Downtown New Orleans

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.

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.

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.

By the 1990s, the terms had largely fallen out of use, with only the merest fraction of the population of Greater New Orleans inhabiting the region once divided into Uptown and Downtown zones.

Today, use of the word "downtown" will most likely be taken to mean the CBD/Warehouse District neighborhood (i.e., the area within the DDD's ambit), and the use of individual neighborhood names or wards has replaced the historic use of the term "downtown", although "uptown" has remained in use – albeit with a lower boundary, now stretching along the Pontchartrain Expressway rather than Canal Street.

The interstate 10 exit that leads directly into the "Downtown" New Orleans area at night.
Canal Street at night, looking away from the river towards Mid-City; the traditional dividing line.
A picture of the well known Bourbon Street in Downtown New Orleans in 1941.
Alvar Street branch New Orleans Public Library , 1940. The WPA-built branch library is on Alvar Street near Burgundy in the Bywater neighborhood
You see the Superdome and Smoothie King Center along with the surrounding area of Downtown New Orleans.