(male narrator) City Park Memories is made possible by the City Park Improvement Association.

Learn more about City Park at www.NewOrleansCityPark.com Funding for this program comes in part from the Theresa Bittenbring Marque and John Henry Marque Fund, established by the estate of John A. Marque in honor of his mother and father.

Also by the WYES Producers Circle, a group of generous contributors dedicated to the support of Channel 12's local productions.

And by contributions to WYES by viewers like you.

[wind chimes] [wind chimes] (male #1) Priceless is what City Park is.

Being able to go out and experience the great outdoors.

(female #1) And you look at City Park and you think, "How did they bring it off?"

Because the amazing balance of artifice and nature is the outstanding characteristic of City Park.

(male #2) It's like stepping back in time and feeling like a child again, and I love that.

(female #2) that is has done what it has done.

It takes your breath away.

♪ ♪ (Peggy Scott Laborde) Tucked within City Park, there's a land of fantasy.

I went to Storyland as a child and it was like watching those uh stories that I read being unfolded in real life.

Great experiences, great way to see what you read come to life.

Storyland as we see it now has been changed a lot.

Originally Mr. Harry Batt, Sr. gave something like 50 thousand dollars to be able to have a Storyland.

(male #3) I didn't know you know that my grandfather had done it.

And one year I was visiting back from New York and we went to see "Christmas in the Oaks" and I saw the plaque and I went oh my gosh, that he did that.

That was so neat.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The Storybook characters were created in the mid-1950s by Blaine Kern Sr., one of New Orleans best known carnival float builders.

You know, I can remember going to City Park and Storyland as a kid.

My real memories were, I was in my twenties when I got the job to go in there and redo it.

Not only did we rebuild a lot of the existing stuff that was in Storyland, uh we built Peter Pan and the ship.

We built a new Pinocchio, we built a new Cinderella and a of the little fiberglass and the new pieces that you'd see at Storyland, were all pieces that we totally redid all of Storyland in the early 90s.

The Old Lady in the Shoe in the original area that was the front entrance to get into Storyland.

You had to duck to get in there.

There is no question about it.

I don't think I could do it today.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The dynamic duo of Little Bo Peep and Humpty Dumpty are the current welcoming committee.

The Storyland gazebo has also had a fairytale ending.

In 1904, Francis B. Dunbar donated the ornamental iron structure as a shelter for boaters.

Now in Storyland, the Dunbar Pavilion is a popular site for storytelling and celebrations.

Other childhood favorites such as the Blue Whale that swallowed Pinocchio, have undergone a few alterations of their own.

I remember the whale.

For some reason, you know, I remember sitting in the whale's mouth and the whale being a focal point of my attention back in those days.

It seems to me that inside the blue whale was an aquarium with fish in it, and you would just sit and look at them.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Maintenance of the aquarium proved challenging.

A fish tail replaced the live fish.

One animal was at the top of some children's wish list.

(male #3) And I remember every Easter they would have this big event with these "kids events" there.

And I remember one year they had a drawing and they gave a pony as a prize.

And I think, I'd imagine the parents of this poor kid.

Like "Mom, dad, I won a pony."

It's like "You can't have the pony."

"I want the pony."

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Luckily, the carousel's fifty-four flying horses offered a more practical alternative to bringing home a live pony.

Rounding out the carousel's attractions are three menagerie animals a giraffe, a camel, and a lion.

(Beau Bassich) The lion weighs four hundred pounds.

When we went to have him repaired to send him back, it took four people to carry it out to this truck, the van to send it back.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The oldest horses date to the 1880s and are attributed to master carvers, Charles Loof and Charles Carmel.

Both worked together at Carmel's factory in Brooklyn, New York.

In 1906, brothers Bartholomew and Tim Murphy, built a pavilion to house the "flying horses."

(Beau Bassich) They called these trolley parks, because most of them were relatively close to a streetcar line, a trolley.

The idea being that the people could come in here, ride the carousel on the way in, and then continue on.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Beau Bassich's passion for the carousel started early.

I was about seven or eight years old and my uncle came by the house on Nashville Avenue and picked up my sister and my brother and I.

We drove out here and we went first to Stocks, which was across the street from City Park and it had a carousel.

And then we went from Stocks down further on Metairie Road to where City Park had its carousel.

It was the same building that it is right now.

It was moved in 1928 from the location on Metairie Road to the area in the back where it is now that started the amusement ride area.

And um, we had I think there were seven rides that we had in the 1960s, 1970s.

And then we just continued adding.

There was something they used to call a Snap the Whip.

And it spins you around, and it turns around in a circle, of course you get nauseated and that's a lot of fun.

(laughing) You know being nauseated as a kid; yeah that's part of it.

(Bryan Batt) And I remember the antique car ride.

The little mini rollercoaster, you know, as a small child you looked around and it was so big and magical.

Now you go and see it and it's petit.

And I remember a time that we went, and we were on a lot of the rides over there in City Park that there was a boat ride and we would play like we were steering, of course you weren't steering anything.

We all know that trick, but I remember splashing my little sister in the face, you know taking the water off the side of the boat, and then splashing her and aggravating her.

There was always something to do and you know as a big bonus there was that train thing to go to.

