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Central Business District | |
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 New Orleans' Central Business District in 2019 | |
 Interactive map of Central Business District | |
| Coordinates:29°56′59″N90°04′14″W / 29.94972°N 90.07056°W /29.94972; -90.07056 | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Louisiana |
| City | New Orleans |
| Planning district | District 1, French Quarter/CBD |
| Area | |
• Total | 1.18 sq mi (3.1 km2) |
| • Land | 1.06 sq mi (2.7 km2) |
| • Water | 0.12 sq mi (0.31 km2) |
| Elevation | 3 ft (0.91 m) |
| Population (2010) | |
• Total | 2,060 |
| • Density | 1,940/sq mi (750/km2) |
| Time zone | UTC-6 (CST) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC-5 (CDT) |
| Area code | 504 |
TheCentral Business District (CBD) is aneighborhood of the city ofNew Orleans, Louisiana, United States.
The CBD is a subdistrict of theFrench Quarter/CBD area. Its boundaries, as defined by the City Planning Commission are Iberville,Decatur andCanal Streets to the north; theMississippi River to the east; theNew Orleans Morial Convention Center, Julia andMagazine Streets, and thePontchartrain Expressway to the south; andSouth Claiborne Avenue, Cleveland Street, as well as South and North Derbigny Streets to the west. It is the equivalent of what manycities call theirdowntown, although in New Orleans"downtown" or "down town" historically used to mean all portions of the city downriver from Canal Street (in the direction or flow of the Mississippi River). In recent decades, however, use of the catch-all "downtown" adjective to describe neighborhoods downriver from Canal Street has largely ceased, having been replaced in usage by individual neighborhood names (likeBywater).[citation needed]
Originally developed as the largely-residentialFaubourg Ste. Marie (English: St. Mary Suburb) in the late 18th century, the modern Central Business District is today a dynamic, mixed-use neighborhood, the home of professional offices in skyscrapers, specialty and neighborhood retail stores, numerous restaurants and clubs, and thousands of residents inhabiting restored, historic commercial and industrial buildings.
A part of the area is listed on theNational Register of Historic Places as theNew Orleans Lower Central Business District.
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Streets in the Central Business District (originallyFaubourg Ste. Marie) were initially platted in the late 18th century, representing the first expansion ofNew Orleans beyond its original French Quarter footprint. Significant investment began in earnest after theLouisiana Purchase of 1803, as people from other parts of theUnited States flocked to the city. Consequently, the district began to be referred to as theAmerican Sector.
While traditionallyCanal Street was viewed as the dividing line between the French Quarter and the American Sector, legally both sides of Canal Street are today considered part of the Central Business District for zoning and regulatory purposes. Through the 19th and into the 20th century, the Central Business District continued developing almost without pause. By the mid-20th century most professional offices in the region were located downtown, the hub of a well-developedpublic transit system. Canal Street was the primary retail destination for New Orleanians, as well as for residents of the surrounding region. Local and regionaldepartment storesMaison Blanche,D.H. Holmes, Godchaux's,Gus Mayer, Labiche's, Kreeger's, andKrauss anchored numerous well-known specialty retailers includingRubenstein Bros.,Adler's Jewelry, Koslow's, Rapp's, andWerlein's Music. National retailers likeKress,Woolworth, andWalgreens were present alongside local drugstoreK&B.Sears operated a large store one block off Canal, on Baronne Street. Bookstores, theaters, and movie palaces abounded with the neon marquees of theSaenger,Loews State,RKO Orpheum,Joy, andCivic theaters nightly casting multi-colored lights onto surrounding sidewalks.
In the 1950s, six-laneLoyola Avenue was constructed as an extension of Elk Place, cutting a swath through a low-income residential district and initially hosting the city's new civic center complex. The late-1960s widening ofPoydras Street was undertaken to create another six-lanecentral area circulator for vehicular traffic, as well as to accommodate modern high-rise construction. The City of New Orleans partook in transforming the district from 1973 to 1993, in a collaboration between public and private sectors to spark active community participation.[1] The portion of the CBD closer to the Mississippi River and upriver fromPoydras Street is known as theWarehouse District, because it was heavily devoted towarehousing and manufacturing before shipping becamecontainerized. The1984 World's Fair drew attention to the then semi-derelict district, resulting in steady investment and redevelopment from the mid-1980s onward. Many of the old 19th-century warehouses have been converted intohotels,restaurants,condominiums, andart galleries. For further information, read aboutLoft 523, a boutique hotel.
Notable structures in the CBD include theGreek Revival Gallier Hall (the city's formercity hall);Caesars Superdome; theSmoothie King Center; the city's present-day,International style city hall; andHancock Whitney Center, the city's tallest building and headquarters forRoyal Dutch Shell's Gulf of Mexico Exploration and Production. Other significant attractions are the postmodernPiazza d'Italia,Harrah's Casino now Caesar's New Orleans, theFour Seasons Hotel which was the World Trade Center of New Orleans, theU.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals,St. Patrick's Church, theHibernia Bank Building, and the formerNew Orleans Cotton Exchange.
The principal public park in the CBD isLafayette Square which faces bothGallier Hall and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. There are other public spaces like Duncan Plaza, Elk Place, the Piazza d'Italia,Tivoli Circle, Mississippi River Heritage Park, Spanish Plaza, and the Richard and Annette Bloch Cancer Survivors Plaza. Museums includeThe National World War II Museum, theOgden Museum of Southern Art, the Louisiana Children's Museum, the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center, and theConfederate Memorial Hall Museum.
