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Much of the city is located below sea level and is bordered
by the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, so the city
is surrounded by levees. Until the early 20th century construction
was largely limited to the slightly higher ground along old
natural river levees and bayous, since much of the rest of
the land was swampy and subject to frequent flooding. This
gave the 19th century city the shape of a crescent along a
bend of the Mississippi, the origin of New Orleans nickname
The Crescent City. In the 1910s engineer and inventor A. Baldwin
Wood enacted his ambitious plan to drain the city, including
large pumps of his own design which are still used when heavy
rains hit the city. Wood's pumps and drainage allowed the
city to expand greatly in area.
In the 1920s an effort to "modernize" the look
of the city removed the old cast-iron balconies from Canal
Street, the city's commercial hub. In the 1960s another "modernization"
effort replaced the Canal Streetcar Line with busses. Both
of these moves came to be regarded as mistakes long after
the fact, and the streetcars returned to a portion of Canal
Street at the end of the 1990s, and construction to restore
the entire line is underway.
While long one of the USA's most visited cities, tourisim
boomed in the last quarter of the 20th century, becoming a
major force in the local economy. Areas of the French Quarter
and Central Business District long oriented towards local
residence and businesses became focused on the tourist industry.
A century after the Cotton Centennial Exhibition, New Orleans
hosted another World's Fair, the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition.
Next> New Orleans Today
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Information provided by wikipedia.org
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