Pontchartrain Expressway at St. Charles Avenue

Pontchartrain Expressway at St. Charles Avenue, originally uploaded by regional.modernism.

The elevated section of I-10 designated as the Pontchartrain Expressway begins as the interstate crosses the Orleans Parish line at the 17th Street Canal and leads to the Crescent City Connection (1958).

The footprint of the expressway largely follows that of the New Basin Canal, constructed in 1831-38 to facilitate transportation of goods between Lake Pontchartrain and downtown. The canal's significance to New Orleans' shipping declined after the opening of the Industrial Canal in 1923. Most of the New Basin Canal was filled between 1937 - 1950, making way for the Pontchartrain Expressway, Pontchartrain Boulevard and West End.

[photo: TSA NOVA]

NYC :: NOLA :: NYC

The New Orleans World Trade Center (formerly International Trade Mart) is located at the foot of Canal Street, once the premier commercial thoroughfare of the city.* Positioning the new International Trade Mart (ITM) on this site was part of a major redevelopment that began in the postwar period.

In 1946 Robert Moses, the "master builder" of New York City, published his Arterial Plan for New Orleans. This included the now infamous plan for the nearly built Riverfront Expressway, a "four-lane elevated highway over the railroad tracks" from Elysian Fields Avenue to Calliope. The plan was designed to alleviate congestion and ease our traffic woes, and ironically claimed it would protect the Vieux Carre from erosion due to traffic. Preservationists argued that this elevated waterfront expressway would effectively cut off the Vieux Carre from the River on which the city was founded.

By the completion of the ITM Building in 1967, the Riverfront Expressway controversy was in high swing. The new tower (the tallest building in New Orleans until it was surpassed by the Plaza Tower in 1969) became emblematic of this fear of change and a vision of what a New New Orleans might look like. The ITM was designed by the New York architect Edward Durell Stone, best known for the design of the Rockefeller Center. It was capped by a revolving lounge, the Top of the Mart, which featured red velvet furniture and a spectacular view of the city and its environs.**

Today the New Orleans World Trade Center is under restoration and interior conversion by architect Frederic Schwartz FAIA, one of the principal designers of the THINK World Cultural Center in New York. Recently, Schwartz addressed the New York City Landmarks Commission in defense of the O'Toole Building by New Orleans architect Albert Ledner.

* This site is a significant point of demarcation in the New Orleanian mental compass. North, South, East and West are blurry distinctions in a city better navigated by Uptown, Downtown, Riverside and Lakeside. Uptown and Downtown historically refer to the upper and lower sides of Canal Street that separate the Spanish / French / Creole Quarter form the American Sector. But you knew that.

** The Top of the Mart was closed in the summer of 2001 and all that fabulous furniture liquidized. The revolving lounge had been purchased by Randy Gerber, who planned to transform it from the 1960s to the new millenium. He pulled out shortly after the terrorist attacks on the New York World Trade Center. The nightclub was eventually re-opened as Club 360.