THE OLD AND THE NEUTRAL THE MILE-LONG CRESCENT PARK IN NEW ORLEANS SHOWS AMBITIONS MEETING REALITY. BY JOHN KING, HONORARY ASLA MANDEVILLE WHARF An elliptical lawn marks the heart of Crescent Park, part of an ambitious project intended to revitalize a rough industrial edge of the Mississippi River in New Orleans. TIMOTHY HURSLEY TIMOTHY 80 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JULY 2018 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JULY 2018 / 81 N A LANGUID FRIDAY floodwall roughly 10 feet high as well afternoon in New Orleans, as railbeds where freight cars might the sounds of the French Quar- sit for days between journeys. The Oter Festival spill downriver toward stylized promenade is promoted by Crescent Park. The music is loudest at some as New Orleans’s answer to Mil- the park’s Mandeville Wharf, but the lennium Park or the High Line, one dozen or so visitors seem to pay no with a photogenic bridge designed by notice as they lounge on a raised lawn the architect David Adjaye. Its impact next to remnants of a vast storage on the adjacent Bywater neighbor- shed, or ride scooters in the shade cast hood, where small colorful houses by the new corrugated roof, or lean line streets where the sidewalks come against galvanized steel guardrails and go, can be seen in the condo com- TOP to watch a barge plow through the plexes starting to rise along its edge. The industrial heritage dark waters. Nor can the distant din of the riverfront seen compete with the cries of the seagulls Viewed through a wider lens, Cres- in this 1950s photo is retained in the who have claimed a fenced-off stretch cent Park fits within the constellation forms and materials of the wharf as their own. of urban waterfronts reclaimed by of the park. cities across the United States in an This low-key scene is typical for Cres- effort to serve locals, attract visitors, RIGHT cent Park, a 1.4-mile-long public space and help to kick-start growth. But From above, along the Mississippi River that was as the rough-edged, sparingly artis- Hargreaves Associates’ arcing lines take a hint completed in 2015. The park starts tic space designed by the firm Har- from the crescent of the just east of the French Quarter but is greaves Associates has settled into riverfront as it bends. cut off from easy inland access by a the physical and cultural landscape, RIGHT HOUSER, STEPHEN LEFT; NOPSI, CAMPANELLA 82 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JULY 2018 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JULY 2018 / 83 CRESCENT PARK – PLAN PRESS ST MONTEGUT ST CHARTRES ST ESPLANADE AVE CLOUET ST ST FERDINAND ST LOUISA ST ELYSIAN FIELDS AVE FIELDS ELYSIAN SPAIN ST SPAIN N PETERS ST PIETY ST MANDEVILLE ST MANDEVILLE MARIGNY ST MARIGNY PROMENADE PIETY BRIDGE DESIRE ST GALLIER ST CONGRESS ST BARRACKS ST PRESS STREET INDEPENDENCE ST WHARF RUINS CHARTRES ST PAULINE ST PREFABRICATED LOUISA STREET ALVAR ST GOV NICHOLLS ST BRIDGE MANDEVILLE WHARF WHARF RUINS N PETERS ST BARTHOLOMEW ST DECATUR ST FRENCH MARKET MAZANT ST PIETY WHARF DESIRE STREET ESPLANADE WHARF WHARF RUINS URSULINES AVE CONGRESS STREET WHARF RUINS PAULINE STREET WHARF GOV NICHOLLS WHARF N it feels less like a catalyst than one floodwall and rail lines and connect came standard-issue circular ones. neighborhood by a striking but more layer of New Orleans’s se- the isolated linear park to the city A playground was deleted, as was straightforward prefabricated bridge ductively tangled connection to its beyond—and, it was hoped, become an interactive water feature on the that rises amid utility towers and river—an insertion that’s different symbols of head-turning change. edge of Mandeville Wharf’s ellipti- touches down alongside the platform- from what the city has seen before, cal lawn. The biggest loss, literally: like wharf, which covers three acres. but also one tempered by the deeper “We wanted designers who would Maltzan’s pedestrian bridge, which Downriver at the other end, there’s a realities of place. city since the French Quarter,” ac- (unrelated) corruption charges. The understand New Orleans at a very would have swooped from the edge dog run and a parking lot that offers cording to the cover letter cosigned towers are nowhere to be seen. Only deep level,” said Sean Cummings, a of the French Quarter out above the the lone ground-level entrance to the UST AS THE 20-ACRE PARK by then-Mayor Ray Nagin. Each end Crescent Park exists—built with $30 local developer who led the Building river and then down into Mandeville park. Only a chain-link fence sepa- J is shaped physically by the indus- of the six-mile-long planning area million in Katrina-related federal Corporation during Nagin’s time in Wharf. rates the parking lot from the rotted TOP trial and natural features that press would be anchored by residential recovery funds, on a stretch of the office. “The project needed to look wooden remnants