences would result in his men treating such "ladies" as those "plying their avocation in the streets", implying that they would treat the women like prostitutes. Accounts of this spread widely. He also came to be called "Spoons" Butler because of the alleged looting that his troops did while occupying the city.
₋Butler abolished French language instruction in city schools. Statewide measures in 1864 and, after the war, 1868 further strengthened the English-only policy imposed by federal representatives. With the predominance of English speakers, that language had already become dominant in business and government. By the end of the 19th century, French usage had faded. It was also under pressure from Irish, Italian and German immigrants. However, as late as 1902 "one-fourth of the population of the city spoke French in ordinary daily intercourse, while another two-fourths was able to understand the language perfectly," and as late as 1945, many elderly Creole women spoke no English. The last major French language newspaper, L'Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans Bee), ceased publication on December 27, 1923, after ninety-six years. According to some sources, Le Courrier de la Nouvelle Orleans continued until 1955.
₋As the city was captured and occupied early in the war, it was spared the destruction through warfare suffered by many other cities of the American South. The Union Army eventually extended its control north along the Mississippi River and along the coastal areas. As a result, most of the southern portion of Louisiana was originally exempted from the liberating provisions of the 1863 "Emancipation Proclamation" issued by President Abraham Lincoln. Large numbers of rural ex-slaves and some free people of color from the city volunteered for the first regiments of Black troops in the War. Led by Brigadier General Daniel Ullman (1810–1892), of the 78th Regiment of New York State Volunteers Militia, they were known as the "Corps d'Afrique." While that name had been used by a militia before the war, that group was composed of free people of color. The new group was made up mostly of former slaves. They were supplemented in the last two years of the War by newly organized United States Colored Troops, who played an increasingly important part in the war.
₋Reconstruction
₋Violence throughout the South, especially the Memphis Riots of 1866 followed by the New Orleans Riot in the same year, led Congress to pass the Reconstruction Act and the Fourteenth Amendment, extending the protections of full citizenship to freedmen and free people of color. Louisiana and Texas were put under the authority of the "Fifth Military District" of the United States during Reconstruction. Louisiana was readmitted to the Union in 1868. Its Constitution of 1868 granted universal male suffrage and established universal public education. Both blacks and whites were elected to local and state offices. In 1872, lieutenant governor P.B.S. Pinchback, who was of mixed race, succeeded Henry Clay Warmouth for a brief period as Republican governor of Louisiana, becoming the first governor of African descent of an American state (the next African American to serve as governor of an American state was Douglas Wilder, elected in Virginia in 1989). New Orleans operated a racially integrated public school system during this period.
₋Wartime damage to levees and cities along the Mississippi River adversely affected southern crops and trade. The federal government contributed to restoring infrastructure. The nationwide financial recession and Panic of 1873 adversely affected businesses and slowed economic recovery.
₋From 1868, elections in Louisiana were marked by violence, as white insurgents tried to suppress black voting and disrupt Republican Party gatherings. The disputed 1872 gubernatorial election resulted in conflicts that ran for years. The "White League", an insurgent paramilitary group that supported the Democratic Party, was organized in 1874 and operated in the open, violently suppressing the black vote and running off Republican officeholders. In 1874, in the Battle of Liberty Place, 5,000 members of the White League fought with city police to take over the state offices for the Democratic candidate for governor, holding them for three days. By 1876, such tactics resulted in the white Democrats, the so-called Redeemers, regaining political control of the state legislature. The federal government gave up and withdrew its troops in 1877, ending Reconstruction.
₋Jim Crow era
₋White Democrats passed Jim Crow laws, establishing racial segregation in public facilities. In 1889, the legislature passed a constitutional amendment incorporating a "grandfather clause" that effectively disfranchised freedmen as well as the propertied people of color manumitted before the war. Unable to vote, African Americans could not serve on juries or in local office, and were closed out of formal politics for generations. The South was ruled by a white Democratic Party. Public schools were racially segregated and remained so until 1960.
