Feature Photo: Early "red cars" on Canal Street

Single-truck operation on Canal Street.  The green streetcars on the left are Ford, Bacon & Davis cars operated by the New Orleans & Carrollton Railroad Company.  The red-yellow streetcar near the center of the photo is a Brill single-truck, operated by the New Orleans City RR.  The red-yellow car to the right is a mule-drawn "bobtail" car operated by NOCRR. 

The New Orleans & Carrollton Railroad Co. operated several of the uptown lines, most notably St. Charles Avenue and Magazine Street.  Their cars would appear onto Canal Street, run down the outer track for a block or two, then turn back for the return leg uptown. 

Nailing down the date of this photo is a challenge.  The color plate is from a postcard.  Postcards at the turn ofthe 20th Century were often black-and-white photos with color brushed in by an artist.  The massive statue of Henry Clay at Canal and St. Charles is gone; that puts the photo somewhere after 1901.  The building in the background with the gold cupola is the first Maison Blanche building.  It was deolished in 1911, and Newman built his second building (which is now the Ritz-Carlton Hotel) in that block.  The mule-drawn cars were phased out as the city's streetcar lines were electrified by 1910, so my guess this is 1901-1902.

The red-yellow livery of the NOCRR cars is interesting because NORTA used those cars to explain the choice of red for the 400-series Riverfront and 2000-series Carrollton cars.