Featured Apartment:
New Orleans- Central City- We've got a newly-renovated one bedroom unit near Tulane that has a great layout for roommates who need their privacy but also need a one-bedroom sized rent. In this apartment, we've put a door on the living room, so it can be used as a second bedroom. Studio apartments, lofts, and efficiency apartments also available. View More Listings -->
Central City Information
Central City is an area in the Uptown section of New Orleans, Louisiana.
"Central City" is located at the lower end of Uptown, just above the New Orleans
Central Business District, on the "back" (away from the river) side of St.
Charles Avenue.
This old predominantly African American neighborhood has been important in the
city's brass band and Mardi Gras Indian traditions and includes three of the
housing projects of New Orleans.
Notable Central City residents have included jazz pioneers Buddy Bolden and
Larry Shields, and rapper Juvenile.
Major streets include Barrone, Oretha Castle Haley, Martin Luther King, and
Simon Bolivar.
Neighborhood businesses include Brown's Velvet Dairy and Leidenheimer Bakery,
which have furnished the city with milk and po-boy bread respectively for
generations. Famous Cafe Reconcile is both a restaurant and a non-profit
educational institution. Landmark New Orleans Croatian seafood restaurant
Uglesich's closed a few month before Hurricane Katrina, but there are rumors it
might reopen. The Ashe Cultural Center and various art galleries are also
located in Central City.
The area closest to Saint Charles Avenue developed first, in the first half of
the 19th Century, booming with the opening of the New Orleans & Carrollton
Railway, which became the St. Charles Avenue Streetcar line. The opening of the
New Basin Canal at the neighborhood's lower end contributed to the area's
development as a center of commerce and a working class residential area,
attracting many Irish, Italian, and German immigrants. After the American Civil
War many African Americans from rural areas settled in this part of the city. By
the 1870s, the urbanized area extended back to Claiborne Avenue.
Dryades Street in this area was a neighborhood commercial district by the 1830s,
but gained greater importance in the first half of the 20th century, becoming
the city's largest African American commercial district during the Jim Crow law
era and a major hub for the Uptown African American community, overtaking the
older South Rampart Street area in importance. At its height in the years after
World War II, the Dryades Street district boasted over 200 businesses.
Dryades Street began a decline in the 1960s, which became a steep nose-dive by
the 1980s. At the low point somewhere around 1990, blighted and vacant buildings
predominated. The blighted area got city attention, and the old commercial
section of Dryades Street was renamed after local civil rights activist Oretha
Castle Haley. Projects to improve the neighborhood gradually saw fruit by the
start of the 2000s.
A large part of Central City was above the flooding which devastated the
majority of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (see:
Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans). As there were many vacant buildings
and vacant lots in this rare piece of high dry ground, greater attention has
been drawn to Central City in plans for post-Katrina redevelopment of the city.
As of mid-2006, the area has achieved the distinction of being the most
dangerous part of the city, in terms of murders and crime activity. It was the
major reason for the June decision to deploy the Louisiana National Guard to the
city so that NOPD officers could focus on the 'crime hotspots', such as this
area.