Wow, these streets are narrow. With a Hummer H3 parked on the left and a Suburban on the right I can barely ride my Schwinn down the center. Residents learn to lay their rear view mirror on the street side flat when they park their cars. Oak Street is especially fun with two lanes of traffic going in opposite directions and parked cars on both sides of the street.

The major roads include St. Charles, Carrollton, Claiborne (US90) and Broadway (technically outside Carrollton). They are the divided roads. Leake Avenue (aka the River Road) carries heavy traffic around the neighborhood. Maple and Oak contain commercial areas. Most of the rest are one way streets no more than 20 feet wide. When Charles Zimple laid out the neighborhood in 1833 that was standard. Today it is pretty tight.


The tight spaces give the neighborhood a cozy, urban feel but provide a brake on development. When Bruno's, a bar on Maple Street wanted to expand in 2001, residents complained. There wasn't enough parking, it would be too noisy, drunks on the street would be unattractive. Through the intervention of Councilman Jay Batt, Bruno's got its permit. Then in the next election the residents got their revenge. In a tight race, Batt lost District "A" to rookie Shelly Midura. Bruno's might have made the difference..

By the way Zimple apparently had a thing for trees. So many of the streets in Carrollton are named for trees that you'd think this was a forest. It probably was. Zimple was one of the leading urban planners of the day and named a few more streets in New Orleans.

By the way changing street names has accelerated in New Orleans since 1978. You might wonder why. If so you have missed one of the main points of this site. The streets are being renamed to honor African-Americans. We'll explore this point more fully over time and find out about Oretha Castle-Haley as well as Martin Luther King and many others who New Orleans honors with street names.