New Orleans=Number One

Last  year we posted information about New Orleans architect Thomas Sully's suggestion for filling Lake Pontchartrain.

We recently came across a 1966 proposal for reducing the Mississippi River from the Garden District to the Industrial Canal. Engineer Simeon O. Coxe, Jr. of B.M. Dornblatt & Associates developed the ambitious plan as a means of "eliminating all the physical barriers preventing the progress of New Orleans towards the goal of becoming NEW ORLEANS = NUMBER ONE."

Coxe's land reclamation bid centered on the Mississippi River rather than Lake Pontchartrain, in the interest of creating 2,000 acres of real estate development sites. He felt that dredging a new Mississippi River channel from the River Bend towards the Gulf of Mexico would obviate the need for levees, railroads and warehouse buildings from Napoleon Avenue to the Ninth Ward. The area could then be utilized for modern hotels, apartment buildings, office buildings and parkways.

Coxe supported the restoration of the New Orleans riverfront circa 1790.  By blocking much of the Mississippi, he felt that the river could be brought to sea level along Jackson Square, and that a proposed Riverfront Expressway could be built along the Algiers side.

To read more, see:  "Directions." Vieux Carre Courier 3:26 (11 November 1966), pp. 4-5. Louisiana Research Collection, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.