So it was, it was quite a lot of fun.

The original train just went around what was then called the amusement ride area.

It was only maybe 200 yards long.

And it was a small, small little train, a cart really.

Again Mr. Batt decided that he would like to see the train enlarged and have the route enlarged.

It's a two-mile train now.

(male #5) It was 1962, that's when the train was dedicated.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Then New Orleans Mayor Victor Schiro joined brothers John and Harry Batt, Jr. for the dedication.

When we first started we had one of the uh old time 1850s uh train.

And then we had a modern train, a little sleek train.

But it rusted out because it would hold the water when it would get wet.

And now we have three of those older trains.

Oh, the train was great.

I love the train because it went, it was pretty speedy, and the tunnels were great.

But, it really was a nice little journey on that train.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) For one blundering suspect, the train raced ahead to catch a thief.

(Bryan Batt) A couple of summers, my brother worked the train here when he was in college and one day there was some policemen uh looking for this suspect, coming through the park.

And a policeman jumped on top of the train and told Jay to go a little faster and he did, and it turned out to be Eddie Compass, who ended up being Chief of Police later on.

But, my brother told me that story and said it was very interesting that they kind of helped catch the suspect with the train.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Next to the carousel gardens, the legacy of Sara Lavinia Hyams lives on.

In her will, Hyams requested that her jewels be sold, and the money used to build identical fountains at Audubon and City Park.

And kids would just play in that fountain, I mean they would have their swimsuits on and they would splash around.

And it's supposed to be this beautiful artistic piece which it is, of course, but it was being used as a, as kind of a swimming pool.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Ellis Laborde, Errol's father, served as City Park Manager from 1950 to 1978.

(Errol Laborde) I guess it was in the summer every year that they had a picnic for orphans.

And my father was always very excited about that because they'd get all kind of food and they provided for them.

He lived for City Park.

I mean it was totally his life.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Within the expansive park grounds, there have always been play areas for children.

When I was little, we used to take our skates with us, and uh on, you know, areas where you could skate we would skate.

I remember as a young boy going to picnics uh in the park with my mother and father and just having a great time being able to run around and do whatever we wanted to do.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) One father offered a trip to the park as an incentive for his sons.

He'd ask my mother, were Chester and Denny good during the week, did they do their chores?

Did they do their lessons?

Well, ok, we're going to take them to the park.

Hooray, we got to go to the park.

As I recall the swings, they were very tall, they were taller than almost any swings that you could find any place in the city.

Most of the swings we were on were to the left of Storyland.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The current generation of tots gets their kicks in the playground named for radio station owner Stanley C. Ray.

On the bank of the bayou, the Walking Oak's low-hanging limbs are Mother Nature's version of a Jungle Jim.

One thing I do remember is so great are the trees, these glorious oak trees, that, I mean, as a kid just to climb those things, as the branches are dipping down and touching the earth again.

♪ (Peggy Scott Laborde) The majesty of City Park's Peristyle reflects the ancient past while embracing the present.

♪ The Peristyle was built in 1906, and it was developed to become an area where New Orleanians could dance under the stars.

So imagine the early 1900s and ladies in their beautiful gowns and men in their tails and tux dancing the night away.

Well times have changed obviously.

The Peristyle is now used for weddings.

It's used for barbeques, for private parties.

To see the uh Peristyle, to me which is one of the most dramatic pieces, I think it's architecture art, to see it in its glory took my breath away.

I stood outside, I said to my husband, "Look at this."

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The Peristyle is a popular venue.

During the annual Lark in the Park fundraiser, long-time volunteer Genevieve Trimble was recognized for her contributions to the park.

In 1958, "The Today Show" came to the Peristyle.

NBC affiliate WDSU broadcast the national show.

Host Dave Garroway interviewed a New Orleans musician sitting on one of the iconic lions.

On the Bayou Metairie side of the Peristyle, four stalwart lions have proven to be the most popular creatures in the park.

The lions were created by local sculptor Pietro Ghiloni.

And I have to imagine there must be thousands of people in the city of New Orleans and have a photograph of a loved one sitting on top of one of those lions.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Photographers love the juxtaposition of light and shadows cast by the neoclassical architecture.

Just a short stroll down the bayou from the Peristyle is Popp Bandstand designed as a replica of the Temple of Love in Versailles Popp Bandstand was built in 1916 when a wealthy New Orleanian, John F. Popp, donated a princely sum of 7,500 dollars to build Popp Bandstand It was built to host public concerts.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The name of this 1912 Spanish revival structure has led to much speculation about its use as a gambling facility.

It was built as a refreshment stand, and so that word it was in Spanish, mission style that's a word for refreshment stand or cantina.

It was "catina" but New Orleans people couldn't say "catina" so they said "casina."

So that was it.

It was never used for gambling.

Only one night.

One night we had Celebration in the Oaks uh fundraiser.

So we got a permit to be able to have gambling in the Casino building.

And uh it was not worth the trouble.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The lure of the casino for most youngsters were the treats to be found inside.

One of my first most wonderful memories of City Park is going in to the casino, to play with an automated marionette character called Peppy the Clown.

You'd put probably a nickel in the machine and it would play, he would sing and he would sing like this "Hi I'm Peppy the Clown" in a little silly voice.

