Hoping to duplicate the success of the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad Company (NO&CRR), the New Orleans City Railroad Company (NOCRR) purchased Square 365 for the purpose of constructing a transportation facility. Square 365 is bounded by N. Dupre, Iberville, N. White, and Canal. With a construction budget of $5,142, the company constructed a two-building car barn on the square in 1861. The original Canal Street line opened on June 1, 1861, running from the barn to the river. Since the line proved to be popular, service was soon extended lakebound past the barn to the cemeteries. The cars used at this time were "bobtail"; cars from the John C. Stephenson Car Company of New York. The cars were mule-powered.

In 1876, the city gave NOCRR permission to operate a steam-powered street railway line from Canal and Carondelet Streets downtown to Lake Pontchartrain. This became the West End line, and the steam motive equipment for the line was stored and serviced at Canal Station until the line was electrified in 1898. The map above is from the Robinson Atlas of New Orleans for 1881. It shows the location of the streetcar barn and steam engine terminal in block 365. Click the image for the entire Plate 9 of the atlas. (Courtesy of the New Orleans office of Notarial Archives.)

Aerial view of Canal Station, 1927. The ballpark in between Canal Station and Warren Easton High School is Kemster Athletic Field, which was a NORD property. The ballpark was acquired by NOPSI in the 1940s, and was added to Canal Station for bus parking. The two buildings to the right of the ballpark are the main buildings of Canal Station. Outdoor storage tracks are located to the right and behind the buildings. The structures behind the ballpark are the heavy-maintenance shops. (Photo courtesy the Earl K. Long Library, University of New Orleans.)

With the discontinuance of the Canal streetcar line in 1964, NOPSI converted Canal Station to an all-bus facility. The company turned over the transit system to the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) in 1983. RTA demolished Canal Station in 1992, to make way for the A. Philip Randolph SIS facility. In 2003, a streetcar barn returned to Canal Street, in the back section of the Randolph facility.
Canal Station was extended back to Bienville Street in 1883, with the acquisition of Square 366. The station’s tracks were extended across Iberville Street and a new barn was constructed for the steam equipment.

The barn housing the steam equipment, as well as the blacksmith and saddlery shops were destroyed in a fire on January 20, 1887. Losses were put at approximately $100,000, but service on the Canal line was not interrupted. The facility was re-built, with the original 1861 buildings being incorporated into two larger buildings.

Canal Station was electrified in the spring of 1894, and the Canal line began operating Brill semi-convertible electric cars in August of 1894. The station was turned over to New Orleans Public Service, Incorporated (NOPSI), in 1924, as part of the overall consolidation of the city’s transit system.

Canal Station was the scene of numerous protests during the transit strike of 1929, with the station and its streetcars receiving minor damage from strikers. Even though NOPSI expanded the use of diesel-powered buses in the 1930s, Canal Station remained exclusively a streetcar facility. In 1940, NOPSI acquired the two adjoining lakebound squares and expanded Canal Station, adding facilities for buses. Building Number 2 was converted to a bus garage, and the expansion area became unsheltered bus storage.