History of Algiers

Algiers is not just Algiers Point. It stretches along 12 miles of riverfront from the Riverview neighborhood at the Jefferson Parish line to the Cut Off at the Plaquemine Parish line with a depth of about 4 miles. This land was originally cypress swamp with prairie lands to its rear. Algiers was developed from a community of hamlets with such names as Duverjeville, Mossyville, Olivierville, Gosselinville, Belleville, Brooklynville, McDonoghville, LeBeoufville, Hendeeville, Sumnerville, Leesville, Tunisbourg, McLellanville, Cut Off, Aurora, Stanton, Plaisanceville, Silver City and Oakdale.

ALGIERS - NEW ORLEANS’ “RED-HEADED STEP-SISTER”

Many people feel that Algiers has always been regarded as the “red-headed step-sister” of New Orleans. During its independence from 1840 to 1870, Algiers was governed by a Police Jury but was annexed to the City in 1870, a move that still has its opponents to this day!

ALGIERS: NEW ORLEANS’ SECOND OLDEST NEIGHBORHOOD

Algiers was established in 1719, making it the second oldest neighborhood in the City. Originally owned by BIENVILLE as part of the “King’s Plantation,” that stretched from Plaquemines to Donaldsonville and then to Natchez. It would be the site of the pens that held the enslaved Africans, that were rested, cleaned up, and ferried across the river to the French Quarter, where they would be sold into a lifetime of slavery either locally or up and down the length of the river to the new French landowners. Algiers was also the site of the City’s powder magazine, for which Powder Street was named, and the City’s slaughterhouse, and was called Slaughterhouse Point in its early history.

WHERE AND WHAT IS ALGIERS?

EARLY LANDOWNERS

The land was cleared and plantation homes built along the riverfront. When the Spanish arrived in 1769, they sold off the lands in Algiers belonging to the Crown and aided homesteaders to establish farms and develop the West Bank. The two most famous of these early landowners were Barthelemy DUVERJE, whose land would be divided into lots in the 1840s to form what we now know as Algiers Point, and John McDONOGH, whose home was on Adams Street between Newton and Homer Streets. McDONOGH’s home, called “Monplaisir,” and several other buildings throughout the history of Algiers, slipped into the river when landslides, or crevasses, occurred.

Since those early days, the levee system built by the Corps of Engineers, protects the residents from such occurrences today. Although McDONOGH owned much of what is now McDonoghville, he did actually live in Algiers, where he had a brick kiln and extensive pleasure gardens, where music could often be heard and dancing was THE social event of the time.