Northside District

(Bayou St. John, Gentilly, Lakeview, and The Upper Ninth Ward)

The northern neighborhoods of the city are among some of the newest, with the exception of the Upper Ninth Ward. Most of them have seen serious settlement only in the last few decades, as technology made it possible to raise the ground level high enough that it wasn't constantly a mud pit.

Bayou St. John
This neighborhood derives its name from a finger of Lake Pontchartrain that runs deep into the northern part of the city. A portion of the original bayou has been filled in recently to make room for a middle-income housing development through much of the bayou remains flooded. Houseboats which once clogged the waterway are becoming less common. This is thanks in no small part to the stench, as the waters are popular dumping grounds for trash--and occasionally bodies. The city sometimes dredges the bayou to keep it at least marginally navigable,but nobody breaks their backs doing it.

Gentilly
Gentilly originally grew along Gentilly Ridge, a stretch of high ground that bordered a bayou in this area. Early this century, the Orleans Levee Board filled in much of the swampy ground. Pumps run by Hellstromme Industries did the rest. Now, Gentilly is home to a growing suburban population. Unlike some neighborhoods in the city, Gentilly is fairly integrated racially. It also houses Dillard University and the Pontchartrain Beach Resort, both of which are segregated, so go figure.

Lakeview
A new seawall on the lakefront made another suburban area possible. As with Gentilly, it owes its existence largely to the efforts of the Orleans Levee Board, but Lakeview is considered a little more upscale than Gentilly. Several golf courses and City Park give the area more of a gentrified feel, attracting residents with a little more disposable income. It's nowhere near the high-society types in the Garden District, but still not the kind of people who make note of where the soup kitchens are either.

The Upper Ninth Ward
Prior to the digging of the Industrial Canal in the early 1920s, there was just the Ninth Ward. Now residents refer to the part west of the Canal as the Upper Ninth and the area east as the Lower Ninth. The Upper Ninth, being adjacent to Downtown and Mid-City, is the more developed of the two.

The fact that the Ninth was also on a stretch of ground higher than the areas closer to the lake gave it an edge as it was more suitable for building. That means the buildings here are older than in the other northern neighborhoods--which also means they're more rundown than the newer homes and apartments nearby. Of course that usually results in lower rents as long as you don't mind sharing your room with water stain shaped like Texas or a cockroach or two...thousand.