Today’s Audubon Park was once the location of the Boré Plantation. In the late eighteenth century, Étienne de Boré converted his plantation crop from indigo to sugar cane due to significant financial…

Antoine Morin, a free man of color, invented a sugar granulation process that launched the greed of Étienne de Boré and the intense labor demanded from enslaved people.

Today, Audubon Park is a space dedicated to leisure in New Orleans. Every day, hundreds of New Orleans tourists and locals enjoy the public jogging path, lagoons, picnic shelters, golf course,…

In 1948, facing increased public health concerns, the Louisiana State Legislature passed a law prohibiting open-air landfills in highly populated areas. [1] However, New Orleans city officials…

By 1985, just four years after the first residents moved into Gordon Plaza, state environmentalists recommended testing soil and air in the Gordon Plaza subdivision to determine the extent of…

In the 1970s, under the administrations of Mayors “Moon” Landrieu and his successor “Dutch” Morial, the city planned and built housing for elderly and low-income families on the former site of…

Throughout the 1950s, the local community suffered from horrible stenches, pest infestations, and smoke emanating from Agriculture Street Landfill (ASL). Spontaneous combustion commonly occurred at…

In 1909, Agriculture Street Landfill (ASL) opened to accommodate trash produced by half of New Orleans residents. ASL occupied 95 acres of previously undeveloped swampland surrounded by Abundance…

On September 9, 1960, seven local university students staged a sit-in at Woolworth’s department store located at 1031 Canal Street to protest the store’s refusal to serve Black people at the lunch…

Though designated for public use, Palmer Park was segregated until the 1970s. The park’s namesake, Benjamin Palmer, was a staunch defender of slavery and leading segregationist, set a tone of…

Political rallies were an important part of Palmer Park’s early history. Local political organizations held numerous rallies and speeches in the park in the first half of the 20th century. The 1919…

The Huey P. Long Bridge spans the Mississippi River in Jefferson Parish, a few miles upstream of New Orleans itself, and features a central 4.4-mile rail track. At the time of its construction, the…

Originally the St. Bernard Market founded in 1854, Circle Food Store was a community gathering space which housed a grocery store, bakery, pharmacy, uniform shop, dentist, chiropractor, bill payment…