The Central Business District (CBD) is a

neighborhood A neighbourhood (British English, Irish English, Australian English and Canadian English) or neighborhood (American English; see spelling differences) is a geographically localised community within a larger city, town, suburb or rural area, ...

of the city of

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is bord ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. A subdistrict of the French Quarter/CBD area, its boundaries, as defined by the City Planning Commission, are Iberville, Decatur and Canal Streets to the north; the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest Drainage system (geomorphology), drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson B ...

to the east; the

New Orleans Morial Convention Center The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center is located in Downtown New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The lower end of building one is located upriver from Canal Street on the banks of the Mississippi River. It is named after former Mayor of N ...

, Julia and Magazine Streets, and the Pontchartrain Expressway to the south; and South Claiborne Avenue, Cleveland Street, and South and North Derbigny Streets to the west. It is the equivalent of what many

cities A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

call their

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ...

, although in New Orleans "downtown" or "down town" was historically used to mean all portions of the city downriver from Canal Street (in the direction of 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 (such as Bywater). Originally developed as the largely-residential

Faubourg "Faubourg" () is an ancient French term historically equivalent to " fore-town" (now often termed suburb or ). The earliest form is , derived from Latin , 'out of', and Vulgar Latin (originally Germanic) , 'town' or 'fortress'. Traditionally, ...

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 the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

as the New Orleans Lower Central Business District.

History

Streets in the Central Business District (originally ''Faubourg Ste. Marie'') were initially platted in the late 18th century, representing the first expansion of

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

beyond its original French Quarter footprint. Significant investment began in earnest following the

Louisiana Purchase The Louisiana Purchase (french: Vente de la Louisiane, translation=Sale of Louisiana) was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. In return for fifteen million dollars, or ap ...

of 1803, as people from other parts of the

flocked to the city. Consequently, the district began to be referred to as the American Sector. While traditionally Canal 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-developed public transit system. Canal Street was the primary retail destination for New Orleanians, as well as for residents of the surrounding region. Local and regional

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic appe ...

Maison Blanche Maison Blanche (''White House'' in French) was a department store in New Orleans, Louisiana, and later also a chain of department stores. It was founded in 1897 by Isidore Newman, an immigrant from Germany. Maison Blanche is perhaps best remem ...

, D.H. Holmes, Godchaux's, Gus Mayer, Labiche's, Kreeger's, and Krauss anchored numerous well-known specialty retailers, such a
Rubenstein Bros.
Adler's Jewelry, Koslow's, Rapp's, and Werlein's Music. National retailers, like Kress, Woolworth, and

Walgreens Walgreen Company, d/b/a Walgreens, is an American company that operates the second-largest pharmacy store chain in the United States behind CVS Health. It specializes in filling prescriptions, health and wellness products, health information, a ...

were present alongside local drugstore K&B.

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

operated a large store one block off Canal, on Baronne Street. Bookstores, theaters, and movie palaces also abounded, with the neon marquees of the Saenger, Loews State, RKO Orpheum, Joy, and

Civic Civic is something related to a city or municipality. It also can refer to multiple other things: General *Civics, the science of comparative government *Civic engagement, the connection one feels with their larger community *Civic center, a comm ...

theaters nightly casting multi-colored lights onto surrounding sidewalks. In the 1950s, six-lane Loyola 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 of Poydras Street was undertaken to create another six-lane central 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. The portion of the CBD closer to the Mississippi River and upriver from Poydras Street is known as the Warehouse District, because it was heavily devoted to warehousing and manufacturing before shipping became

containerized Containerization is a system of intermodal freight transport using intermodal containers (also called shipping containers and ISO containers). Containerization is also referred as "Container Stuffing" or "Container Loading", which is the pr ...

. The

1984 World's Fair The 1984 Louisiana World Exposition was a World's Fair held in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. It was held 100 years after the city's earlier World's Fair, the World Cotton Centennial in 1884. It opened on Saturday, May 12, 1984, and ...

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 into

hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a re ...

restaurant A restaurant is a business that prepares and serves food and drinks to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services. Restaurants vary greatly in appearan ...

condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership structure whereby a building is divided into several units that are each separately owned, surrounded by common areas that are jointly owned. The term can be applied to the building or complex ...

s, and

art galleries An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The lon ...

. Notable structures in the CBD include the

Greek Revival The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but a ...

Gallier Hall (the city's former

city hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...

