Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans (33 page)

New Orleans’s Sports Teams and Their Home Turf

New Orleans Saints

On November 1, 1966, the
New Orleans Saints
became the sixteenth NFL franchise. John Mecom Jr. was the majority stockholder and president of the franchise. Tom Fears was named the first head coach. The city was thrilled; the first day that tickets went on sale for the first game, 20,000 tickets were sold, accumulating in 33,400 ticket sales for the first game.

The Saints played their very first game against the Los Angeles Rams and lost 16-7. Little did New Orleanians know that this would be an omen for the future of the team. But that didn’t stop the fans from standing behind them—through all of the less-than-thrilling seasons when fans put paper bags over their heads, they still attended games of the “Aints.”

In 1985, the team had a new owner, Tom Benson, who bought the team for $70.204 million (Official Site of the New Orleans Saints). It wasn’t until 1987 that the Saints made it to their first NFL playoff game. For the first time in their twenty-year history, the fans went wild!

In 2005, the Superdome (the home field for the Saints) was severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Knowing its importance to New Orleans and New Orleanians, the Dome was repaired in time for the Saints to play on their home field for the first regular season game, lifting the spirits of the city at a time when it needed it most.

Then, in 2010, the hopes and dreams of the city were realized when the New Orleans Saints under head coach Sean Payton went to Super Bowl XLIVI in Miami, where they beat their opponents, the Indianapolis Colts, 31-17. More than forty years after the inception of the franchise, the New Orleans Saints were World Champions.

New Orleans Hornets

In 2002, New Orleans got their second pro-sports team, the
Hornets
NBA basketball franchise.

Founded in 1988, the Hornets originally called Charlotte, North
Carolina, home. The team moved to New Orleans following its 2001-2
season. Its inaugural season as the
New Orleans Hornets
began with a home game on October 30, 2002.

Hurricane Katrina forced the franchise to move temporarily to Oklahoma City, where they spent two seasons, returning to New Orleans in 2007.

In April 2012, Tom Benson, owner of the NFL Saints franchise, bought the team.

Louisiana Superdome

The
Louisiana Superdome,
locally called the Dome, is owned by the state of Louisiana and was built at a cost of $161 million. It was opened with a football game in August 1975. Probably the most extravagant building in the world at the time, it hosts a seating capacity of 76,468, a diameter of 680 feet, and a height of 273 feet. Although it garners and reflects a Texas flavor, it outdoes the Houston Astrodome in size, which could fit inside the Superdome with thirty feet above it to spare. The Dome towers over the site of the old railroad yard and is the most visible building in the city. With the opening of the Superdome, the city was announcing that it was officially open for business.

The Superdome is the home to the Tulane University football team, the New Orleans Saints NFL team, and the annual Sugar Bowl game.

In August of 2005, the Dome was designated as one of the “refuges
of last resort” by Mayor Nagin for those citizens who were not able to evacuate the city for Hurricane Katrina. The Dome sustained severe damage during the storm. The latest renovation, completed in June 2011, cost $85 million.

The Louisiana Superdome has hosted (or will host) a number of Super Bowl games, including those of 1970, 1972, 1975, 1978, 1981, 1986, 1990, 1997, 2002, and 2013.

On October 4, 2011, Governor Bobby Jindal and the New Orleans Saints announced that a ten-year agreement had been reached for renaming the Dome. The new name of the domed stadium became the
Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

New Orleans Arena

The
New Orleans Arena
is another part of the city’s sports complex and is the home court for the New Orleans
Hornets.

The arena was completed in 1999 at a cost of approximately $114 million. In addition to the Hornets, it is the venue for some high school basketball games as well as concerts.

English Turn

Another element to the sports picture was added in 1994 at
English Turn.
No longer just a bend in the river, it is now a country club development with a Jack Nicklaus-designed championship golf course, where the PGA Zurich Classic is held each year.

Industry and Natural Resources

The
Avondale Shipyards,
founded in 1938 as Avondale Marine Ways, is across the river from New Orleans in Avondale, Louisiana. Today it is part of Huntington Ingalls Industries. At one point, the shipyard employed more than six thousand people in the building of ocean-going crafts, making it the largest employer in the state at the height of its life. Huntington Ingalls is on track to close down the Avondale shipyard in 2013.

The 832-acre Michoud plant called
NASA Michoud Assembly Facility
in Eastern New Orleans has been used for fabricating rocket boosters for flights in space. Martin Marietta manufactured the Space Shuttle’s external fuel tanks under a contract to NASA. NASA retired the Space Shuttle program in 2010. Currently, Jacobs Technology (part of Jacobs Engineering, Inc.) maintains the day-to-day operations of the facility.

Freeport McMoRan,
a Fortune-300 natural resource company
headquartered in New Orleans, produces sulphur, copper, and gold. Its contributions to the community have been many. In the field of education, the company has contributed to the public schools of Louisiana. It has made enormous contributions to human service organizations, such as the United Way Agencies. In the arts, it has contributed to organizations such as the Metropolitan Arts Fund. In helping environmental groups, Freeport McMoRan has made huge contributions to the Louisiana Nature and Science Center.

The
Audubon Institute
is a non-profit organization that operates the Audubon Zoo, the Aquarium of the Americas
, Audubon Park
, Woldenberg Riverfont Park, Freeport McMoRan
Audubon Species Survival Center, Audubon Center for Research on Endangered Species, and the Audubon Insectarium. It adds to the local economy $100 million annually. It is in part supported by household and
individual memberships. The Institute began as “Friends of the Zoo
” in 1974.

