« February 2008 | Main | April 2008 »
March 26, 2008
Feature Photo - Claiborne Terminal
The end of the St. Charles Ave. streetcar line, at S. Carrollton and S. Claiborne Avenues. This photo is from June, 2002.
Six more weeks to go, and the St. Charles line will be 100% operational. As of now, the line is only running the length of St. Charles, turning around at Riverbend. NORTA has announced that they expect to finish the upgrades and repairs to the line on S. Carrollton Ave. by May.
The intersection of S. Carrollton and S. Claiborne Avenues has been the location of the end of the St. Charles line since belt service was discontinued in 1951. It is a double-track terminal with a double-slip switch. Several bus lines terminate either in front of Palmer Park (like the bus on the left side of the photo), or on the neutral ground on S. Claiborne (to the right, just out of the photo). This intersection has long been a transit hub, dating back to 1915, when the Orleans-Kenner Railroad began operations.
The streetcars in the photo are Perley A. Thomas cars 940 and 961, both vintage 1923-24.
Posted by Edward Branley at 5:19 PM | TrackBack
March 19, 2008
Feature Photo: Liberty Place in 1963
Liberty Place, August 25, 1963 (photographer unknown). A single Perley A. Thomas streetcar on the Canal line sits on the three-track layover, having just looped around the monument. This was the final step in the evolution of streetcar operations at the foot of Canal Street prior to the conversion of the Canal line to buses. The Liberty Monument was removed from the foot of Canal St. in the 1980s by the administration of Mayor Sydney Barthelemy, antcipating the development of a downtown casino. The three-track layover was re-constructed when the Riverfront line was expanded in 1997-98. Instead of the loop, however, the current configuartion in this area is a turn from the Canal tracks to Riverfront.
Prior to the erection of the Liberty Monument in 1891, the Canal trackage turned off onto N. Peters, S. Peters, Decatur, and Fulton Sts., with a simple semi-circle loop at the ferry landing. Because of of the construction of the monument and changes because of electrification, the city hired the engineering firm of Ford, Bacon & Davis to re-design the trackage from in front of the Custom House to the ferry landing. FB&D developed and constructed a huge terminal that was eight tracks wide at one point, all coming together to the loop you see in the photo above. As streetcar operations declined in the mid-20th century, the terminal tracks shrunk to the final three.
The Liberty Monument has been a sore subject in New Orleans for decades. The monument commerates the "Battle of Liberty Place," which occurred on September 14, 1874. Frustrated by the reconstruction government in New Orleans, The White League (a white supremacist organization similar to the Ku Klux Klan) attacked the police and supporters of the government in the French Quarter and at the foot of Canal. The Republican governor, William Pitt Kellogg, was forced to leave the city until he could marshal federal troops to return to the Quarter, push out the White League, and restore order. Kellogg was a career Republican politician from Vermont who was appointed by Lincoln to administer the Port of New Orleans after the war. When local (white) politicians took over control of city government in 1881, the locals named the area at the foot of Canal "Liberty Place." the obelisk followed in 1891.
Originally, the monument was a commemoration of the White League's victory, and the names of the members of the League killed during the battle were carved on the obelisk. A parade was held annually on September 14 that ended at Liberty Place. In 1934, two plaques were added to the monument, directly recognizing white supremacy in the city and state. It was these plaques that added insult to injury for black citizens of New Orleans. In 1974, Mayor Moon Landrieu (father of Senator Mary and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, and now an appellate court judge) ordered a brass plaque erected near the monument explaining that the "battle" was actually an insurrection led by white supremacists.
Mayor Ernest N. "Dutch" Morial tried to remove the obelisk outright in 1981, as part of the preparations for the 1984 World's Fair, but was blocked by the majority-white City Council. While the council would not let Morial remove the monument, they did authorize him to cover up the 1934 plaques. Even though the City Council agreed with Sydney Barthelemy in 1988 that the monument should go, allies of white supremacist and KKK leader David Duke sued City Hall in federal court. The racists argued that the city's action violated federal regulations concerning historic landmarks. Both sides worked out a consent decree, and Mayor Marc Morial (Dutch's son) took the Liberty Monument out of storage and returned it to a location near the Riverfront streetcar line, a block away from its original spot.
Posted by Edward Branley at 9:41 AM | TrackBack
March 12, 2008
Feature Photo: Canal and St. Charles, 1880s
Canal Street and St. Charles Avenue, looking lakebound, early 1880s. The church spire in the background on the right is Christ Church Episcopal, at Canal and Dauphine (the current location of the Maison Blanche Building-Ritz Carlton Hotel). The photographer is standing on the northern side of the big monument to Henry Clay in the middle of the intersection.
In the middle of the photo you can see three Stephenson single-ended "bobtail" streetcars. These cars were mule-powered (horses can't work for extended periods in the New Orleans summer). When they reached St. Charles Ave., the operators would turn them around on the turntable visible in the foreground. The man in shirtsleeves is most likely a street railway. working out of the little kisos to the left, behind the street vendor. That kiosk is a "starter house," where the employee working there would assist the operator in getting the mule and streetcar turned around for the outbound leg of the trip.
Four-track operations had already begun on Canal by this time. The two outside tracks were used by the streetcar lines coming to Canal Street from the Central Business District and Uptown (left side) and the French Quarter/Faubourg Marigny (right side). ; The center tracks were used by the Canal and West End lines.
Since the mule-powered streetcars are in the photo, and Christ Church is still located on Canal, this dates this photo to somewhere between 1880-1883.