of a derelict pier. The plan of the park close on each side, its origins were towers, with an array of attractions river where cargo operations ceased good, but also be authentic and in- Partly because of all this subtraction, knits a series of shaped by a much grander develop- between them to form “a new, 21st decades ago. stantly familiar to local people.” but also because of Hargreaves’s de- The one section where things open character-driven ment plan that most likely will never century urban landscape.” sign strategy, Crescent Park today is up and Hargreaves could craft a wharves together come to pass. Hargreaves was part of Reinventing The rezoning to allow the park was less a unified space than a string of more elaborate space is midway, and is intended to draw locals from The plan, which received a 2008 the Crescent’s planning team, and approved in January 2010, with an encounters connected by a 20-foot- at Piety Street, which also is where the Bywater, Marigny, The concept traces back to Reinvent- ASLA Professional Award for Analy- it started work on Crescent Park as expectation that it would open in wide path of concrete and asphalt little Adjaye’s bridge serves as the most and French Quarter ing the Crescent, a planning effort sis and Planning, included projec- soon as city officials decided to focus 2011. But progress was fitful, and changed from when it was a wharf obvious link to Bywater and such neighborhoods. launched by the New Orleans Build- tions that a $294 million public resources on what they hoped would the first piece didn’t open until 2014. apron where workers moved pallets local mainstays as Frady’s, a corner ing Corporation in the aftermath of investment would reap nearly $3.6 be an attention-getting waterfront The second followed one year later. stacked with break-bulk cargo. market with humble but heroic INSET Hurricane Katrina. The plan’s final billion in private development and destination. To up the star wattage, po’boy and muffuletta sandwiches. A prefabricated bridge elevates pedestrians version was released in 2008 with 24,000 new jobs. But the crystal ball the architects Michael Maltzan and Along the way, design features There’s the area around Mandeville Here, the curving rail spurs to the for a bit of industrial an official goal to create “the most was clouded by hype. Today, Nagin David Adjaye were each hired to de- were sacrificed to hold down costs. Wharf, reached from the French abandoned wharfs were replaced by glamour. significant physical addition to this is in jail after being convicted of sign bridges that would span the BOTTOM HURSLEY, TIMOTHY TOP; ASSOCIATES, HARGREAVES Custom-designed picnic tables be- Quarter and the adjacent Marigny porous asphalt strips, between which 84 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JULY 2018 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JULY 2018 / 85 RIGHT Plantings feel restrained compared to the rest of the city’s storied fecundity. are bands of native plants arranged in strokes of color. It’s a focused space intended as a communal crossroads, with a hammock as well as the round picnic tables scattered beneath oak, maple, and birch trees. The striped plantings aren’t nearly as bold as in renderings, a lingering effect of elevated acidity levels in the soil imported by the contractor. The troubles related to soil quality were among the reasons for the delayed opening; even now, the park’s veg- etation looks sparse and strained for a warm, humid coastal city where everything else seems overgrown. But even if the plants and trees were thriving, the main show would still be the surroundings. The river churns past on one side, masked in long stretches by fast-growing volunteer trees that emerge from alluvial soil along the riverbank and in the spring are laced with aro- matic honeysuckle vines. (Kirt Rie- der, ASLA, Hargreaves’s principal in charge for the park, calls this stretch of the tidal zone known locally as batture “junglelike. It’s mind- blowing.”) Inland are the rail lines and floodwall, only a few buildings HURSLEY TIMOTHY 86 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JULY 2018 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE JULY 2018 / 87 SITE SECTION – LAWN SITE SECTION – GALLIER STREET SITE SECTION – BATTURE beyond them tall enough to be was important to recognize that her- tics who see the park and its design likely to be redeployed anytime soon. “David was pretty clear-eyed about Though both landscapes are roughly visible. Then there’s Piety Wharf, itage and build on what was there.” aspirations as magnets for new devel- The signature design element for what he wanted,” says Dumez, con- the same length, the High Line has a a clearing entered through blunt opment and for people seeking the Crescent Park is Adjaye’s bridge at ceding that he knows people who $3.5 million operations budget with a gates of rusted steel.