New Orleans French: La Nouvelle-Orléans is a major U.S. port and the largest city in Louisiana. New Orleans is the center of the Greater New Orleans metropolitan area, the largest metro area in the state.

New Orleans is located in southeastern Louisiana, straddling the Mississippi River. It is coextensive with Orleans Parish, meaning that the boundaries of the city and the parish are the same. It is bounded by the parishes of St. Tammany (north), St. Bernard (east), Plaquemines (south) and Jefferson (south and west). Lake Pontchartrain, part of which is included in the city limits, lies to the north and Lake Borgne lies to the east.

The city is named after Philippe II, Duc d'Orléans, Regent of France, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. It is well known for its multicultural and multilingual heritage, cuisine, architecture, music (particularly as the birthplace of jazz and its annual Mardi Gras and other celebrations and festivals. The city is often referred to as the "most unique" city in America.

Beginnings Through the 19th Century

La Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans) was founded May 7, 1718 by the French Mississippi Company under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville on land inhabited by the Chitimacha. It was named for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans who was Regent of France at the time. His title came from the French city of Orléans. The French colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris (1763) and remained under Spanish control until 1801, when it reverted to French control. Most of the surviving architecture of the Vieux Carré (French Quarter) dates from this Spanish period. Napoleon sold the territory to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The city grew rapidly with influxes of Americans, French and Creole French. Major commodity crops of sugar and cotton were cultivated with slave labor on large plantations outside the city.

The Haitian Revolution of 1804 established the second republic in the Western Hemisphere and the first led by blacks. Haitian refugees both white and free people of color (affranchis) arrived in New Orleans, often bringing slaves with them. While Governor Claiborne and other officials wanted to keep out more free black men, French Creoles wanted to increase the French-speaking population. As more refugees were allowed in Louisiana, Haitian émigrés who had gone to Cuba also arrived. Nearly 90 percent of the new immigrants settled in New Orleans. The 1809 migration brought 2,731 whites; 3,102 free persons of African descent; and 3,226 enslaved refugees to the city, doubling its French-speaking population.

During the War of 1812 the British sent their best forces to conquer New Orleans. Despite immpossible odds, the young Andrew Jackson successful banded New Orleanians together and decisively defeated the British troops, led by Sir Edward Pakenham, in the Battle of New Orleans on January 8 1815.

As a principal port, New Orleans had the major role of any city during the antebellum era in the Atlantic slave trade. Its port handled huge quantities of goods for export from the interior and import from other countries to be traded up the Mississippi River. The river was filled with steamboats, flatboats, and sailing ships. At the same time, it had the most prosperous community of free persons of color in the South, who were often educated and middle-class property owners.

The population of the city doubled in the 1830s and by 1840, New Orleans had become the wealthiest and third-most populous city in the nation. It had the largest slave market. Two-thirds of the more than one million slaves brought to the Deep South arrived via the forced migration of the internal slave trade. The money generated by sales of slaves in the Upper South has been estimated at fifteen percent of the value of the staple crop economy. The slaves represented half a billion dollars in property, and an ancillary economy grew up around the trade in slaves — for transportation, housing and clothing, fees, etc., estimated at 13.5 percent of the price per person. All of this amounted to tens of billions of dollars during the antebellum period, with New Orleans as a prime beneficiary.

The Union captured New Orleans early in the American Civil War, sparing the city the destruction suffered by many other cities of the American South

Twentieth Century

In the early 20th century, New Orleans was a progressive major city whose most portentous development was a drainage plan devised by engineer and inventor A. Baldwin Wood. Until then, urban development was largely limited to higher ground along the natural river levees and bayous. Wood's pump system allowed the city to expand into low-lying areas. Over the 20th century rapid subsidence, both natural and human-induced, left these newly- populated areas several feet below sea level.

New Orleans was vulnerable to flooding even before the age of negative elevation. In the late 20th century, however, scientists and New Orleans residents gradually became aware of the city's increased vulnerability. In 1965 Hurricane Betsy killed dozens of residents, even though the majority of the city remained dry. The rain-induced May 8, 1995 Flood demonstrated the weakness of the pumping system. Since that time, measures were taken to repair New Orleans' hurricane defenses and restore pumping capacity.

