St. Charles Avenue

[1] The Southern live oak trees, plentiful in the historic Garden District, were planted during the early twentieth century.

From Lee Circle to Louisiana Avenue it has two lanes of traffic in each direction with two streetcar rail lines on the grassy tree-lined median ("neutral ground" in local parlance).

The street was laid out atop a slight rise, the remains of an old natural levee, in connection with the construction of the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad, which became the St. Charles Streetcar Line.

The long traffic avenue originally used for horse-drawn buggies and wagons, with public rail transit running down the center, helped fuel the development of Uptown in the 19th century.

In 1889, writer Martha R. Field observed that "St. Charles Avenue is seven miles long, and is paved with asphalt its entire length" and was lined "with beautiful homes.

Many of the surviving ones have been divided into condominiums or rental apartments; others have been utilized as businesses, small hotels, and a library, while some remain individually-owned residences.

In early 1999, an effort by the New Orleans Police Department was made to clean up the Avenue and the blocks north, which were beginning to show signs of seediness.