by nolahistoryguy | Dec 3, 2025 | 1950s, 1960s, Buses, CBD, NOPSI, Streetcars
New Orleans Public Service, Inc. (NOPSI) began the push to discontinue the Canal Streetcar in 1960.
Canal Street buses
This 1959 photo of Canal Street confused me for a moment. My friend Keith Evans posted it in his Facebook group, “N.O.L.A. – New Orleans Long Ago,” with just the title, “1959.” I thought, no, there are buses in the neutral ground, and that would be post-1964. I said as much in the group. Pop replied that he dated the image by the ad for the movie, “Ben Hur,” which came out in 1959.
So, I looked at that neutral ground a bit closer. It’s so clean! When buses ran in the “Canal Street Zone,” the roadway was streaked with rubber from tires and oil that leaked from the buses. The area in this photo is spotless! So, it’s just too clean to be normal.
Closing the streetcar line
By 1951, NOPSI discontinued streetcar service on all but the St. Charles and Canal lines. They stopped “belt service” on St. Charles and Tulane. Tulane switched to trolley bus service. Instead of running the belt, St. Charles terminated at S. Claiborne and Carrollton Avenues, as it does to this day. That meant the Canal streetcars were next up on the chopping block.
It wasn’t hard to convince Canal riders to switch to buses. If you lived in Lakeview and commuted into the CBD, you rode a bus to Canal Street and City Park Avenue. From there, the streetcar took you down Canal. NOPSI’s strategy was to operate two bus lines from the lakefront into town. One would use West End and Pontchartrain Boulevards, the other Canal Boulevard. Instead of turning around at City Park Avenue, however, they would continue down Canal Street. This offered riders a direct ride to work during the week, shopping on Saturday. No transfer!
Not only would buses make it an easier trip, they were air-conditioned. That was a big deal for men wearing coat and tie and women wearing stockings to work. Rainy day? You were safe until you got to Baronne or Carondelet Street.
Canal Street zone
With no streetcars in the CBD, buses would travel in the Canal neutral ground. After Claiborne Avenue, they would move into the regular auto traffic lanes. This meant commuters avoided cars while downtown. NOPSI airbrushed the streetcars out of several photos from 1959-1960, inserting buses in their place. I have a couple of these images in my book, New Orleans: The Canal Streetcar Line. This one was new to me.
Red streetcars
Streetcar service on Canal Street returned in 2004. The 2000-series Von Dullen cars featured a smoother ride and…wait for it…air conditioning! Riders coming in from Lakeview have to transfer from the bus, like they did prior to 1964, but hey, streetcars are always more fun.
by nolahistoryguy | Sep 28, 2024 | 1960s, Brother Martin High, Buses, Cor Jesu, F. W. Gregory Junior High, Gentilly, Lakeview, Mid-City, St. Aloysius
In the 1960s, Canal Street buses changed downtown.
Canal Street buses
From: 1965: NOPSI photo of a GM GMC TDH5303 bus. It’s running on the Canal-Lakeshore line, outbound, passing through the 1000 block of Canal Street. This photo dates to about a year after the conversion of Canal to bus service. The vintage-1923 arch roof streetcars ceased operation on Canal in May of 1964.
Cemeteries, Lake Vista, Lakeshore
So much can be said about the buses on Canal, and there are a few other items to be unpacked on this image. Let’s focus on the three Canal bus lines, post-streetcar. I rode those lines in both directions for the five years I attended Brother Martin High School in Gentilly. While my dad, who worked at the University of New Orleans, drove me to school in the morning, I rode public transit home. NOPSI provided two basic routes west from Gentilly. The Broad Street line ran from out in Da East, then Gentilly Blvd. The line turned onto Broad Street, just after passing Dillard University, continuing all the way to Lowerline, uptown. The other option using Gentilly Blvd. was the Carrollton line. Both of these lines crossed Canal. So, we would hop off and catch one of the three Canal lines to City Park Avenue. We caught the Veterans bus from there.
Lakeview
Then there was the second route, through Lakeview. We took the Cartier line from Mirabeau and Elysian Fields to Spanish Fort. The Cartier line started at Franklin and Mirabeau. It was, for all intents and purposes, a school bus route, passing by several elementary schools, F. W. Gregory Junior High, and John F. Kennedy Senior High. So at Spanish Fort, we transferred to the Canal (Lake Vista via Canal Blvd.) That line began its inbound run there. We’d ride Lake Vista to Toussaint and Canal Blvd. While the bus turned inbound on Canal Blvd., we got off and transferred to the line from this photo, Canal (Lakeshore via Pontchartrain Blvd.)
