Leonidas (also known as West Carrollton) is a neighborhood designation in the city of New Orleans. A subdistrict of the Uptown/Carrollton Area, its boundaries as defined by the New Orleans City Planning Commission are: South Claiborne Avenue, Leonidas and Fig Streets to the north, South Carrollton Avenue to the east, the Mississippi River and Jefferson Parish to the west. Although an official city planning district name, the name "Leonidas" is not widely used nor has it any historical usage and the area is usually referred to by the larger neighborhood "Uptown, or "Carrollton". The designated neighborhood incorporates the upper-river half of what had been the town of Carrollton, Louisiana, in the 19th century. It is commonly known to locals simply as "Carrollton, or to distinguish this section, "Upper Carrollton" or "West Carrollton". The portion closer to the river is often called the "Riverbend" or "Carrollton Riverbend." The section closer to the Jefferson Parish line is sometimes known as "Pigeon Town/Pension Town". Today the area thrives on its commercial businesses but it also includes a large residential community. Landmarks in the neighborhood include the Camellia Grill, the Carrollton Streetcar Barn, Palmer Park, the Water Works, and the Oak Street commercial district (including the well known Maple Leaf Bar). Name The formal name for the neighborhood, Leonidas, may have been derived from the famous Spartan King of 490 B.C. However, as the name also is connected with the street that intersects the neighborhood, Leonidas Street, it is more likely to have derived from Leonidas Polk, Episcopalian "fighting bishop" for whom the street was possibly renamed following the end of Reconstruction. The informal name, Pigeon Town, has been passed down through generations. The name has its roots in the word, pidgin. It is defined as a simplified speech used for communication between people with different languages. History The Leonidas neighborhood area has history dating all the way back to the 1700s. Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, a French colonizer and the founder of the city of New Orleans, began a plantation in the area circa 1719. The land went on to remain a plantation for different types of agriculture well into the 1800s. The area was then bought by the New Orleans Canal and Banking Company and was divided into sections. In 1835, the first house was built and soon emerged a new neighborhood of the city of New Orleans. The Leonidas neighborhood