What do you like most about your part of New Orleans

[Donny James]

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.

[Puddinhead]

Damn. That was interesting.

When you say the Creoles, Im assuming they werent the same type of creoles like today who are basically African-Americans with mixed ancestry. What mixture of race/ethnicities were the creoles of that time.

Also. Why is it that only Louisianians of mixed ethnicities like that are considered creole. Whats different about people with mixed origins from other southern states.

[Donny James]

So from the more recent 1900s up until the present time, what has been the defining characteristics or the general makeup of the Downtown population of people versus the Uptown population. Uptown started out as the "American side", but did that carry over into the 20th century?

[UptownNewOrleans]

In the 19th century, much of Downtown was still predominantly Francophone. It was center of the city's Creole communities. There was a traditional rivalry with the predominantly Anglophone "Uptown New Orleans" on the other side of Canal Street. The broad median of Canal Street became known as the "neutral ground", where partisans of the two sections of the city could meet for discussions and business without going into each other's territory. The city was long traditionally divided into "Downtown" and "Uptown". Most of the low lying "Back of Town" was only substantially developed for residential neighborhoods after World War II with improved drainage in New Orleans. While the Downtown/Uptown division of the city has sometimes been over stated (by the late 19th century there were already substantial numbers of people of French descent Uptown and Anglo & Irish descent Downtown), it continues to be a factor in New Orleans culture into the 21st century, for example the division of the Mardi Gras Indians into Downtown and Uptown tribes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_New_Orleans

[Donny James]

In the 19th century, much of Downtown was still predominantly Francophone. It was center of the city's Creole communities. There was a traditional rivalry with the predominantly Anglophone "Uptown New Orleans" on the other side of Canal Street. The broad median of Canal Street became known as the "neutral ground", where partisans of the two sections of the city could meet for discussions and business without going into each other's territory. The city was long traditionally divided into "Downtown" and "Uptown". Most of the low lying "Back of Town" was only substantially developed for residential neighborhoods after World War II with improved drainage in New Orleans. While the Downtown/Uptown division of the city has sometimes been over stated (by the late 19th century there were already substantial numbers of people of French descent Uptown and Anglo & Irish descent Downtown), it continues to be a factor in New Orleans culture into the 21st century, for example the division of the Mardi Gras Indians into Downtown and Uptown tribes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_New_Orleans

[Puddinhead]

I thought Back Of Town was in the 7th ward.

[UptownNewOrleans]

Each of the New Orleans wards have one or two signature streets. You can tell what ward you're in based on the street.

[NCB]

Proud to represnt the 5th Ward!