Neutral Ground Tradition — Why New Orleans Has Medians

What the rest of the country calls a median, New Orleans calls the neutral ground — a name that dates to the strip of Canal Street that separated the French-speaking Creole downtown from the English-speaking American uptown, territory neither side claimed. The term stuck. Now every median is a neutral ground, and the linguistic fossil points to a century of civic tension. St. Charles' neutral ground is where you watch parades.