);

Caesars Superdome The Caesars Superdome, commonly known as the Superdome (formerly known as Mercedes-Benz Superdome), is a multi-purpose stadium located in the Central Business District of New Orleans, Louisiana. It is the home stadium of the New Orleans Saints ...

; the Smoothie King Center; the city's present-day, International style city hall; and

Hancock Whitney Center Hancock Whitney Center, formerly One Shell Square, is a 51-story, skyscraper designed in the International style (architecture), International style by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, located at 701 Poydras Street in the Central Business Distric ...

, the city's tallest building and headquarters for

Royal Dutch Shell Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New ...

's Gulf of Mexico Exploration and Production. Other significant attractions include the postmodern Piazza d'Italia, Harrah's Casino, the World Trade Center New Orleans, the

U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (in case citations, 5th Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following federal judicial districts: * Eastern District of Louisiana * Mi ...

, St. Patrick's Church, the Hibernia Bank Building, and the former

New Orleans Cotton Exchange The New Orleans Cotton Exchange was established in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1871 as a centralized forum for the trade of cotton. It operated in New Orleans until closing in 1964. Occupying several buildings over its history, its final locatio ...

. The principal public park in the CBD is Lafayette Square, upon which face both Gallier Hall and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Other public spaces include Duncan Plaza, Elk Place, the Piazza d'Italia, Lee Circle, Mississippi River Heritage Park, Spanish Plaza, and the Richard and Annette Bloch Cancer Survivors Plaza. Museums include the National World War II Museum, the

Ogden Museum of Southern Art The Ogden Museum of Southern Art is located in the Warehouse Arts District of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana. Established in 1999, and in Stephen Goldring Hall at 925 Camp Street since 2003. The building The Ogden consists of two main buildin ...

, the Louisiana Children's Museum, the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center and Confederate Memorial Hall Museum. New Orleans CBD was one of the few areas of New Orleans that escaped the catastrophic flooding of 2005's Hurricane Katrina.

Geography

The Central Business District is located at and has an elevation of . As is true of most of metropolitan New Orleans, the parts of the district nearer the river are higher in elevation than areas further removed from it. According to the

United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of th ...

, the district has a total area of . of which is land and (10.17%) of which is water.

Adjacent neighborhoods

* Iberville Development (north) * French Quarter (north) * Lower Garden District (south) *

Central City In urban planning, a core city, principal city metropolitan core, or central city, is the largest or most important city or cities of a metropolitan area. A core city is surrounded by smaller satellite cities, towns, and suburbs. A central cit ...

(south) * Tulane/Gravier (west)

Boundaries

The City Planning Commission defines the boundaries of the Central Business District as these streets: Iberville Street, Decatur Street, Canal Street, the

, the

, Julia Street, Magazine Street, the Pontchartrain Expressway, South Claiborne Avenue, Cleveland Avenue, South Derbigny Street and North Derbigny Street.

Demographics

As of the

census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses inc ...

of 2000, there were 3,435 inhabitants of the census tracts best corresponding to the boundaries of the New Orleans Downtown Development District. The

population density Population density (in agriculture: standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geographical term.Matt RosenberPopu ...

was 1,692 /mi² (664 /km²). Another 4,142 inhabitants of the adjacent French Quarter neighborhood were recorded in the 2000 Census. The CBD, its subdistricts (e.g., the Warehouse District), and the bordering neighborhoods of Tremé, the French Quarter, and the Lower Garden District possessed 21,630 residents, according to the 2000 Census.

Government and infrastructure

The New Orleans City Hall and surrounding structures, including the ''circa''-1960, architecturally award-winning Main Branch of the New Orleans Public Library face Duncan Plaza, an exercise in 1950s-style

urban renewal Urban renewal (also called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States) is a program of land redevelopment often used to address urban decay in cities. Urban renewal involves the clearing out of blighte ...

embodying then-mayor Chep Morrison's desire to create a modern civic center. The New Orleans Civic Center is today much diminished, with the

Louisiana Supreme Court The Supreme Court of Louisiana (french: Cour suprême de Louisiane) is the highest court and court of last resort in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The modern Supreme Court, composed of seven justices, meets in the French Quarter of New Orl ...

building having been torn down in the wake of the court's 2004 departure for the French Quarter, the Louisiana State office building having suffered the same fate, and Duncan Plaza itself having been fenced off. The

United States Postal Service The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the ...

operates the New Orleans Main Post Office at 701 Loyola Avenue in the CBD. The Union Passenger Terminal is the terminus for three of Amtrak's long-distance trains, the City of New Orleans, the

Crescent A crescent shape (, ) is a symbol or emblem used to represent the lunar phase in the first quarter (the "sickle moon"), or by extension a symbol representing the Moon itself. In Hinduism, Lord Shiva is often shown wearing a crescent moon on his ...

and, since 2005, the

Sunset Limited The ''Sunset Limited'' is an Amtrak passenger train that for most of its history has operated between New Orleans and Los Angeles, over the nation's second transcontinental route. However, up until Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it operated betw ...

