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August 29, 2004
Beauregard Terminal
Beauregard Terminal
The Carrollton Spur comes to an end at Beauregard Circle. This is the intersection of Wisner Blvd. with City Park and Esplanade Avenues. It’s named for P.G.T. Beauregard, who was a Confederate general as well as a leading citizen of Louisiana after the Civil War. Just to the left of car 2016 in this photo is the traffic circle, with a statue of Beauregard mounted on a horse.
The building looming in the background of the photo is the Parc Esplanade apartments, which are actually on the other side of Bayou St. John from the streetcar terminal. This area is no stranger to streetcars; the Canal and Esplanade Belt lines ran past here, and there used to be a car barn on the other side of the bayou, across from where the apartment building now stands.
The Beauregard Terminal is an important stop on the Canal Line, because it enables folks attending the annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival at the Fair Grounds racetrack to ride from downtown to this point, walk up Esplanade a few blocks, and turn into the Mystery Street entrance of the track for Da Fest. Sure, you could have taken the Esplanade bus from downtown, but the streetcars make the ride so much more fun. In addition to going to Da Fest, riders can go to City Park with all its attractions on a daily basis, as well as walking up to St. Louis Cemetery Number Three and Degas House on Esplanade, or over to Pitot House on Moss Street, along the bayou.
Unlike the Cemeteries Terminal, Beauregard Terminal is a two-track terminal. It’s different from the end of the St. Charles Line at Claiborne Avenue, however, because the two tracks from Carrollton Avenue merge to one for half a block, then split out into the two terminal tracks. The reason for this is that there is a large oak tree just out of view to the right of the photo. Rather than rip up a beautiful old tree, RTA re-designed the run up to the terminal. The two-tracks-to-one configuration can create some slowdowns when there are a lot of cars working the spur (such as at JazzFest time), but this isn’t an issue on a daily basis.
Posted by Edward J. Branley at August 29, 2004 07:36 PM
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