What do you like most about your part of New Orleans

[UptownNewOrleans]

We got a lot of folk on here representin' New Orleans, so show some love to your part of New Orleans. If you live in the area, you can chime in as well.

13th Ward, Uptown

Likes:

Conveinent to Tulane & Loyola universities, St. Charles Ave & the aforementioned streetcar line

Many famous attractions are literally a block or 2 away

notable residents (B.G. Neville Bros. Note: The Neville brothers lived in the 13th Ward for half their lives, along Valence St. The other half was spent in the notorious Calliope housing project)

Memorial Medical Center-the shining gem in the 13th Ward. The hospital where I was born.

Shotgun homes

Dislikes:

Criminality-Located deep in the Uptown ghetto, murders & drug sales are commonplace. South Broad, compared to the majority of the 13th Ward is moderately dangerous

Distance-Located in the upper end of Uptown, the 13th Ward is quite a lengthy distance from the Quarter, downtown New Orleans & CBD by car. Of course the distance is much shorter if you take the St. Charles streetcar line.

[nola17]

Gentilly near City Park

Likes: Close location to City Park, low crime activity, paved rodes, many returning and rebuilding residents, easy access to Carrollton Avenue and Musuem of Art. Easy access to Esplanade Ave. Corridor and Fair Grounds.

Dislikes: nothing really.

[JPKneworleans]

Uptown......the fact that it is pretty much back to normal, with the exception of the streetcar line.

[L-Beware]

In your opinion, UptownNewOrleans, whats the difference between Uptown and Downtown.

[TSmith]

Algiers...

-Depending on what part of Algiers you're in, the crime is relatively low.

-It's about 10-15 minutes from anywhere in New Orleans

-Quiet

-Has never flooded, nor should it, as it is some of the highest land in N.O.

-Good schools

-Little traffic

-Easy commute to downtown

-Easy access to points south and west for fishing

-Low cost of living

[NCB]

In your opinion, UptownNewOrleans, whats the difference between Uptown and Downtown.

Uptown will be able to give you much more info, as he lives there, but I can tell you, Uptown is completely different from anything else in New Orleans. But then again, basically every New Orleans neighborhood is different from the next, which is a major part of our culture being so diverse here.

[L-Beware]

OK but whats so different about it.

[TSmith]

OK but whats so different about it.

Uptown and downtown are two different animals. I'll try to tackle this question.

Uptown New Orleans has everything from $5 million antibellum homes to projects. But it's the former, and everything in between that truly defines this famous area of New Orleans. Uptown has everything, but everything is neighborhood-based. Magazine St, which runs from downtown, all the way through Uptown has absolutely everything you can imagine. From antique shops, to bars, to fine restaurants, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, and everything in between. Pedestrian traffic on Magazine is almost always heavy with shoppers and locals walking their dogs... or even miniature ponies. Yes, you heard that right. You can see each end of the spectrum of New Orleanians on Magazine, and all of Uptown for that matter.

Then, there's St. Charles Ave... one of the most famous streets in America, which parallels Magazine about 4 blocks away. On the downtown side, there are 50's and 60's era condominiums, beautiful homes, large sprawling 200+ year old live oaks, bars, fine restaurants, etc... The further you head from downtown, the more residential it becomes. However, there is Tulane University and Loyola University and Audubon Park opposite those Universities. Around the universities, there are many turn of the century duplexes and quadplexes full of college-age kids. This area of uptown offers many nightlife options, from bars to restaurants. Then you go up Carrolton Ave at the river. This area is beautiful, but more affordable. Oak St. off Carrolton leads you to another bend in the river... with many neighborhood businesses and the famous Maple Leaf Bar where Rebirth Brass Band still plays on Tuesdays to a predominant local crowd. Carrolton is also a live oak lined street which leads you eventually to Mid City, which is directly to the north of downtown.

