<GNOCDC> St. Bernard Area Neighborhood Snapshot

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This information is pre-Katrina.
Although the information on this page is out-of-date, we are continuing to make it available, as it provides insight about this neighborhood pre-Katrina.

Post-Katrina, we will not be making any changes or updates to this page. As a result, you may find outdated information and broken links.

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St. Bernard Area Neighborhood Snapshot

Census 2000 Data Tables: People & Household Characteristics, Housing & Housing Costs, Income & Poverty, Transportation, Employment, Educational Attainment, Immigration & Language, Disabilities, Neighborhood Characteristics

The St. Bernard Area's borders stretch from Harrison Avenue to Southern Railway and from Bayou St. John to Paris Avenue. It is home to several housing efforts and a community development center. In recent years, many housing developments in New Orleans have undergone renovations. The numbers from the 2000 Census for this neighborhood may no longer be accurate. Please check with the Housing Authority of New Orleans and the St. Bernard Resident Council for the most current status of the development.

A sampling of what's in the St. Bernard Neighborhood

St. Bernard is the home of Union Baptist Theological Seminary, the Youth Study Center, one of the alternative schools in Louisiana under the New Orleans Public School System, and Asia Baptist Church, which also operates a day care center.

	© GNO Community Data Center
	Houses along Harrison Avenue

The Willie Hall Playground is an eleven-acre multi-neighborhood park, owned by New Orleans Public School Board and administered by the New Orleans Recreation Department (NORD). This well-used playground has an all-purpose field where varying types of NORD activities are held, particularly for young people, in the day and evening hours.

A success story

Former Mayor Marc Morial brought attention to the efforts of Asia Baptist Church in the summer of 2001. The church partnered with the city of New Orleans to provide new and refurbished homes for former tenants of the St. Bernard Housing Development. The church's Edward Madison Community Development Corporation renovated four doubles on Lafreniere and Duplessis Streets and built five rental houses. Plans were made for future homes as well.


	© GNO Community Data Center.
	Two of the rental houses built by Asia Baptist church

The former mayor praised Rev. Zebadee Bridges, the church's pastor, for finding funding to decrease the number of blighted properties in the St. Bernard area and offering these structures to residents wanting to leave the housing development. Eighteen families, all from the St. Bernard Housing Development, have benefited from the work of the Asia Baptist Church as they enjoy their new homes.

"Church provides quality housing -- Morial praises effort to renew properties." Times Picayune Metro News, 07/01/01

St. Bernard Area Community Development Center


© GNO Community Data Center.
NORD Playground Mural

Built in 1980, the St. Bernard Area Community Development Center, on Lafreniere Street, has been an educational, social service and recreational resource for families in the area for many years. Staff at the Center work closely with the St. Bernard-Willie Hall Booster Club at Willie Hall Playground and the St. Bernard Resident Council to provide public recreation and other services. Year-round activities consist of a senior citizens' exercise program, a tutorial program, ballet, and sports-related activities, such as community basketball for youth and adults, adult weight training, board and table games. Seasonally, staff direct NORD basketball, volleyball and summer camps, and AAU basketball for boys and girls. The community uses the site for meetings, health screenings, holiday programs and roller-skating. Input from area residents is used to design future programs and improve existing ones.

Original 7 Social Aid & Pleasure Club

The Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs were started as a result of the demise of the New Orleans Freedmen's Aid Association, an organization whose mission was to "provide loans, assistance and counsel, and a means of education to newly freed slaves." Social Aid and Pleasure Club Organizations in New Orleans took on the role of mutual aid societies. They would bestow help to other African Americans and guarantee that club members received a proper burial, which, at the member's request, could be a jazz funeral.

Today, the Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs act as a "social safety net" where financial support is given and expectations are that the recipients, usually club members, use it to quickly get back on their feet. The money comes from members' monthly dues. The Original 7 Social Aid & Pleasure Club, still active today, originated in the St. Bernard Housing Development.

Read more about the topic

Carnival Guide Online

Some history on Jazz funerals

Image courtesy New Orleans Public Library (nutrias.org). Permission for reuse required.
WPA workers prepare to pave Gibson Street to serve residents of the then-new St. Bernard Housing Project [WPA Photograph Collection: Paving project]

St. Bernard Housing Development

In the 1930s, President Roosevelt made a commitment to provide adequate public housing for the urban poor. The passage of the U.S. Housing Act of 1937, also known as the Wagner Bill, instituted the U.S. Housing Authority within the Department of the Interior. Its mission was to provide public housing for low-income families. It was in the 1940s when the first families relocated to the St. Bernard Project, as it was once called.

Some of the Development's history


	Image courtesy New Orleans Public Library (nutrias.org). Permission for reuse required.
	"Nursery class graduates in the St. Bernard Housing Development" [Report of the Housing Authority of New Orleans (1945)]

The St. Bernard Housing Development was the fifth of ten such developments built between 1940 and 1960. Initially, there were 744 units in 74 buildings constructed on 30.9 acres of land. The boundaries were St. Bernard Avenue to Gibson Street and Senate to St. Denis Streets. The architects used the same principles of design of most "housing projects" of the times. Two and three story brick apartment buildings encircled parking lots and playgrounds.

In 1946, a gas explosion on the southside of the development killed seven people and injured 38. Fourteen buildings were demolished.

In the 1950's, The Housing Authority needed to relocate 700 families. Through the 1949 Housing Act, the St. Bernard expanded, adding 720 more units. It is regarded as one of the largest housing developments in New Orleans.

Scattered sites were first introduced to New Orleans in the late 1960s as an alternative to higher concentrated family dwellings. The idea was to have families "scattered" throughout existing neighborhoods to reduce the number of units in one location. One of those sites is the Imperial Scattered Site Housing Development, just to the west of the St. Bernard development. In 1968, the Housing Authority of New Orleans purchased 54 two-bedroom houses and in 1972, bought 200 more.

Helen Washington Lang

Helen Washington Lang, a long time resident of the St. Bernard Housing Development, has a history of social activism. She was active during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and continued her work, focusing on public and Section 8 housing. She began the first Section 8 Resident Council in the United States in June 1994. The St. Bernard Resident Council and the work of Ms. Lang have been a model to resident councils around the country. Ms. Lang, with other council members, has been a leader in raising key issues of concern to St. Bernard Housing Development residents with the management of the Housing Authority of New Orleans. As a result of her hard work and efforts, she was presented with Mayor Marc Morial's Golden Hammer Award and the National Organization of African-Americans in Housing's Resident of the Year Award.

The National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials: NAHRO National Roll of Achievers

Recent changes

	© GNO Community Data Center
	St. Bernard Housing Development today

The Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) is renovating the interior and exterior buildings of the St. Bernard Housing Development as part of a revitalization plan for housing developments throughout the city of New Orleans.

According to a June 2004 personal interview with Resident Council President, Naomi Minor, as of that date approximately 950 of the units in the St. Bernard Housing Development were occupied -- down from the 1200 occupied units one year earlier.

For more information:

New Orleans Recreation Department
www.new-orleans.la.us/cnoweb/cpc/parksrecreationplan/park7.htm

Baptist Theological Seminary
www.universities.com/Schools/U/Union_Baptist_Theological_Seminary.asp

Youth Study Center
www.doe.state.la.us/DOE/department/Altsch.pdf

Neighborhood Profiles Project Document prepared by the City of New Orleans Office of Policy Planning and the City Planning Commission. Published December 1980. Study available at the Williams Research Center (non-circulating collection).

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Last modified: June 23, 2004