Landscape Experts Focus on Gentilly & Ponchartrain

DESIGN WEEKEND
Landscape experts and students converge on Pontchartrain Park, Gentilly Woods
Saturday, October 13, 2007
By Leslie Williams
Staff writer

As Pontchartrain Park and Gentilly Woods residents rebuild their neighborhoods, they can expect lots of ideas to choose from regarding how to design their natural areas.

A group of design experts and university students in cooperation with Longue Vue House & Gardens are gathering information about the green spaces in the two New Orleans neighborhoods, collectively known as Pontilly, so they can develop strategies for shaping the landscape in ways that add to the area's beauty while helping protect it against flooding.

"It's wonderful because you have to have plans -- and that costs money," said Concepcion "Connie" Tregre, who lives in Gentilly Woods and was among residents who participated this week in a design weekend with the experts and university students.

"I'm eager to hear their ideas for the golf course (near Southern University at New Orleans) and drainage for our area," Tregre said.

The Pontilly neighborhood already has a master plan, said William Morrish, a professor of architecture, landscape architecture and urban and environmental planning at the University of Virginia. This effort, he said, will provide richer details for landscaping the environment and public parks in Pontilly.

"We're hoping that by early next year we'll have a plan to take to the public," said Jane Wolff, assistant professor of architecture at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. "It will be less like a prescription and more like a menu" from which residents may make a selection.

Wolff, Moorish, Longue Vue Executive Director Bonnie Goldblum and students from Louisiana State University, Southern University, Tulane University and the University of Virginia toured the Pontilly area Friday. They began discussing possible options for the green spaces in connection with the four-day design weekend financed by $30,000 from the Catherine Brown Memorial Fund, which is named after Moorish's deceased wife.

There are many issues to consider, said Moorish, like using some of the land in the area to reduce flooding, making the land more productive, sorting out the best use for vacant spaces and deciding what to plant.

The notion is not only to propose ideas that make the area more beautiful with lawns and ornamental plants, but also show the how the landscape can be designed to reduce flooding and conserve water, Wolff said.

In Pontilly, the collective is "looking at issues with drainage and surface water (after a rain) and gardens that function better hydrologically and ecologically," Wolff said.

The scope of the project also includes coming up with ideas for public rights of way, parks, canals, street easements and neutral grounds, she said.

"This area is the third largest green space in the city -- after City Park and Audubon Park," said Carol Reese, an art historian who teaches in the School of Architecture at Tulane University. On Friday, she lectured students and other participants in the design weekend about the history of Pontchartrain Park, a subdivision of single-family homes created for middle-class African Americans in the 1950s.
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Leslie Williams can be reached at lwilliams@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3358.
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