Downtown has everything for everyone. It offers concrete canyons of skyscrapers and bustling business centers... 300 year old archietecture, etc... But it also has fine restaurants and too many bars and nightclubs to mention. New Orleans has one of the nation's only true 24-7 downtowns. We don't roll up the sidewalks after 5pm in New Orleans. Downtown is truly the heartbeat of this city in an era when so many downtowns are struggling accross this country. Along the river, and in the warehouse district, which is technically downtown, thousands of young professionals and retirees call it home. The warehouse district is a beautiful collection of converted warehouse condos, neighborhood bars, and yes... more great restaurants. On the other side of downtown is the world famous French Quarter. I don't think I have to tell you anything about this vast area of New Orleans. Downtown New Orleans is truly one of the most precious pieces of real estate in America... with the French Quater on one side, and Uptown on the other. Hope this helps.

[richyb83]

Thanks for the break-down TSmith. New Orleans is so unique.

Is the Garden District part of Uptown or is it an neighborhood between Downtown and Uptown ?

[NCB]

Is the Garden District part of Uptown or is it an neighborhood between Downtown and Uptown ?

It's part of Uptown. Most of the Garden District is located around the land area known as the "slither by the River" which is describing the high ground along the Mississippi.

[richyb83]

Thanks Nate.

[TSmith]

Yeah, the transition from Downtown to Uptown is almost immediate. There's really no gap in between. A good rule of thumb, and something easy for even out of towners to understand is that when you are leaving downtown, when you cross under the twin bridges (CCC), you're essentially in the Uptown area.

[NCB]

A good rule of thumb, and something easy for even out of towners to understand is that when you are leaving downtown, when you cross under the twin bridges (CCC), you're essentially in the Uptown area.

Exactly. The CCC is essentially a gateway into Uptown coming from the CBD, or vis versa if you're headed the other direction.

It's really pretty amazing how the CCC is literally a barrier between the CBD and downtown. Literally as soon as you pass under the bridge, you can tell you're not in the CBD anymore. Just looking at this satelite view makes that look obvious. Link

[TSmith]

Just looking at this satelite view makes that look obvious. Link

That's a good link. I scrolled over, and it's amazing how much undeveloped high ground there is right accross the river from the riverbend where St. Charles meets Carrolton. I'm guessing some of this area is where KB Homes is building its 11,000 home development.

[richyb83]

Thanks. Definitely looks alot greener on the other side in Uptown. That is a rather dramatic change with the CCC as the dividing-line.

[UptownNewOrleans]

In your opinion, UptownNewOrleans, whats the difference between Uptown and Downtown.

Uptown is more residential, downtown is more business-oriented. If Uptown New Orleans were its own city, it would be larger than Birmingham, AL & Norfolk, VA because the Uptown region has over 200,000 of New Orleans' pre-Katrina 475,000 population. Downtown is pretty much anything goes, you can walk through the French Quarter at any time of the day with a bottle of alcohol and the police won't say anything, because it's legal. Uptown is closer to the river, downtown is down-river from Canal. Of the 17 wards, 8 of them are Uptown, wards 4th-9th are downtown.

[L-Beware]

Yeah I know that. I know how the city is mapped out wit the wards and all that.

Im asking you, as far as the two different hoods are concerned. Whats the difference between Uptown and Downtown.

Also, look at what I put in that 'New Orleans twin city' thread and tell me what you think. Thats real talk. But alot of people dont know that.

[UptownNewOrleans]

all of the Uptown businesses are mom & pop stores. From the restaurants to bookstores, everything here is family-owned. As far as the hoods are concerned, Uptown hoods are easily recognizable. Go a block or two from St. Charles Ave or Magazine St and you're smack in the middle of the Uptown ghetto. Downtown is pretty similar, there are ghetto neighborhoods surrounding the Superdome & N.O. Arena, as well as the French Quarter. Overall danger, both Uptown and Downtown have ghetto sections where you'll get a 1st class ticket to the morgue.

[L-Beware]

I know that. That aint really what Im asking. I know the 4th ward is right there, then the 6th then the 7th ward and the St. Bernard then the 9 and then the Lower 9.

Im sayin as you being a New Orleanian from New Orleans. Whats the difference between Uptown and Downtown, people-wise. Maybe I should say it that way.