And you could make his hands move and his feet with the little buttons, and that got me on the road to working with puppets.

The building that is now called the Tempkin Center which we've always known as the casino building.

The casino building was where the park offices were and the boat rental, but I remember Mr. Bellvue he was the boat concessionaire.

And so the boats were there, and you can go and they had canoes, and they had row boats.

You know what I remember the most, and I loved so much, were the pedal boats.

You know, I thought that was, that was so much fun.

Of course it's always been a wonderful place because there's all those little islands.

Those little pocket islands.

And to go row around them you can always see ducks and sometimes you can find ducks nesting.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The history of City Park is as entwined as the outstretched limbs of its magnificent live oaks.

Its Native American roots date to the Tchefuncte culture.

Tchefuncte culture went back about 500 B.C.

and uh it spanned at about 1600 years in the area.

Before 1699, on Bayou St. John, Tchoupitoulas boom, then you had the Accolapissa boom, they were on what they called the City Park side uh where the Museum of Art is right now.

When the Accolapissa left, um which was right toward the end of the 1600s, The Houma moved in around the early 1700s.

So they were one of the few nations that were actually occupying that area when French moved in.

The vegetation here was unbelievable.

The food that was here was great.

There were deer, they hunted bear, ah you had turkey, um all kind of wild game, all the fish you could eat.

So it was like living in an Eden.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) A decade after the founding of New Orleans, Jean Louis Allard acquired this Eden.

He ran an indigo plantation and cattle ranch on the site.

(Sally Reeves) The property went along what was then Metairie Road, now City Park Avenue, to include Delgado Trade School, what became Delgado Trade School almost to the WYES studio.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) By the 1840s, the heir of the Allard estate was in bankruptcy.

Land baron and philanthropist John D. McDonogh bought the land in a sheriff's sale.

(Sally Reeves) In 1991, we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of City Park, but really it should have been almost 150th because the park was actually dedicated in 1854.

And it came out of a donation of land that John McDonogh gave the city, but not necessarily to make a park.

And his idea was that the city would divide it into farm plots and lease them out.

And then the city could get income to educate the poor.

But just a few years after he died, the Daily Picayune was already suggesting that the city should think about having a park.

And it did build a keeper's cottage and put up a fence and designate a park, but then the Civil War hit And every now and then there'd be a little May Day dance or something, but it didn't have somebody to love it and manage it and really care about it.

After the 1880s the city kind of forgot about City Park.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) In 1891, Victor Anseman, a retired florist, rose to the challenge.

Under his leadership, the City Park Improvement Association was formed to rescue the park from oblivion.

City Park's ancient oaks mirror the history of the park.

The most important grove is the historic live oaks, which is in the oldest section of City Park, which is near City Park Avenue, and which was the old Metairie Bayou.

(Grayhawk Perkins) And it was actually called Tchoupitoulas, Bayou Tchoupitoulas and it was named after the nation that was living there on that bayou at that time.

We have the largest known collection of mature live oaks in the world in City Park.

(male #6) There's a McDonogh Oak for John McDonogh.

(Betty Bagert) It's well over 800 and some odd years old now.

(male #7) Originally there were two dueling oaks, and you know the story goes that, in the late 1800s, when someone would be challenged to a duel they'd go out and meet at City Park and duel between these two oaks.

(narrator) "Between 1834 and 1844 scarcely a day passed "without duels being fought at the Oaks."

Times-Democrat, March 13, 1892.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The Suicide Oak also harbors sad tales.

They'd climb up and they'd, you know, they'd tie a rope and they'd hang themselves.

As a kid somebody told me, "Yeah, that was where "all those suicides were until Huey P. Long Bridge was built."

And then the Huey P. Long Bridge kind of put Suicide Oak out of business.

And the Suicide Oak keeps trying to commit suicide itself.

It uh lost a branch right before um Katrina.

And it lost another branch during Katrina (Peggy Scott Laborde) Framed by the oaks, the original entrance to City Park was North Alexander Street.

To quench the thirst, and appease the appetites of park patrons, entrepreneur Jean Marie Saux established a tavern across from the park.

(narrator) "It is a large home of refreshments, "stocked with the best liquors, and an ice cream saloon for the ladies."

The Daily Picayune, 1861.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Today, Ralph's on the Park continues to offer patrons an expansive view of the historic North Alexander Street entrance.

That lovely gate was donated by a steamboat captain named Salvatore Pizzati.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The 1910 gilded gateway is intertwined with delicate iron rosettes.

The gardens of City Park began with roses.

But it was a garden where people during the throws of the Depression could go and see some beauty, see some roses blooming.

And I remember Paul Soniat telling me about that and I thought way back then, in the rough times they saw the value of this land, and that still remains.

When the Great Depression hit and the Roosevelt administration was distributing funding across the country to fight the effects of the Great Depression, one of the criteria for getting aid was that you had to have a plan.

And as a result, aid from the WPA came to the park almost before any other entity in the state of Louisiana because we had a plan.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The improvements spearheaded the expansion of the vintage rose garden into the 12-acre Botanical Gardens.

♪ So come get away from the crazy world outside.♪ ♪ Slow down and hear the sound.

