About Longue Vue
The Gardens
Learn about upcoming garden workshops, register to volunteer in the gardens, ask for pest control tips, and see a list of what’s in bloom year-round.
The Longue Vue Legacy
Read about our founders, Edith and Edgar Stern, and their legacy of philanthropy and civic engagement.
Board & Staff
Find staff members and contact information, as well as a list of board members and their positions using the link above. Click here for current employment openings at Longue Vue.
A Fuller History
As rich and complex as the Stern family’s 6o years at Longue Vue were, those years were only a brief moment in a much longer history of this space. People, plants, and animals have connected on the land we now stand on, and the surrounding waters, for thousands of years. Indigenous peoples called this area “Bulbancha, or Place of Many Tongues: In centuries past, as today, the crescent of land between the river and the lake was a passageway, connecting people of different backgrounds, languages, and customs.
Documentation of specific uses of this land prior to European colonialization is scarce, but we know that indigenous peoples would have utilized the waterways as “roads to navigate the region.
The adjacent Palmetto Canal, along our south border, was once a natural waterway used to travel from the river to the lake year-round. By 1720. European colonizers had begun to la chain to the land, creating individual plots. Eventually it became part of the city of New Orleans as we know it today – including the corresponding deterioration of indigenous control of Bulbancha.
This history, too, is part of our history. It requires further research and promises a more complete historical narrative. Today’s Longue Vue is committed to telling the stories ve know well to researching the deeper history we yearn to know better, and to stewarding the land and water we find in our hands in the service of our expansive community. The example of Edith and Edgar Stern and their love for the earth, their family, and their communities guide us in this work. Thanks to their vision, today Longue Vue once again has the opportunity to be Bulbancha: a place many languages, many customs, and many cultures.