The Canal Lakeshore bus ran outbound on West End, turned right on Toussaint, then left on Canal Blvd. It terminated at the lake. For its outbound run, the line returned to Toussaint and went down Pontchartrain Blvd. So, we caught the inbound Lakeshore and rode it to Veterans, where we would pick up the Veterans.
Suburban transition
Cor Jesu and St. Aloysius High Schools didn’t have a lot of boys from Metairie attending the schools. As suburban expansion grew, the combined Brother Martin High appealed to a number of Crusader and Kingsmen families who moved out to Metairie. We kids from #themetrys were still a minority of the student body, back in the 70s. As the transition grew (now, most Crusaders live in Metairie and Kenner), the school offered school bus service, so families didn’t have to rely on less-reliable public buses.
To continued…
We’ll have more to say about this image in a couple of other posts. Thanks to Aaron Handy, III, for sharing this image to one of the bus fan groups on Facebook and triggering my memories!
by nolahistoryguy | Aug 15, 2024 | Buses, CBD, Lakefront, Lakeview, Mid-City, Riverfront, Streetcars, Transit
The Canal Street Zone is the transit hub of the city.
Canal Street Zone
At the peak of my streetcar riding, in the mid-late 1970s, transfer slips always said, “Good on any connecting line or any line in the Canal Street Zone.” That concept goes back over a century now. The Canal Street Zone morphed into an (almost) all-bus concept in 1964, with the conversion of the Canal (Cemeteries) line to buses. This ad in the Times-Picayune on 15-August-1964 announces the roll-out of bus service in the Canal Street neutral ground:
Canal Street Buses Start Operating on Downtown Neutral Ground Sunday as Major Construction Nears End.”
Cemeteries line service continued with buses immediately after the electric overhead wires vanished at the end of May, 1964. While most streetcar infrastructure moved slowly, NOPSI and the city moved quickly to ensure the change stuck. No going back, similar to the move of passenger rail service to Union Passenger Terminal in 1954. Buses operated in the automobile lanes for the entire length of the line while city crews ripped up the tracks.
Return to the neutral ground
by August, 1964, the city cleared the streetcar tracks on Canal from Claiborne to Liberty Place. For the first time since 1861, no streetcars operated in the neutral ground. Only the one-block loop track for the St. Charles Line (Carondelet-Canal-St. Charles) remained. This is huge. At their peak levels of operation, streetcars ran on four tracks in the neutral ground. Uptown and Downtown lines approached Canal, looped for one or more blocks on the outside pair of tracks, then proceeded on their outbound runs.
So, that one-block loop was all there was from 1964 until the upgrade of the Riverfront line in 1997. While Riverfront opened in 1988, it did not connect to St. Charles. The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (NORTA, which took over from NOPSI in 1984) used the old L&N/Seaboard Coast Line (now-CSX) track. Riverfront grew in popularity to the point where NORTA expanded the line to two-track operation. They ripped up the standard-gauge track, replacing it with two wide-gauge (streetcar) tracks. Additionally, they built a connector from Riverfront to St. Charles. Now the “red ladies” could return to Carrollton Station under their own power.
Street-to-neutral ground
The photos in this ad show how the bus zone operated. Buses for all three Canal lines ran from City Park Avenue to Claiborne in the auto lanes. At Claiborne, they shifted to the inside (left) lane, entering the bus zone. They ran down to the river, turned around, and headed outbound. At Claiborne, they exited the zone, continuing in the auto lanes.
Direct service
The ad states, “Direct service between the river and the lake, with no transferring, is now offered for the same 10-cent fare for local and 15-cent for express.” Prior to all-bus operation on Canal, riders living in Lakeview took the West End bus to City Park Avenue. They transferred to the streetcar at that point. This! This right here is why it was so easy to sell discontinuing streetcar service on Canal. If you lived in Lakeshore or Lake Vista, you could board the extended lines, Canal-Lakeshore via Pontchartrain Blvd, or Canal-Lake Vista via Canal Blvd., by your house and ride into town without transferring. In air-conditioning. At a time when working downtown meant men wore suits and women wore dresses and hose, this was a Big. Deal.
by nolahistoryguy | Feb 20, 2023 | 1950s, Buses, CBD, NOPSI, Post-WWII, Streetcars, Transit, Uptown
Streetcar parade changes happened to keep the streets clear.