₋New Orleans' large community of well-educated, often French-speaking free persons of color (gens de couleur libres), who had been free prior to the Civil War, fought against Jim Crow. They organized the Comité des Citoyens (Citizens Committee) to work for civil rights. As part of their legal campaign, they recruited one of their own, Homer Plessy, to test whether Louisiana's newly enacted Separate Car Act was constitutional. Plessy boarded a commuter train departing New Orleans for Covington, Louisiana, sat in the car reserved for whites only, and was arrested. The case resulting from this incident, Plessy v. Ferguson, was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. The court ruled that "separate but equal" accommodations were constitutional, effectively upholding Jim Crow measures. In practice, African-American public schools and facilities were underfunded across the South. The Supreme Court ruling contributed to this period as the nadir of race relations in the United States. The rate of lynchings of black men was high across the South, as other states also disfranchised blacks and sought to impose Jim Crow. Nativist prejudices also surfaced. Anti-Italian sentiment in 1891 contributed to the lynchings of 11 Italians, some of whom had been acquitted of the murder of the police chief. Some were shot and killed in the jail where they were detained. It was the largest mass lynching in U.S. history. In July 1900 the city was swept by white mobs rioting after Robert Charles, a young African American, killed a policeman and temporarily escaped. The mob killed him and an estimated 20 other blacks; seven whites died in the days-long conflict, until a state militia suppressed it.
₋Throughout New Orleans' history, until the early 20th Century when medical and scientific advances ameliorated the situation, the city suffered repeated epidemics of yellow fever and other tropical and infectious diseases.
₋20th century
₋New Orleans' economic and population zenith in relation to other American cities occurred in the antebellum period. It was the nation's fifth-largest city in 1860 (after New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore) and was significantly larger than all other southern cities. From the mid-19th century onward rapid economic growth shifted to other areas, while New Orleans' relative importance steadily declined. The growth of railways and highways decreased river traffic, diverting goods to other transportation corridors and markets. Thousands of the most ambitious people of color left the state in the Great Migration around World War II and after, many for West Coast destinations. From the late 1800s, most censuses recorded New Orleans slipping down the ranks in the list of largest American cities (New Orleans' population still continued to increase throughout the period, but at a slower rate than before the Civil War).
₋By the mid-20th Century, New Orleanians recognized that their city was no longer the leading urban area in the South. By 1950, Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta exceeded New Orleans in size, and in 1960 Miami eclipsed New Orleans, even as the latter's population reached its historic peak. As with other older American cities, highway construction and suburban development drew residents from the center city to newer housing outside. The 1970 census recorded the first absolute decline in population since the city became part of the United States in 1803. The New Orleans metropolitan area continued expanding in population, albeit more slowly than other major Sun Belt cities. While the port remained one of the nation's largest, automation and containerization cost many jobs. The city's former role as banker to the South was supplanted by larger peer cities. New Orleans' economy had always been based more on trade and financial services than on manufacturing, but the city's relatively small manufacturing sector also shrank after World War II. Despite some economic development successes under the administrations of DeLesseps "Chep" Morrison (1946–1961) and Victor "Vic" Schiro (1961–1970), metropolitan New Orleans' growth rate consistently lagged behind more vigorous cities.
₋Civil Rights Movement
₋During the later years of Morrison's administration, and for the entirety of Schiro's, the city was a center of the Civil Rights Movement. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was founded in New Orleans, and lunch counter sit-ins were held in Canal Street department stores. A prominent and violent series of confrontations occurred in 1960 when the city attempted school desegregation, following the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). When six-year-old Ruby Bridges integrated William Frantz Elementary School in the Ninth Ward, she was the first child of color to attend a previously all-white school in the South.
