|  The Robinson Atlas, published in 1883
from surveys made several years earlier, provides us with an overview of Algiers as it appeared just a few years after
annexation by New Orleans. Among the features shown are the five dry docks then in operation, a bell tower at Verret
Street and the River, the Louisiana and Texas Railroad terminal, and the nearby cattle yards, appropriately sited on Le
Boeuf Street.
|
| These pages from the 1886 tax assessment
book for Algiers identify the property and business owners in square 23, located between the First District (Canal Street)
and Third District ferry landings. The square, then one of the most heavily commercialized in the entire Fifth Municipal
District, is now mostly residential (the new Algiers Point Condominiums are cattycorner from the square). Villere
became Morgan Street in 1894.
[New Orleans (La.) Board of Assessors, Assessment Rolls] |
| The Algiers riverfront has long been a
center for the ship repair industry of New Orleans. Major ship repairs require the use of dry docks and Algiers has been
home to a number of them over the years. The 1883 Robinson Atlas (at far left in this case) shows five such
facilities on the right bank. In a 1938 publication the Army Corps of Engineers listed six dry docks in Algiers but by
1981 their count was down to two. Today, you can take a quick ferry ride across the Mississippi and check out the dry
docks at the Bollinger yard just upriver from the ferry terminal.
[Louisiana Postcard Collection] |
| The ferry system serving the left and
right banks of the Mississippi River dates back at least to 1820, and continues today under the aegis of the
Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, Crescent City Connection Division. This early
ferry is unidentified, but it resembles a boat called the Emma, owned by A.M. Halliday.
[Louisiana Postcard Collection] |
| The Mastodon, the Southern
Pacific Railroad's ferryboat, powered by tugboats, took the Sunset Limited passenger train across the
Mississippi River from the SPRR dock at Elmira Street to the Elysian Fields terminal on the New Orleans
side.
[Louisiana Postcard Collection] |