To a person who has constantly been on the move, never living in a place for more than a couple years at a time, never fully experiencing a specific community for too long, the idea of neighborhoods has been little more than a word to me. I have lived in my fair share of "neighborhoods" of transient military families with names such as Gen. Pershing Gardens and Cavalry Terrace, but never have I truly understood what a community was or what it means to be part of one, therefore, my perceptions of the idea of community and neighborhood are from the point of view of a complete novice. They are merely outsider observations with no clear point of reference other than those Beaver Cleaver ideas force fed to me by Hollywood. In choosing my path, I had to look back on past writings. I felt like I didn't know or understand anything about the area surrounding City Park, particularly on Lake Ponchartrain. This, naturally, was truly unfortunate for many reasons, the least of which being the fact that I spend so much of my time on site in the park and thus should probably know the areas north of the Park as well as the areas to the south. My other goal in choosing the neighborhoods which I chose was to more fully understand the city's relationship with the water, more specifically with the Lake. I chose a route which I felt reflected both of these main goals; Esplanade Ave. to City Park Ave. to Canal Blvd. to Lakeshore Dr. In doing this, I drove through four neighborhoods (Midcity, Lakeview, and Lakeshore East and West. LakeshoreEast and West). For the express purpose of this paper, I am going to combine Lakeshore East and West into a single neighborhood due to the fact that Lakeshore West did not have many houses or a clear attitude of neighborhood, but rather acted largely as a park. Just as communities align hemselves based not only on geographic infrastructural elements, but also on common beliefs, and what Greenlie refers to as "mythologies", so too was my imediate perception of these different neighborhoods shaped by various archtiectural and natural conditions.
My journey started the way any should, with a clear and dramatic change of scenery. I started underneath I-10 in the shade and gloom of this space which could not truly be considered a space. It was more of a transition space, an area stretched from two spaces seperating. An empty concrete void devoid of any significance other than the one applied conceptually by the viewer. I burst from this vacuumous area in the sun streaked avenue of Esplanade Ave. The entry condition could not have been more perfect for a street such as this. Lined with huge towering Live Oaks and with densely packed housing, it was a definite seperation from the bare vacuumous concrete void left by the elevated interstate. As I drove along the beautiful avenue of Esplanade Ave., I couldn't help but notice how dense the houses were. In some occasions, the houses were so dense that it was a matter of inches which seperated neighbors and a matter of feet that seperated them from the hustle and bustle of the street. Beautiful old raised shotguns nestled beside towering two story homes. Old New Orleans seemed to be the major theme in this neighborhood. People walked around in the neutral ground between the two directions of traffic as if it were their personal yard and sat on the front steps of their raised home the way an old man in a western would sit in a rocking chair on his front porch. The traffic rolled by seemingly oblivious to the life that was taking place not six feet from their windows. The traffic in this area was a remarkable site in itself as well. Cars and trucks caught in afternoon traffic slowly moved the way toothpaste is forced from a tube. The street narrowed as cars parked on the street. There were no parking lots or driveways in this area where every square foot on the street was inhabited by a building. The sunlight was filtered by the overhanging branches of montrous live oaks lining the avenue. It is hard to imagine all the living that these century old trees must have seen on this stretch of land in the Midcity area.
As I turned onto City Park drive, I encountered a demarkation proclaiming the start of City Park. I avoided the urge to enter that which General Beauregard was guarding so vigilantly, and skirted left onto City Park Drive. Driving on this road was different from Esplanade as well. Neither did I feel any strong inclination torward any specific building or point of convergence, nor did I feel any strong sense of community. This road was a boundary condition, an area between areas. This, much like the area under the interstate, was a space between spaces.As I turned onto Canal Ave., a new sense of community began to dawn on me. I understood the ordering of this area slightly more because it was closer to what I was used to. Seemingly standardized houses built in a much later period began to arise.
Buidlings spread out and provided area for recreation. Here there were no people lounging on stoops or playing in the neutral ground. Rather, there were yards in the strictest of suburban definitions. Children played on front lawns and people lounged on their front porches. Space not only seperated houses from the street, but from each other as well, opening up space between not only for recreation, but as a fence of sorts between each house. The style of house considerably changed as well. Only the fact that most were built in the 1940 according to the book History of New Orleans by John Kendall when the area was drained and first made available created common ground for the designs. Ranging from ranch style family homes to spanishesque red tile roofed buildings, to art nouveau and modernist concrete houses, this area's eclectic blend of what it meant to inhabitat a house made the area feel that much less like a neighborhood in the same sense that the Midtown area. One thing I noticed too whilst driving down this particular boulevard, and this may just be because it was a major road in the area and not a neighborhood road, but the houses got considerably larger and pulled farther away from the road the further I went. It was as if the further from the city, no matter how close in reality, the stronger the pull of suburbia. In the article entitled Spaces: Dimensions of the Human Landscape, Greenlie states "As the single-family home on its own plot of land is the mythic image on which the typical American bases the concept of a good home, so the small town is the model for good community." It feels like the Lakeview area was based entirely upon this principle of perfection of the utopic view of the ideal American dwelling/ community. Due in part to the time that these neighborhoods were built, it is easy for me to easily jump to the term suburbia, with all its connotations. As I travelled too, the live oaks grew less and less dense. Palm trees and Banana leaf trees began to replace the light filtering branches of the meandering oak. Sun poured down up on the streets and the houses began taking upon and more tropical or exotic flair. It made me immediately think of driving to the beach. I couldn't help but feel a certain anxiety as I drove through these streets, expecting in my mind to smell the brine of saltwater or hear the call of gulls.
As I reached the end of the road, the road drifted upwards onto a levee. As I crested the levee I caught sight of the lake. No longer were there live oaks. No longer was there any traffic other than the occasional hardcore bicyclist or transient car. This area was beautiful in its bareness. The lake and the sky dominated my view to the right and the levee dominated my view to the left. Caught between these two elements of natural conditions, man-altered though they be, it gave one a certain sense of insignificance. Perhaps this is the cause for the some of the houses I encountered further down Lakeshore Dr.
The Lakeshore area is not entirely a residential area or a business area the way that other areas in the city are. Instead, it is more a park space that celebrates and emphasizes the water of Lake Ponchartrain. There are a few buildings and businesses spotting the area, but the first density that could be considered a neighborhood occured a little way down Lakeshore Dr. This area was a masterpiece of what human beings could do if given too much money and a desire to control their landscape. Greenlie states that "Only influential and affluent city dwellers have significant control over the form of their physical environment." Modernist houses and huge glass houses rise up on slabs in a grove of palms, framing their views of the lake and controlling the endless planes which they live next to. The levees monotony is controlled too by the planting of trees, which though perhaps unwisely places next to the levee, provide a break from the endless wrinkle of land. These sprawling cathedrals to the oil industry defy logic. Here, there are no people visible. No frolicking children or old men sitting on their porch. Here there are no references to buildings next door, but rather walls of controlled palms. Lawns pull so far away from the road, the occuring driveway takes on the air of a street in and of itself. This is a far cry from the tightly compressed buildings found in Midcity or even the community driven suburban streets found in Lakeview. This is money wanting to set itself apart and set itself above the surroundings. As I came to the end of my journey, I was shocked to see howmuch I learned and how much I still wanted to see. In the future, I plan on revisiting these neighborhoods. One trip to form a perception of what the community means to the building is not nearly enough, nor would multiple, but maybe in time I could come to understand that which I have never encountered.
