800 Block Canal Street
800 Block Canal Street in 1864. W.D. Mcpherson photo.
800 block Canal Street – Shopping!
The Canal Streetcar line is about three years old at the time of this photo. None of the mule-drawn, “bobtail” streetcars appear here. The greenery on the sides of the Canal Street neutral ground isn’t grown-out yet, so the tracks are visible.
The photographer, William D. Mcpherson, is upstairs in a building in the block between Carondelet Street and St. Charles Avenue. That’s Christ Episcopal in the top left, at the corner of Canal and Dauphine. It’s only seven years old in that photo. It’s the second church the congregation built, moving to Dauphine from Bourbon when Judah Touro made them an offer they couldn’t refuse for their location at Canal and Bourbon.
The anchor on the block is Daniel Henry Holmes’ dry goods store. It was twenty-four years old in this photo. D. H. Holmes wouldn’t become a full-blown “department store” for another forty years, but the Irishman already made his mark on Canal Street by the 1860s. Shopping on Canal Street wouldn’t go further up Canal for another 20 years, and wouldn’t reach the end of the French Quarter until the 1900s, with Krauss Department Store.
Street Addresses
The addresses on the stores in the photo follow the “old” pattern for Canal Street. Rather than go by blocks (100, 200, 300), buildings were numbered individually at this time. So, D. H. Holmes was 155 Canal, James Ryback, importer, was at 149, J.A. daRocha & Co. at 147 Canal. A dress and cloak maker, Mrs. Charles Brown, was at 145 Canal.
By June of 1864, New Orleans was two years under Union occupation. The blockade of the United States Navy was long over. Trade and commerce coming in through the port was back in full swing. While the city was unable to move goods out of New Orleans because of the war, the city no longer suffered from being cut off from the rest of the world. The well-documented tensions between the Union army and the locals were in full swing, but the immigrant laborers who worked along the river were back at work.
New Orleans: The Canal Streetcar Line
The clanging of a streetcar’s bell conjures images of a time when street railways were a normal part of life in the city. Historic Canal Street represents the common ground between old and new with buses driving alongside steel rails and electric wires that once guided streetcars.
New Orleans was one of the first cities to embrace street railways, and the city’s love affair with streetcars has never ceased. New Orleans: The Canal Streetcar Line showcases photographs, diagrams, and maps that detail the rail line from its origin and golden years, its decline and disappearance for almost 40 years, and its return to operation. From the French Quarter to the cemeteries, the Canal Line ran through the heart of the city and linked the Creole Faubourgs with the new neighborhoods that stretched to Lake Pontchartrain.
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