Mandeville Louisiana Community Information     Mandeville is a city in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 10,489 at the 2000 census. Mandeville is located on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, across the lake from the city of New Orleans. Mandeville was listed as one of the Top 100 Places to Live on relocate-america.com in 2004 and 2005. Mandeville was recently hit by Hurricane Katrina and has been moderately damaged. The lakefront is currently under reconstruction as the storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain has extensively damaged the Lakefront. History The area had long been agricultural land when the town of Mandeville was laid out in 1834 by developer Bernard Xavier de Marigny de Mandeville. In 1840 Mandeville was incorporated as a town. It became a popular summer destination for well-to-do New Orleanians wishing to escape the city's heat. In the mid 19th century regular daily steam-boat traffic between New Orleans and Mandeville began, and by the end of the 19th century it became a popular weekend destination of the New Orleans middle-class as well. Bands would play music on the ships going across the lake and at pavilions and dance-halls in Mandeville; Mandeville became one of the first places where the new jazz music was heard outside of New Orleans. Bunk Johnson, Buddy Petit, Papa Celestin, George Lewis, Kid Ory, Edmond Hall, Chester Zardis, and many other early jazz artists played in Mandeville regularly. Ruby's Roadhouse Two buildings from early jazz history still stand in Mandeville. Ruby's Roadhouse has been in continuous operation since the 1920s and today is still popular a bar and live music venue. The Dew Drop Dance Hall opened in January of 1895, it closed with the onset of the Great Depression and the building used only for storage for decades, preserving it unchanged from the early 20th century until it reopened in 2000 with live jazz as a protected historic landmark. (This was one of the earliest "Dew Drop"s; dance halls across the South were similarly named, including the club in New Orleans where Little Richard got his start. ) In 1956 the first span of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway opened to automobile traffic. A second span was added in 1969. This began the growth of Mandeville and the surrounding area as a suburban commuter community for people working in New Orleans. This trend increased in the 1980s and 1990s, bringing much growth to Mandeville, and bringing it more into the Greater New Orleans Metropolitan area. Mandeville is the home town of Cajun fiddler and bandleader Amanda Shaw. Courtesy of Wikipedia - the Free Encyclopedia