Shrewsbury is an unincorporated town in

Jefferson Parish, Louisiana Jefferson Parish (french: Paroisse de Jefferson; es, Parroquia de Jefferson) is a parish in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 440,781. Its parish seat is Gretna, its largest community is Metairie, and its ...

, along the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...

and Shrewsbury Road about 1 mile upriver from the border of the city of

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Merriam-Webster. ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nuev ...

. The name came into use in the mid-19th century, and became less commonly used towards the end of the 20th century, when surrounding communities of unincorporated Jefferson grew together as a

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...

of New Orleans. The area is now generally known as Old Jefferson and is part of the

Greater New Orleans The New Orleans metropolitan area, designated the New Orleans–Metairie metropolitan statistical area by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, or simply Greater New Orleans (french: Grande Nouvelle-Orléans, es, Gran Nueva Orleans), is a me ...

Metropolitan area A metropolitan area or metro is a region that consists of a densely populated urban agglomeration and its surrounding territories sharing industries, commercial areas, transport network, infrastructures and housing. A metro area usually com ...

. During the early 20th century, Shrewsbury Road was an official link in the

Jefferson Highway The Jefferson Highway was an automobile highway stretching through the central United States from New Orleans, Louisiana, to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The Jefferson Highway was replaced with the new numbered US Highway system in the late 1920s. ...

(State Route 1, and later

U.S. Route 61 U.S. Route 61 or U.S. Highway 61 (U.S. 61) is a major United States highway that extends between New Orleans, Louisiana and the city of Wyoming, Minnesota. The highway generally follows the course of the Mississippi River and is designate ...

) and provided the main automobile route into New Orleans via Metairie Road. It faded in importance as new and more direct routes into the city were constructed, namely the extensions of Jefferson Highway (1928) and

Airline Highway Airline Highway is a divided highway in the U.S. state of Louisiana, built in stages between 1925 and 1953 to bypass the older Jefferson Highway. It runs , carrying U.S. Highway 61 from New Orleans northwest to Baton Rouge and U.S. Highway 19 ...

(1940) into South Claiborne Avenue and Tulane Avenue, respectively. The final blow came in June 1957 when the railroad crossing on Shrewsbury Road was closed following completion of the nearby Causeway Boulevard overpass, leaving the once prominent road discontinuous. In 1915, Shrewsbury was connected to New Orleans by two streetcar lines. The first was the Orleans-Kenner interurban line (popularly known as the O-K Line), which provided service between Kenner and downtown New Orleans along the Jefferson Highway/Claiborne Avenue corridor. The second was an extension of the Napoleon Avenue streetcar line completed in 1915 with service along Metairie Road to Shrewsbury Road. The O-K Line was discontinued in 1930, and the Napoleon Avenue streetcar was cut back in 1934 and replaced by the Metairie bus line. In 1917, the Jefferson Park Race Track was opened near the intersection of Jefferson Highway and Shrewsbury Road and was a favorite horse racing venue for many years. The site was converted into the Jefferson Park residential subdivision in 1948. The area is also home to the

Camp Parapet Camp Parapet was a Civil War fortification at Shrewsbury, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, a bit more than a mile upriver from the current city limits of New Orleans. History The fortification consisted of a Confederate defensive line about a mile ...

Powder Magazine, one of the last remnants of the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

in the New Orleans area. Shrewsbury, Louisiana is referred to in the

Rhythm & Blues Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated in African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly ...

song ''Shrewsbury Blues'', written by

Dave Bartholomew David Louis Bartholomew (December 24, 1918 – June 23, 2019) was an American musician, bandleader, composer, arranger, and record producer. He was prominent in the music of New Orleans throughout the second half of the 20th century. Originally ...

and recorded by Tommy Ridgeley, a native of the area.

References

Geography of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana {{Louisiana-geo-stub