Mandeville City Hall is located at 3101 East Causeway Approach, Mandeville, LA 70448.
Phone: 985‑626‑3144.
Neighborhoods
Beginnings [1]
Lake Pontchartrain was named by French explorer Pierre Le Monye, Sieur d'Iberville, who first came upon the Lake on an expedition in 1699. The Mandeville area was first settled in 1739 near Bayou Castine, but did not thrive until developed in the 1830s by Bernard de Marigny de Mandeville. Marigny began purchasing land on the north shore of the Lake in the early 19th Century, eventually owning an extensive portion of the area from Bayou Cane to the Lewis plantation near the present day Causeway. Marigny named the site Fontainebleau, after the Chateau de Fontainebleau and its forest south of Paris. He also purchased land west of Bayou Castine, and eventually developed the land as a small town for wealthy New Orleanians to visit in the summertime in order to escape the summer heat and seasonal outbreaks of yellow fever.
According to his plan, Marigny auctioned 432 lots in Mandeville in February 1834 for a total of $80,000. Marigny placed several conditions on the lots, including one of his most significant contributions to the future citizens of Mandeville, that "the space between the streets fronting the Lake and the Lake were forever to remain open, and unobstructed, for the common use." Additional conditions included establishing minimum street widths, requiring owners of the lots to maintain the planned wharf on the Lake as well as planned bridges on the Small Bayou Castin and the Shell Ravines, and that the Small Bayou Castin and the Shell Ravines, used for drainage, would not be stopped in their course.