Polder Pontchartrain

In 1925, retired architect Thomas Sully (1855-1939) proposed an engineering project for Louisiana . . . creating a giant polder out of Lake Pontchartrain. He envisioned  that home builders could utilize the newly formed land and that there would no longer be a need to construct a bridge linking New Orleans to the North Shore. Sully conveyed:

'Lake Pontchartrain is a shallow lake, the average depth being about fourteen feet and the greatest depth sixteen feet. A mile from shore you would construct the levee in water from six to twelve feet deep. Just what it would cost I will let the engineers and contractors, who are familiar with such work, figure it out.

As to the value of the land after the completion, it should pay for the construction. Permission would have to be given by the United States, the state of Louisiana, and the city or a corporation could do the work. The land should be worth on an average $500 per acre, and as there is [sic] about 227,500 acres, it would mean $113,750,000.'

An avid sportsman, Sully spent considerable time on Lake Pontchartrain, the Tchefuncta River and the Gulf of Mexico.

Image/quoted matter from: "Here is Proposed Lake Levee." The Times-Picayune (8 January 1925): p. 6.