Historically a racially mixed neighborhood, it remains an important center of the city's African-American and Créole culture, especially the modern brass band tradition.

Developers began building subdivisions throughout the area to house a diverse population that included Caucasians and free persons of color.

[3] Tremé abuts the north, or lake, side of the French Quarter, away from the Mississippi River—"back of town" as earlier generations of New Orleanians used to say.

At the end of the 19th century, the Storyville red-light district was carved out of the upper part of Tremé; in the 1940s this was torn down and made into a public housing project.

The "town square" of Tremé was Congo Square—originally known as "Place des Nègres"—where slaves gathered on Sundays to dance.

The square was also an important place of business for slaves, enabling some to purchase their freedom from selling crafts and goods there.

"Creoles of color" brass and symphonic bands gave concerts, providing the foundation for a more improvisational style that would come to be known as "Jazz".

In the early 1960s, in an urban renewal project later considered a mistake by most analysts, a large portion of central Tremé was torn down.

Musicians from Tremé include Doreen Ketchens, Alphonse Picou, Kermit Ruffins, Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews, Lucien Barbarin, and "The King of Treme" Shannon Powell.

Alex Chilton, who led the rock groups Big Star and The Box Tops, lived in Tremé from the early 1990s until his death in 2010.

It is listed on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail, as is the community's St. Augustine Church — the oldest African-American Catholic parish in the U.S..