Throughout the 20th Century, New Orleans experienced a significant drop in economic activity compared with newer southern cities, such as Houston and Atlanta. While the port remains vitally important, automation and containerization resulted in fewer local jobs at the ports. Manufacturing in the city also diminished. New Orleans became increasingly dependent on tourism as an economic mainstay. Poor education and rising crime became increasingly problematic in the later decades of the century.

Geography

New Orleans is located at 29°57′53″N & 90°4′14″W on the banks of the Mississippi River approximately 105 miles (169 km) upriver from the Gulf of Mexico. According to the United States Census Bureau the city has a total area of 350.2 square miles (907 km) of which 180.56 square miles (467.6 km) or 51.55%, is land.

The city is located in the Mississippi River Delta on the east and west banks of the Mississippi River and south of Lake Pontchartrain. The area along the river is characterized by ridges and hollows.

New Orleans was originally settled on the natural levees or high ground, along the Mississippi River. In fact, when the capital of French Louisiana was moved from Mobile, Alabama to New Orleans, the French colonial government cited New Orleans' inland location as one of the reasons for the move, as it would be less vulnerable to hurricanes. After the Flood Control Act of 1965 the United States Army Corps of Engineers built floodwalls and man-made levees around a much larger geographic footprint that included previous marshland and swamp. Whether or not this human interference has caused subsidence is a topic of debate.

A study by the Geological Society of America reported while erosion and wetland loss are huge problems along Louisiana's coast, the basement 30 to 50 feet (15 m) beneath much of the Mississippi Delta has been highly stable for the past 8,000 years with negligible subsidence rates.

On the other hand, a report by the American Society of Civil Engineers claims that "New Orleans is subsiding (sinking)"

Large portions of Orleans, St. Bernard and Jefferson parishes are currently below sea level — and continue to sink. New Orleans is built on thousands of feet of soft sand, silt, and clay. Subsidence, or settling of the ground surface, occurs naturally due to the consolidation and oxidation of organic soils (called “marsh” in New Orleans) and local groundwater pumping. In the past, flooding and deposition of sediments from the Mississippi River counterbalanced the natural subsidence, leaving southeast Louisiana at or above sea level. However, due to major flood control structures being built upstream on the Mississippi River and levees being built around New Orleans, fresh layers of sediment are not replenishing the ground lost by subsidence.

A recent study by Tulane and Xavier University notes that 51% of New Orleans is at or above sea level, with the more densely populated areas generally on higher ground. The average elevation of the city is currently between one and two feet (0.5 m) below sea level, with some portions of the city as high as 16 feet (5 m) at the base of the river levee in Uptown and others as low as 10 feet (3 m) below sea level in the farthest reaches of Eastern New Orleans.

In 2005, storm surge from Hurricane Katrina caused catastrophic failure of the federally designed and built levees, flooding 80% of the city. A report by the American Society of Civil Engineers says that "had the levees and floodwalls not failed and had the pump stations operated, nearly two-thirds of the deaths would not have occurred".

New Orleans has always had to consider the risk of hurricanes, but the risks are dramatically greater today due to coastal erosion from human interference. Since the beginning of the 20th century, it has been estimated that Louisiana has lost 2,000 square miles (5,000 km) of coast (including many of its barrier islands), which once protected New Orleans against storm surge. Following Hurricane Katrina the United States Army Corps of Engineers has instituted massive levee repair and hurricane protection measures to protect the city.

In 2006, Louisiana voters overwhelmingly adopted an amendment to the state's constitution to dedicate all revenues from off-shore drilling to restore Louisiana's eroding coast line. Congress has allocated $7 billion to bolster New Orleans' flood protection.

National Protected Areas

• Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge
• Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve
• New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park

The Central Business District of New Orleans is located immediately north and west of the Mississippi River and was historically called the "American Quarter" or "American Sector." Most streets in this area fan out from a central point in the city. Major streets of the area include Canal Street, Poydras Street, Tulane Avenue and Loyola Avenue. Canal Street functions as the street which divides the traditional "downtown" area from the "uptown" area.