I know how the city is mapped out. Im asking you as far as the two places are concerned, comparing the two far as the people, the high schools, etc...It seem like 7th Ward is the place where most of the creoles live. 9th Ward seem to be the "main" neighborhood Downtown just like the 3 seem to be the "main" neighborhood Uptown.

[Puddinhead]

The answers on this thread point out something I've always said was true of New Orleans, and from reading the history, has always been true of New Orleans.

Notice that the answers to the original question about the difference between Uptown and Downtown focus much more detail on the descriptions of Uptown than of Downtown. Apparently those making the replies are Uptown natives or residents, so it's perfectly normal that this is the case. But notice where the "verbal tour" of the city (Uptown AND Downtown) ends--at the French Quarter. And how the described areas pretty much hug the River. Kind of as though those neighborhoods encompass all of New Orleans. To many Uptown residents, other parts of the city (outside of the Quarter) either don't exist, or are acknowledged, but not really considered to be part of the same city they live in. And for many Downtown residents, the opposite was also considered true.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not condemning anyone for this "natural" phenomenom of talking more about the part of town they're familiar with. I'm a Downtown (Ninth Ward) guy, and my descriptions of the city probably would have focused more on parts of town other than Uptown, because I'm not as at home there. Historically, the dividing line between the Uptown part of New Orleans and the Downtown part is Canal Street rather than the Pontchartrain Expressway; it divides the "Creole" city from the "American" city. The median down the center of Canal wasn't the first to be called the "neutral ground" without reason. At points in the city's past, there were actually separate city governments for New Orleans above Canal and New Orleans below Canal....and I don't mean as far back as when Carrollton was a still a separate city.

Note UptownNewOrleans' reply in which he points out that "Uptown is more residential, downtown is more business-oriented". If you're looking at the city from an Uptown perspective, you could think this is true. After all, if your "Downtown" starts at the Warehouse District and ends at the French Quarter....then, yeah, "Downtown" IS pretty much mostly business. Setting aside the fact that the Quarter is still basically a residential neighborhood, that is. But if you sort of expand your view of New Orleans to encompass the actual whole rest of the city--all that stuff that's NOT Uptown, Warehouse District, CBD, or the Quarter--then you start to think that maybe there's a little bit of residential area on the Downtown side of Canal as well. Not to mention the "Lake" side of Claiborne...also not usually considered "Uptown".

A Downtown guy like me might have come at the question from another direction, so to speak...at least pre-Katrina. I might have started my "Downtown" tour with the "original" city of New Orleans, the French Quarter. Then progressed downriver to Fauborg Marigny (the first suburb), Bywater, and the Lower Ninth Ward. I might have come back and gone Lake-bound on Canal to Mid-City, or out Esplanade to Fauborg St. John, and visited the city's "oldest street", Bayou Road. From there? Maybe out through the Carrollton neighborhood, or farther Lake-bound along Canal, on out to Lakeview. Or maybe we'd go to my current stomping grounds, the vast area of New Orleans known as Gentilly. From there you can follow the original land route in and out of New Orleans to the East (and in the early years, to the rest of the country) along Chef Menteur Highway through the sprawling New Orleans East section, where you can go straight from an urban area directly to a national wildlife refuge. Just don't neglect to stop at the city's largest Vietnamese enclave along the way; you don't want to pass up the best French bread in town. Now, to me as a kid, Uptown was pretty much the place you took a really long ride through to get to the Zoo, and where you went to watch the Mardi Gras parades. As I got older, I found out where a few of the playgrounds were to play softball at them. But that's about the extent of my firsthand knowledge of Uptown.

Anyway...the point of all this rambling was originally to point out how the fact that it really isn't convenient to get from Uptown to the city's other neighborhoods, and vice versa (I'd always ask my cousin who lives on Magazine what the quickest way to get to his place was from whichever area I happened to be coming from--Gentilly, Metairie, Lakeview..whatever--and the answer was alway's the same..."Ain't one.") has sort of caused the Uptown areas and the rest of the city to almost develop as two completely different cities with very little interaction. In fact, I'd have to say that as a child growing up in the Ninth Ward, I was infinately more familiar with not only the Ninth Ward, Gentilly, Bywater, New Orleans East, and the Lakefront than with Uptown, I was much more familiar with St. Bernard, Metairie, and the West Bank than with Uptown. And I'd venture to say that some of the Uptown guys were more familiar with Jefferson Parish than they were with New Orleans below Esplanade for most of their lives as well.

