FAUBOURG ST. JOHN
House on Grand Route St. John: This house was situated on the last leg of the Bayou Road that led from New Orleans to the settlement of Bayou St. John, which had become an important small port and settlement in the late Spanish period. Before other canals were dug, supplies coming to New Orleans via the Lake Route, through the Rigolets and Lake Pontchartrain to Bayou St. John were unloaded at Port St. John and carried to the city over the portage road. The portage road was the earliest path from the Lake to the River, and has been used since time immemorial by the Indians before the French began exploring the area. With the coming of the French colonizers it became the main road for bringing supplies and people to the new settlement on the Mississippi. During the late 1700’s and first half of the 1800’s, it became the fashionable road of the area, along which many lovely homes were built, most of them two-story plantation type homes. This area, along with Gentilly, was one of the earliest and most fashionable suburbs of New Orleans. It was so early that concessions of land in this location of Grand Bayou de St. Jean (as named by Bienville) were granted to settlers as early as 1708. In 1718, when the future Nouvelle Orleans could boast little more than a rude shack serving as a temporary shelter for the Commandant, Jean Baptist LeMoyne Sieur de Bienville, settlers were established along the banks of Bayou St. John.
Information obtained from the link below:
http://old-new-orleans.com/NO_Historical_Images.html