New Orleans, Bar Live Cam

New Orleans East is a collection of communities that sprang up as an early suburb for Creoles, French, and new residents. Today it is a popular residential neighborhood, home to Jazzland Theme Park, and the connection to the Northshore cities of Covington and Slidell.

In the 18th century, the East New Orleans community of Gentilly functioned as a small village a "half league" from New Orleans. Established along Gentilly Ridge, the area began expanding in the 1920s as Creoles began moving out of the French Quarter-Esplanade area. It is now a mixture of diverse neighborhoods, low sprawling post-World War II houses, nurseries, Dillard University, and the Baptist-Theological Seminary.

The Holy Cross neighborhood is a beautiful residential area of 90 square blocks connected to the Mississippi River. It is joined to downtown New Orleans and the Central Business District (CBD) by the St. Claude Bridge over the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal. The neighborhood levees provide spectacular views of the Mississippi, the canal, and the skyline of the CBD. The neighborhood has simple historic homes, pleasant residents, and shady tree-lined streets.

The French Quarter is the original site of New Orleans. The sector is famous (and infamous) for its bustling nightlife, hotel balconies, ritzy restaurants, talented musicians, and unique bars. It may be the only place in America where barbers from Iowa share stories with millionaires from Manhattan and local college students at 1:00 a.m.

The Quarter is the only section of New Orleans where the streets run in a grid - from Canal St. to Esplanade Ave., and from Decatur St. on the Mississippi River to Rampart Street. The French Quarter was founded and built by the French throughout the middle 1700s.

The port city sprouted the French Market, which still exists today on the Mississippi River. King Louis XV ordered Catholic Ursuline nuns to go to the new territory. The nuns arrived in 1727 and built the Old Ursuline Convent in 1734. France controlled the site until 1763, when Spain assumed control. Many buildings in the Quarter still exhibit the Spanish architecture, notably the cast iron on the balconies, brick and stucco exterior walls, and tiles on roofs.

The land of Downtown New Orleans and Commercial Business District (the CBD) has grown from a sugar plantation to the city’s center of commerce, government, and the Superdome.

The land was once a sprawling sugar plantation, owned by Bertrand Gravier. After a devastating fire in the French Quarter in 1788, Mr. Gravier sold portions of the land to residents who were eager to move outside of the Quarter. These residents formed a suburb called Faubourg Ste. Marie (later Americanized to St. Mary).

Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the area became populated with businessmen, bankers, brokers, and planters who enthusiastically made the most of the new American port on the mouth of the Mississippi River. The area became known as the “American sector” of the city. American style houses were different from French or Spanish homes because they had front doors instead of courtyards, and sloped roofs. You can find out more about the city’s architecture from a tour of the city. The “American sector” also required warehouses to service the port.

Canal Street divides the French Quarter from downtown, and it has developed into the commercial center of New Orleans. The cycles of New Orleans’ business and history are captured in the layers of buildings throughout downtown – cotton refineries become meat packing plants and warehouses, while old banks and small exchanges become corporate towers, government buildings, and the Louisiana Superdome.

The Convention Center and Arts District developed from a neighborhood filled with warehouses that supported the Mississippi River port. In the early 1800’s, the port needed warehouses. The Louisiana Purchase brought New Orleans into the United States in 1803. Americans moved to New Orleans, settled just outside the French Quarter, and expanded the area’s industry and commerce through the port on the Mississippi River. Canal Street divided the French Quarter from the “American sector".

Of course commerce and industry require warehouses, so those were built and maintained during the 1800’s and until the mid-1900’s. Modern businesses did not require as much warehouse space, so the area became unused and fell into disarray. In the 1980’s, the price of land in New Orleans had grown, and (as in most big American cities) the warehouse area became converted into art studios, ritzy restaurants, posh commercial space, and swanky bars. The area is now a unique mix of modern renovation and factories, refineries, and unused buildings awaiting an imaginative developer.

The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center opened in 1985 on the shores of the Mississippi River. It contains 1.1 million square feet of contiguous exhibit space, a 4,000 seat conference auditorium, two ballrooms, and 140 separate meeting rooms. The Convention Center hosts lots of large events, such as the Essence Music Festival in July.

The lush, sub-tropical Garden District has columned mansions which sit next to mansions in ruins. It is the perfect setting for Anne Rice’s vampire novels, and in fact she owns several Garden District houses. St. Charles Avenue runs from downtown through the Garden District and Uptown, past Tulane University and Audubon Park, to the River-bend area on the shores of the Mississippi River. St. Charles Avenue is the main connecting street in these neighborhoods, and is where historic streetcars run and is on the route for most Mardi Gras parades.

The Garden District began as a suburb in the 1830s. The area grew with the 1835 arrival of the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad on St. Charles Ave. Prior to the Civil War in 1861, mansions were built in the area on large tracts of land. After 1865, those large tracts were filled in with smaller houses and rapid growth began in the upriver area, called Uptown.

The word Metairie is derived from the French word "Moitie" (one-half), or "moitoire", a French form of sharecropping. Starting almost 200 years ago, the road across Bayou Choupic to the sharecropping farms became known as Metairie road. Metairie Road is still one of the city’s major roadways, connecting Metairie to the City of New Orleans. The road also inherited traditional French efficiency - it’s mostly a slow, meandering, two-way boulevard.

Today, the area surrounding Metairie Road is a picturesque community known as "Old Metairie". Shops, coffee houses, professional buildings, and shopping centers have developed on Metairie Road. Further away from New Orleans, Metairie also has Lakeside Shopping Center, one of Louisiana's oldest and largest shopping malls. Over the years, Metairie is gradually shifting from a primarily suburban residential community to mixed commercial uses such as shopping malls, office buildings, and nightclubs and entertainment in the “Fat City” area. New Orleans Zephyrs AAA baseball games are a family-friendly destination in Metairie.

The City of Kenner is west of Metairie. Kenner is home to New Orleans' Louis Armstrong International Airport (MSY). Visitors traveling from the airport to central New Orleans travel through Kenner and then Metairie on Interstate 10 or on Veterans Memorial Boulevard. Kenner is also home to Rivertown, which is 16 blocks of family-oriented activities. Rivertown has a Living Science Center, a Space Station, Planetarium & Observatory, Wildlife & Fisheries Center, Mardi Gras Museum, Saints Hall of Fame, Toy Train Museum, Children’s Castle, and other activities for the whole family.