♪ Stop and smell the roses.

♪ And if you take the time ♪ you might find ♪ some peace of mind in the garden.

♪♪ In the early 80s I started a feature called The Good Earth.

And once a week we did a story on anything to do with the earth.

And I tell you, if I had not had Paul Soniat and Dan Gill, it never would have flown.

I learned so much from them, whether it was: "Let's talk about ferns," or "let's talk about different kinds of grasses," or "hey, there's a bug over there," it really brought the park alive for me.

My wife is from upstate New York in the country, and uh and I'm from St. Louis, and we decided to marry in New Orleans where we met.

I think City Park was the natural choice for us.

It represented what we loved about being here in addition to you know our other, everything else in our lives, you know, we're both kind of gardeners.

It was really ideal.

And, uh, and I love those memories.

All of the Sculpture in the Botanical Garden were done by Enrique Alferez.

Enrique Alferez is known for his art deco designs that you can find all over the place in City Park.

And um, and they're wonderful.

He was a pure artist.

He was uh, he um, he was a great individual, great storyteller, uh but his focus was always his art.

He really didn't care what you thought about him.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Alferez's sense of humor was on display when he described the antics of two figures in the center of the garden.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Tucked under garden benches, Alferez's creative genius is just as evident in smaller scale formats.

'Cause I asked him I said "Well what, what you know made you do these?"

He said, "Well I just looked around and saw what was in the park."

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Alferez's first wife, artist Rose Marie Huff, added another whimsical note.

"Undine," a water nymph rides a dolphin leaping over the pond.

And it's, it's so charming.

I mean, it's um, it's uh you know playful design right where it belongs.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Alferez did not look on his former wife's artistry in the same favorable light.

(Betty Bagert) Well he designed the piece that's there.

She executed it.

He said through clenched teeth one time to me, "I never could teach that girl how to use cement properly."

(Paul Soniat) The nice thing about Enrique is that he did this work when he was in his thirties in the 1930s, and continued to work in the 90s, when he was in his nineties.

The last big bronze piece he did was called "The Flute Player," and he was I think about 96 when he did that.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The 1989 master plan for the Botanical Garden incorporated the old with the new.

Anchoring the gardens are two magnificent buildings: The Conservatory, and directly opposite, The Pavilion of the Two Sisters.

A gift of the Azby Foundation, The Conservatory and Pavilion are named for sisters Marion Wadsworth Harvey and Erminia Wadsworth.

And when we um made the presentation, Ms. Erminia was still alive, and she loved the idea and we, and we named it after the two sisters.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The Pavilion hosts the Twilight Concert Series featuring a talented pool of New Orleans singers, musicians, actors, and even puppeteers.

(male #8) I do the show Hot Stuff with Becky Allen and Chris Weckline.

And Becky does Ms. Inez her 9th ward character.

Chris sings an Aria in the audience.

Ms. Viola is a marionette which is a puppet with strings and that's what I always was really fascinated by and Peppy started that.

It's a very eclectic kind of fun show for everybody.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) In addition to rejuvenating the Rose Garden, WPA artisans and workers arrived in City Park in great numbers to drain swamps, clear lagoons, plant trees, build roadways, and pathways.

(narrator) "Yesterday, this crew of WPA workers "in City Park broke the Louisiana "and national records for laying sidewalk paving.

"In one day they laid 700 lineal feet of "six and one-half foot wide sidewalk."

New Orleans Item, July 30, 1936.

And I mean today we would call it shovel ready, but it really was shovel ready because literally, because they would dig this with shovels.

It was hand tools with shovels doing all of this to give more people work.

On some of the concrete bridges around City Park you can find bas relief freezes on the side of the bridges of working men.

Somebody using a surveyor's sextant, somebody digging, somebody you know rolling a wheel barrel.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) WPA workers created and repaired bridges such as the Anseman Bridge over Bayou Metairie.

Early wooden spans required constant upkeep, but a few original stone bridges still exist including the Goldfish Bridge across from the Peristyle, and the 1902 Langles Bridge behind the casino.

Named for City Park Commissioner Felix Dreyfous, the Dreyfous Bridge honors his three decades of service to the park.

Dreyfous also commissioned the Pigeonniere, designed by his son, Julius, and named for his granddaughter Carol.

On April 29, 1937, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt arrived at City Park to dedicate the new Roosevelt Mall.

Prior to Roosevelt's arrival, the park had a new look.

Between 1897 and 1900, four major land acquisitions gave the park frontage on the former Native-American portage to the mouth of the river via Bayou St. John.

The natives called it uh Choupicacha.

Choupicacha is choupic means mudfish, acha means river.

So it would be Mudfish River.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) In 1908, a steel bridge over the bayou allowed direct access to the park from Esplanade Avenue.

In 1913, park commissioner Anthony Monteleone saw the need for a suitable entrance.

(Sally Reeves) Monteleone donated those enormous pylons with the torch and the uh three part um design to define a new sort of a Beaux Arts new entrance.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) On May 26, 1914, citizens gathered for the dedication of a statue of Civil War General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard.

Two years earlier, stately Lelong Avenue was completed.

