Kenner (first known as Kennerville) extends across the former plantation lands of Minor Kenner and William B. Kenner (brothers of Duncan F. Kenner of Ashland Plantation upriver in Ascension Parish; see Day Trip 2). Much of the original town, laid out by surveyor W. T. Thompson in 1855, was absorbed into a new Mississippi River levee in the twentieth century, and thus few of its early buildings have survived. Kenner remained a community of truck farms until New Orleans’s International Airport opened in 1945. Initially named for pioneer aviator John B. Moisant, who died in a plane crash in New Orleans in 1910, the airport was renamed Louis Armstrong International Airport in 2000 to honor the New Orleans–born musician. Ongoing expansions include new terminals and parking garages. Airline Highway (now Airline Drive), the original route to the airport from New Orleans, blossomed with motels and restaurants, sadly deteriorated or demolished after I-10 superseded the older highway. One of Kenner’s earliest buildings is the two-story Felix and Block General Mercantile Store (1907; 303 Williams Boulevard); its brick facade is ornamented with pilasters, a cornice with dentils, and a sawtooth brick panel in the center of a small pediment.
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