Few machines I know blend in with their natural environment as well as New Orleans’ venerable St. Charles Avenue streetcar. Its color, sound, speed, right-of-way and attitude so well fit the Uptown New Orleans architectural climate that it is hard to imagine one without the other.

Now, America’s most exotic city has another streetcar line (don’t call them trams in New Orleans, there, they are streetcars) – the Canal Street line with its City Park spur. This line is rapidly joining the St. Charles line as a Crescent City urban icon.

When I stepped off the St. Charles line car 953 at Canal Street, I couldn’t help wondering about what is reputed to be the widest city street in North America. Watching the bright red Canal Street streetcars trundle towards and away from their Mississippi River terminus (at the French Market near Esplanade Avenue 12 blocks downriver from Canal Street), I was pleased to remember that streetcars of one kind or another have been on Canal Street for almost 150 years. Sure there was a 40 year gap in operations out Canal Street towards Lake Pontchartrain, but strictly speaking the St. Charles car never stopped using at least one block of Canal (between Carondelet Street and St. Charles Avenue) to turn around for its 90 minute outbound run.

Reminiscences were not my only objective. When Canal line Car 2017 rolled to a stop in front of me, I boarded it for the five-mile ride towards the Lakefront. I mounted the two steps, flashed my New Orleans three-day, all bus and streetcar line travelpass, walked past the large, modern wheelchair lift and took a downtown-side, window seat near the back so I could admire the well-built gleaming, hardwood streetcar and the urban scenery out the windows.

At first glance, the red Canal Streetcar looks much like its green St. Charles cousin only shinier and with the handicapped facilities installed. When looked at more closely, though, the differences are glaring.

Craftsmen at the Carrolton Avenue shops (seven blocks beyond the Riverbend turn from St. Charles Avenue) proudly built the 24 red cars from scratch (all except the wheels and running gear) using their skills honed during generations of maintenance on the one-of-a-kind St. Charles cars. They added the clearstory roof to disguise air-conditioning units (note that windows do not open on the Canal cars) and they fitted in the wheelchair lift without disturbing the car’s classic Perley Thomas exterior lines.

Nothing like such homegrown experience demonstrating the importance of historic preservation I thought while watching the new A. Philip Randolph Service, Inspection and Storage (SIS) facility as my car glided along its tracks towards the North Carrollton Avenue turnoff for the Midcity spur to the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA).
Situated in the spacious 1500 acre City Park area of Midcity, The NOMA is one of America’s most little known major museums. It deserves better – if for nothing other than the spectacular array of some 250 majestic Live Oak Trees.

The Live Oak (Quercus virginiana), with its low, wide branch spread, is reputed to be the most popular tree in the Deep South. It is an evergreen coastal plain tree with a native range from Virginia to Florida and along the Gulf Coast Mexico. City Park’s oldest and largest (the McDonogh, Ansemen and Suicide) trees are located along the lagoon, which was created from Bayou Metairie, a remnant of an ancient distributary of the Mississippi River. These trees sprouted long before Iberville and Bienville first scouted the area for a site to build the city and port that became New Orleans.

All this ran through my mind while I watched the motorman manually change the electric poles to prepare for the car’s return run downtown to the French Market. Confederate General P.T Beauregard on his plinth before the stately entrance to the NOMA stood guard over the scene.

After a long, leisurely visit through the NOMA’s many galleries and exotic sculpture garden, I boarded another gleaming red streetcar for the run back downtown. This time I was pleasantly surprised by the streetscape along North Carrollton Avenue. I was a bit embarrassed by the fact that I hadn’t really noticed how elegant this part of New Orleans is. I made a mental note to come back to this neighborhood and sample the cuisine in the many restaurants that line the Avenue.

Its too bad I thought that heavy automobile usage along much of Canal Street makes for a great deal of stop-and-start streetcar movement, but I’m sure locals will adapt traffic signals and flow patterns to favor better streetcar movement

Now that New Orleans has three distinct streetcar lines with a fourth – the Desire Streetcar – on the drawing boards, it seems more than likely that America’s most unique city will retain its rollicking image and roll into the 21st Century aboard streetcars as distinctive as every other aspect of the “city that care forgot.”





For more background info on the Canal Streetcar, read: New Orleans, The Canal Street Streetcar (2004), by Edward J. Branley (ISBN 0-7385-1605-8) published as part of the Images of America series by Arcadia, an Imprint of Tempus Publishing, Inc. (www.arcadiapublishing.com).

For info on transit and ticket passes useable on all New Orleans streetcar and bus routes go to: www.norta.com or call 1 504 248 3900.

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