<GNOCDC> Pines Village Neighborhood Snapshot

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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Although the information on this page is out-of-date, we are continuing to make it available, as it provides insight about this neighborhood pre-Katrina.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 As a result, you may find outdated information and broken links.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.

Pines Village Neighborhood Snapshot

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

Because Pines Village is the area in New Orleans East closest to Chef Menteur Highway and the Industrial Canal, this neighborhood was one of the first to be developed in New Orleans East.

Bits and pieces of Pines Village’s history

Several hundred years ago, a crevasse occurred along the Mississippi River at Kenner Bend, which created a distributary channel that flowed eastward roughly parallel to the river. After the distributary was abandoned, there remained a lazy bayou alternately known as Bayou Metairie, Gentilly and Sauvage. The Bayou was paralleled on both sides by fairly well drained ground. It was this high ground that provided a flood-free land route into the city from the east. In the 1850s, the Bayou was dammed, drained and filled. Chef Menteur Highway was built on the ridge and for a long time was the only road in that direction.

	Image © Tristram R. Kidder from Tulane University
	Industrial canal lock facility.

In addition to transportation, another barrier to development in the area was the Industrial Canal, completed in 1923, which separated New Orleans from the eastern section of the city. Before Interstate-10 and the Seabrook Bridge were completed in the 1960s and 1970s, draw bridges at Chef Menteur Highway, Gentilly Road and the Lake-Industrial Canal juncture were the only means of crossing the Industrial Canal north of Florida Avenue. That made New Orleans East rather isolated.

In the 1950s, this marshy land was reclaimed by leveeing the area to establish a basic drainage system and lowering the water table by pumping, raising the level of construction sites by use of hydraulic fill and finally, building a drainage system consisting of a series of lakes and canals.

The neighborhood's namesake, Sigmund Pines purchased a large piece of the land closest to the Industrial Canal and proceeded to develop it with residences. In the 1950s and early 1960s, substantial numbers of dwellings-both doubles and single-family detached-were built in the Pines Village Subdivision.

For more information

1999 Land Use Plan New Orleans City Planning Commission
www.new-orleans.la.us/cnoweb/cpc/1999_dist_nine.htm/

Industrial Canal Lock Replacement Project
http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/prj/ihnc/index.asp
A website by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

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Last modified: October 5, 2002