Canal Street

The neutral ground runs down the center of Canal Street — 171 feet wide, the widest main street in the United States. When Americans bought Louisiana in 1803 and built upriver from the French city, the street became a dividing line. Creole merchants on one side, American merchants on the other, and the median was where they met to do business. Neither party's territory. Common ground for commerce. New Orleanians still call every median in the city a neutral ground. The term survived because the division was real and the compromise mattered. Two cities grew on either side of this street — French colonial downriver, American expansion upriver — and the width held both. Through the early 20th century, Canal Street was the commercial heart of the South. The streetcar line that runs its full length, from the river to the cemeteries, was restored after Katrina. The rails still trace the boundary, still cross the old neutral ground where the deal was that neither side owned it.