In most towns they call it Main Street.
In New Orleans it's Canal Street from the river to the cemetaries.
Canal Street, looking away from the river, 1920s
Forming the up-river boundary of the city's oldest neighborhood, the French Quarter
(Vieux Carre), it formed the dividing line between the older
French/Spanish Colonial era city and the newer American sector, the Central Business District.
The name of the avenue comes from a planned canal which was to connect the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain, but it was never constructed. The wide median which was to contain the canal was referred to by early inhabitants as the "neutral ground," a term still used by New Orleanians to refer to all street medians.
One end of Canal Street is at the Mississippi River. Often called "The foot of Canal Street," at the riverfront a ferry connects to the old urban suburb of Algiers, Louisiana across the river. The other end is in Mid City New Orleans at a collection of cemeteries.
The street has three lanes of traffic in both directions, with a pair of streetcar
and bus lanes in the center. New Orleans' Canal Street is often claimed
to be the widest city street from sidewalk to sidewalk, although it has
not actually been the city's widest since the early twentieth century.
This article is licensed under the
GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the
Wikipedia article "Canal Street New Orleans".