re: Pictures from days gone by....

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It always kills me to see pre-1970-ish concrete chock full of shells in it used as aggregate. The sheer volume that must have been available for concrete production boggles my mind.

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I guess you're not old enough to have seen Lake Pontchartrain before they stopped shell dredging due to environmental concerns.

The water was always cloudy from turned up silt due to dredging on such a large scale.

There wasn't a day you could be on the seawall along Lake Shore Drive and not see several dredges pulling up enough shells to fill huge barges.

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I'll take a guess and say the pic is from 1984.

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Which, if true, almost certainly means crime was much higher than now.

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If you honestly think crime at Eastwood Mall in Birmingham was higher in 1984 than it is now, then you’ve never been to Eastwood Mall.

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The Krispy Kreme on the corner was lit!

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Two words…

Hot

Now

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I guess you're not old enough to have seen Lake Pontchartrain before they stopped shell dredging due to environmental concerns.

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Probably old enough, just never lived anywhere near the coast.

In fact, that's a point that makes it weird for me. I'm a NASA contractor and often hang out at MSFC in Huntsville. MANY of the older sidewalks and concrete works there are full of shell segments. That's about a 300 mile drive to the closest coast.

My in-laws place in Sylacauga AL also had a lot of shells embedded in the concrete, residential stuff from the late 1950's. I could understand pea gravel instead of crushed limestone, etc due to local quarries and rock types (side note, a lot of Sylacauga concrete has waste product marble chips in it instead of limestone). But trucking in shells seems to be a bit expensive if just used for cheap aggregate. But then again, I'm a Sparky kind of guy instead of a Flangehead or Rockhead Engineer. My Rockhead buddies have built concrete canoes.

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Lakeview, Lakeshore, Lake Vista 1958.Before Orleans Marina was completed! Before the Robert E. Lee Theater was built!

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How did Lake Vista have so much more trees and vegetation compared to Lake Shore?

St Pius Class of 74 representing!

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How did Lake Vista have so much more trees and vegetation compared to Lake Shore?

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Everything north of Robert E. Lee Boulevard and Leon C. Simon is newly-created land reclaimed from the Lake. The reclamation process started in the 1920s, and was completed in the late 1930s. It was always planned to be residential subdivisions with parks, etc.

Lake Vista, with its unusual design, was the first area opened up for development, prior to the US entering WWII. All of the streets were built and the land subdivided into lots prior to US entering WWII, though not all of the lots were sold or had houses built on them.

With the ramp-up prior to the US entering WWII, and with the war effort, almost all of the remaining empty land north of Robert E. Lee Boulevard-- what would eventually become Lake Shore, Lake Terrace, Lake Terrace Oaks-- began to be put to military use: Camp Leroy Johnson for the army was built east of Franklin Avenue. West of Elysian Fields (basically the UNO campus) was the original location of Naval Air Station New Orleans before it was moved to Belle Chasse. Military hospitals were built in the area containing Lake Shore. Of course, once the US officially entered the war, subdivision and residential development STOPPED completely and did not pick up again until well after the war..

Here is a map of the facilities during wartime:


Here is a good aerial photo showing the lakefront right around the time of the war. Notice how Lake Vista has its streets already in place:


Naval Air Station basically where UNO is today:


Aerial showing Lagarde Military Hospital in what is now Lake Shore. Note how trees had already been planted on the Lake Vista 'lanes' (sidewalks):


Another view of the hospital complex, taken from the vicinity of the Lake Pontchartrain Lighthouse at West End:


So the short answer was Lake Shore, Lake Terrace, and Lake Terrace Oaks were developed quite a bit LATER than Lake Vista, on land that had already been cleared for military purposes.

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So the short answer was Lake Shore, Lake Terrace, and Lake Terrace Oaks were developed quite a bit LATER than Lake Vista, on land that had already been cleared for military purposes.

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Thank you for the info and most especially for the pictures. As someone that grew up on the Lakefront in the 70's, it was nice seeing how it got that way. My Dad, who was born in the Quarter and grew up on Ursuline by the City Park, told me the land was reclaimed but I never really checked it out until this thread. I was unaware of how much military infrastructure was out there around WWII.