The Parisian-inspired boulevard led to the newly opened Isaac Delgado Museum of Art.

Due to his friendship with City Park board members, Delgado himself chose the site known today as the New Orleans Museum of Art.

This is a huge repository of world art which is being held in trust for the citizens of New Orleans.

One of my fondest memories of the museum is when the King Tut exhibit came here for the first time and they painted the road leading up to the museum Nile blue.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Art in the park is just a stroll away.

Well the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Garden is a very eclectic selection of sculpture.

Much of it modern but some of it dating back to, you know neoclassicism.

And you go all the way to pop art like the Claes Oldenburg diaper pin and Robert Indiana's "LOVE" symbol and George Rodrigue's tri-colored dog sculpture.

One of the most interesting pieces in the Besthoff sculpture garden is Louise Bourgeois' giant spider.

It's a spider easily big enough to eat you.

In her view the spider had an aspect of being nurturing.

It was forever weaving.

It was, it was creating.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) One sculpture, Hercules The Archer, stirred up considerable controversy A 1938 States-Item article reported that when the anatomically accurate figure was placed on the steps of the museum, a city council member branded it "indecent."

And a museum board member suggested sending the figure to a foundry to have a fig leaf welded on.

The thing I remember about the archer, Antoine Bourdelle's archer was that for years and years he was who greeted you outside of the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Now he's in the garden.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Near City Park Avenue, Chloe, the water nymph, is poised and ready to blow her horns.

Sadly, vandals plucked them from her hands.

Vandals also destroyed the previous occupant, "Unfortunate Boot".

It was broken in 1929, and then replaced by Chloe.

The water nymph patiently waits to be restored.

City Park has always been reliant on benefactors and fundraisers to sustain the park.

We get about 15 percent of our money from the tax that um is on slot machines at the Fair Grounds, and the rest we have to raise ourselves.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) While the City of New Orleans owns the land, City Park, a state agency, is managed by the non-profit City Park Improvement Association.

Formed in 1979, the Friends of City Park raise funds for capital improvements.

Park supporters have long sought creative ways to maintain the park.

In the modern era, "Celebration in the Oaks" is a big fundraiser for the park.

It began in 1984 when board member Mary Rogers floated the idea of "a tribute to the Christmas tree."

[Jingle Bells] [Jingle Bells] I knew it was an event that either had to grow or was going to die.

I had been working with Angela Hill on some projects, and I called Angela and she helped get it started by getting WWL.

(Angela Hill) It was called "Christmas in the Oaks" and Channel Four became the television sponsor, and along with Entergy.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) In 1990, "Christmas in the Oaks" had a new name: the more inclusive "Celebration in the Oaks."

WVUE FOX 8 is a current sponsor.

And much of Celebration's success has been due to volunteers such as Barbara Hammett and Janet Larue who chaired the event for fourteen years.

I think that walking through there, there's something about the lighting among those trees in such a small area, relatively small area that literally makes you think that you're in a fairy tale.

My parents came to town and the train was running.

I said we're going to do the train and I remembered looking at their faces, look at this.

No matter how I would describe what it was, for them to see it at that age "Marvel," I said "From out of town, how magnificent is this."

That is such a profound memory.

(Laura Claverie) I think my favorite memory was the year that City Park brought back Mr. Bingle.

It just brought back all those wonderful memories of going to Canal Street and seeing Mr. Bingle.

And he is still a favorite at Celebration in the Oaks.

(Harry Mayronne, Jr.) And I remember um, my niece lining up with my niece to see Santa Claus.

I always welcomed a sit on his lap to tell him what I wanted.

I mean that was important.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The miniature train garden is an unexpected, playful aspect of Celebration in the Oaks, as well as a year-round feature in the Botanical Gardens.

You know New Orleans is always a little different than any other city, so we, we themed it with the idea of what trains would run in the city, what streetcars, the houses, the architecture.

And they're always inventive.

There's always something going on, the new oak tree with the blue crystal snowflakes coming down.

The Enrique Alferez Oak is what we call it.

It's in the New Orleans Botanical Garden.

It's decorated so beautifully for our Christmas with blue lights, with dripping blue lights like rain or tears.

It's really just a great, peaceful way to look at the oaks, to see the lights, to just enjoy the season.

I love it.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Other areas at the park have evolved in surprising ways.

And the swimming pool was a gift of William Ratcliffe Irby.

It was right on by Irby Drive which is an offshoot of Stadium Drive.

The swimming pool was originally built in the 1930s.

It ran until 1958 that we had to replace an awful lot of the stuff so it was taken out of play.

Once it was closed as a park it had a couple of reincarnations.

(Beau Bassich) One of the things they did is they made it into a monkey hill, where monkeys all escaped and got into all the oak trees in City Park, and they had to go out and try and catch them and bring them back.

But I remember my father getting calls at night like some monkeys escaped, alright.

And that's a tough one.

(Beau Bassich) So they ended up giving the monkeys to Audubon Park.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Today the only monkeys in City Park are artist Rona Pondick's stainless steel creatures cavorting in a gleaming tangle in the Bestoff sculpture garden.

After the great monkey escapade, a miniature golf course was built on the site.

And you had different, eighteen different holes and were all different Louisiana things and it really never worked quite as well.

