Gentilly is the big stretch of New Orleans between City Park and the Industrial Canal, running from around I-610 up to Lake Pontchartrain. It's one of the oldest settled parts of the city and home to some of the prettiest bungalows in Louisiana. Almost no visitor ever sees it. That's their loss. Gentilly people are fine with the quiet.
Ask a tourist to name New Orleans neighborhoods and you'll get the French Quarter and the Garden District, and maybe the Marigny if they've done their homework. Gentilly doesn't come up. It's not on the walking tours. It's where people live.
Older Than Most of the City
The name goes back almost to the beginning. The Preservation Resource Center says Mathurin and Pierre Dreux settled here in 1727 on the natural levee along Bayou Sauvage and named their plantation Gentilly after their hometown in France.
That high ground, the Gentilly Ridge, is the key to the whole neighborhood. For a long time, settlement stuck close to it, because the ridge stayed dry when the land around it didn't. A road along the ridge eventually became Gentilly Boulevard, which is also U.S. Highway 90. Next time you're stuck in traffic on it, think about the fact that people have been using that same strip of high ground for nearly three hundred years.
Gentilly Terrace: Houses on Hills
Gentilly Terrace is the part people fall for. Starting around 1909, developers sold it as the place "where homes are built on hills," and they weren't totally kidding. Builders dug out the shallow swamp and piled the dirt into raised, terraced blocks, so the houses really do sit up a little higher than the street.
What they built on those blocks is what makes it special. The PRC says Gentilly Terrace has the largest collection of California Craftsman bungalows in the state, mostly built between 1910 and 1926, along with English cottages and Spanish and Mediterranean Revival houses. It was listed as a National Register Historic District in 1999. It also sits about four to five feet above sea level, which in this city counts as a mountain.
Drive through on a weekday afternoon. Wide porches and low eaves. It's a different New Orleans from the one on the postcards, and plenty of us think it's the better one.
Dillard, SUNO and the College Side
Gentilly is also a college neighborhood, though it doesn't act like one. Dillard University and Southern University at New Orleans are both here, along with the University of New Orleans out by the lake.
Dillard and SUNO are historically Black universities with deep roots in the city. Driving past Dillard's campus on Gentilly Boulevard is one of those moments where New Orleans reminds you how much is going on outside the parts the guidebooks cover.
Katrina and the London Avenue Canal
Here's the hard part. When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, the floodwalls along the London Avenue Canal failed in two places, and most of Gentilly flooded. This wasn't a storm surge overtopping a levee in some remote spot. The walls broke in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
The recovery was slow and uneven. By early 2007, fewer than half of the pre-storm residents and businesses had come back, according to the summary on Wikipedia. The people who came back to Gentilly did the work. That's the honest version of the comeback story here. It wasn't a ribbon cutting.
The Gentilly Resilience District
Gentilly is now the testing ground for a different way of living with water. After the city won $141.2 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's National Disaster Resilience Competition, it launched the Gentilly Resilience District, a set of projects meant to hold rainwater where it falls instead of pumping it all out.
The biggest is the Mirabeau Water Garden, on a 25-acre former convent site provided by the Sisters of St. Joseph. The idea is to store up to 10 million gallons of stormwater in a park-like landscape. The city broke ground in late 2023, WWNO reported, after years of delays. Other pieces, like the Blue & Green Corridors along neighborhood streets, are in various stages of construction and planning.
Whether it all works the way the drawings promise is something Gentilly residents will judge for themselves, probably during the next big summer downpour. For the rest of us, it's worth watching. If you want to know more about how the city floods and drains, our hurricane prep guide is a good starting point. Our When It Rains It Floods Jacket is for the rest of the time.
Why Gentilly Deserves Your Attention
Gentilly doesn't have a famous street. It doesn't have a strip of bars. What it has is neighborhoods full of people who chose to come back, some of the highest ground in the city along its old ridge, and the lake at the end of the road.
Even Jazz Fest knows the name. There's a stage called Gentilly, and our The Stages shirt maps the whole Fair Grounds from Gentilly to the Gospel Tent.
If you're new to town and the Quarter has worn you out, take a drive out Gentilly Boulevard. Then keep going toward the lake. Our neighbors in Mid-City are right next door, and our older Neighborhood: Gentilly profile has more of the backstory. And if you want every one of these little worlds on your wall at once, Caleb Morris's Welcome To New Orleans Print has room for all of them.
Gentilly New Orleans: FAQ
Where is Gentilly in New Orleans?
Gentilly sits between City Park and Bayou St. John on one side and the Industrial Canal on the other, stretching from around I-610 north to Lake Pontchartrain. Gentilly Boulevard runs through it along the old Gentilly Ridge.
Did Gentilly flood during Hurricane Katrina?
Yes. The floodwalls on the London Avenue Canal failed in two places in 2005, and most of Gentilly flooded. Recovery took years.
What is the Gentilly Resilience District?
It's a city program funded largely by a $141.2 million HUD grant to reduce flood risk in Gentilly with green infrastructure, including the Mirabeau Water Garden, which is designed to store up to 10 million gallons of stormwater.
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