west end

NOPSI 625 during the 1929 transit strike. The car appears to be on Canal Street, in front of Canal Station at N. White St. The car was extensively vandalized, which means the photo was likely taken between 5-July-1929 and 15-July-1929. The photo is from the Franck studios, who were regularly retained by NOPSI lawyers for shooting traffic accidents and such.

Contract negotiations with the five-year old corporation formed to consolidate electric and transit service in the city, New Orleans Public Service, Incorporated (NOPSI), broke down at the end of June, 1929. The union walked on July 1st. On July 5th, NOPSI tried to break the strike by resuming operations with management and non-union labor operating the streetcars. This resulted in various incidents of vandalism across town, as well as one streetcar being overturned and burned on Canal Street.

The 1929 strike is generally regarded as the birth of the New Orleans "po-boy" sandwich. To show solidarity with the striking motormen and conductors, Martin Brothers Restaurant on St. Claude Avenue offered free sandwiches to the strikers. They took whole loaves of New Orleans French bread, filled them with fried potatoes and roast beef gravy. It was the kind of a sandwich even a "poor boy" could afford.

The union and NOPSI settled the strike by October, 1929, but it seriously damaged the company's reputation, and ridership never got back to the levels of the "golden age" of 1910-1928.

Perley A. Thomas streetcar number 939, operated by New Orleans Public Service, Incorporated, on the West End line, 1946.

It's hot in New Orleans in the summer. Visit here for a day and a half in June/July/August and you figure that out pretty quickly. Back before the days of near-universal air conditioning in homes and offices, folks needed an escape from the heat. One of the things families would do was to head out to West End for a day trip. The New Orleans & City RR Company began running steam train service down Canal Street to West End in the 1870s, along with their mule-car service to the cemeteries. It was all streetcars after electrification in 1895, but the idea was still the same: escape to the lakefront!

It's 1946 in this photo. NOPSI operated the Perley Thomas 800- and 900-series streetcars exclusively by now and was actively discontinuing electric transit service in favor of buses. You can see the motorman-conductor team as they pose for the picture. The requirement by the city that NOPSI use two-man crews hastened the demise of street railways in the city.

Still, it looks like a lovely (albeit hot) day in New Orleans. A trip to the lakefront to catch the breeze at West End Park is something I could use right now.