I think really one of its most successful uses, if not one of the most bizarre uses, was Sheriff Charles Foti when he was criminal sheriff at Halloween, he would make it into a haunted house.

I can remember playing at the old tennis court which weren't too far from there.

Then all of a sudden you hear these screams, you know these yells and all these sirens which for the uninitiated would sound like there was a murder going on.

After Katrina they just tore it down It just, it doesn't stand anymore.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) When park land doubled in size in the 1920s, one tract remained in private hands.

In 1919, William Harding McFadden enlarged an existing mansion, adding a sunken garden and a lover's lane, and an urban legend was born.

(Errol Laborde) One version of it is if you could picture the McFadden House where Christian Brothers is today.

And according to the story a long time ago there was a girl who lived there.

And there's one of these things that, she fell in love with this guy, and he was like a sailor.

And they were getting married, but all of a sudden he had to leave.

Whatever it was it didn't end happily.

And so one night that she went out by Big Lake and drowned herself.

And her name was Lisa, okay.

And so at night that you could hear this moaning sound that was Lisa's ghost moaning for her lost lover.

I remember when I was a teenager in the 60s that there was supposedly you could go down a road and you could see the ghostly figure over a young woman called the Moaning Lisa that would haunt that road down there.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Prior to the 1950s, the New Orleans black community had limited access to the park.

And I remember once we were riding our bikes in City Park.

Policemen came through and threw us out.

We weren't even supposed to ride through the park.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Segregation prevented black golfers from playing until 1959.

Change came in the 1960s, when Joseph Bartholomew, the first black golf pro in the United States, helped design City Park's new north course It was a very difficult time in the nation.

And City Park was one of the first public facilities in New Orleans to publicly announce that they were going to integrate.

This was probably right after the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) In 1963, the National Defense Highway Act called for the creation of an interstate highway system An interstate bypass, I-610, ultimately cut through City Park.

And that was very controversial because you'd hear you were going to have a um, an expressway a noisy expressway, crossing this peaceful park and wipe out the best, most beautiful building ever been built in the park, the old golf clubhouse.

(Errol Laborde) I remember there was one of the alternative newspapers at the time, The Vieux Carre Courier, which had a headline called "The Rape of City Park" you know, talking about the City Park board giving in and allowing this to happen.

And it has been a difficulty because it divided the park in two.

But it gave them the money to develop the land on the other side of Harrison Avenue.

So they kind of made lemonade out of that intrusion in the park.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) A byproduct of the I-610 construction yielded unexpected bragging rights to the city's tallest peak.

The story I hear is that it's the spoils when they built I-610, they piled it up there They made a mountain, the highest elevation in the city.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Located in the park's Couturie Forest, it's called "Laborde Mountain" or "Lookout" in memory of previous General Manager, Ellis Laborde.

In size and scope, City Park has undergone dramatic changes.

Well the original donation for City Park from John McDonogh's estate was about 100 acres And the current size of the park is about 1300 acres.

So it's about 13 times larger than the original donation and generally runs from City Park Avenue to Robert E. Lee and from Bayou St. John to the Orleans canal There are also two fingers that go out towards Lake Pontchartrain that sort of create the symbolic connection of the park to the lake.

And then that, of course, all crashed when Katrina came.

(Robert Becker) We had 43 million dollars in direct damage to the park All of the park's equipment was lost.

Every, every piece down to a shovel and a hammer was gone.

All of the parks 120 or so buildings were damaged.

The landscape of the park took a tremendous hit.

We lost 1,000 trees immediately and another 2,000 shortly afterwards Frankly, when we got back to the park it was not clear to us that we could bring the park back.

The damage was so tremendous and we had so little resources.

It was just a gigantic mess, but Mother Goose was hanging from one of the trees just sort of swinging there and it was really kind of ironic.

Storyland is one of the places that we, you know we focused on, because it's so iconic to people in the community who've had generations of their children go through.

And we actually held Celebration for nineteen days in December of 2005, which was one of the most inspiring things for me that I've ever seen, with people coming who had lost their house and their job and whatever, but they were determined to show their children, you know, a Christmas of some sort.

To see lights, to see happiness, to see Christmas Celebration was everything.

And unfortunately for us, another effect of the storm was that we had to layoff virtually all the staff in the park, because the park at that time was principally self-sustaining in terms of generating revenue from activities in the park.

So people would drive through in the park and they'd see one or two of us working in the park, and some people would come up and say, "When are you going to get the driving range open?"

It was like you know, "When are we going to climb Mount Everest?"

About the ten of us that were there walked onto the golf driving range and we began to pick golf balls out of the mud and the dirt, and we brought them back and we washed them off.

So we wrote up a sign, a handmade sign and said "Driving Range open.

Ten dollars for a bucket of balls."

And people drove by and some went, "Oh my God!"

And then they went out, and they started to hit golf balls.

And then as we were going through the bucket of balls, my operations director said to me, he said "You know Bob, we don't have any more golf balls.

We walked out onto the area where people were hitting you know we told "Stop!

Stop!"

Everybody's enjoyed themselves here, but we don't have any way to pick up the balls.

Can you help us?"