₋The Civil Rights Movement's success in gaining federal passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 renewed constitutional rights, including voting for blacks. Together, these resulted in the most far-reaching changes in New Orleans' 20th century history. Though legal and civil equality were re-established by the end of the 1960s, a large gap in income levels and educational attainment persisted between the city's White and African-American communities. As the middle class and wealthier members of both races left the center city, its population's income level dropped, and it became proportionately more African American. From 1980, the African-American majority elected primarily officials from its own community. They struggled to narrow the gap by creating conditions conducive to the economic uplift of the African-American community.
₋New Orleans became increasingly dependent on tourism as an economic mainstay during the administrations of Sidney Barthelemy (1986–1994) and Marc Morial (1994–2002). Relatively low levels of educational attainment, high rates of household poverty, and rising crime threatened the city's prosperity in the later decades of the century. The negative effects of these socioeconomic conditions aligned poorly with the changes in the late-20th century to the economy of the United States, which reflected a post-industrial, knowledge-based paradigm in which mental skills and education were more important to advancement than manual skills.
₋Drainage and flood control
₋In the 20th century, New Orleans' government and business leaders believed they needed to drain and develop outlying areas to provide for the city's expansion. The most ambitious development during this period was a drainage plan devised by engineer and inventor A. Baldwin Wood, designed to break the surrounding swamp's stranglehold on the city's geographic expansion. Until then, urban development in New Orleans was largely limited to higher ground along the natural river levees and bayous.
₋Wood's pump system allowed the city to drain huge tracts of swamp and marshland and expand into low-lying areas. Over the 20th century, rapid subsidence, both natural and human-induced, resulted in these newly populated areas subsiding to several feet below sea level.
₋New Orleans was vulnerable to flooding even before the city's footprint departed from the natural high ground near the Mississippi River. In the late 20th century, however, scientists and New Orleans residents gradually became aware of the city's increased vulnerability. In 1965, flooding from Hurricane Betsy killed dozens of residents, although the majority of the city remained dry. The rain-induced flood of May 8, 1995, demonstrated the weakness of the pumping system. After that event, measures were undertaken to dramatically upgrade pumping capacity. By the 1980s and 1990s, scientists observed that extensive, rapid, and ongoing erosion of the marshlands and swamp surrounding New Orleans, especially that related to the Mississippi River – Gulf Outlet Canal, had the unintended result of leaving the city more vulnerable than before to hurricane-induced catastrophic storm surges.
₋21st century
₋Hurricane Katrina
₋New Orleans was catastrophically affected by what Raymond B. Seed called "the worst engineering disaster in the world since Chernobyl", when the Federal levee system failed during Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005. By the time the hurricane approached the city on August 29, 2005, most residents had evacuated. As the hurricane passed through the Gulf Coast region, the city's federal flood protection system failed, resulting in the worst civil engineering disaster in American history. Floodwalls and levees constructed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers failed below design specifications and 80% of the city flooded. Tens of thousands of residents who had remained were rescued or otherwise made their way to shelters of last resort at the Louisiana Superdome or the New Orleans Morial Convention Center. More than 1,500 people were recorded as having died in Louisiana, most in New Orleans, while others remain unaccounted for. Before Hurricane Katrina, the city called for the first mandatory evacuation in its history, to be followed by another mandatory evacuation three years later with Hurricane Gustav.
₋Hurricane Rita
₋The city was declared off-limits to residents while efforts to clean up after Hurricane Katrina began. The approach of Hurricane Rita in September 2005 caused repopulation efforts to be postponed, and the Lower Ninth Ward was reflooded by Rita's storm surge.
₋Post-disaster recovery
₋Because of the scale of damage, many people resettled permanently outside the area. Federal, state, and local efforts supported recovery and rebuilding in severely damaged neighborhoods. The Census Bureau in July 2006 estimated the population to be 223,000; a subsequent study estimated that 32,000 additional residents had moved to the city as of March 2007, bringing the estimated population to 255,000, approximately 56% of the pre-Katrina population level. Another estimate, based on utility usage from July 2007, estimated the population to be approximately 274,000 or 60% of the pre-Katrina population. These estimates are somewhat smaller to a third estimate, based on mail delivery records, from the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center in June 2007, which indicated that the city had regained approximately two-thirds of its pre-Katrina population. In 2008, the Census Bureau revised its population estimate for the city upward, to 336,644. Most recently, by July 2015, the population was back up to 386,617—80% of what it was in 2000.