New Orleans CBD was one of the few areas of New Orleans which escaped thecatastrophic flooding of 2005'sHurricane Katrina.[citation needed]
The Central Business District is located at29°56′59″N90°04′14″W / 29.94972°N 90.07056°W /29.94972; -90.07056[2] and has an elevation of 3 feet (0.9 m).[3] As is true of most ofmetropolitan New Orleans, the parts of the district nearer the river are higher in elevation than areas further removed from it. According to theUnited States Census Bureau, the district has a total area of 1.18 square miles (3.1 km2). 1.06 square miles (2.7 km2) of which is land and 0.12 square miles (0.3 km2) (10.17%) of which is water.
The City Planning Commission defines the boundaries of the Central Business District as these streets: Iberville Street, Decatur Street, Canal Street, theMississippi River, theNew Orleans Morial Convention Center, Julia Street, Magazine Street, the Pontchartrain Expressway, South Claiborne Avenue, Cleveland Avenue, and also South Derbigny Street and North Derbigny Street.[4]
As of thecensus[5] of 2000, there were 3,435 inhabitants of the census tracts best corresponding to the boundaries of the New Orleans Downtown Development District. Thepopulation density was 1,692 /mi2 (664 /km2). Another 4,142 inhabitants of the adjacentFrench Quarter neighborhood were recorded in the 2000 Census. The CBD, its subdistricts (e.g., the Warehouse District), and the bordering neighborhoods ofTremé, the French Quarter, and theLower Garden District had 21,630 residents, according to the 2000 Census.
The New Orleans City Hall and surrounding structures, including thecirca-1960, architecturally award-winning Main Branch of theNew Orleans Public Library face Duncan Plaza, an exercise in 1950s-styleurban renewal embodying then-mayorChep Morrison's desire to create a moderncivic center. The New Orleans Civic Center is today much diminished due to theLouisiana Supreme Court building being torn down in the wake of the court's 2004 departure for the French Quarter,[6] the Louisiana State office building having suffered the same fate, and Duncan Plaza itself having been fenced off.
TheUnited States Postal Service operates the New Orleans Main Post Office at 701 Loyola Avenue in the CBD.[7] TheUnion Passenger Terminal is theterminus for three ofAmtrak's long-distance trains, theCity of New Orleans train, theCrescent train, and since 2005 theSunset Limited (with the elimination, due toKatrina damage, of the eastbound portion of the Sunset Limited route), and also offers inter-city bus service viaGreyhound Lines.
Interstate Highway access is provided byI-10, via the Claiborne andPontchartrain Expressways. When I-10 curves to the east by the Louisiana Superdome and becomes the Claiborne Expressway, elevated above N. Claiborne Avenue, the Pontchartrain Expressway continues asU.S. Route 90 Business and crosses the Mississippi River on the twin-bridgeCrescent City Connection.
Significant thoroughfares in the CBD includeSt. Charles Avenue, Camp Street,Carondelet Street, Gravier Street,Poydras Street,Tchoupitoulas Street, Howard Avenue, and Canal Street. Prior to the 1980s, the intersection of Gravier and Carondelet streets was thede facto heart of the city's financial district. Though still a vibrant area, that part of the CBD witnessed the migration of much business slightly upriver to Poydras Street, as many modernhigh-rise office towers were constructed there in the 1970s and 1980s. The widening of Loyola Avenue, Poydras Street and O'Keefe Avenue aimed to simultaneously create an effectivedowntown circulator high capacity road network for automobile traffic and make room for large-scale redevelopment (e.g., Duncan Plaza,Caesar's Superdome). However, many of the development sites created in the wake of the improvements were never built upon, leaving a noticeable and unfortunate quantity of surface parking lots along those widened streets.
Entergy, the region's soleFortune 500 firm, maintains its headquarters in the CBD, as doesReily Foods Company which marketsLuzianne products and Standard Coffee.[8][9] Other companies headquartered downtown areFreeport-McMoRan,Pan American Life Insurance,Superior Energy Services,TurboSquid, iSeatz, Historic Restoration Inc. (HRI Properties),Tidewater Marine, Energy Partners Ltd., Intermarine, IMTT (International-Matex Tank Terminals), International Coffee Corp., and The Receivables Exchange.
The CBD hosts the New Orleans I.P. (Intellectual Property), home to manycreative industries firms, and a substantial number of bioscience companies are established at the New Orleans BioInnovation Center inside of BioDistrict New Orleans. The regional economic alliance Greater New Orleans, Inc. (GNO Inc.),the New Orleans metropolitan area's lead economic development entity for the ten-parish New Orleans region, is also headquartered downtown as is the New Orleans Business Alliance (NOLA BA), the public-private partnership agency leading economic development efforts for the city proper. TheWorld Trade Center of New Orleans (WTCNO) began operating in 1943 and at one time was at 2 Canal Street. That location is now the Four Seasons Hotel and the WTCNO is atOne Canal Place.
TheConsulate of Mexico in New Orleans is in the CBD.[10] The consulate re-opened in 2008 because of a dramatic increase in the local Mexican immigrant population, many of whom arrived in thewake of Hurricane Katrina to assist in rebuilding the city.[11]
In addition toMexico,France maintains a consulate in downtown New Orleans, a reflection of the long-standing ties between that country and Louisiana in addition toFrance's role as the founder of New Orleans in 1718. At one time theConsulate-General of Japan, New Orleans was located in theEntergy Tower.[12] In 2006 Japan announced that it was moving the consulate toNashville.[13] The Japanese Government moved it to be closer to industries and operations owned by Japanese companies.[14]
Honorary consuls for numerous other nations are in the CBD.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C. Retrieved on March 7, 2010. "New Orleans Consulate-General of Japan, Suite 2050, One Poydras Plaza, 639 Loyola Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana 70113, U.S.A."
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