Canal Street, New Orleans

thumb|300px|Canal Street in the Central Business District, looking away from the [[Mississippi River|river, 1920s]]

thumb|right|Aerial view of Canal Street in the Central Business District, 1922

Canal Street () is a major thoroughfare in the city of New Orleans. Forming the upriver boundary of the city's oldest neighborhood, the French Quarter or Vieux Carré, it served historically as the dividing line between the colonial-era (18th-century) city and the newer American Sector, today's Central Business District.

Up until the early 1800s, it was primarily Creoles who lived in the Vieux Carré. After the Louisiana Purchase (1803), a large influx of other cultures began to find their way into the city via the Mississippi River. A number of Americans from Kentucky and the Midwest moved into the city and settled uptown. Along the division between these two cultures, a canal was planned. The canal was never built but the street which took its place received the name. Furthermore, the median of the street became known as the neutral ground, acknowledging the cultural divide. To this day, all medians of New Orleans streets are called neutral grounds. Throughout its length, Canal, which runs east and west, serves as a dividing line for cross streets running north and south; although the New Orleans layout follows the Mississippi River.

The street has three lanes of traffic in both directions, with a pair of streetcar tracks in the center. Canal Street's downtown segment serves as the hub of the city's public transit system or RTA, with numerous streetcar and bus route terminals. (Of note, it is the home of the Canal Streetcar Line, operated by the RTA.)

Canal Street has been called "America's widest main street." Canal Street is often said to be the widest roadway in America to have been called a street, instead of the avenue or boulevard titles more typically appended to wide urban thoroughfares.

Shopping

thumb|Canal Street Central Business District, 1950s

For more than a century, Canal Street was the main shopping district of Greater New Orleans. Local or regional department stores Maison Blanche, D. H. Holmes, Godchaux's, Gus Mayer, Labiche's, Kreeger's, and Krauss anchored numerous well-known specialty retailers, such as Rubenstein Men's Store, Adler's Jewelry, Koslow's, Rapp's, and Werlein's Music, as well as bookstores, drugstores, Kress, Woolworth's, and others. The department stores began as sellers of fabric, notions, and accessories, with extensive floor space and glass windows. As elevators and escalators allowed for multi-floor department stores, the stores were enlarged and made more elegant by incorporating adjoining buildings.

One Canal Place Office Tower is a Class A commercial office building managed by Corporate Realty. It is adjacent to the Westin New Orleans Hotel. The office space is made up of more than and includes a parking garage and health club facilities.

thumb|Streetcar passing First Grace Methodist Church on Canal Street in Mid-City New Orleans, 2009

Entertainment

New Orleans has historically been a center for opera, theater, and concerts. In 1871 the Varieties Theater opened on Canal Street between Dauphine and Burgundy streets. The building was renovated and renamed the Grand Opera House in 1881, which could be used as both a theater and ballroom. Theaters and movie houses were clustered around the intersection with Rampart Street, with the neon marquees of the Saenger, Loews State, Orpheum, and Joy casting multi-colored light nightly onto surrounding sidewalks.

It is said that the world's first movie theater (that is, the first business devoted specifically to showing films for profit) was "Vitascope Hall", established on Canal Street in 1896. By the 1910s there were several movie theaters on Canal, including the Alamo, the Plaza, and the Dreamworld. In 1912 the Trianon, the first "movie palace" in the city opened. The Tudor followed in 1914 and the Globe in 1918. By the 1950s they had become low-grade theaters, and in the 1960s they were closed.

Although most of the grand movie theaters have closed over the years, several cinemas on Canal Street operate today. These decisions opened the door for changes in land use, encouraging business, especially that of the tourism industry, for the city.

The downtown New Orleans segment of Canal Street has been undergoing redevelopment along the lines called for in the Downtown Development District's Canal Street Vision and Development Strategy (2004). In recent years the street has welcomed the addition of numerous new anchor enterprises, including the Ritz-Carlton New Orleans, luxury apartments at 1201 Canal, the New Orleans Bio-Innovation Center, the rehabilitated Joy Theater, the Saint Hotel, the Audubon Nature Institute's Audubon Insectarium, and the Astor Crowne Plaza. In October 2011, the New Orleans City Council granted final approval for the construction of 1031 Canal, a 190-foot (58 m) multi-use high-rise at the northeast intersection of Canal and North Rampart Streets. The building, under construction as a Hard Rock Hotel, was the site of a partial building and crane collapse on October 12, 2019.

After exiting downtown, Canal Street runs for its remaining length through the Mid-City neighborhood, part of which is now designated as BioDistrict New Orleans, a state-chartered economic development district created to encourage growth in the region's biomedical sector. Construction of two new teaching hospitals, the University Medical Center and a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs regional facility, involving the expenditure of approximately $2 billion, is now underway in the BioDistrict.

In 2024, Sandra Herman and others founded a coalition called Celebrate Canal in order to help redevelop Canal Street.

Canal Street, New Orleans

Shopping

Entertainment

See also

Further reading

References