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BLAKE PONTCHARTRAIN™ @GambitBlake | askblake@gambitweekly.com
Hey Blake, Gilmore Park is on Laurel Street on either side of State Street. Why is it there? Someone told me it was the site of a market. Can you help me solve this mystery? TOM
Dear Tom, Gilmore Park is a “pocket park,” a green space that’s just the right size to be enjoyed by its neighborhood residents. Geographer Richard Campanella explains that the two tiny strips of land that make up the park are remnants of what once was the LeBreton plantation. A third of the plantation was sold and subdivided in 1836 and became an area called Bloomingdale. It was divided into quirky patterns and elongated blocks, Campanella explains in his book Time and Place in New Orleans. Those blocks line up with the borders for the plantation. “Odd angles and kinks in Laurel Street (for Gilmore Park)
Gilmore Park is a green space on Laurel Street Uptown that has a sidewalk and benches and is about the size of a neutral ground. P H OTO B Y K A N DAC E P O W E R G R AV E S
and Annunciation Street line up with the otherwise-erased upper and lower Bloomingdale lines,” he writes. According to several sources, after the Civil War, the area was a public open-air market frequented by farmers. When the area became more residential, the market was phased out. In 1903, the park was named for Samuel L. Gilmore, a New Orleans native who at the time served as city attorney. In 1909, Gilmore was elected to Congress from Louisiana’s 2nd District but served for less than a year. He died in July 1910. His daughter was Martha Gilmore Robinson, a force in New Orleans civic life and preservation efforts from the 1930s until her death in 1981. She was a founder of Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre, the League of Women Voters and Louisiana Landmarks Society. In the 1960s she also was a vocal opponent of the proposed Vieux Carre Riverfront Expressway.
BLAKEVIEW THIS WEEK MARKS THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF A NEW ORLEANS INSTITUTION that feels like it’s been at the corner of Napoleon Avenue and
Tchoupitoulas Street forever: Tipitina’s. The legendary music club opened on Jan. 14, 1977 in a building that formerly housed a bar known as The 501 Club, which borrowed its name from the spot’s address at 501 Napoleon Ave. The club’s new name was inspired by the Professor Longhair song “Tipitina.” The club’s young founders, who called themselves “The Fabulous Fo’Teen,” established the place to host rediscovered local artists including Longhair. Other early acts included The Meters, James Booker, The Neville Brothers, The Radiators, Dr. John and Lil’ Queenie & the Percolators. Longhair’s death in 1980, combined with the downturn in the economy, forced the club to file for bankruptcy and close in 1984. It reopened in 1986 and blossomed 10 years later under the ownership of Roland and Mary Von Kurnatowski. In 2003, the couple and others established the Tipitina’s Foundation, which uses club profits and other donations to purchase instruments for local music students and to help local musicians.