(with the elimination, due to Katrina damage, of the eastbound portion of the Sunset Limited route), and also offers inter-city bus service via

Greyhound Lines Greyhound Lines, Inc. (commonly known as simply Greyhound) operates the largest intercity bus service in North America, including Greyhound Mexico. It also operates charter bus services, Amtrak Thruway services, commuter bus services, and ...

Interstate Highway The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly known as the Interstate Highway System, is a network of controlled-access highways that forms part of the National Highway System in the United States. T ...

access is provided by

I-10 Interstate 10 (I-10) is the southernmost cross-country highway in the American Interstate Highway System. I-10 is the fourth-longest Interstate in the United States at , following I-90, I-80, and I-40. This freeway is part of the originally p ...

, via the Claiborne and Pontchartrain 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 as U.S. Route 90 Business and crosses the Mississippi River on the twin-bridge

Crescent City Connection The Crescent City Connection (CCC), formerly the Greater New Orleans Bridge (GNO), is a pair of cantilever bridges that carry U.S. Highway 90 Business (US 90 Bus.) over the Mississippi River in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. They ...

. Significant thoroughfares in the CBD include St. 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 the ''de 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 modern high-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 effective downtown circulator high capacity road network for automobile traffic and make room for large-scale redevelopment (e.g., Duncan Plaza, Superdome). However, many of the development sites created in the wake of these improvements were never built upon, leaving a noticeable and unfortunate quantity of surface parking lots along these widened streets.

Economy

Entergy Entergy Corporation is a Fortune 500 integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations in the Deep South of the United States. Entergy is headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana, and gene ...

, the region's sole

Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune (magazine), Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States Joint-stock company#Closely held corporations and publicly traded corporations, corporations by ...

firm, maintains its headquarters in the CBD, as does Reily Foods Company, which markets Luzianne products and Standard Coffee. Other local companies headquartered downtown include McMoRan Exploration, Pan American Life Insurance, Superior Energy Services, TurboSquid, iSeatz, Historic Restoration Inc. (HRI Properties), Tidewater Marine, Energy Partners Ltd., Intermarine, IMTT, International Coffee Corp., and The Receivables Exchange. The CBD also hosts the New Orleans I.P., an "Intellectual Property", home to numerous creative industries firms, and numerous bioscience companies are established at the New Orleans BioInnovation Center, located within 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. The

World Trade Center of New Orleans The World Trade Center of New Orleans is the founding member of the World Trade Centers Association, a worldwide association of over 300 World Trade Centers in nearly 100 countries. The mission of the World Trade Center of New Orleans is to creat ...

(WTCNO) has been located in the CBD since its establishment in 1943. The WTCNO facilitates the addition of wealth and jobs in Louisiana through international trade, economic development, and allied activities by supporting a prosperous international business climate in Louisiana.

Diplomatic missions

The Consulate of Mexico in New Orleans is located in the CBD. The consulate re-opened in that location in 2008 because of the dramatic increase in the local Mexican immigrant population, many of whom arrived in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to assist in the city's rebuilding. In addition to Mexico,

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

maintains a consulate in downtown New Orleans, a reflection of the long-standing ties between that nation and Louisiana, and of

's role as the founder of New Orleans in 1718. At one time the Consulate-General of Japan in New Orleans was located in the Entergy Tower. In 2006 Japan announced that it was moving the consulate to

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and ...

. The Japanese Government relocated the mission to be close to industries and operations owned by Japanese companies.Japan will close New Orleans consulate
"

''

The Times-Picayune ''The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate'' is an American newspaper published in New Orleans, Louisiana, since January 25, 1837. The current publication is the result of the 2019 acquisition of ''The Times-Picayune'' (itself a result of ...

''. November 30, 2007. Accessed June 21, 2008. Honorary consuls for numerous other nations may also be found within the CBD.

References

External links

BioDistrict New Orleans

New Orleans Downtown Development District
{{New Orleans Neighborhoods in New Orleans Downtown New Orleans Central business districts in the United States Economy of New Orleans Louisiana populated places on the Mississippi River