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 Canal Street 1861 Canal Street 1866-1868 Canal Street - Fountain Canal Street After 1883 Canal Street "Middle Ground" Canal Street Snow 1895 Canal Street 1900-1910 Canal Street - Early 1900 Canal Street - Mardi Gras 1900 Canal Street 1904-1 Canal Street 1904-2 Canal Street 1904 (unsure) Canal Street 1905 Canal Street 1908 Canal Street 1910 Canal Street 1915 Canal Street 1915 - Along the Sunset Route Canal Street 1920s Canal Street 1920s Canal Street 1922 Canal Street 1930s Canal Street 1940s Canal Street 1942 Canal Street Late40s-Early50s Canal Street Mardi Gras 1950s Canal Street 1950s Canal Street 1950s Canal Street 27-Nov-1953 Canal Street St. Charles Royal 20-Jul-1954 Foot of Canal Street-1956 Canal Street Tues-10-July-1956 Canal Street Tues-10-July-1956 Canal Street - 1957 Canal Street 1960 Canal Street 1960 Canal Street - St. Charles-1960 Canal Street 1961 Canal Street - July, 1961 Canal Street - 25-Aug-1963 Canal Street - August, 1963 Canal Street - 31-Jan-1964 Canal Street - 1-Feb-1964 Canal Street - 1-Feb-1964 Canal Street - 28-Feb-1964 Canal Street - May, 1964 Canal Street - 1970s Canal Street - July, 1985 Canal Street - Wednesday, 6-Aug-2003 Canal Street - Audubon Building
 Streetcar Named Desire-
 New Orleans Canal Street late 1890s
Canal Street-at 170 feet six inches the widest business district street in the country-was never paved curb-to-curb for the use of ordinary vehicles. It originated as a "commons" area between the original city, also called the French Quarter or Vieux Carre, and the American Quarter, which grew immediately upriver. In the early 1800s, a canal was supposed to have been built down the middle of this commons, 50 feet wide, connecting the Mississippi River to the Basin Canal (also called the Carondelet Canal). The latter canal, now filled in, formed a connection to Lake Ponchartrain, running from Bayou St. John to Basin Street, where it ended in a large turning basin. The plan called for 60 feet of reservation on each side of the new canal. The proposed canal was never built, but the result was a 170 foot wide commons area, which gradually evolved into a street with two roadways flanking a central reservation. Source
Like many of New Orleans- wide main streets, this "neutral ground" (as New Orleanians call it) originally sported grass and trees, providing an almost park-like environment. Also like some of New Orleans- other wide streets, part of this neutral ground eventually came to harbor street railway tracks, which were thereby considerably freed from conflict with other types of vehicles. But because Canal was (and remains) the center of the central business district, so many street railway lines used it that its wide neutral ground became completely filled with tracks, and was finally paved over. Even paved, though, the neutral ground was still for street railways only, and other vehicles remained in the two flanking roadways.
Canal Street is what Downtown New Orleans is all about. Originally the dividing line between the French/Spanish "Creole" section of the city and the newer "American" Quarter, there indeed was a plan to put a canal in the middle of Canal Street, but that plan fell through in the 1830s. The street was still left at 170-wide, however, making it a six-lane street with a large "neutral ground" (that's "median" to those of you who didn't grow up in New Orleans). Canal Street's position and size made it Main Street New Orleans and the hub of the city's transit system. Streetcars ran up and down the street's neutral ground until 1964. Source
For more than two centuries, Canal Street has been a vital thoroughfare for New Orleans transit. Mule-drawn carriages served as the first public transit along Canal Street in the 1860s, with electric streetcars dominating the line by the 1890s. By 1910, streetcars were running the length of Canal Street and beyond into growing suburbs. But as the years went on, buses slowly replaced streetcars on the Canal line, and in May 1964, streetcars were completely removed from Canal Street.
After almost forty years, the Canal streetcars returned to the line on April 18th, 2004, and the line now runs over five and a half miles from the Mississippi River to City Park Avenue with a spur along North Carrollton Avenue.
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