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    Metairie
    Metairie
    Metairie
    Ebook197 pages59 minutes

    Metairie

    By Catherine Campanella

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Metairie was the first suburb of New Orleans; an outgrowth to the west by young families seeking larger lots, open air, and affordable new housing.


    Those suburbanites shared much in common with previous generations of New Orleanians who had migrated westward from the original town (now the French Quarter) to high land along the Mississippi River and the Metairie Ridge. When Jefferson Parish was established in 1825, it included all New Orleans faubourgs west of Felicity Street--what we now know as Uptown New Orleans. These would become the first cities in Jefferson Parish: Carrolton, Jefferson, and Lafayette. By the early 1900s, the westward expansion continued into what we now call Old Metairie and Bucktown. During the mid-20th century, Metairie boomed and is now one of the largest communities in Louisiana. While many residents consider themselves New Orleanians, even those born generations after their families moved to the suburb, Metairie has its own unique history.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateMar 12, 2008
    ISBN9781439635490
    Metairie
    Author

    Catherine Campanella

    An LSU graduate with a BA in fine arts, Cathy chose a career in teaching (MEd, University of New Orleans), where she became a technology coordinator and early proponent of the educational value of the Internet. New Orleans History: Lake Pontchartrain (www.pontchartrain.net) was her first attempt to compile a cultural overview as a pictorial history of the lake. Lake Pontchartrain (Arcadia Publishing, 2007) culminated this endeavor in a print edition. Now a retired educator, Cathy's interest in writing and research has grown to include the books Metairie (2008), New Orleans City Park (2011), Legendary Locals of Metairie (2013) and Images of Modern America: Lake Pontchartrain (2015), all released by Arcadia Publishing, as well as her more recent Lost Metairie (2017), published by The History Press. Campanella has written for Scholastic Instructor, Read-Write-Think and Every Day with Rachel Ray magazines. Married to Mike Azzarello, the mother of two and grandmother of two adorable grandchildren, Cathy hopes this book will inform, educate and rekindle wonderful memories of life around Lake Pontchartrain.

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      Book preview

      Metairie - Catherine Campanella

      you.)

      INTRODUCTION

      While traveling on Metairie Road, one follows the trail used by Native Americans long before people on other continents knew of their existence. The road sits upon the Metairie Ridge, a naturally occurring deposit of alluvial soil created thousands of years ago. The oak trees are of the same natural stand that graces city Park. Until modern times, a bayou flowed along the road; the only remaining section of it is in the park. Formed around 2500 bce, it has been called bayou Metairie for centuries.

      Continuing down the ancient path, the Seventeenth Street canal marks the entrance into the city of New Orleans, but the street name remains Metairie Road. Metairie cemetery comes into view; from 1838 until 1873, the property was occupied by the Metairie Race course. Until 1874, this area of the city was a part of Jefferson Parish and the bayou still flowed. At the Interstate 10 overpass, the street name changes to city Park Avenue (until 1902 it was Metairie Road).

      It is not surprising that many residents of Metairie consider themselves to be New Orleanians because their histories are intermingled. All of what we now call carrollton, Uptown, the Garden District, and the Irish channel, as well as parts of Mid-city and central city (all west of Felicity Street), were Jefferson Parish property when the jurisdiction was carved out of the parish of Orleans in 1825. New Orleanians had, for generations, moved westward from the original city (the French Quarter) to newly opened areas of land.

      The origin of the name Metairie is debatable, but most historians attribute it to either the French moitie, one-half, or moitoire, a 12th-century word applying to land leased to a farmer for 50 percent of the crops or produce grown. Although farming was a major endeavor for most of Metairie’s long history, sharecropping was not commonly practiced.

      It may be of interest to note that in 1682 Jacques de la Metairie traveled with René Robert cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, to the mouth of the Mississippi River, where, serving as the explorer’s notary, he officially recorded the claim of the land for France in the name of King Louis XIV. However, no historic record indicates that the place name Metairie was given for or by him.

      After New Orleans was founded in 1718, the French government granted lands to be used for large agricultural endeavors. The Jesuit Fathers’ property, deeded in 1726, was called Metairie des Jesuites, and land granted to the chauvin family in the same year was called La Metairie. by the 1760s, when farming had been well established in the area, Metairie appeared frequently on maps and in official documents. Spelling variations have included Maiterie, Meteria, Maitry, Matery, Materie, Metry, and Maitery. Metairie was originally called Tchoupitoulas (or a variation of the word) for the Native Americans who had lived along the road, the bayou, and in the surrounding area.

      Despite it’s long agricultural history, few plantation homes were built in Metairie. They were constructed near the Mississippi River, but the properties often extended through Metairie to Lake Pontchartrain. Dense forests provided lumber, some of it used to build the first church in New Orleans. Until the early 1900s, many small farms produced lettuce, cabbage, shallots, onion, beans, cucumbers, and artichokes. Some land was used as pasture for milk cows and for dairies. Small truck farmers plodded along unpaved roads for as long as six hours to transport their goods by horse and wagon to the French and Treme Markets.

      For almost 200 years—from 1723, when the first agricultural land was deeded, until around 1910—Metairie remained primarily farming, pasturing, and timbering land. This began to change when a streetcar—an extension of the Napoleon Avenue line from New Orleans—was placed along Metairie Road in 1916, allowing easy access to what was a remote area. The first modern property developments (subdivisions of sorts) began during the 1920s on land directly adjacent to New Orleans. On its opposite boundary, at the old town of Kenner, some growth edged over the line into Metairie. Much of the land, however, remained undeveloped until the mid–20th century, when lowland swamps and marshes on either side of the ridge were drained.

      After World War II, as young soldiers returned home to New Orleans and began raising families, they faced a housing shortage. Like many of their parents and grandparents before them, they moved slightly westward. Using GI bills, they acquired new and affordable homes on larger lots than were usually available in the city. From the 1950s through the 1970s, the area boomed with subdivisions comprised mostly of ranch-style houses (the new residents, unfortunately, did not take the architectural traditions with them to Metairie). This trend continued until all the swampland was drained and all but a tiny percentage of ancient cypress and oak trees were cut and cleared.

      The seemingly haphazard growth of Metairie (many businesses along the major thoroughfares did sprout up in an unplanned configuration) belies the build it and they will come foresight of Jefferson Parish officials, who had dug canals, drained swamps, and built major roads years before the vast majority of the area was populated. They vigorously promoted their parish and invited newcomers and new businesses. between 1940 and 1950, the population of Jefferson Parish more than doubled, just as it had between 1920 and 1930. In 1954, Dun and bradstreet ranked Jefferson Parish the busiest parish with a 42.3-percent gain in business listings.

      In 1954, the Jefferson Parish Address co-ordination Section changed some street names that were duplicated and reassigned some addresses. Streets starting at Airline Highway were addressed as the 100 block at Airline and increased toward the lake. Streets starting at the river were addressed as 100, also increasing toward the lake. Streets crossing Airline Highway were designated as north at that point toward the lake. east-west running streets started as the 100 block at the New Orleans parish line and increased toward Kenner.

      Metairie’s 3,240

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