₋Several major tourist events and other forms of revenue for the city have returned. Large conventions returned. College bowl games returned for the 2006–2007 season. The New Orleans Saints returned that season. The New Orleans Hornets (now named the Pelicans) returned to the city for the 2007–2008 season. New Orleans hosted the 2008 NBA All-Star Game. Additionally, the city hosted Super Bowl XLVII.
₋Major annual events such as Mardi Gras, Voodoo Experience, and the Jazz & Heritage Festival were never displaced or canceled. A new annual festival, "The Running of the Bulls New Orleans", was created in 2007.
₋On February 7, 2017, a large EF3 wedge tornado hit parts of the eastern side of the city, damaging homes and other buildings, as well as destroying a mobile home park. At least 25 people were left injured by the event.
VII.Other Information
₋Buses
₋Public transportation is operated by the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority ("RTA"). Many bus routes connect the city and suburban areas. The RTA lost 200+ buses in the flood. Some of the replacement buses operate on biodiesel. The Jefferson Parish Department of Transit Administration operates Jefferson Transit, which provides service between the city and its suburbs.
₋Ferries
₋New Orleans has had continuous ferry service since 1827, operating three routes as of 2017. The Canal Street Ferry (or Algiers Ferry) connects downtown New Orleans at the foot of Canal Street with the National Historic Landmark District of Algiers Point across the Mississippi ("West Bank" in local parlance). It services passenger vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians. This same terminal also serves the Canal Street/Gretna Ferry, connecting Gretna, Louisiana for pedestrians and bicyclists only. A third auto/bicycle/pedestrian connects Chalmette, Louisiana and Lower Algiers.
₋Bicycling
₋The city's flat landscape, simple street grid and mild winters facilitate bicycle ridership, helping to make New Orleans eighth among U.S. cities in its rate of bicycle and pedestrian transportation as of 2010, and sixth in terms of the percentage of bicycling commuters. New Orleans is located at the start of the Mississippi River Trail, a 3,000-mile (4,800 km) bicycle path that stretches from the city's Audubon Park to Minnesota. Since Katrina the city has actively sought to promote bicycling by constructing a $1.5 million bike trail from Mid-City to Lake Pontchartrain, and by adding over 37 miles (60 km) of bicycle lanes to various streets, including St. Charles Avenue. In 2009, Tulane University contributed to these efforts by converting the main street through its Uptown campus, McAlister Place, into a pedestrian mall open to bicycle traffic. A 3.1-mile (5.0 km) bicycle corridor stretches from the French Quarter to Lakeview, and 14 miles (23 km) of additional bike lanes on existing streets. New Orleans has been recognized for its abundance of uniquely decorated and uniquely designed bicycles.
₋Roads
₋New Orleans is served by Interstate 10, Interstate 610 and Interstate 510. I-10 travels east–west through the city as the Pontchartrain Expressway. In New Orleans East it is known as the Eastern Expressway. I-610 provides a direct shortcut for traffic passing through New Orleans via I-10, allowing that traffic to bypass I-10's southward curve.
₋In addition to the interstates, U.S. 90 travels through the city, while U.S. 61 terminates downtown. In addition, U.S. 11 terminates in the eastern portion of the city.
₋New Orleans is home to many bridges; Crescent City Connection is perhaps the most notable. It serves as New Orleans' major bridge across the Mississippi, providing a connection between the city's downtown on the eastbank and its westbank suburbs. Other Mississippi crossings are the Huey P. Long Bridge, carrying U.S. 90 and the Hale Boggs Memorial Bridge, carrying Interstate 310.
