St. Charles Avenue — The Great Street

The streetcar has run down St. Charles Avenue since 1835, making it the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the world. The line was built as the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad, and the street itself was laid out atop a slight rise — the remains of an old natural levee — to accommodate the tracks. That choice shaped Uptown. The long traffic avenue, originally used for horse-drawn buggies and wagons with public rail transit running down the center, fueled the development of the neighborhood through the nineteenth century. By 1889, writer Martha R. Field observed that St. Charles Avenue was seven miles long, paved with asphalt its entire length, and lined with beautiful homes. The street became the favored site for mansion construction by the wealthy from the mid-nineteenth century through the early years of the twentieth. The southern live oak trees, plentiful in the historic Garden District, were planted during the early twentieth century. The canopy is now so dense the streetcar runs through a green tunnel for most of its length. Many of the old mansions were torn down in the mid- and late twentieth century, until the area was declared a historic district. The surviving ones have been divided into condominiums or rental apartments; others house businesses, small hotels, and a library. The former mansion of silent-film star Marguerite Clark is now the Milton Latter Memorial branch of the New Orleans Public Library. The Columns Hotel is a small hotel in a nineteenth-century mansion; part of the film *Pretty Baby* was made here. The facades of both Tulane University and Loyola University New Orleans sit on St. Charles Avenue, opposite Audubon Park. The street is one of the chief Mardi Gras parade routes. During the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005, St. Charles Avenue and the portion of Uptown closer to the Mississippi River escaped significant flooding. Board at Canal Street and ride the full line to Carrollton. The fare is $1.25 and the ride takes forty-five minutes end to end. It's the best tour in the city for $1.25.