With a little inside info, finding your way around New Orleans is a cinch.
New Orleans’ Moonwalk
With a little inside info, finding your way around New Orleans is a cinch.
First thing: north, south, east and west are virtually unknown here. We navigate by the landscape. North toward the lake and the Causeway is lakeside, south to the river is riverside, west is uptown, and east is downtown.
Second, we travel by neighborhoods, driving over to Mid-City, Carrollton or into the Faubourg Marigny. The National Register of Historic Places has designated seventeen National Historic Districts in New Orleans. Two of them — the French Quarter and Garden District — are also National Historic Landmarks. (So is the St. Charles Avenue streetcar line.)
To orient yourself in New Orleans (and have fun doing it), visit the Preservation Resource Center at 923
Tchoupitoulas in the Central Business District. Concise, informative vignettes cover the highlights of each historic neighborhood. A great, free map takes you around the city and makes a good souvenir of your visit.
Bonus: there, you can take an entertaining hands-on crash course in building styles like the Creole cottage, the raised cottage and the shotgun house by lifting the lids on their scale models.
New Orleans began, as most first-time visitors here do, with the Vieux Carré, or French Quarter — a square hugging an elbow curve in the Mississippi. From Canal to Esplanade, Rampart Street to the river: 98 blocks, 98 block parties.
The architecture is European and Creole, the colors are Caribbean and the festive lifestyle is a New Orleans trademark. For 300 years, the French Quarter has been the heart of the city, centered around Jackson Square. Home of the French Market, Riverwalk, the Aquarium of the Americas, Spanish Plaza, museums, restaurants and enough activity for a lifetime of sightseeing.
While the French Quarter is the most famous, there are lots of other fascinating neighborhoods to explore. Here’s the scoop on just a few.
Just downriver (to the east, if you must have compass points) is the first suburb, the Faubourg Marigny (Esplanade to Press Street, the river to St. Claude), dating from the early 18th century. Brightly (sometimes wildly) painted Creole cottages cluster in the narrow streets dotted with churches, old warehouses, chic cafés, eateries and watering holes. Washington Square is the oasis; Frenchmen Street is the center of the club activity, and music drifts through the air along with the scent of the river and night-blooming jasmine.
Head toward the lake (north) along lovely Esplanade Avenue, at the back of the Quarter through Esplanade Ridge (North Rampart to City Park banking Esplanade Avenue). Considered part of Mid-City by locals, lovely mansions and shotgun and Creole cottages dominate the landscape scattered with occasional monuments. It’s home to the Fair Grounds Race Course by Churchill Downs, and ends at lovely Bayou St. John and City Park — home to the New Orleans Museum of Art, Besthoff Sculpture Garden and 1,500 acres of botanical gardens, sports, theme parks and children’s activities.
Toward Uptown, west of the French Quarter across Canal Street, is the Central Business District (Canal
Street to Poydras Street, the Pontchartrain Expressway to the river). This is where the Americans first settled when the Creoles wanted to keep the French Quarter to themselves. It consists of a mix of office and industrial buildings centered around Lafayette Square, the site of Gallier Hall, where the mayor toasts carnival kings during Mardi Gras parades. Just uptown of the CBD (Poydras Street to I-10 and Pontchartrain Expressway to the river) is the lively Warehouse and Arts District, an area that has in the last decade seen its revitalization as a flourishing arts and residential district. Wonderful architectural conversions have created a neighborhood of galleries, restaurants, studios and museums like the Preservation Resource Center, the Contemporary Arts Center, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the New Orleans School of GlassWorks & Printmaking Studio. A stroll along Julia Street from the river to Carondolet Street takes you past some of the city’s hippest contemporary art galleries.
Continuing west toward Uptown is the National Historic Landmark, the Garden District. Its two sections, Lower Garden and the Garden District, were both subdivided from plantations. The best way to view these landmarks is via another historic landmark, the St. Charles Avenue Streetcar. Through late 2007, the line will be undergoing repairs to cantilever damage caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Until it returns to service, you can travel the same St. Charles Avenue route via the St. Charles bus.
The Lower Garden District (I-10 to Jackson Avenue, St. Charles to Tchoupitoulas) is more cottage than mansion. Named for its origins, lower on the social and style scale than the Garden District, it is an architectural buffet of Greek Revival, Victorian and historic cottage styles. A few sophisticated historic townhouses gather around Coliseum Square, with its antique ambiance. Classical street names take on local pronunciations: Melpomene (mel-puh-meen), Calliope (kal-ee-ope).
Trendy shops along Magazine Street (from the French magasin , meaning “shop”) and the hip, laid-back style of the area have inspired many to dub it one of the coolest neighborhoods in the U.S., on a par with Greenwich Village.
Garden District (Jackson Avenue to Louisiana Avenue, St. Charles Avenue to Magazine Street): Americans unwelcome in the French Quarter showed off their wealth by building huge mansions with the lavish gardens for which the Garden District is renowned. Every house tells a tale, as the novels of Anne Rice remind us.
Uptown Officially, the boundaries of this historic district extend from Louisiana Avenue to Lowerline Street and from Tchoupitoulas to Claiborne. Adjacent is the Carrollton area, centered around Carrollton Avenue, where the river bends.
Uptown is heart and home to residents, universities including Tulane and Loyola, chic boutiques and a multitude of eateries and outdoor cafés where the sound of screen doors shutting and oyster shells opening is music to the patrons’ ears. This largest residential enclave of the city is known for its polished wooden floors and high ceilings with lazy fans. The architecture is diverse; the landscape is green with live oaks; and the air perfumed by sweet olive, magnolias and night-blooming jasmine. Early mornings, as the mist rises on the river, you can sometimes hear the roar of lions from the wilds of the Audubon Zoo.
This material may be reproduced for editorial purposes of promoting New Orleans. Please attribute stories to New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau.
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