[L-Beware]

OK there is an answer that I really learned something with. I appreciate that. I was wondering how the relationship is between Uptown and Downtown. And you really helped me understand it better just now. I would say thats somewhat similar to how it is with Downtown Charleston and North Charleston. Its like two separate worlds really. I always wondered that about Uptown and Downtown New Orleans.

I would assume that DOWNTOWN would be the way you all are describing UPTOWN, and vice versa.

[Puddinhead]

It goes all the way back to the Louisiana Purchase, or even the years prior to it. Just about the time that the plantations immediately upriver (in New Orleans, Uptown is "upriver", Downtown is "downriver") from the original city (the Quarter) were poised to be subdivided and developed, the City was becoming a boom town as far as the shipping trade was concerned. American farmers from the Midwest had been sending their agricultural products to New Orleans via the inland riverine system for years, where they'd be removed from the barges and keelboats, stored or warehoused, and then loaded onto oceangoing vessels and sent on their way to East Coast or European ports. With that much business going on and money to be made, American businessmen were sure to find their way down to New Orleans to compete with the Creole businessmen. These Americans were not particularly welcomed by the native New Orleanians; there experience with Americans was pretty much limited to the boatmen who brought the goods downriver, got paid, and pretty much drank, gambled, and brawled their way through most of their pay before leaving. Not that the Creoles had anything against drinking or gambling per se; it was more a matter of style. LOL

Anyway...the Creoles pretty much had all the land of the Quarter and downriver from that (Bernard de Marigny's holdings) locked up, and weren't too eager to allow these "barbaric" Americans to come in and "ruin the neighborhood". But there was all that land opening up upriver from the Quarter, including a large parcel that had once been owned by the Jesuits...so the Americans began to essentially create their own "city" directly upriver from and adjacent to the Creole city. This accelerated immensely when Thomas Jefferson realized that whoever controlled New Orleans controlled the whole interior of the continent, and sought to buy the city only to end up with the entire territory. Americans flooded into New Orleans now, settling in the upriver areas that were to become Uptown. As the Creole businessmen made their fortunes in trade, they built their mansions (of a more urban style) along Esplanade stretching toward Bayou St. John, along the original "high ground" portage between the River and the Bayou that was the reason the City was sited where it was in the first place. As the American businessmen made their fortunes, they built mansions on a grand avenue they laid out parrallel to the River, which would become known as St. Charles. Neither population on either side of what became Canal Street had much use for the other--this is when the concept of the "neutral ground" was born, neither Creole nor American.

And so practically from the beginning, the seeds for a "disconnect" between Uptown and Downtown were sown.

[UptownNewOrleans]

I know that. That aint really what Im asking. I know the 4th ward is right there, then the 6th then the 7th ward and the St. Bernard then the 9 and then the Lower 9.

Im sayin as you being a New Orleanian from New Orleans. Whats the difference between Uptown and Downtown, people-wise. Maybe I should say it that way.

I know how the city is mapped out. Im asking you as far as the two places are concerned, comparing the two far as the people, the high schools, etc...It seem like 7th Ward is the place where most of the creoles live. 9th Ward seem to be the "main" neighborhood Downtown just like the 3 seem to be the "main" neighborhood Uptown.

If you look at it from that standpoint, then yea. Keep in mind that the 9th Ward & 3rd Ward were brought to the forefront by various N.O. rappers. Other than natives, no one else outside N.O. would have had a clue about those wards. People-wise, Uptown has New Orleans' most diverse population in terms of race & ethnicity, as well as economics. Also the Mardi Gras indians have two different tribes, an Uptown tribe & Downtown tribe. By the late 19th century there were already substantial numbers of people of French descent Uptown and Anglo & Irish descent Downtown. This still continues to be a factor today.

