I’m doing research on some happenings in New Orleans in the 1960s (nothing to do with the JFK assassinations in case you’re wondering). I’m only familiar with the Quarter and Garden District and it would help if I knew the names of some working class sections for the searching. Could somebody more familiar with the city please tell me:
–Is the Irish Channel section working class, upper class, or is it socioeconomically mixed?
–Is there a specific “working class” Irish neighborhood that would have been so in the 1950s-1960s?
–Is there an area outside of the quarter that’s famous for strip clubs/seedy bars (more geared towards natives than the tourists)?
–Confederacy of Dunces is set on Constantinople St., which I drove down once out of curiosity but it’s very long. What area of the city is this in?
It’s been a while, and I didn’t live there for that long, but I’ll give it a shot until someone comes along with more, or more accurate, info.
While lots of New Orleans neighborhoods are mixed, if I had to define this one, I’d call it working class. I’m pretty sure it was mostly shotguns.
Absolutely no idea when the Irish stopped being the predominant group in that area, so I’m afraid I can’t help you here.
I don’t remember any area specifically. The ones that I remember that targeted the locals were scattered throughout town. Visions was a “where the locals go” type of place, for example, but there were many others, and not anywhere near the same part of town. I guess you could say there were small pockets, but I don’t remember any of them having a reputation as such.
It depends on which section of the street, but the book was probably referring to Touro. Like the other neighborhoods in that part of the city, there is a pretty big mix of really nice houses and not so nice ones, often within a few hundred feet of each other.
Note, Constantinople is not really that long of a street. Are you sure that you weren’t perhaps on St. Charles or Tchoupitoulas (I still love saying that even after doing so thousands of times), which cross Constantinople, and both of which are fairly long? If I had to guess it was one of those, I’d say St. Charles, as not only is it long, it is one of those drives that feels longer than it is.
I could have been. I remember getting lost a couple of times and, IIRC, there were street names that would stop and then resume after an “intermission”. Thanks for the info.
Side question: How do you pronounce Tchoupitoulas?
It depends somewhat on which particular local you ask, but it’s roughly “Chop uh too luss”,with some folks adding a barely discernable “t” sound at the beginning, but others too lazy to be bothered to do so.
By the way, as for getting lost, that happens to best of us in New Orleans. Due to the way the river winds, and due to the way I took to get to Magazine St., I think I lived there for over a year before realizing that that street didn’t run north and south. The river seems to throw a wrench into the mental mapping of various streets.
The Irish Channel was working class Irish. Then it became a high-crime area, probably by 1970. Now it’s being taken over by younger people with money to buy the properties and fix them up. It’ll probably end up being upper class by the time they’re done with it.
Not that I’ve ever heard of. There was probably Irish mixed into every neighborhood in the city, but the Irish Channel is the only place I ever heard of a concentration of Irish. Also, all of the people I know with Irish heritage had family in the Irish channel at one point.
The New Orleans City Planning Commission has divided up the city into “neighborhoods” and sets the borders of the Irish Channel as being between 1st Street and Toledano Street, and between the river and Magazine Street. These “neighborhoods” are a pretty modern invention, so I’m not sure what was considered the Irish Channel 40 years ago, but those borders are probably pretty close to accurate.
New Orleans East had quite a few. There used to be several “Oriental Massage” places on Chef Menteur Highway, but I’m pretty sure they’re all gone now. But strip clubs are scattered all over the map.
Constantinople Street starts at the river in the East Riverside neighborhood and runs towards the Lake* through the Touro neighborhood ending at Daneel Street which is a few blocks into the Milan neighborhood. The whole street is about a mile long. The entire area is loosely referred to as the Garden District Area (including the Irish Channel).
Note that I’ve heard people refer to “Touro” and “Milan” before as neighborhoods, but I’ve never heard anyone use the term “East Riverside”.
There is no continuation of Constantinople street, because it’s on the inside of a bend in the river. The streets don’t quite run parallel…they get closer together as you move away from the river, and some of the streets have to end to keep them from getting too close together. As a result, you’ll find a lot of V shaped corners and points throughout this area.
You might have lived here, but you just put the big “I’M NOT A NATIVE” sign over your head.
There’s no North or South in New Orleans…there’s “towards da lake” and “towards da river”. These are north and south sometimes, but not always. A native can instinctively tell which way it is to the lake or the river from any point in the city.
