Real Estate Flyer
*Pontchartrain Park opened on this date in 1955. This is one of the first Black suburban neighborhoods in the United States.
Located in New Orleans, LA, Pontchartrain Park is a subdistrict of the Gentilly District Area. Its boundaries are Leon C. Simon Drive to the north, the Industrial Canal to the east, Dreux Avenue to the south, and Peoples Avenue to the west. Pontchartrain Park was developed after World War II. It was one of the first suburban-style subdivisions developed by and for middle-class African Americans during the Jim Crow racial segregation in Louisiana.
It has been home to prominent New Orleanians such as mayors Ernest Morial and Marc Morial, political activist Philip M. Baptiste, and District Attorney Eddie Jordan, as well as nationally known figures including Lisa P. Jackson, EPA Administrator under President Barack Obama; actor Wendell Pierce, and jazz musician Terrence Blanchard. In the 1970s, urban renewal projects were undertaken with the federal New Town Program.
Pontchartrain Park suffered severe flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The water initially came from the overtopping of a section of the Industrial Canal floodwall, caused by storm surge channeled into the city from the MRGO Canal, and then from major breaches sustained by floodwalls along the London Avenue Canal.
