Downtown New Orleans

In New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, downtown has historically referred to neighborhoods along the Mississippi River, downriver (roughly northeast) from Canal Street — including the French Quarter, Tremé, Faubourg Marigny, Bywater, the 9th Ward, and other neighborhoods. Contrary to the common usage of the term downtown in other cities, this historic application of the term excluded the New Orleans Central Business District. The term continues to be employed as it has been historically, although many younger people and migrants from other parts of the country will use "downtown" as it is used elsewhere; that is, to mean the Central Business District/Warehouse District area.

In the 19th century, much of New Orleans' downtown (downriver from Canal Street) was still predominantly Francophone. Downtown hosted the city's French-speaking 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 for years divided into Downtown and Uptown.

Development of the low-lying Back of Town (the swamp and marsh extending northwards from the edge of development to the shores of Lake Pontchartrain) only began after 1900, as longstanding drainage issues were solved. While the downtown/uptown division of the city has sometimes been overstated (by the late 19th century there were already substantial numbers of people of francophone orientation living uptown, and of anglophone orientation living downtown), it continues to be a factor in New Orleans culture into the 21st century, marking, for example, the division of the Mardi Gras Indians into Downtown and Uptown tribes.

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