<GNOCDC> West Riverside Neighborhood Snapshot

Home Pre Katrina Home Orleans Parish Uptown/ Carrollton District West Riverside Snapshot

This information is pre-Katrina.
Although the information on this page is out-of-date, we are continuing to make it available, as it provides insight about this neighborhood pre-Katrina.

Post-Katrina, we will not be making any changes or updates to this page. As a result, you may find outdated information and broken links.

For current data about New Orleans and its neighborhoods, visit our homepage.

West Riverside Neighborhood Snapshot

Census 2000 Data Tables: People & Household Characteristics, Housing & Housing Costs, Income & Poverty, Transportation, Employment, Educational Attainment, Immigration & Language, Disabilities, Neighborhood Characteristics

West Riverside is a long line of streets running parallel to Tchoupitoulas in uptown New Orleans.

Green space in West Riverside

West Riverside has two historical green spaces.

Wisner Playground was once the site of day nursery center for low-income children.

During the 30s and 40s all such nursery schools were segregated and this one served white children only.

	Image courtesy New Orleans Public Library (nutrias.org). Permission for reuse required.
	Wisner Playground wading pool, August 1941. [WPA Photograph Collection]

Gilmore Park is in the wide neutral ground at Laurel and State Streets. After the Civil War, the area was a public open-air market frequented by farmers. When the area became more residential than rural, the market was phased out.

Samuel Gilmore (1859-1910), a City Attorney, saved the area for use as a neighborhood park about 1903. Mr. Gilmore and his daughter, Martha Gilmore Robinson, were influential leaders in New Orleans in the early part of the 20th century. Mr. Gilmore was instrumental in the creation of the Public Belt Railroad, was a U.S. Representative for the 2nd Congressional District, and was actively opposed to the rechartering of the Louisiana lottery.



© GNO Community Data Center
Gilmore Park.

Martha Gilmore Robinson led the drive to erect a statue to Margaret Haughery in Gilmore Park– said to be the first statue in the nation to honor a woman. Believing women to be more moral than men, she headed up the anti-Long Women's Division of the Honest Election League and the League of Women Voters, and promoted reforms for clean government and laws against child labor. She was the only female appointed to the charter committee that rewrote the new city charter and she was the first woman to run for councilman at large that year.

Bibliography

Uptown Neighborhood Improvement Inc's page on Gilmore park
www.gnofn.org/~uni/unigilmore.htm

Silk Stockings and Ballot BoxesWomen and Politics in New Orleans, 1920-1963
http://www.unc.edu/depts/csas/southern_cultures/contents.html

Samuel Louis Gilmore, Orleans Parish, Louisiana
Biographical and Historical Memoires of Louisiana, (vol. 1), p. 446.
Published by the Goodspeed Publishing Company, Chicago, 1892.

Home Pre Katrina Home Orleans Parish Uptown/ Carrollton District West Riverside Snapshot

Last modified: October 5, 2002