- Canal Street begins at the river and runs halfway across town towards the lake. The wide avenue ends at Greenwood Cemetery, but another street, Canal Boulevard, will take you all the way to Lake Pontchartrain. At the other end of Canal Street along the riverfront stands Harrah's Casino and Hotel, while just a first few blocks away, visitors will find several hotels, a few department stores and a host of small businesses. As you continue north on Canal Street towards mid-city, tall buildings are replaced by single-family homes and small businesses.
- In 1717, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, the governor of French Louisiana, found a place along the Mississippi River that was not prone to flooding or hurricanes. This became the site for a makeshift settlement, and in 1723, Adrien de Pauger, an engineer in the colony, designed and laid out a seven- by eleven- block area for the new city. Today this small section of the city is called the Vieux Carre or French Quarter, and its western border has become Canal Street.
- In 1803 the United States bought the Louisiana territory from France, and New Orleans came under U.S. jurisdiction. The new arrivals to the Crescent City were quite different from their Spanish and French predecessors and soon began to settle upriver from the Vieux Carre. The upper edge of the French Quarter became a de facto dividing line. Soon a wide avenue was built at this juncture, and it was called Canal street.
- During the 19th century, Canal Street. developed into a grand avenue that was 170 feet across with a wide median strip that ran down the middle of the boulevard. For a while, a ditch ran down the middle, but it was never filled with water, so Canal St. never actually had a canal. Eventually the ditch was filled in, and trees were planted.
- The neutral ground in the middle of Canal Street became an excellent location for public transportation. First came a city railroad in 1869, which actually used horse drawn wagons to cart passengers up and down Canal Street as well as along Claiborne Avenue, St. Charles Avenue and a number of other major thoroughfares. Streetcars did not arrive until 1894, when the railroad companies were replaced with a transportation system that ran off of overhead electric lines. The Canal Street Line was discontinued in the 1960s, but returned to service in 2004. Currently, passengers can once again ride down the wide avenue on electric streetcars that run several times an hour.
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