Every street crossing Canal Street between the Mississippi River and Rampart Street which is the northern edge of the French Quarter, has a different name for the "uptown" and "downtown" portions. For example, St. Charles Avenue, known for its street car line, is called Royal Street below Canal Street. Elsewhere in the city, Canal Street serves as the dividing point between the "South" and "North" portions of various streets. In the local parlance downtown means "downriver from Canal Street", while uptown means "upriver from Canal Street". Downtown neighborhoods include the French Quarter, Tremé, the 7th Ward, Faubourg Marigny, Bywater (the Upper Ninth Ward), and the Lower Ninth Ward. Uptown neighborhoods include the Warehouse District, the Lower Garden District, the Garden District, the Irish Channel, the University District, Carrollton, Gert Town, Fontainebleau and Broadmoor. However, the Warehouse and the Central Business District, despite being above Canal Street, are frequently called "Downtown" as a specific region, as in the Downtown Development District.

Other major districts within the city include Bayou St. John, Mid-City, Gentilly, Lakeview, Lakefront, New Orleans East and Algiers.

Architecture

New Orleans is world-famous for its abundance of unique architectural styles, which reflects the city's historical roots and multicultural heritage. The city has seventeen historic landmark districts, administered by the New Orleans Historic District Landmarks Commission (HDLC). Many styles of housing exist in the city, including the shotgun house (originating from New Orleans) and the bungalow style. Creole townhouses, notable for their large courtyards and intricate iron balconies, line the streets of the French Quarter. Throughout the city, there are many other historic housing styles: Creole cottages, American townhouses, double-gallery houses and Raised Center-Hall Cottages. St. Charles Avenue is famed for its large Antebellum homes. Its mansions are in various styles, such as Greek Revival, American Colonial and the Victorian styles of Queen Anne and Italia architecture. New Orleans is also noted for its large, European-style Catholic cemeteries, which can be found throughout the city.

For much of its history, New Orleans' skyline consisted of only low- and mid-rise structures. The soft soils of New Orleans are susceptible to subsidence, and there was doubt about the feasibility of constructing large high rises in such an environment. The 1960s brought the World Trade Center New Orleans and Plaza Tower which demonstrated that high rises could stand firm on New Orleans' soil. One Shell Square took its place as the city's tallest building in 1972. The oil boom of the early 1980s redefined New Orleans' skyline again with the development of the Poydras Street corridor. Today, New Orleans' high rises are clustered along Canal Street and Poydras Street in the Central Business District.

Culture and Contemporary Life

In 2002, Louisiana began offering tax incentives for film and television production. This led to a substantial increase in the number of films shot in the New Orleans area and brought the nickname "Hollywood South." Films which have been filmed or produced in and around New Orleans include: Ray, Runaway Jury, The Pelican Brief, Glory Road, All the King's Men, Déjà Vu, Last Holiday, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and numerous others. In 2006, work began on the Louisiana Film & Television studio complex, based in the Treme neighborhood. Louisiana began to offer similar tax incentives for music and theater productions in 2007, leading many to begin referring to New Orleans as "Broadway South."

New Orleans has always been a significant center for music, showcasing its intertwined European, Latin American, and African cultures. New Orleans' unique musical heritage was born in its pre-American and early American days from a unique blending of European instruments with African rhythms. As the only North American city to allow slaves to gather in public and play their native music (largely in Congo Square, now located within Louis Armstrong Park), New Orleans gave birth to an indigenous music: jazz. Soon, brass bands formed, gaining popular attraction that still holds today. The city's music was later significantly influenced by Acadiana, home of Cajun and Zydeco music and Delta blues.

New Orleans' unique musical culture is further evident in its funerals. A spin on the tradition of military brass band funerals, traditional New Orleans funerals feature sad music (mostly dirges and hymns) on the way to the cemetery and happier music (hot jazz) on the way back. Such traditional musical funerals still take place when a local musician, a member of a club, krewe or benevolent society, or a noted dignitary has passed. Until the 1990s, most locals preferred to call these "funerals with music", but visitors to the city have long dubbed them "jazz funerals".

Much later in its musical development, New Orleans was home to a distinctive brand of rhythm and blues that contributed greatly to the growth of rock and roll. An example of the New Orleans' sound in the 1960s is the #1 US hit "Chapel of Love" by the Dixie Cups, a song which knocked The Beatles out of the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100. New Orleans became a hotbed for funk music in the 1960s and 1970s and by the late 1980s, it had developed its own localized variant of hip hop, called bounce music. While never commercially successful outside of the Deep South, it remained immensely popular in the poorer neighborhoods of the city throughout the 1990s.

A cousin of bounce, New Orleans hip hop has seen commercial success locally and internationally, producing Lil Wayne, Master P, Birdman, Juvenile, Cash Money Records and No Limit Records. Additionally, the wave of popularity of cowpunk, a fast form of southern rock, originated with the help of several local bands, such as The Radiators, Better Than Ezra, Cowboy Mouth and Dash Rip Rock. Throughout the 1990s many sludge metal bands started in the area. New Orleans' heavy metal bands like Eyehategod, Soilent Green, Crowbar and Down have incorporated styles such as hardcore punk, doom metal and southern rock to create an original and heady brew of swampy and aggravated metal that has largely avoided standardization.

New Orleans is the southern terminus of the famed Highway 61.

Food

Louisiana Creole cuisine and Cajun cuisine

New Orleans is world-famous for its food. The indigenous cuisine is distinctive and influential. From centuries of amalgamation of the local Creole, haute Creole, and New Orleans French cuisines, New Orleans food has developed. Local ingredients, French, Spanish, Italian, African, Native American, Cajun, and a hint of Cuban traditions combine to produce a truly unique and easily recognizable Louisiana flavor.

Unique specialties include beignets (locally pronounced like "ben-yays"), square-shaped fried pastries that could be called "French doughnuts" (served with café au lait made with a blend of coffee and chicory rather than only coffee); Po' boy and Italian Muffuletta sandwiches; Gulf oysters on the half-shell, fried oysters, boiled crawfish and other seafood; étouffée, jambalaya, gumbo and other Creole dishes; and the Monday favorite of red beans and rice. (Louis Armstrong often signed his letters, "Red beans and ricely yours".) New Orleans residents enjoy some of the best restaurants in the United States that cater specifically to locals, and visitors are encouraged to try the local establishments recommended by their hosts. Another New Orleans specialty is the Praline (locally pronounced as /ˈprɑːliːn/, not /ˈpreliːn/), a delicious candy made with brown sugar, granulated sugar, cream, butter and pecans.

Dialect

New Orleans has developed a distinctive local dialect over the years that is neither Cajun nor the stereotypical Southern accent, so often misportrayed by film and television actors. It does, like earlier Southern Englishes, feature frequent deletion of the post-vocalic "r". This dialect is quite similar to New York "Brooklynese", to people unfamiliar with either. There are many theories to how it came to be, but it likely resulted from New Orleans' geographic isolation by water and the fact that the city was a major immigration port throughout the 19th century. As a result, many of the ethnic groups who reside in Brooklyn also reside in New Orleans, such as the Irish, Italians (especially Sicilians) and Germans, among others, as well as a very sizeable Jewish community.

One of the strongest varieties of the New Orleans accent is sometimes identified as the Yat dialect, from the greeting "Where y'at?" This distinctive accent is dying out generation by generation in the city itself, but remains very strong in the surrounding parishes.

Less visibly, various ethnic groups throughout the area have retained their distinctive language traditions to this day. Although rare, Kreyol Lwiziyen is still spoken by the Creoles. Also rare, an archaic Louisiana-Canarian Spanish dialect is spoken by the Isleño people, but it can usually only be heard by older members of the population.

Sports

New Orleans' professional sports teams include the New Orleans Saints (NFL), the New Orleans Hornets (NBA), the New Orleans VooDoo (AFL) and the New Orleans Zephyrs (PCL). It is also home to the Big Easy Rollergirls, an all-female flat track roller derby team and the New Orleans Blaze, a women's football team. A local group of investors began conducting a study in 2007 to see if the city could support a Major League Soccer team.

The Louisiana Superdome is the home of the Saints, the Sugar Bowl and other prominent events. The New Orleans Arena is the home of the Hornets and many events that aren't large enough to need the Superdome. New Orleans is also home to the Fair Grounds Race Course, the nation's third-oldest thoroughbred track. The city's Lakefront Arena has also been home to sporting events.

Each year New Orleans plays host to the Sugar Bowl, the New Orleans Bowl and the Zurich Classic, a golf tournament on the PGA Tour. In addition, it has often hosted major sporting events that have no permanent home, such as the Super Bowl, ArenaBowl, NBA All-Star Game, BCS National Championship Game and the NCAA Final Four.

Economy

New Orleans is home to one of the largest and busiest ports in the world. It also accounts for a major portion of the nation's refinery and production of petroleum, has a top 50 research university, Tulane University, as well as half a dozen other institutions of higher education, and is renowned for its cultural tourism.

New Orleans is also an industrial and distribution center. The Port of New Orleans is the 5th-largest port in the United States based on volume of cargo handled, second-largest in the state after the Port of South Louisiana and 12th-largest in the U.S., based on value of cargo. The Port of South Louisiana, also based in the New Orleans area, is the world's busiest in terms of bulk tonnage and, when combined with the Port of New Orleans, it forms the 4th-largest port system in volume handled.

Like Houston, New Orleans is located in proximity to the Gulf of Mexico and the many oil rigs that lie just offshore. Louisiana ranks fifth in oil production and eighth in reserves in the United States. It is also home to two of the four Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) storage facilities: West Hackberry in Cameron Parish and Bayou Choctaw in Iberville Parish. Other infrastructure includes 17 petroleum refineries with a combined crude oil distillation capacity of nearly 2.8 million barrels per day (450,000 m³/d), the second highest in the nation after Texas. Louisiana has numerous ports, including the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP), which is capable of receiving ultra large oil tankers. With all of the product to distribute, Louisiana is home to many major pipelines supplying the nation: Crude Oil Exxon, Chevron, BP, Texaco, Shell, Scurloch-Permian, Mid-Valley, Calumet, Conoco, Koch Industries, TEPPCO Partners, Colonial, Plantation, Explorer, Texaco, Collins); and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (Dixie, TEPPCO, Black Lake, Koch, Chevron, Dynegy, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, Dow Chemical Company, Bridgeline, FMP, Tejas, Texaco, UTP). There are a few energy companies that have their regional headquarters in the city, including Chevron Corporation and Shell Oil Company.

The city is the home and worldwide headquarters of a single Fortune 500 company: Entergy, an energy and infrastructure providing company. Freeport-McMoRan, the city's other Fortune 500 company, merged its copper and gold exploration unit with an Arizona company and relocated that division to Phoenix, Arizona. Other companies with a significant presence or base in New Orleans include: AT&T, IBM, Navtech, Harrah's Entertainment, Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits, Zatarain's, Whitney National Bank (Corp. HQ), Capital One (Banking HQ), Tidewater (NYSE: TDW) (Corp. HQ) and Energy Partners Ltd. (NYSE: EPL) (Corp. HQ).

Tourism is a major staple of the city's economy, a $5.5 billion industry that accounts for 40 percent of New Orleans' tax revenues. In 2004, tourism employed 85,000 people, making it New Orleans' top industry. The city also hosts the World Cultural Economic Forum (WCEF). The forum, held annually at the New Orleans Morial Convention Center, is directed toward promoting cultural and economic development opportunities through the strategic convening of cultural ambassadors and leaders from around the world. The first WCEF took place in October 2008.

The federal government has a significant presence in the area. NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility is located in the eastern portion of Orleans Parish, known as New Orleans East and is operated by Lockheed Martin. It is a large manufacturing facility where the external fuel tanks for the space shuttles are produced, and it also houses the National Finance Center, operated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).