Community Profile and Images | Statistical Profile

Neighborhoods in District 2 Central City/ Magnolia Lower Garden District St. Thomas Development Garden District East Riverside Touro Milan Irish Channel

District 2 began its life as an active commercial center, where New Orleans merchants traded with British ships in cloth, cutlery and farming equipment. 
 
Magazine Street developed supporting services for the nearby port activities, and was named to signify the warehouses (“magazin” in French) which lined the street for storage of tobacco and other goods awaiting export.  In the mid-1800s construction of the New Basin Canal attracted a large number of laborers who followed the spread of industrial development up Tchoupitoulas Street.  While the Garden District housed many wealthier Americans, most inland communities in District 2 developed in response to Irish and German immigration patterns.  The eclectic mix of class and culture throughout the district is underscored by the fact that the St. Thomas and Magnolia Street (renamed C. J. Peete) public housing developments were the first proposed for New Orleans, and their loan applications were the first signed by President Roosevelt in 1937.  At the turn of the 20th Century, many of the older riverfront industrial structures were demolished and new warehouses for cotton, coal and other bulk items were constructed as part of a Dock Board plan to revitalize the Port. 

Prior to Katrina, the historic industrial use had almost entirely disappeared with residential land use accounting for 60% of the District’s total acreage.  Most housing units were renter occupied and the District had a higher proportion of African American residents than the City as a whole. District 2 was typical of the diversity in class and race that was seen throughout New Orleans in that it featured some of New Orleans’s wealthiest and poorest neighborhoods. Major proposed and on-going developments within the District prior to Katrina included the mixed income redevelopment of the former St. Thomas Housing Development, the proposed redevelopment of the Guste and C.J. Peete Housing Developments, the construction of hundreds of new apartment units at the Saulet apartment complex, and the rehabilitation of much of the housing stock in the historically poor and working class neighborhoods close to the River.

As with the City as a whole, the degree of flood damage that the District experienced was inversely proportional to the elevation of particular areas. With the exception of relatively isolated fires, the higher ground closer to the River was virtually unscathed by Katrina while the Claiborne Avenue corridor and the neighborhoods on the lake side of Claiborne Avenue experienced severe flooding. (Sources: City of New Orleans 1999 Land Use Plan and GCR & Associates, Inc.)

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New Orleans
Neighborhood Planning Districts

1: French Quarter/CBD
2: Central City/Garden District
3: Uptown/Carrollton
4: Mid-City
5: Lakeview
6: Gentilly
7: Bywater
8: Lower Ninth Ward
9: New Orleans East
10: Village de L’Est
11: Viavant/Venetian Isles
12: Algiers
13: New Aurora/English Turn

NORA
New Orleans
Redevelopment Authority
1340 Poydras Street
Suite 600
New Orleans, Louisiana 70112
tel: 504-658-4400
fax: 504-658-4551