Filmore Ave. between West End Blvd. and Pontchartrain Blvd., New Orleans 70124
New Basin Canal Park follows the footprint of the New Basin Canal, constructed by the New Orleans Canal and Banking Company between 1832 and 1838. The sixty-foot wide, six-foot deep, and six-miles-long channel stretched from Lake Pontchartrain to a turning basin downtown at the present-day Union Passenger Terminal. Improvements during the 1840s added levees, a towpath, and a shell road to West End, a new lakefront resort.
Enslaved people were viewed as too valuable for cutting the canal through mosquito-infested swamps where cholera, malaria, and yellow fever lurked. Instead, the Company hired immigrants, primarily Irish, who labored with shovels and wheelbarrows. Some 6,000-10,000 died. Mass graves lined the canal. A newspaper in 1833 reported that “the poor Irish canal diggers were dying like rotten sheep” (“Cholera,” Niles’ Weekly Register, 14 September 1833, vol. 45, p.35).
The Canal became an economic lifeline, carrying construction materials and produce that aided antebellum New Orleans’s transformation into a commercial capital – a time when the population rose from 46,000 in 1830 to 168,000 in 1860.
The Canal thrived until the 1930s. By the 1950s, the Canal, except for a lakefront portion now a marina, was filled. Part became New Basin Canal Park. The rest became Interstate 10 from the Park to Claiborne Avenue. The city built an underground operation center in case of nuclear attack at the northern end of the Park. This facility, still visible, was abandoned in the 1980s. In 1990, the Irish Cultural Society of New Orleans dedicated a Celtic cross as a memorial to the Irish dead. (Courtesy of Anthony J. Stanonis)
Nearby Sites of Interest
New Canal Lighthouse
8001 Lakeshore Dr., New Orleans 70124
The site of a lighthouse since 1839, the museum recounts the history of the New Basin Canal and the light-keepers. At a time when opportunities for women were limited, women served here as light-keepers from 1847-1849, 1850-1853, and 1869-1932, receiving recognition for braving hurricanes and rescuing distressed vessels.
To Learn More
- Richard Campanella, Time and Place in New Orleans: Past Geographies in the Present Day (Pelican Publishing, 2002).
- David Gleeson, The Irish in the South, 1815-1877 (University of North Carolina Press, 2001).