And people dropped their clubs and walked out onto the driving range and picked up golf balls and put them back.

But I mean it just shows you how anxious people were to get back to some normality.

One of the really great ironies about City Park is that is has taken two of the greatest disasters in the history of the country to spur development and redevelopment of the park.

And of course the WPA in response to the Great Depression occurred in the 1930s.

But following Hurricane Katrina's devastation of the park has also been a period of time when the park was basically being rebuilt from being virtually annihilated during the storm.

And with the help of the Federal Government doing it and with the help of lots of other people as well.

In the last few years we have welcomed forty thousand volunteers to City Park, and they have contributed hundreds of thousands of hours of sweat equity.

Even though it was devastated by Katrina the comeback has just been phenomenal.

I think anybody, who has been in the park just feels that energy and feels like it's just headed in the right direction.

♪ (Peggy Scott Laborde) From its inception, the range of sports and sports facilities in the park is impressive Opened in 1937, City Park Stadium is in active use today.

The art deco gates feature decorative insets fashioned by Enrique Alferez.

The athletes represent the various sports played within the park.

The stadium replaced the short-lived City Park race track which had a brief run from 1905 to 1908.

The stadium that rose over the track oval remains the largest and most visible contribution of the relief efforts of the WPA, the Works Progress Administration.

In 1965, it was renamed for beloved local coach, Tad Gormley.

He was a guy that loved kids and loved athletics and was instrumental in bringing a lot of the area kids into sports.

I played high school football there you know as a junior and senior in Tad Gormley Stadium.

It's still a focal point of all of the local school athletics here in the city of New Orleans.

We've hosted two national AAU track and field championships.

The Junior Olympics has been hosted in the park for twice in the last six years.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Designed as a multi-use community facility, on October 17, 1938, 70 thousand worshipers attended the 8th National Eucharistic Congress.

Other events followed.

(Errol Laborde) On Sunday evenings there were free concerts.

And there were many dancing schools at the time, and so on any given Sunday night one or two dancing schools would put on a routine.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) And then there was The Beatles.

(Errol Laborde) And then all of a sudden The Beatles came on.

And once they came on, all the girls or just about all the girls in the stands started leaping the rails and running toward The Beatles.

And from that point on you forgot about The Beatles.

I mean The Beatles were just background music to what was a rodeo that was going on I mean I'm talking about thousands of girls who were rushing the stadium, and it was the police just trying to bring them back, and wrestle them and bring them back as gently as they can.

And so what you saw of The Beatles were these little stick figures in the distance.

But what you remember is the foreground of all the girls trying to rush them.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The more intimate size of the refurbished Pan American stadium makes it ideal for high school teams to compete in growing sports such as rugby and soccer.

Now soccer is huge in the park.

And you know we have five soccer fields in the park.

We're getting ready to open four more soccer fields.

Softball has always been a big part of what we do in the park.

Back in the late 70s, uh early 80s, I um joined a softball league.

Summers in New Orleans being what they are you know, you could always count on rain, and the umpires at the time didn't call the games.

And I remember this vividly, that you'd be standing there with the rain just pouring down around you, and I remember it because I wear glasses, and so you know I'd be forever taking my glasses off and I was the pitcher.

So, accounts for some stellar performances.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Golf came to City Park in 1900.

The south course was the first public golf course in the city.

It expanded from 9 holes to 18 near the present day museum.

So at one moment in time the park had four golf courses that probably took up nearly six hundred of the thirteen hundred acres of the park.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) By the 1930s, WPA workers enlarged the old St. John's clubhouse, and the new east course emerged as ladies joined the ranks of avid golfers Due to the "rowdiness" of the caddies, the caddy house was relocated to separate quarters equipped with an intercom connected to the main house.

The first Crescent City Golf Tournament in 1938 was a huge draw with $5000 in prize money.

In 1940, the event became the New Orleans Open Golf Tournament.

A new driving range was also on the agenda.

Crowds poured in on opening night to witness the inaugural test run.

(Anthony Biagas) So presently we have one golf course, 18 holes, and the driving range.

And we're on schedule right now to complete another course, a PGA type course.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Fishing in City Park's necklace of lagoons ranks among the earliest and longest running pastime.

(Laura Claverie) The Bass Fishing Rodeo is the oldest fishing rodeo in the United States.

It was begun in 1946, and I'm told it was so primitive at the time that the scale they used to weigh the fish had to be borrowed from a Schwegmann's grocery store.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The rodeo remains a highly-anticipated annual event.

The accent is on kids and families.

Anglers vie for trophies in categories from Junior Angler to Champion's Challenge Competition in the park is key, whether on the lagoons, or on the tennis courts.

The first tennis courts were actually up near Bayou St. John near the front of Lelong Avenue.

And then gradually tennis became consolidated in the area in the front of the park between Victory and Dreyfous.

And at one time the park had over 50 tennis courts in that area.

The old City Park tennis complex in its prime was one of the largest public tennis complexes in the country.

We call them the old courts which are now, which is now the Great Lawn.

And we would have the beer tournaments.

Well, "why beer tournament?"

Because we're going to serve hot dogs and beer at the end of the tournament.

