Book Review: From the streets to the skies

Two books out recently, Main Streets of Louisiana and Louisiana Aviation, offer different but complementary views of our state through photographs. Louisiana Aviation celebrates the state’s impressive history of flight from novelty first takeoffs (some deadly) to barnstorming stunt pilots and the eventual progression toward aviation as a form of commerce and transportation. Through it all, author Vincent P. Caire shows how Louisiana was at the forefront of the nascent industry. We see gorgeous black-and-white images of local aviation pioneers, and we read of Huey Long’s determined effort, before Louis Armstrong International, to build an airport in New Orleans that wouldn’t be under the city’s control. His solution: Pump state-owned soil from Lake Pontchartrain to construct a peninsula that would house the Art Deco-style Shushan Airport, now the New Orleans Lakefront Airport.

Main Streets functions almost as a travel guide to the Pelican State’s small towns and their inviting old storefronts. The book celebrates 33 districts designated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as Main Street Communities. Towns from every corner of the state are featured as well as four New Orleans Urban Districts. Each section delves into interesting stories about the communities—Franklin’s Victorian streetlamps still bear the “Do Not Hitch” stamps to deter carriages, while Minden survived a fire, a tornado and a flood all in one year, 1933.

Main Streets shows small towns that are holding on to a unique sense of place, or are determined to rehabilitate their once-inviting centers of community life.

Through both books, we see a small state that’s managed to have a huge impact on a big industry like aviation while staying true to its small-town roots.