Tulane University - Jambalaya Yearbook (New Orleans, LA)

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at the foot of Canal Street by the river. Both introduced retail shops. Canal Place added office space, and Poydras Plaza introduced a night life. The advent of the LWE introduced a night life and also a new life to the formerly decayed Ware- house District. Many of the pavilions and shops and restaurants of the Fair were housed in these very buildings, old, turn-of-the-cen- tury brick and timber structures that had survived decades of abuse, both from nature and from their owners. These stal- wart edifices were restored and soon were filled with the voices of happy fair goers, music from bands, smells of cook- ing foods from many cultures and also the everimportant ringing of cash regis- ters. The World ' s Fair showed developers that New Orleans was planning on mak- ing a commitment to clean up the ware- house district. The new convention cen- ter further proved this to them, and they responded accordingly. The Park Suite Sugar House Hotel went up, and al- though it failed to attract many fair go- ers, it is one of the closest hotels to the This candy man makes his rounds on St. Charles Ave- nue. But this is actually his mule. The newly built Jax Brewery experiences a peaceful day — a rarity in New Orleans. Jax was opened to the public in November. 18 the city

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THE CITY Celebrating New Orleans ' Return to Itself In 1979, Richard Ernie Reed, a respect- ed urban preservationist, published a booi entitled Return to the City, a well- written, thought-provoking volume. It lauded the efforts of communities in places such as San Francisco, St. Paul, Chicago, Portland, New York, Savannah and Galveston which busted their prover- bial buns to revitalize their downtrodden and oft-neglected neighborhoods. New Orleans seems to have at last discovered the philosophy of urban preservation and is applying it to its own heart, the Central Business District and the Vieux Carre. At the end of 1984, it was fashionable in New Orleans to speak ill of the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition. Well ... it was fashionable to speak ill of its fiscal and management woes anyway. No one, however, who had attended the LWE could say too many bad things about the fair itself. True, it never received the at- tendance it ought to have and true, it wasn ' t advertised as well as it ought to have, and true, public figures seem to have profited from it. But in all of the complaining and fingerpointing, no one seems to have noticed several very im- portant and key facts brought about by the World ' s Fair. Thanks to an expected and impending flood of tourists with fat little wallets, the City of Nawlins was forced to tidy its image. Streets were cleaned, new paving was installed and two urban renewal pro- jects — long on the drawing boards but never implemented until the threat of out-of-towners seeing the state of the city ' s heart, forced their construction — were undertaken. One was the St. Charles Avenue streetscape Improve- ment, the program that resulted in the tree-planting and installation of what is termed sidewalk furniture in the biz along the city ' s most historic street from Poydras to Lee Circle. The other projected was the Lafayette Mall. Still unfinished, its concept will pro- vide a new life for the CBD, a section of the city that tends to die down after 5 p.m. This planned pedestrian mall will stretch from Poydras Plaza by the Super- dome down to the Piazza d ' italian and beyond to the newly-renamed Conven- tion Center Boulevard, featuring shops, eateries and nightclubs. The trend, if you ' ve missed it, is quite simple. Where the late 1960 ' s and cer- tainly the 1970 ' s inspired a mass exodus to the suburbs, the eighties are inspiring a return to the city. Where shops and boutiques flocked to the malls on the outskirts, leaving T-shirt joints and dirty movie houses downtown, it is now fash- ionable to move into renovated, formerly decayed neighborhoods and set up shop. This trend has hit New Orleans, and just in time. While many programs and projects were inspired as a result of an impending World ' s Fair, there are a few scattered examples that predate the LWE and show developers ' confidence in New Or- leans. Two main ones set up on opposite ends of the CBD: Poydras Plaza by the Hyatt and Superdome, and Canal Place Continued For a modest fee, you can get a traditional horse and buggy tour of the Quarter. It ' s a bit touristy though. Photos: L. Block the city 17

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the city 19