Each month we talk with Richard Campanella about his Cityscapes column for Nola.com and The Times-Picayune. This month the Professor of Geography at the Tulane School of Architecture delves into a bizarre street pattern that pops up in the 7th Ward.Richard Campanella talks to Eve Troeh about a 7th Ward puzzle.
Seen from above, he says, this particular parcel of land and the way its streets intersect looks like the floor of a messy tailor's shop, scraps and remnants rather than any type of clear-cut pattern.
"Things at odd angles tell interesting stories,"Campanellanotes. And this oddity owes its layout to the city's original division as plantation land, partitioned into long, thin pieces. Those were later subdivided to create grids. This zigzag in the 7th Ward sits in a place where several grids had to meet.
It was laid out at a particular moment in time, then the bequest of a landowner froze it in that moment, while the rest of the city moved forward with development. So credit the oddity, in large part, to an eccentric busybody from Kentucky with a penchant for public life and a fascination with hot pepper sauce. The result? A relic of a cityscape we can still see today.
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