History
The area along the river front was developed first, at the start of the 19th century, followed by the natural high land along Gentilly Ridge.
The designation of this area as the "9th Ward" dates from 1852, when the boundaries of the Wards of New Orleans were redrawn as part of the reorganization of the city from three municipalities into one centralized city government.
Along the lakefront were various fishing camps built on piers, the most famous collection being Little Woods. Such camps were common along the lakefront in the 19th and early 20th century, but the collection at Little Woods was the longest lasting concentration, many surviving until Hurricane Georges in 1998.
The area of the 9th Ward on the back side of St. Claude Avenue experienced the city's most significant and longest standing flooding from the New Orleans Hurricane of 1915 due to a break in the protection levee at Florida Avenue.
The Industrial Canal was dredged through the neighborhood at the start of the 1920s.
Most of the area between Gentilly Ridge and Lake Pontchartrain was swamp, not drained and developed until the mid and late 20th century.
Lincoln Beach was an amusement park along the lakefront for African-Americans during the era of racial segregation. The nearby "Pontchartrain Beach" was the corresponding amusement area for whites.
Parts of the 9th Ward flooded during Hurricane Flossy in 1956, and the Lower 9th Ward experienced catastrophic flooding in Hurricane Betsy in 1965.
Read more about this topic: Ninth Ward Of New Orleans
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)