Resolve to visit New Orleans in '07

COMMENTARY

By Charles Leocha

Travel columnist

updated 1:14 p.m. ET Dec. 29, 2006

Charles Leocha Travel columnist • Profile • E-mail

Jambalaya, gumbo, pralines and beignets stir evocative memories of the heady old days. Rhythm and blues, Dixieland and zydeco pulse into the centuries-old streets. Football fans celebrate a win by the hometown Saints. New Orleans as a unique historic tourist destination is back. Tourists can enjoy the flavor, sounds and exhilaration of one of America’s most exciting cities and they can be a part of the revitalization of this historic Mississippi port town.

Tourism is the forward edge of New Orleans’s Hurricane Katrina recovery. Though saddled by ineffective local and state governments, the tourism organizations and fearless citizens have led the renewal.

For the past year, the tourism infrastructure of the Crescent City has been in a frenzied stage of rebuilding. Hotels like the Ritz Carlton, W, Monteleone, Intercontinental, Omni and International House have roared back to life. And top chefs like John Besh of award-winning Restaurant August and Tory McPhail of historic Commander’s Palace have returned to raise their exceptional restaurants from the hurricane rubble.

The New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau has also done its part, working together with neighborhood associations, schools, the restaurant association, the airport, small B&Bs, giant hotels and casinos to bring back the lucrative tourism economy. Slowly, the city has clawed its way back onto the nation’s list of must-see premier destinations.

For the most part, the New Orleans that most tourists experience did not suffer the flooding and devastation seen on TV; in fact, it emerged relatively unscathed, physically. The French Quarter, the Central Business District, Magazine Street, the Garden District, Faubourg Marigny and Faubourg Tremé are now just about back to their old selves. Buildings have been renovated, shops are open and restaurants are serving a thankful group of locals determined to breathe life back into the city.

In the French Quarter, carriages again rattle over the cobblestones to the clip-clop cadence of their horses. Powdered sugar wafts across the sidewalk beside the Café du Monde. The bell tolls out the hours in the tower of St. Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square, reverberating throughout the Vieux Carré. Traffic moves fitfully along Decatur Street. Watercolorists, sculptors and souvenir hawkers crowd the French and Farmers Markets.

Faubourg Marigny, New Orleans’s first suburb, comes alive in the music clubs on Frenchmen Street, and the grand old Creole mansion houses along leafy Esplanade Avenue are still spectacular. But across North Rampart Street, in Faubourg Tremé, the bars and restaurants are for the most part closed. The colorful buildings of this onetime French-Creole neighborhood are currently in various stages of repair, but the vibrant flavor of this section, with its quirky houses and voodoo past, is worth a walk during the day.

The Central Business District bustles beneath the city’s clutch of high-rise office buildings. This is where the Anglo-American settlers began what amounted to a new city, leaving the French and Creoles to reside across Canal Street in the French Quarter. Two highlights are the Church of the Immaculate Conception, where soft light filters through massive stained-glass windows to illuminate spectacular religious art, and Gallier Hall, whose facade echoes a giant Greek temple facing Lafayette Square.

The Warehouse District and Magazine Street, once home to giant cotton balers and printing plants, is beginning to reclaim its artists, galleries and antiques auctioneers. The Thirteen Sisters and the Leeds Foundry buildings both stamped an English style on the city, and Julia Street, a nonstop collection of galleries, is unwavering in its drive to regain its position as the “Soho of the South.” Nearby museums are again open for business, including the National World War II Museum, the Louisiana Children’s Museum, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the Confederate Museum.

Fortunately, the Garden District survived the storm well, and tourists once again stroll its streets past gardens shaded by mimosa and magnolia trees to enjoy the neighborhood’s Greek Revival buildings, Italianate brick houses and intricate ironwork. The two-story porches adorn the Victorian houses, which have stunning interiors with soaring ceilings and spectacular chandeliers. Only one is open to the public: the Women’s Opera Guild House, on Prytania Street, which was built in 1858. The nearby Fire Department Museum gives visitors a different view of life in the 1800s with a great collection of antique firefighting equipment.

The New Orleans of disaster
Yes, the tourist’s New Orleans lives again. But there is another, apocalyptic, side of New Orleans. To understand the scale of the coming reformation efforts that will be splashed across newspapers and on TV in the coming months, Americans would be well served by a more sober look at the rest of the city and its governance.

Only a short walk or drive away from tourist neighborhoods the devastation from Katrina is overwhelming. The floodwaters are gone, but the Lower 9th Ward is a complete and utter wasteland. During a two-hour tour of the neighborhood in late October, not one habitable building was seen. The immensity of destruction is amazing and cannot be comprehended through TV coverage and magazine photos alone.

On the other side of the city, the once-thriving upper-middle-class neighborhood of Lakeview presents another expanse of ruined homes. Here, about 10 percent of the houses seem to be in some stage of repair or rebuilding, but the lurking presence of hundreds of empty building lots and abandoned homes missing their shingles, windows, gutters and siding underscores the problems of rebuilding and neighborhood renewal.

The rejuvenation of this city’s bedroom communities will take the good part of a decade. Currently, the city leaders and state government seem frozen — without a plan to rebuild the social infrastructure. City services have only recently been returned to many neighborhoods outside of the downtown district. While the parochial schools opened almost immediately after the hurricane and provided a rallying point for returnees, many of the city’s public schools in habitable areas are still shuttered.

MORE FROM U.S. & CANADA

U.S. & Canada Section Front

Top 25 American hot spots St. Louis highlights its blues heritage Deadwood marks 20 years of legal gambling Eat, shop, explore Chicago’s ethnic neighborhoods TV tours a big attraction for N.Y. tourists America’s most attractive people America’s favorite cities Which Hawaii is right for you? Twilight-themed restaurant for Washington town Uncle Remus museum still grapples with race U.S. & Canada Section Front   Add U.S. & Canada headlines to your news reader: