With little fanfare, the City of Mandeville is rapidly approaching an important milestone – its 175th birthday. “But how can that be?” you might ask. “Didn’t we celebrate its 150th birthday in 1990? I’m not saying that Mandeville officials would cook the history books, but that doesn’t seem to add up – I keep coming up with 169; how about you?”
Well, here’s the deal. Mandeville was indeed incorporated as a municipality in 1840, so the 1990 celebration was perfectly legitimate. You don’t have to apologize for any intemperate or over exuberant things that you might have said or done in connection with that festive event.
And here’s more good news. You’re going to have to do it again because Mandeville’s real birth date was February 24, 1834. It was then that Bernard Marigny, the Grandest Creole of them all, held his great public lot auction for property on the north shore that he had recently acquired and subdivided. So later this month, we will celebrate our real 175th anniversary – or if you want to be really pompous about it (and Marigny certainly would, being a Francophile and all) – la Cent-Soixante-Quinzième anniversaire.
So how did this all come about on that long ago February day? And, for this information, we can thank Sally Reeves, retired archivist for the New Orleans Notarial Archives. Sally has spent most of her life rooting around in the records of the hundreds of notaries who passed, recorded and filed official land and other acts during Louisiana’s colonial and early statehood days, before there were parish clerks of court to keep centralized records. Property transactions from those days are hard to find, and it is only because of detailed tedious research by people like Sally with an amazing recall of all of the notaries who were doing business during that period that we are able to recapture this part of our history at all.
At any rate, the story goes like this. We’ll pick up the life of Bernard Marigny, one of Louisiana’s most interesting and influential characters, in the mid 1820s. Bernard, who by this time was in his 40s, had increased his inherited wealth through shrewd financial management and land developments like the Faubourg Marigny. He was a leader of the French Creole community and had served in both municipal and state elected positions. He was also a lover of French opera and the theater, and of gaming. As a result, he became friendly with a kindred spirit named John Davis, who operated theaters, ballrooms, casinos and related entertainment venues in New Orleans.
At about this same time, the Bayou St. John/Spanish Fort/Port Pontchartrain area on the south shore was becoming a hot resort area and this did not go unnoticed by Bernard Marigny – for three reasons. First, he loved casinos and the resort environment. Second, when he subdivided and sold off his family plantation to create the Faubourg Marigny, he was left with a right of way for a canal that serviced a sawmill on his property. This canal led northward from the river and showed promise as a shortcut to the new resorts on the lake. This promise materialized in the spring of 1830, when Marigny sold the right of way to the Pontchartrain Railroad Company for a tidy sum of money. Within a year, the railroad was completed and was carrying thousands of riders from the Vieux Carre to the lakefront resorts. The third force at work here, and this actually preceded the second, was a vision by Marigny that the casino/resort business model working so well on the south shore could easily be replicated in the healthier, cheaper lands to the north. He foresaw the trains transferring their passenger loads to steamers for a short two or three hour trip to another subdivision of his in Mandeville.
Marigny began buying up north shore lakefront property in early 1829. His first purchase was from the Edwards family, who had acquired several parcels through Spanish land grants in the late 1700s. The Edwards tract totaled about 1540 acres stretching east-west from Bayou Castine to roughly what is now Lafitte Street, and from the lake north to approximately where Hwy 1088 joins Hwy 59.
In September, 1829, he acquired from the Bonabel family almost 4800 acres with lake frontage from Bayou Castine eastward to Cane Bayou. This had also originally been a Spanish land grant as had most of the properties that Marigny ultimately acquired. Spanish land grants apparently took precedence in the courts over Choctaw land grants. This acreage is where Marigny build his plantation, Fontainebleau. Today, this is where Fontainebleau State Park, the Northlake Nature Center, Pelican Park and the State Hospital are located.
In November, 1829, he bought 340 acres known as the Barthe/Bowman tract. This acreage stretches from Massena Street to Carondelet Street, and from the lake northward to Greenleaves Boulevard This land contained a small waterway and was somewhat swampy, so it was not subdivided and included in Marigny’s 1834 lot auction.
In the summer of 1830, Marigny purchased 631 acres from the family of Zachariah Faircloth, a British loyalist who fled from North Carolina to West Florida after the American Revolution. This land extended from Massena Street to Cindy Lou Place in the Old Golden Shores Subdivision, and from the lake to Bayou Chinchuba. As with the Barthe/Bowman tract, Marigny sold subdivided lots here not in 1834, but in a subsequent “Extension of Mandeville”auction in the late 1830s.
In December, 1830, Marigny acquired the Smith tract of 200 acres that stretched from the lake to Dupard Street between roughly Lafitte and Adair Streets. In September, 1831, he purchased the Spell tract – the final 221 acre lakefront piece of the puzzle between Carondelet and Adair Streets that extended northward to Orleans Street.
In total, Marigny had acquired over 7700 acres –12 square miles of land. During the period 1832 and 1833, Marigny resolved land disputes involving the Bonabel property and began developing his plantation there. In the meantime, with the growing success of the south shore resorts, he also had a surveyor named Brignier prepare a subdivision plan for his resort 24 miles to the north.
On February 24, 1834, Marigny held his successful public land auction for lots in Mandeville, selling to prospects Bernard had transported to the north shore at his expense aboard the steamer Black Hawk. Generally, the lots were laid out on gridded streets in widths of about 63 feet (60 French feet) in blocks about 500 feet square. Actually, one lot, the entire double square between Girod and Lafitte Streets from the lake to Jefferson Street had already been sold to Marigny’s old friend John Davis for his casino and hotel. Claiborne Sreet, which now lies between Lakeshore Drive and Jefferson did not exist at that time because Brignier had planned this grand square as the centerpiece of the town, around which all resort activity would revolve. One other feature was the reservation of land along the lake as open space for public use in perpetuity.
Marigny and Brignier therefore created a planned community 175 years ago with the character, charm, and livability that you may recognize in the new Traditional Neighborhood Design (TND) developments that are becoming so popular today. So, Happy Birthday again Mandeville! You’re still looking good.
