Pontilly - Pontchartrain Park Gentilly Neighborhood Association

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Ponchartrain Park

Pontchartrain Park Neighborhood Snapshot

Pontchartrain Park is a suburban-style neighborhood, with 200 acres of greenspace for parks, playgrounds, lagoons and the Joe Bartholomew Golf Course. Two major streets run through the neighborhood from Chef Menteur Highway, Press and Congress Drives. All other streets are curvilinear and prevent passage out of the neighborhood, creating a degree of privacy and pedestrian safety.

Pontchartrain is enclosed by railroad tracks to the west, Leon C. Simon to the north, the Inner Navigation Harbor Canal on the east and a small mostly dry bayou, remnants of an older time, to the south. It is one of the first areas in New Orleans designed to provide home ownership to middle and upper income African Americans and one of the last Gentilly neighborhoods to be developed.

History

	© GNO Community Data Center
	A view along Dreux Avenue

The city of New Orleans sold the land between East New Orleans and Lakeview to the New Orleans Lakeshore Land Company. Most of it was swamp and had to be dredged. Pontchartrain Park Homes, with Edgar Stern as president, was the developer for the Pontchartrain neighborhood. The plans were to build a subdivision around the city's 185-acre Pontchartrain Park. It was advertised in the Times-Picyaune in 1954.

Constructed by the same company who built Gentilly Woods, Crawford Homes, built two- and three-bedroom homes styled very similar to those in Gentilly Woods, the all-white neighborhood next to Pontchartrain Park bordering Chef Menteur Highway.

In the late 1950s Mary Dora Coghill Elementary School was built for the young people in the neighborhood. In later years, residents would attend services at St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church in Gentilly Woods and send their children to its school.

In the early 1970s there was a significant residential turnover in Pontchartrain Park as many families moved to the newly developing New Orleans East neighborhoods. In the mid 1970s, a passageway to Leon C. Simon from Press Drive was opened to allow access to the neighborhood from the rear.

Today, the community still retains a certain charm rooted in family and community life. Pontilly Neighborhood Association, Pontchartrain Park Home Improvement Association and other neighborhood organizations, some of who work with city administrators and churches, operate to maintain the visual appeal of the neighborhood, protect property values, and keep the neighborhood safe.

Sitting along the northern edge of the Joe M. Bartholomew Sr. Municipal Golf Course is Wesley Barrow, a 10.82-acre park that includes a stadium, playground and tennis courts. This quite active NORD-run facility provides a multitude of activities for both young and old.

Southern University

	Image courtesy New Orleans Public Library (nutrias.org). Permission for reuse required.
	"In 1959 Southern University at New Orleans opened its doors on Press Street near Pontchartrain Park. These graduation scenes are from the schools 1976-1977 yearbook, The Commuter." [from the African Americans in New Orleans: Learning exhibit]

Southern University is a fully accredited four-year, co-educational, liberal arts, state school of higher learning for the education of African American students. It's main campus sits on a 17-acre site in Pontchartrain Park and has expanded to include a north campus adjacent to the U.S. Navy and Marine Reserve Training site in the Lake Terrace/Lake Oaks neighborhood.

Southern University opened in 1959, in one building on the site of their present location with 158 students and 15 faculty members. Bachelor's degrees were conferred to its first class in May 1963. Enrollment and faculty members increased substantially over the next ten years. Originally under the authority of the Louisiana State Board of Education, it became a branch of Southern University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in Baton Rouge in 1973. The university was open to all individuals regardless of race or color following a lawsuit against the Louisiana State Board of Education filed by Virigina Cox Welch, a Caucasian high school teacher.

Today, SUNO offers a range of basic degree programs in various fields of study. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and has an accredited graduate program in Social Work. Although students from various ethnic backgrounds attend the school, the majority population is still African American.