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Filmore Neighborhood Snapshot

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

The Filmore neighborhood has a history shaped by many investors and developers in the 1900s. The neighborhood remains a conveniently located, family neighborhood with mainly single-family dwellings.

Natural and other forces that influenced the development of Filmore

It appears that Fort St. John, built in 1769 at the mouth of Bayou St. John and Lake Pontchartrain, was the only site where Europeans had built permanent structures in the immediate vicinity of Lake Pontchartrain. By 1815, Europeans began to build structures on the naturally high land along Bayou Sauvage (Gentilly) and Bayou St. John. Bayou St. John land was particularly valuable because of its elevation and its proximity to the important route of water transportation. Land along Bayou Sauvage was valuable because of its well-drained ground that provided a flood-free land route into the city.


Library of Congress

  Fort St. John was originally built at the mouth of Bayou St. John on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. However, since the fort's construction, the old lakeshore has been filled, and the new shoreline is now about 500 yards further out. As originally built, the fort was 50 or so feet across and held five gun emplacements.
   

With the advent of the railroad in 1830, fashionable resorts began to develop on Lake Pontchartrain. Throughout the 1800s, these resorts remained active and drew crowds of people from the city, especially on weekends. Much of the land in this area was still swampy, particularly north of the Gentilly Ridge. Alexander Milne, a Scotsman and a philanthropist, believed that New Orleans would eventually expand to Lake Pontchartrain despite the swamps. He acquired land grants around farms in Gentilly and bought land in other outlying areas including property along Bayou St. John and along the lakefront. During his lifetime, he accumulated a fortune in swampy real estate. It is out of Milne’s landholdings that the Filmore, Dillard and St. Anthony neighborhoods were carved in the 20th century.

The swampland between Bayou St. John and Elysian Fields north of the Gentilly Ridge was slower than other areas to develop. The London Avenue Canal was built before the turn of the century as a part of the drainage system of New Orleans. However, the canal could not drain this section of land because it was on the “lake side” of the pumping station. Land area from Gentilly Road to Mirabeau Avenue could not be developed until after the Paris Avenue Canal was dug in the 1930s, providing for necessary drainage. Lift pumps were constructed in 1945 to lift the water into the London Avenue Canal from the areas adjacent to the canal so that the land in Filmore, Mirabeau and Robert E. Lee could be pumped out and made available for development.

 

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Historic American Buildings Survey. (memory.loc.gov).
 
A detail showing the north view of Fort St. John and the view from Bayou St. John. From the Historic American Buidings Survey.  
   

The Filmore neighborhood derives its name from Filmore Avenue, which bisects the area from east to west. While the original spelling is Fillmore, residents and street signs spell the name Filmore. The primary development history of Filmore is in the second half of the 20th century.

George Pratt was one of the major investors in this area in the early 1900s. Pratt incorporated his landholdings into Pontchartrain Realty Company in 1923. In 1939, he had the Mirabeau Gardens subdivision laid out, which was the area north of Filmore.

In 1946, Pontchartrain Realty sold a sizable portion of land to the west of Mirabeau Gardens to Chester Owens. The subdivisions of Bancroft Park, Bayou Vista and Parkchester were a result of subsequent sales that Owens made to individual developers. Shelby Construction Company purchased a parcel of land in the Filmore neighborhood in 1947 and built the Park Chester Garden Apartment complex. This facility provided middle-class apartment dwellings in Filmore until the late 1960s.

By the 1970s, the Parkchester Complex had declined, and the apartments were demolished in the mid-1970s as HUD acquired title to the land.

The land to the north of Mirabeau Avenue and stretching out to Lake Pontchartrain between Paris Avenue and Bayou St. John belonged to the Milne Asylum for Destitute Orphan Girls until 1924 when Bancroft Realty purchased the tract. Ownership of this land passed through many hands until the mid-1900s when Charles Murphy, Frederick Herrick and Felix Kuntz acquired a major part of it. Subsequently, these men sold parcels to developers or developed for themselves a number of subdivisions, including Oak Park, Oak Park Extension, Oak Park Gardens and Oak Park Gardens Addition.

Legion Oaks Subdivision was part of the original purchase of the Bancroft Realty Corporation in 1924. However, through various events a large part of this area reverted back to the ownership of the Milne Asylum for Destitute Girls. Kennick Realty Company obtained this land from the Asylum in 1948. American Legion Post 333 purchased the ground for Legion Oaks Subdivision from Kennick in the early 1950s. This encompassed the area from Mirabeau to Prentiss and from Paris to Cartier Avenue. When the Kennick Company was liquidated, Herrick, Kuntz and Murphy acquired the undeveloped remainder of the tract from which many of the aforementioned developments came.

For more information:

Neighborhood Profiles Project Document prepared by the City of New Orleans Office of Policy Planning and the City Planning Commission. Published December 1980. Study available at the Williams Research Center (non-circulating collection).

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

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Last modified: October 5, 2002