If you win, you get a winner's trophy and so it became an institution of the park.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) In 2011, the state of the art Pepsi City Park Tennis Center opened on Marconi Drive with 16 hard courts and 10 clay courts.

Tournaments and lessons are conducted in a lush tropical setting.

For horse enthusiasts, stables on Filmore Avenue offer riders of varying skill levels, a place to enjoy equestrian activities.

Lessons from novice to expert are available to all.

Equally competitive are those who participate in runs through the park.

The park is the center of some of the major races in the city of New Orleans with The Crescent City Classic where you find approximately 20 thousand people running in the race each year We've begun something new in the last couple of years: the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon which ends up in the park.

And as we rebuild these facilities for the traditional field sports and people who use the park, we're seeing more and more demand from other kinds of sporting activities.

The park has played not only an incredible role in the athletic history of the city, but in the cultural history of the city.

Right up through the Voodoo Music Fest that we hold today where we get modern day acts for people that come out and play in the park.

It's just a long history of the tradition of music and culture being a vital part of the park.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The Goldring Woldenberg Great Lawn is a bucolic area in City Park that's now a focal point.

We took an area that was unused and created an open, green space that faces the Peristyle.

It's now used for just peaceful outdoor activities: swinging on the swings, having a picnic, flying a kite.

My favorite night is the night in April when the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra plays and families come from all over.

And they have picnics, and they bring their blankets and candelabra and drink wine and watch the children run around the park.

It's really an amazing experience.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The City Park master plan includes designs for a miniature golf course next to the Goldring Woldenberg Great Lawn And a splash park for the little ones near the former south golf course.

The expansion of Big Lake next to the Museum offers new opportunities to explore the park.

(Laura Claverie) If you look at an aerial view of Big Lake, it is the exact same shape as Lake Pontchartrain.

And we built a walking path around that lake which is about three quarters of a mile long.

And on any given day you can go out there and find hundreds of people walking around that path.

(Marlin Gusman) My wife Renee, I and my two dogs Rufus and Chaka Khan.

Typically what we'll do is we'll go to the back of the park first, and then come back and end up on Big Lake and just take the whole circle.

And now that they've put in the new nature path, we go there and relax sometimes and just look at the water and the pelicans or the birds diving.

It's just really a wonderful place to be.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The post Katrina return of the pelican, the state bird, is a most welcome sight.

Efforts are also underway to attract more songbirds to the park.

As a Naturalist and a Native American, uh definitely feel that, that parks and natural parks are very important.

It connects people back to a natural environment.

One of my favorite pictures is a picture of my father and me feeding the ducks.

It's just a real wonderful father son moment.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) City Park has always served as a wildlife refuge.

For some other denizens of the park, caution is advised.

This was after Katrina, and uh my wife and I were taking a walk in City Park, and things were still pretty desolate.

And we were near Scout Island, and my wife said, "look at the alligator."

And I couldn't see anything, and then I followed her gaze, and it was across the lagoon.

And it was an alligator.

And Holy Smoke!

So I finally saw a City Park alligator with my own eyes.

You always get the sense that you are telling somebody you saw a UFO.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Alligators are a reminder that vast areas of the park were swampland.

New Orleans City Bark has transformed one of these sections into a dog owner's destination.

(Laura Claverie) NOLA City Bark is the first dog park in America to receive the coveted five paw rating.

NOLA City Bark is divided into a large dog park and small dog park.

We have agility training.

We have swimming pools The dogs love it.

The people love it.

(Peggy Scott Laborde) The refurbished Popp Fountain with its dramatic central waterspout designed by Enrique Alferez, has inspired new memories of the park.

♪ Do you dare to dream, ♪ do you dare to dream,♪ ♪ cause sometimes you know your dreams they do come true.

♪ ♪ Sometimes you know they will not disappoint you.

♪ ♪ So take a little time to dream.♪ ♪ Take a little time to dream.♪ That's what I like about City Park.

With all the renovations that have been done here, they've kept the old and they've mixed it with the new in such a way that it just feels good, it feels important.

And it feels very very nice.

And I think it's a very romantic place for couples to go.

City Park is just one of the real positive forces in this community.

And I used to tell people that "wait in about five years and City Park will be one of the great urban parks in the country.

And now I've changed that, and I say "It's going to be THE great urban park in the country."

I think the question is what would New Orleans be without City Park?

Think of the void.

What if we didn't have all those beautiful trees, we didn't have that area to walk in, to stroll a baby in, to walk your dog in, to hold hands in?

What if we didn't have that?

(Peggy Scott Laborde) Thirteen hundred acres of lush open spaces, and dense forests, ancient waterways criss-crossed by a network of trails, pathways, and bridges, New Orleans City Park is one of the nation's premier urban sanctuaries.

Here nature has value, life is renewed, and moments are cherished.

Isn't that why we want to live here?

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (narrator) City Park Memories is made possible by the City Park Improvement Association.

Learn more about City Park at www.NewOrleansCityPark.com Funding for this program comes in part from the Theresa Bittenbring Marque and John Henry Marque Fund, established by the estate of John A. Marque in honor of his mother and father.

Also by the WYES Producers Circle, a group of generous contributors dedicated to the support of channel 12's local productions.

And by contributions to WYES by viewers like you.