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BLAKE PONTCHARTRAIN™
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12 14 04 |
New Orleans Know-It-All
Hey Blake, I belong to a group here in Missouri called "Tea and Topics." Next week our topic is "streets." Since I was born and raised in New Orleans, I decided to report on my favorite street -- St. Charles Avenue. However, I haven't been able to find information on the Web. I thought you could help.
Barbara
Dear Barbara, St. Charles Avenue would probably win a contest here in the Big Easy for the best street. So I'm glad you selected it for your group. Perhaps they'll want to see it for themselves.
St. Charles Avenue between Canal Street and St. Joseph Street came into being when Bertrand Gravier and his wife Marie began to divide up their plantations in 1788 to create our first suburb, Faubourg Ste. Marie. They named one of the streets for King Charles of Spain, and in doing so bestowed on him honorary sainthood.
Next came Barthelemy Lafon, who in 1803-1810 subdivided four more plantations directly upriver from Faubourg Ste. Marie. Lafon called the most important street "Cours des Naiades." Soon it became Route of the Nayades. But in 1852 a city ordinance changed the name to St. Charles Avenue and continued the street in the Faubourg Ste. Marie, although I thought that it would have been rather romantic to have a splendid street named after river nymphs.
St. Charles Avenue eventually continued Uptown through the various subdivisions whose growth was aided by the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad Company. They began running streetcars in 1835 on the very same route used today. The route began at the intersection of Baronne and Poydras streets; the line ran up to the present intersection of St. Charles and Carrollton avenues.
Hey Blake,
Do you know where the Huki-Lau was in Metairie?
Purple Jade
Dear Purple,
The Huki-Lau Restaurant/Bar, later known as the Huki-Lau Supper Club, was a Polynesian-theme restaurant located at 3701 Hessmer St. in the area we used to call Fat City. The decor was Hawaiian, but the food was Chinese, and it was in business for about six years during the 1970s.
Hey Blake,
Every time I see it on the map I wonder, does Arabi in St. Bernard Parish have anything to do with either Arabia, the Arab nation, or James Joyce's short story of the same name?
Sonny Miro
Dear Sonny,
Well, sort of. It was definitely not named for Joyce's short story "Araby," one of 15 stories in a collection called The Dubliners. Arabi came into being in the last half of the 19th century. At the time, it was just an unnamed suburb. But in the 1890s a fire destroyed the courthouse there and a number of surrounding buildings. About the same time, there was an Arabian sheik in the news for his incendiary activities. So folks thought it would be clever to name the town in his recognition.
Hey Blake, What year did the Warehouse concert hall on Tchoupitoulas Street open and close? Any chance of knowing the first and last concerts there? Mike Hanson Dear Mike, Were you one of the lucky people to be there when the first concert took place on Jan. 30, 1970? Officially named A Warehouse, it was located at 1820 Tchoupitoulas St., but calling it a "concert hall" is certainly making it seem more posh than it was. The place was a warehouse originally built in the 1850s to house coffee and cotton.
It was un-airconditioned and held 3,500 sweaty music lovers who packed the place frequently for terrific concerts. The first one featured the Grateful Dead and Fleetwood Mac, and tickets were only $5. Twelve years later the Talking Heads were featured on the last performance on Sept. 10, 1982. During the years it was open, A Warehouse pulled in the young folks -- they even let in old guys like me -- we heard the likes of Pink Floyd, Chicago, Bob Marley, the Who, the Doors, KISS, and ZZ Top, just to name a few.
But don't bother driving down Tchoupitoulas on a pilgrimage to find the building. It was demolished in April 1989.
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