₋The Twin Span Bridge, a five-mile (8 km) causeway in eastern New Orleans, carries I-10 across Lake Pontchartrain. Also in eastern New Orleans, Interstate 510/LA 47 travels across the Intracoastal Waterway/Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal via the Paris Road Bridge, connecting New Orleans East and suburban Chalmette.
₋The tolled Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, consisting of two parallel bridges are, at 24 miles (39 km) long, the longest bridges in the world. Built in the 1950s (southbound span) and 1960s (northbound span), the bridges connect New Orleans with its suburbs on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain via Metairie.
₋Taxi service
₋United Cab is the city's largest taxi service, with a fleet of over 300 cabs. It has operated 365 days a year since its establishment in 1938, with the exception of the month after Hurricane Katrina, in which operations were temporarily shut down due to disruptions in radio service.
₋United Cab's fleet was once larger than 450 cabs, but has been reduced in recent years due to competition from services like Uber and Lyft, according to owner Syed Kazmi. In January 2016, New Orleans-based sweet shop Sucré approached United Cab with to deliver its king cakes locally on-demand. Sucré saw this partnership as a way to alleviate some of the financial pressure being placed on taxi services due to Uber's presence in the city.
₋Airports
₋The metropolitan area is served by the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, located in the suburb of Kenner. Regional airports include the Lakefront Airport, Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans (Callender Field) in the suburb of Belle Chasse and Southern Seaplane Airport, also located in Belle Chasse. Southern Seaplane has a 3,200-foot (980 m) runway for wheeled planes and a 5,000-foot (1,500 m) water runway for seaplanes.
₋Armstrong International is the busiest airport in Louisiana and the only to handle scheduled international passenger flights. As of 2018, more than 13 million passengers passed through Armstrong, on nonstops flights from more than 57 destinations, including foreign nonstops from the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Mexico, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.
₋Rail
₋The city is served by Amtrak. The New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal is the central rail depot and is served by the Crescent, operating between New Orleans and New York City; the City of New Orleans, operating between New Orleans and Chicago and the Sunset Limited, operating between New Orleans and Los Angeles. Up until August 2005 (when Hurricane Katrina struck), the Sunset Limited's route continued east to Orlando.
₋With the strategic benefits of both the port and its double-track Mississippi River crossings, the city attracted six of the seven Class I railroads in North America: Union Pacific Railroad, BNSF Railway, Norfolk Southern Railway, Kansas City Southern Railway, CSX Transportation and Canadian National Railway. The New Orleans Public Belt Railroad provides interchange services between the railroads.
₋Modal characteristics
₋According to the 2016 American Community Survey, 67.4% of working city of New Orleans residents commuted by driving alone, 9.7% carpooled, 7.3% used public transportation, and 4.9% walked. About 5% used all other forms of transportation, including taxicab, motorcycle, and bicycle. About 5.7% of working New Orleans residents worked at home.
₋Many city of New Orleans households own no personal automobiles. In 2015, 18.8% of New Orleans households were without a car, which increased to 20.2% in 2016. The national average was 8.7 percent in 2016. New Orleans averaged 1.26 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8 per household.
₋New Orleans ranks high among cities in terms of the percentage of working residents who commute by walking or bicycling. In 2013, 5% of working people from New Orleans commuted by walking and 2.8% commuted by cycling. During the same period, New Orleans ranked thirteenth for percentage of workers who commuted by walking or biking among cities not included within the fifty most populous cities. Only nine of the most fifty most populous cities had a higher percentage of commuters who walked or biked than did New Orleans in 2013.
VIII.Contact Information
Government
Type: Mayor–council
Mayor: LaToya Cantrell (D)
Council: New Orleans City Council
City Hall
Post Office Box 201
Baton Rouge, LA 70821-0201
Address:
617 North Third Street
Baton Rouge, LA 70802
TEL: 855.307.3893
Website: https://revenue.louisiana.gov/Contact