Government and Civic Center

New Orleans operates on the parish council system. Orleans Parish and the City of New Orleans share boundaries; therefore, the parish and city government are the same. The New Orleans mayor is assisted by a chief administrator and a city council made up of seven members, five from districts and two at large. The
City Hall,
where government administration takes place, is an eleven-story building that is part of the
Civic Center,
built in 1957. It includes the eight-story
State Office Building,
the
State Supreme Court Building,
the
Civil Courts Building,
and the
Main City Library.
The Civic Center, which covers an area of eleven acres in the CBD, was built at a cost of $19 million.

Universities

New Orleans is home to many universities and colleges: Tulane University on St. Charles Avenue (opened in 1834), Dillard University on Gentilly Boulevard (1869), Loyola University of the South on St. Charles Avenue (1912), Xavier University on Washington Avenue (1915), Our Lady of Holy Cross College on Woodland Drive (1916), Delgado Community College on City Park Avenue (1921), Southern University of New Orleans on Press Drive (1956), and the University of New Orleans on Lakeshore Drive (1958).

Louisiana World Exposition

From May to November 1984, New Orleans was host to the
Louisiana World Exposition,
held on the riverfront between Poydras Street
and the Greater New Orleans Mississippi River
Bridge. The Fair’s theme was “The World of Rivers—Fresh Water as a Source
of Life.” A 550-seat amphitheater provided a superb view of the proscenium stage with the magnificent Mississippi as a backdrop for the international artists who performed there. An open air aquacade extravaganza further carried out the water theme.

Although the World’s Fair lost a great deal of money, it left a valuable legacy to the people of New Orleans in the development of the riverfront, the construction of hotels and parks, and the improvement of roads. The
Riverwalk,
a major shopping mall, attracts millions of tourists annually. The
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
is now the sixth largest in the nation.

Parks

City Park
is one of the largest municipal parks in the United States and covers fifteen hundred acres of land. The original park was the Allard Plantation, bought at auction by John McDonogh, who willed it to the children of New Orleans. Allard lived on the land until he died and was buried beneath the one remaining Dueling Oak. The park tripled in size in the 1920s.

Audubon Park
was once the plantation of
É
tienne de Boré and the site of the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition of 1884. It now boasts the
Audubon Zoological Garden,
the South’s largest zoo, located at the juncture of Magazine Street and the Mississippi River. Besides white alligators, swamp exhibits, and the world of primates, it features waterfalls and tropical vegetation that simulate a natural habitat for more than one thousand animals.

Armstrong Park
on Rampart Street between St. Ann Street and St. Peter Street is a square with an interesting history. Named in honor of the New Orleans-born jazz musician who was the city’s goodwill ambassador to the world, it is home to many festivals and celebrations. The city purchased the square from Claude Tremé in 1810 and
subdivided the neighborhood. In this area, many free people of color and skilled black craftsmen lived side by side with white families who built the Italianate and Greek Revival homes.

After the Civil War, the square was renamed Beauregard Square in honor of the Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard. In 1930, the Municipal Auditorium was constructed to the rear of the square. Its name was changed to
Morris F. X. Jeff Auditorium
in honor of the city official who helped provide recreation and sports activities for African-American children and was the location for operas, plays, and Carnival Balls. It also housed the Harrah’s temporary casino in 1995. The auditorium suffered damage from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Future use of the facility is uncertain.

Woldenberg Riverfront Park,
which opened in October 1989, provided the landscaping for the Aquarium, which opened the following year. The park is named for Malcomb and Dorothy Woldenberg, philanthropists who gave tremendous sums to Tulane University
and to Woldenberg Village for the elderly in Algiers. The park consists of thirteen acres of green space featuring oak trees, magnolias, crepe myrtles, and a brick promenade along the river. It is graced with a beautiful kinetic sculpture by a New Orleanian, John Scott, who won the commission in a contest sponsored by the Audubon Institute
. His work, called “Ocean Song,” is sixteen feet tall and made of mirror-finished stainless steel. Its top elements move in the wind.

The
Aquarium of the Americas,
part of the Audubon Institute, opened in 1990 on a sixteen-acre site on the riverfront near Canal Street. It offers an up-close view of sea life, showing the aquatic worlds of the Caribbean, Amazon Rainforest, Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi Delta. The zoo and aquarium, both on the Mississippi River, can be accessed by the
John James Audubon Riverboat,
which connects the Uptown and French Quarter attractions.

Museums

In April 1993,
the New Orleans Museum of Art
in City Park completed a twenty million dollar renovation, doubling its gallery space, expanding its educational facilities, and adding a restaurant. NOMA’s collections include works of art of western civilization from the pre-Christian era to the present. Its collections present the arts of Africa, the Far East, pre-Columbian America, the Faberge collection, and works by the impressionist painter Edgar Degas. It is the city’s oldest fine arts organization and has a permanent collection of almost 40,000 objects valued in excess of $200 million.

The Historic New Orleans Collection
at 533 Royal Street is a private, non-profit organization established in 1966 by General and Mrs. L. Kemper Williams to serve the public as a museum and research center for state and local history.

Mus
é
e Conti Wax Museum of Louisiana Legends
at 917 Conti Street tells the story of three centuries of New Orleans history in costumed wax figures and settings.

The
National World War II Museum,
originally called the National D-Day Museum, opened its doors on June 6, 2000.
Stephen Ambrose,
historian and author, founded the museum as a way of telling the story of the American experience in World War II. The name was officially changed by Congress to the National World War II Museum in 2003. The museum, located at 945 Magazine Street, displays exhibits of film, documents, and artifacts of the war. The museum also features dining, entertainment, and shopping.

There are a number of impressive museums scattered through the city, including the
Cabildo,
the
Presbyt
è
re,
the
1850 House
in the lower Pontalba Apartments, the
Old US Mint,
the
Confederate Museum,
the
Pharmacy Museum,
and the
Children’s Museum.