Background
Pierre le Blond de la Tour was born in France in 1673.
Pierre le Blond de la Tour was born in France in 1673.
La Tour began his career as a military engineer with the French army in Portugal in 1697. During the War of the Spanish Succession, he served as a draftsman in Portugal in 1702, appointed engineer in 1703, and served with the army in Spain from 1704 to 1708. He was taken prisoner at Alcantara in 1705 and exchanged the next year. He participated in the siege of Marchienne and served as noncommissioned officer at the sieges of Douai, Quesnoy, and Bouchain in 1712, and of Freiburg in 1713. In 1715 he was named reserve captain of the Piedmont regiment and then corporal of his Majesty's Engineers.
In 1720 he was appointed engineer-in-chief of the province of Louisiana which was at that time under the control of Law's Company of the West. He arrived at Old Biloxi, the capital of the province, in December of that year with a corps of assistants to superintend the construction of whatever public buildings and works might be needed. The most pressing question before the council of the province at that time was whether to rebuild Old Biloxi, which had been almost wiped out by fire the year before, or transfer the capital to some other place. Bienville, the governor of the province, was very eager that the capital should be moved to New Orleans, which he had founded in 1718. But the council, acting under the advice of La Tour, decided to move the capital to a point a short distance to the west of Old Biloxi and to give it the name of New Biloxi.
La Tour drew up an elaborate plan for the new capital, which included a fortress and a port on Ship Island which stood a few miles opposite in the Mississippi Sound. In September 1721 the transfer was made. New Biloxi developed into the Biloxi of today. Meanwhile La Tour had been ordered to send his assistant, Adrien de Pauger, to New Orleans to examine the site and transfer the settlement to a more suitable spot, if he should deem it necessary to avoid the inundations of the river.
Pauger went to New Orleans in March 1721, and seeing no reason for changing the site, he surveyed the place and in a few weeks finished drawing up plans for a city of about a mile square. He sent the plans to La Tour, but instead of forwarding them to Paris, La Tour is said to have pigeonholed them for fear the capital would be moved from New Biloxi to New Orleans. Bienville had anticipated this action on the part of La Tour, and having procured a copy of Pauger's plans, he sent them on to Paris. Soon thereafter the board of liquidation, which had taken over the affairs of the company after it had collapsed in the latter part of 1720, ordered the capital of Louisiana transferred to New Orleans. Not until then did La Tour give his official approval of Pauger's plans of the city. La Tour claimed in a letter written December 9, 1721, that he had drawn up the plan of New Orleans, and most of the historians of that city, especially the earlier ones, have accepted his claim. But Villiers du Terrage (Histoire, post, p. 88) declares that La Tour did not see New Orleans until nearly six months after making this claim, and that probably the only part he had in the matter was to trace on paper in advance a number of little squares. He may have intended, however, that these little squares should be situated far away from the Mississippi River, probably on the Bayou St. John which flowed into Lake Ponchartrain north of New Orleans. La Tour favored establishing an inland settlement on Lake Ponchartrain rather than on the Mississippi River, on the ground that it would be easier of access from the towns along the Gulf Coast.
On June 10, 1722, La Tour and Pauger left New Biloxi for New Orleans, arriving at their destination on July 7. Other boats followed, and under La Tour's supervision the new city began to take form and shape. A church and several houses were built, a cemetery was laid out, levees were thrown up--the first on the Lower Mississippi--ditches were dug, and a canal was constructed in the rear of the city for drainage purposes. The city, as laid out by Pauger and developed by La Tour, constitutes the French Quarter or the Vieux Carre of the present city of New Orleans. Before leaving New Biloxi, La Tour was made lieutenant-general of the province, much to the disgust and chagrin of Bienville. But Bienville submitted to higher authority and formally presented La Tour in his new role to the troops. La Tour died in New Orleans about eighteen months after going there. As far as is known, he left no heirs or descendants.
La Tour was well known engineer, responsible for the layout of early New Orleans. He was credited with performing the first work to improve navigability on an American inland river, and also the first work on constructing levees on the Lower Mississippi River. He was decorated with the Cross of the Royal and Military Order of St. Louis in 1715 for his military service.