Streetcar parade changes
Ad in the Times-Picayune, 20-February-1950, outlining the “Changes in Streetcar and Bus Routes during Carnival Parades” for Lundi Gras and Mardi Gras that year.
In order to clear the streets along the routes of Carnival parades, certain temporary changes in streetcar and bus routes, principally in the Canal Street area, will be necessary. The dates and hours during which the changes will be in effect, as well as the points in the Canal Street area at which passengers may board and alight, are shown below. Service on the St. Charles-Tulane Belt lines will be interrupted during the parades along part of St. Charles Avenue as outlined below.
The timing of the changes: Lundi Gras, 6:30pm to about 9:30pm. The only parade of the evening was the Krewe of Proteus. It moved pretty quickly down the route, since they wanted to get their ball started on time at 9pm, at the Municipal Auditorium.
On Carnival Day,
Canal Street will be cleared of Traffic all day Mardi Gras from 9:45 a. m. until the night parade clears the street about 9:30 p. m. Passengers should board and alight at the points shown, below between those hours.
The parades on Mardi Gras were Rex during the day and Comus at night. Zulu had a less-formal route at this time, so it didn’t figure into the transit calculus.
Loading and unloading
The Canal line looping back at Crozat isn’t all that different from what happens now. The buses, being more flexible, essentially stop short of their usual turnarounds on Canal Street, on both the uptown and downtown sides of Canal.
The Belt
NOPSI 434 on the St. Charles Belt, 1947 (courtesy George Friedman)
“In the interest of safety, the St. Charles and Tulane Belt lines will not operate along the parade route while the Carnival parades are on St. Charles Avenue.” The turn-back points for the streetcars are different than recent years. For Proteus on Lundi Gras, the streetcars ran all the way down to Washington Avenue. That’s because Proteus went up Jackson to St. Charles. It turned left on St. Charles, but only for four blocks, to stop in front of Garden District homes, then looped to head to Canal Street. At this time, Rex left their den on Claiborne Avenue, and turned left on Claiborne, going to Louisiana. They then turned right on Louisiana, and turning left again onto St. Charles. Their route later expanded to Napoleon. So, now, Rex turns right out of the den, then left onto Napoleon, then left onto St. Charles. So, now the turn-back point is further up, at Napoleon.
Since the St. Charles and Tulane lines ran in Belt service, with one circling in one direction and the other in the opposite direction, there was a second turn-back point. This was at Elk Place and Canal. So, during parades, the lines ran point-to-point, from St. Charles and Louisiana, up St. Charles, turning on S. Carrollton, then Tulane, going to Canal and Elk. The Tulane line ran the opposite direction.
A year later, in 1951, NOPSI discontinued Belt service. The Tulane line transitioned to trackless trolleys, while St. Charles remained streetcars.
Have a safe and happy Lundi Gras and Mardi Gras!
by nolahistoryguy | Dec 31, 2022 | 1950s, Buses, CBD, Food and Drink, French Quarter, Garden District, Lakeview, Restaurants, Streetcars, Uptown
Sugar Bowl dining options were extensive in 1956
Ride the bus or streetcar to the game, come back to the French Quarter for fine dining.
Enjoying Sugar Bowl Dining
With fans from Baylor University and the University of Tennessee in town for the Sugar Bowl game on New Year’s Day, even the established, “old line” restaurants took out ads in the Times-Picayune.
Brennan’s
Beakfast at Brenna’s, all day.
Brennan’s French Restaurant served “Breakfast At Brennan’s,” with Eggs Hussarde or Eggs St. Denis, all day long. They also recommended Lamb Chops Mirabeau, as well as the rest of a very popular menu of French cuisine. Brennan’s, Still There More at 417 Royal Street, across from the Louisiana Supreme Court building.
Restaurant Antoine
Restaurant Antoine
“the gourmet’s choice…The House of Antoine for 117 years…National polls have placed Antoine’s top on their list of fine restaurants of America and the world. Antoine’s Restaurant, 713 St. Louis Street in the French Quarter. Roy L. Alciatore, Proprieter.
Arnaud’s
Arnaud’s Restaurant in the French Quarter.
