re: Older Baton Rouge residents. What lead to the decline of NBR?

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North Baton rpuge actually has far better infrastructure compared to the rest of town.

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The open neighborhoods really do help disperse traffic better compared to the limited entry/exit subdivisions you see in SBR

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Crack crime wave in the late 80s/early 90s pushed out most of the last few hangers-on.

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I can definitely see that as a contributing factor as it destroyed a great number of racially integrated neighborhoods up North as well.

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how an area that was so vibrant in the 1970's evaporated so quickly.


30 to 40 years? Quickly?

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It had already started declining by the 70s.

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. Once they made a bit of money they figured out they could live elsewhere and started moving out of that immediate area.

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the interstate system helped them do this as well

It started as simply not wanting to live next to big arse chemo plants and then followed by white flight once the home values started their decline.. Is my best guess

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It started as simply not wanting to live next to big arse chemo plants and then followed by white flight once the home values started their decline.. Is my best guess

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Yep. If you talk to really older people from BR, NBR was always seen as the sort of 'other side of the tracks' part of town. No doubt it was certainly nicer and more vibrant when you had a stable working class population living there, but it was never really seen as a desirable part of the city.

Low interest rates in the '80's allowed the blue collar plant workers to move out of the area, which was predominantly white until then.

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Plank Road seems to be what Perkins road is now.

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Even if the public schools didn't completely implode and crime didn't destroy the community......Plank and Scenic were both basically "route 66'd" when I-110 was built. Summer ave in Memphis was the same way when Sam Cooper was run along side of it. The traffic and thus the bulk of the spending power that supported a major regional retail corridor at the time started using the freeway and the businesses could not easily change format.

It's happening to Florida Blvd the past 20 years as more traffic shifts to the I-12. The demand for business along that route has changed from regional shopping centers to grocery stores, gyms, and pharmacies as the regional traffic moved somewhere else. It's not clear what to do with the giant shopping malls now that they are no longer needed.

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They had smaller operations before then, but they really exploded during WWII. That coincides with Baton Rouge going from being literally a small town to a decent sized city. A lot of white working class folks moved into town from rural areas (a lot actually from Mississippi) to come work in the plants and settled close by in N. Baton Rouge. They found affordable housing and it was close to work, so that outweighed the idea that you literally lived in the shadow of those plants. Once they made a bit of money they figured out they could live elsewhere and started moving out of that immediate area.

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This is pretty accurate. Standard Oil opened the current refinery before WW1.

Many people did come from Mississippi but from rural La as well from sharecropping to real jobs with security. Once this was established Baton Rouge just starting moving East away from the river with vast areas of undeveloped land from Melrose, Broadmoor, Red Oaks, Sherwood Forest, Goodwood Heights etc...that were affordable.

It is no different than any city really. People want to better themselves, new bigger houses, a second car etc...and the class behind them find it affordable to move where these have upgraded. Now it has moved even farther and while it is constantly blamed on EBR public schools that is only part of it. Livingston Parish and Ascension Parish had vast areas of undeveloped land and the migration continues. Look at Melrose, Broadmoor, Red Oaks and Sherwood Forest. They all have transitioned or are in the process of transitioning into the above. It's called life.

The number one cause was white flight due to integration of the schools.

NBR was not a bad place to live in even in the early and mid 60s.

They had a big street program around that time funded by a parish tax and NBR received major street improvements and most of the bigger streets were four laned and the result was a nice grid pattern that you see today.

SBR never got the upgrade and phase II of the plan was defeated at the polls. If memory serves in that plan included the widening of Lee Drive and Dalrymple. Two projects which never happened.

Evidence of SBR neglect of roadways remained until Kip's Green Light plan helped things a lot, but some areas were never fixed (Lee/Dalrymple for example).

Istrouma High use to rival BRHS and was a big deal as was Glen Oaks. Belaire came along strong too but only for a short while. All of these NBR schools declined quickly as the neighborhoods declined.