I live on St. Charles Avenue, home to the famous New Orleans streetcar line. It’s home also (in addition to some insanely impressive houses) to one of the most unique urban spaces in America. The St. Charles Avenue streetcars run on a tree-lined strip known locally as “the neutral ground.” This is simply a “median” in other cities, but in New Orleans there is—inevitably—a more colorful name, with a whole bunch of history attached. The neutral ground is no exception. As Ann Nungesser writes on About.com:
“The big neutral ground in the middle of Canal Street in downtown New Orleans is apparently the reason all medians are called neutral grounds. . . . The French Creoles were living in the French Quarter and the new Americans were living on the other side of Canal St. . . . around the turn of the nineteenth century. There were tensions between the two groups who had different lifestyles, manners, and values, but Canal St was literally the neutral ground where they met. Even the streets that didn’t exist until long after those ethnic tensions [eased] have neutral grounds, never medians in New Orleans.”
