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Treme
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Tremé (historically sometimes called Tremé or Faubourg Tremé or Tremé/Lafitte when including the Lafitte Projects) is a neighborhood of the city of New Orleans. A subdistrict of the Mid-City District Area, its boundaries as defined by the City Planning Commission are: Esplanade Avenue to the north, North Rampart Street to the east, St. Louis Street to the south and North Broad Street to the west. It is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city, and early in the city's history was the main neighborhood of free people of color.
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Encyclopedia
Tremé (historically sometimes called Tremé or Faubourg Tremé or Tremé/Lafitte when including the Lafitte Projects) is a neighborhood of the city of New Orleans. A subdistrict of the Mid-City District Area, its boundaries as defined by the City Planning Commission are: Esplanade Avenue to the north, North Rampart Street to the east, St. Louis Street to the south and North Broad Street to the west. It is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city, and early in the city's history was the main neighborhood of free people of color. It remains an important center of the city's African-American and Créole culture, especially the modern brass band tradition. Parts of the Tremé neighborhood (particularly the area lakeside of Claiborne Avenue) have a crime problem.
Geography
Treme is located at and has an elevation of . According to the United States Census Bureau, the district has a total area of . of which is land and (0.0%) of which is water.
Adjacent Neighborhoods
Boundaries
The City Planning Commission defines the boundaries of Treme as these streets: Esplanade Avenue, North Rampart Street, St. Louis Street North Broad Street]].
Demographics
As of the census of 2000, there were 8,853 people, 3,429 households, and 2,064 families residing in the neighborhood. The population density was 12,830 /mi² (4,918 /km²).
History
The modern Tremé neighborhood began as the Morand Plantation and two forts -- St. Ferdinand and St. John. Near the end of the 18th century, Claude Tremé purchased the land from the original plantation owner. Within a few decades, the Carondelet Canal was built from the French Quarter to Bayou St. John, splitting the land. Developers began building subdivisions throughout the area to house a diverse population that included Caucasians, Haitian Creoles, and free persons of color.
Tremé abuts the north, or lake, side of the French Quarter, away from the Mississippi River -- "back of town" as earlier generations of New Orleanians used to say. Its traditional borders were Rampart Street on the south, Canal Street on the west, Esplanade Avenue on the east, and Broad Street on the north. Claiborne Avenue is a primary thoroughfare through the neighborhood. At the end of the 19th century, the Storyville red-light district was carved out of the upper part of Tremé; in the 1940s this was torn down and made into a public housing project. This area was no longer be considered part of Tremé.
The "town square" of Tremé was Congo Square -- originally known as "Place de Nègres" -- where slaves gathered on Sundays to dance. This tradition flourished until the United States took control, and officials grew more anxious about unsupervised gatherings of slaves in the years before the Civil War.
The square was also an important place of business for slaves, enabling some to purchase their freedom from sales of crafts and goods there. For much of the rest of the 19th century, the square was an open-air market. "Creoles of Color" brass and symphonic bands gave concerts, providing the foundation for a more improvisational style that would come to be known as "Jazz". At the end of the 19th century, the city officially renamed the square "Beauregard Square" after Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, but the neighborhood people seldom used that name. Late in the 20th century, the city restored the traditional name of "Congo Square".
In the early 1960s, in an urban renewal project later considered a mistake by most analysts, a large portion of central Tremé was torn down. The land stood vacant for some time, then in the 1970s the city created Louis Armstrong Park out of the area, named after the recently deceased Louis Armstrong. (Contrary to the impression this gives to some, Armstrong, an uptowner, was not from Tremé nor often active here when he lived in town.) Congo Square is within Armstrong Park.
Musicians from Tremé include Alphonse Picou and Kermit Ruffins. While predominantly African-American, the population has been mixed from the 19th century through to the 21st. Jazz musicians of European ancestry such as Henry Ragas and Louis Prima also lived in Tremé. Also, Joe's Cozy Corner in Tremé is often considered the birthplace of Rebirth Brass Band, one of the most notable current New Orleans bands.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Tremé neighborhood received minor to moderate flooding. Fortunately in the portion of the neighborhood in from I-10, the water was generally not high enough to damage many of the old raised homes.
David Simon, the creator of The Wire, has written a pilot called Tremé, based on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the musicians who live in the area.
See also
External links
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