Germaine Cazenave Wells, Owner and Manager of Restaurant Arnaud’s, and daughter of Count Arnaud, the founder, welcomed Sugar Bowl visitors. “The Paris of the South,” Arnaud’s, still at 813 Bienville Street.
Commander’s Palace
Commander’s Palace in the Garden District
“a command performance for generations, the toast of Kings and Queens of Mardi Gras, Commander’s Palace where each meal is a command performance–delicious french cuisine expertly prepared and graciously served.”
Since 1880, Commander’s Palace – “Dining in the Grand Manner,” Washington Avenue at Coliseum.
Lenfant’s
Lenfant’s, Poydras and S. Claiborne and Canal Blvd.
Lenfant’s operated two locations in 1956, 537 S. Claiborne and Poydras, and 5236 Canal Blvd. The Special Turkey New Year’s Dinner served to 4 P. M., a la carte after 4pm. “Plenty of Parking Space Available at Both Locations.” Lenfant’s, particularly the Canal Blvd. location, attracted locals not looking to mingle with football visitors.
Pittari’s
T. Pittari’s, 31-December-1956
“The Famous T. Pittari’s – Directly on your route–to and from The Sugar Bowl Game” at 4200 So. Claiborne. Pittari’s aggressive marketing via downtown hotels attracted visitors. While they came for the lobster and other exotic dishes, locals went to Pittari’s for their popular Creole-Italian dishes.
Happy New Year!
by nolahistoryguy | Oct 21, 2022 | 1960s, 1970s, Buses, Lakeview
Express 80 bus service made it easy to discontinue streetcar service.
Express 80 bus in Lakeview (NOPSI photo)
NOPSI’s Express 80
From the late-1960s, riders board a NOPSI bus on the Express 80 route. NOPSI operated this line as an “express” option to its Canal – Lake Vista via Canal Blvd line. The bus, NOPSI 251, is a General Motors “New Looks” bus. They, along with buses from Flxable, replaced the maroon and cream GM “Old Looks” buses, and similar designs from White. The sign at the top front advertises color televisions. The amber lights on either side of the roll board (the route designator) flashed, informing riders this was an express bus rather than the local.
The route
The Canal-Lake Vista and Express 80 lines shared the same basic route:
Outbound
- Canal Street at Liberty Place
- Lakebound on Canal Street to City Park Avenue
- Right on City Park Avenue
- Immediate left onto Canal Boulevard to Toussaint
- Right on Allen Toussaint Boulevard to Marconi
- Left on Marconi Boulevard to Lakeshore Drive
- Right onto Lakeshore Drive to Beauregard
- Right on Beauregard Avenue to Toussaint. (Spanish Fort Terminal)
Inbound
- Right onto Toussaint, heading west to Canal Blvd
- Left on Canal Blvd to City Park Avenue
- Right, then left, onto Canal Street
- Canal Street to Liberty Place
The difference between the local route and Express 80 was that Canal-Lake Vista made every stop along the way. When the outbound Express 80 reached Canal Street and Claiborne Avenue, it didn’t stop again until City Park Avenue. The bus resumed stops from there.
Fares
Riders paid fifteen cents for local bus service at this time. Transfers were free. NOPSI charged an additional nickel for the express lines. When I was a student at Brother Martin High, 1971-1976, I often rode home via Gentilly and Lakeview. We took the Cartier Line (Mirabeau to St. Bernard to Spanish Fort), then Canal-Lake Vista, up to City Park Avenue. I caught the Veterans bus there. Or, if the connections worked. I transferred to the Canal-Lakeshore bus at Canal Blvd and Toussaint. I rode that bus up to the old State Police Troop B station (now the OMV) on Veterans. That’s where I would pick up the Vets bus. When catching either Express 80 or Express 81 (the Lakeshore express), the drivers let me slide on the extra nickel. They knew I was getting off before they went into express service.
Fares in the 1970s went up from fifteen cents to a quarter, with the extra five cents for express.
Sinking the steetcars
How did the express lines help NOPSI discontinue streetcar service on Canal? The Lakeview and West End buses went to the Cemeteries, then turned around. Riders transferred to the green, 1923-vintage arch roof streetcars there. Look at the men in this photo, dressed in business suits. They switched from air-conditioned buses to hot, humid, open-window streetcars. There was no romance of “A Streetcar Named Desire!” So, NOPSI offered them one a/c bus from, say, Harrison Avenue and Canal (or Pontchartrain) into town. That sealed the fate of the Canal line.
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