Latest issue: Outdoor Fun – April 2021

Page 16

The ability of the iconic New Orleans Streetcar to Capture Riders' You’re in your car going down St. Charles Imagination Avenue. The sun is shining through the leaves on the Rattles On live oak trees that flank the thoroughfare. Maybe you’re going to Superior Grill for lunch, commuting to Loyola for classes, or just cruising to Classic city streetcars some jazz on WWOZ. As you’re driving, the streetcars, old and new St. Charles Avenue Streetcar comes from up behind on your left side, packed with locals and tourists. As you see it rumbling past, you might think nothing of it. You’ve seen that dark green streetcar so many times, it just seems to blend into the avenue’s beautiful scenery. In your mind, that streetcar is part of what completes your mental image of “New Orleans.” By Burke Bischoff

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Outdoor Fun | Where Y'at Magazine

New Orleans’s streetcars, or trolleys if you’re from out-of-town, have been an important part of the city’s public transit system since all the way back in the 1830s. In particular, the St. Charles Streetcar line has the distinction of being the oldest continuously functioning streetcar line in the entire world (since 1835) and is a registered National Historic Landmark. Currently, the city has five lines that are managed by the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority: the St. Charles line, two branches of the Canal line (one heading to Metairie Road and the other towards Bayou St. John), the Riverfront line, and the RampartSt. Claude line. According to the book The Streetcars of New Orleans by Louis Hennick and Harper Charlton, the first rail service to appear in the Greater New Orleans area was in 1831 when the Pontchartrain Railroad Company created a five-mile line along Elysian Fields Avenue toward Lake Pontchartrain. The original cars on this line, plus many other lines that opened in the city, were pulled by horses until they were eventually replaced with steam engine cars starting in 1832. When the New Orleans and

ADOBE STOCK; INSET: COURTESY BISCHOFF FAMILY

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