[Puddinhead]

If you look at it from that standpoint, then yea. Keep in mind that the 9th Ward & 3rd Ward were brought to the forefront by various N.O. rappers. Other than natives, no one else outside N.O. would have had a clue about those wards. People-wise, Uptown has New Orleans' most diverse population in terms of race & ethnicity, as well as economics. Also the Mardi Gras indians have two different tribes, an Uptown tribe & Downtown tribe. By the late 19th century there were already substantial numbers of people of French descent Uptown and Anglo & Irish descent Downtown. This still continues to be a factor today.

Well, the Ninth Ward may have been "brought to the forefront" for a younger generation by rappers...but younger generations always forget that there was actually a world going on before they came around. LOL For example, for folks my parents' age and those between their age and mine, the Ninth Ward was home for Fats Domino and a little later Dr. John. Life goes in cycles....in years hence, I've no doubt that there will be a later generation for whom rappers will at best be known like Fats and Dr. John are known by younger folks today--as guys who performed the kind of stuff their parents might have liked. LOL

Again, on the Uptown/Downtown dichotomy...I'm not so sure about Uptown necessarily being able to be flatly labeled as having "New Orleans' most diverse population". It absolutely is diverse in all the ways you've mentioned...but let's not disregard the whole rest of the city as being somehow homogenous. There's a lot of pretty darned wealthy people living in the French Quarter, for example, along side people of more moderate means. Treme and the 7th and 8th Wards have a lot of lower income residents, but more middle-income families than it might seem on the face of it. Of course the 7th Ward was always known for it's "creole" population of mixed ancestry and French surnames. Fauborg Marigny and Bywater (in the 9th Ward) are really interesting mixes of older residents, both black and white, of lower incomes along with a large percentage of the city's gay population, who may have a little more disposible income, and also a growing influx of "yuppie/artsy"-types attracted by the "funkiness" of Bywater and the relocation of NOCCA. The Marigny has the club scene along Frenchmen attracting a diverse crowd. It's also becoming a destination for "second homes" for professionals who are attracted by the urban (in the architectural sense) nature of the neighborhood; world reknowned "New Urbanist" architect Andres Duany recently bought a home there. In the lower 9th Ward you have both the neighborhoods of abject poverty highlighted by those on the rap scene along with a more middle- to lower-middle income neighborhood of more diverse racial and income profile in the Holy Cross Historic district.

Gentilly is so large that it would almost have to be among the city's most diverse neighborhoods on area alone; the Gentilly Civic Improvement Association, an umbrella organization set up after Katrina has representatives from some twenty different Gentilly neighborhoods, almost all racially diverse and middle-class. The St. Bernard neighborhood is wedged between the older middle-class Fairgrounds area and the upscale homes along Bancroft at Bayou St. John, populated by both black and white families. Gentilly Terrace, Seabrook, St. Anthony, Edgewood, Oak Park, Mirabeau Gardens, Vascoville...all mainly working class folks with a healthy sprinkling of professionals and small business owners, such as in my neighborhood of Gentilly Terrace where a block such as mine might have almost even numbers of black and white families...with a hispanic family or two thrown in for good measure. Mostly middle to upper-middle income, mostly white residents in the Lakefront neighborhoods of Lake Oaks, and Lake Terrace. Pontchartrain Park, the city's first upscale subdivision specifically for the African-American community, is located in Gentilly.

Lakeview is largely white, and middle, upper-middle, and higher in income.

New Orleans East has the reputation of being all low income apartment housing, mainly because that's what's clustered along the Interstate as you drive through the area...but in fact, there are still many middle to upper-middle class neighborhoods, mostly black but still with some of the white families who originally bought homes when the area was developed. Lake Willow, Spring Lake, Lake Barrington Estates...all fairly upscale. And don't forget the decidedly upscale development along Crowder in recent years...and of course, New Orleans' largest Vietnamese enclave at Village d'Lest.

So you see, both Uptown AND Downtown can lay claim to diverse populations...or at least, could before Katrina. We'll have to wait to see how everything shakes out in the future.

[L-Beware]

Exactly. Dude seems to be under the impression that these wards (especially the 9th ward, which had fame outside of New Orleans previous to rap music) are new to non-New Orleanians. Thats not true.