Relics 2015: Pilings, Sunset

By now, Laura Mehaffey’s friends and family are familiar with the request. “On all my visits home,” said the New Orleans-born Mehaffey, who currently lives in Nashville, “everyone knows I have to watch the sunset at least once while I’m there. No matter if we’re eating or socializing, I’ve got to go see it.”

She blames her lakefront upbringing. “Growing up in Lakeview, I got to run down and watch the sunsets all the time,” said Mehaffey.

And where better than Fitzgerald’s Restaurant? Propped at the end of a lengthy wooden pier, the long-running West End seafood establishment offered its devotees three views of Lake Pontchartrain from the dining room. Also a draw: boiled crab, stuffed crab, and avalanches of fried shrimp. “The wait took a long time,” said Mehaffey, of her family’s frequent visits through the 1960s and 1970s. “It always seemed like we were there for hours. But the food was amazing, of course.”

This West End restaurant did an ample trade in its day, thanks to the scenic setting and regular visits from the shrimp and fishing boats. “The seafood was as fresh as you could get it,” recalled Mehaffey.

Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Fitzgerald established the restaurant in 1932; in 1998, Hurricane Georges dealt Fitzgerald’s a crippling blow; by the time Katrina swept out of New Orleans in 2005, only the pilings were left.

To get to the restaurant’s remnants, Mehaffey navigates through the overgrown and cracked roads of the “dead, kind of eerie” side of the lakefront. From her view, this pocket has yet to see a hint of renaissance.

But still, the photographer takes this potholed path down to the water in the evenings—often toting her Nikon D3200, a tripod, and a family member; but sometimes just succumbing, homesick, to a pull: “I have to go and find my sunsets.”

View more at lauramehaffey.wix.com/photography. Details on Relics 2015, our yearlong photography series, can be found here.