Historic past with a possible future
Claiborne Avenue is one of longest and most storied streets in the city. Running through Tremé, the section from Orleans Avenue to Elysian Fields was once a thriving commercial district for African Americans, who were long denied access to the whites-only shops and movie palaces on Canal Street and much of the French Quarter.
At the time, Claiborne had a wide neutral ground (the New Orleans term for a median) lined four deep with live oaks, almost like a park in the middle of the street, where area residents would congregate. Slowly, under the guise of modernization, the neighborhood was torn apart. The final death knell came in the 1960s with the white flight to suburbia and the development of a highway system to serve these outlying communities. Five hundred homes were torn down to facilitate construction of a new interstate. The green median along Claiborne Avenue was ripped up and replaced by concrete. Not surprisingly, the business district rapidly declined as the community’s center disintegrated.
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Address North Claiborne Avenue from Elysian Fields to Orleans Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70116 | Tip All medians in New Orleans are called neutral grounds. This comes from Canal St, the dividing line between the European residents in the French Quarter and the Americans on the Uptown side. While thinking each other idiots, the median was the one place they agreed not to squabble.
Today, this stretch of Claiborne is a ramshackle mix of vacant homes, used tire shops, and convenience stores, all under the shadow of the freeway that passes overhead. There is, however, a glimmer of hope to be found in the Restore the Oaks program. In 2002 the African American Museum issued a call to local artists to create a permanent outdoor exhibit using the large cement pillars that hold up the highway as their canvases. Many paintings depict the grand trees that used to stand there. Others memorialize the people of historic Tremé and the Seventh Ward, like gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, musician Fats Domino, and inventor Norbert Rillieux.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, there’s been a more fervent call to rethink the I-10 and explore the possibility of removing the entire 2.2-mile elevated stretch of highway to free up more than 50 acres of land and restore the vibrancy of the area.
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