urban bicycle journeys

What if I bicycled the entire length of Washington Avenue in New Orleans? The street is only four miles long but I suspect people think the idea is crazy. Parts are considered unsafe. It is a fascinating mostly two lane city street lined with live oaks as it passes through areas of huge cultural and economic differences.

New Orleans is called the Crescent City because it is shaped by the curve of the Mississippi River. The oldest parts of town line the river. Major streets emanate at a perpendicular angle from the river, or else parallel the river. This all works fine until these streets meet at a tangle in the middle, an area called either Mid-City or Gert Town or Marlyville-Fontainebleau.

Washington Avenue is the blue line.

New Orleans of 2025 continues to change and is not always playing by traditional social segregation rules. Neighborhoods change. Society is more complex. Sixty years ago one would describe Washington Avenue as starting at the Mississippi and running half a mile through the poor and mostly White Irish Channel. It then passed through one of the city’s premier neighborhoods, the Garden District. Almost immediately thereafter the street entered a traditional center of African-American life in New Orleans, Central City. All these changes happened on the first mile of Washington Avenue. Today those descriptions only partly hold water.

This particular morning I left my pickle ball group over on Louisiana Avenue and bicycled to where Washington Avenue begins, by the riverside wharfs of Tchoupitoulas Street.

On the corner of Washington and Tchoupitoulas is a delightful Mid-Century Modern former maritime union building, from 1956. It now houses Camp Bow-Wow.

On the opposite corner is apparently the only Tesla service area in the state of Louisiana.

Most of Washington Avenue is draped in live oaks. I cycled up the street.

Back in 1985 Tootie and I were looking to purchase a home in New Orleans. In 2025 the Irish Channel is yuppie central with prosperous looking young mothers pushing strollers; in 1985 it was considered crime-ridden and dangerous, especially near the river. Back then a real estate agent took Tootie and me on a tour of a single shotgun house in a sketchy stretch of Washington Avenue. Forty years later I tried to remember which house it was; was it this one?

Or was it this one?

In 1985 we didn’t buy the Washington Avenue house for many reasons but we still remember a laugh. There had been two young men renting the place and we essentially walked through their life. We marveled at an Asian porcelain jar of lube on those guy’s bedside table. It seemed so shocking back then.

I continued to bicycle up Washington Avenue.

Most of the big houses are a few blocks further, on the other side of Magazine Street. This Greek Revival house on the corner of Washington and Constance is abnormally large for the Irish Channel and has recently been spruced up. My guess it is from the 1850’s.

In 1985 a storefront on the corner of Washington and Magazine was an auto parts store. Since about 2010 that same space has been the higher end restaurant Coquette. Tootie and I have eaten there several times. It’s quite good.

Traditionally crossing Magazine Street has been a major social transformation. Washington Avenue then passes through five blocks of the Garden District. Most of the nineteenth century mansions are on streets a block or two on either side.

Sometime around the 2025 Super Bowl ex Beatle Paul McCartney was photographed dining at Commander’s Palace on Washington Avenue. I have tried to dismiss Commander’s as being too big and too touristy but they generally do a great job. It’s a fun fancy place to be. Turtle soup. On weekday lunch, twenty-five cent martinis.

Across the street from Commander’s is Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 which began in 1833 and encompasses just one city block, featuring New Orleans’ distinctive above-ground tombs. I walked through it several years ago. Many of the deaths in the 1850’s occurred to people in their twenties and thirties. If I lived in the Garden District I would be annoyed at the number of guided tour groups both here and all over the neighborhood.

Two blocks later Washington Avenue crosses the wide St. Charles Avenue. From there you can take the St Charles streetcar three miles uptown to Tulane University or two miles downtown to Canal Street and the French Quarter.

Washington Avenue now heads in a different cultural direction. One block beyond St. Charles Avenue, at the corner of Carondelet and Washington I speculate the real estate value of this lovely antebellum mansion is greatly reduced because it is on the “wrong” side of St. Charles Avenue.

Washington Avenue now threads through the traditionally Black neighborhood of Central City. Near the perceived “border,” on the corner of Washington Avenue and Baronne Street sits the dive bar Verret’s Lounge.

I have only been in there once. Tootie and I in 2023 were giving two friends a ride to Central City to their Joan of Arc pre-parade dinner and we all stopped at Verret’s for a drink, the friends in medieval costumes. The bar seemed safe and friendly. This 2025 photo was at 11:30 AM.

Opposite Verret’s Lounge is this former gas station. Could this be from the 1920’s?

The next stretch of Washington Avenue has many churches, seemingly one every other block.

Are these guys Mormon missionaries?

I passed two adjacent cemeteries.

There were eats.

The comforting halo of live oaks continued.

New Orleans is always celebrating something. At noon on what seemed a normal weekday, on the corner of Washington and Lasalle people were setting up for a street party. It might have been St. Joseph’s Day, but I thought that was an Italian thing.

Liquor Menu. Free Phones. I have no idea what this means.

The area shown below used to be 1940’s brick two story housing projects. After Hurricane Katrina and its flooding in 2005 they were torn down by the Housing Authority (HANO) and replaced with these mostly apartment buildings.

As Washington Avenue crosses six lane Claiborne Avenue, a post-Katrina strip shopping center seems to be doing OK.

Street work in New Orleans is constant. We are sinking into the muck. The ancient city water system corrodes. Washington Avenue near Claiborne is currently closed to cars but I could push a bicycle on the sidewalk around the barriers.

At least for a while the canopy of live oaks continue.

It was not to last. The trees mostly disappear and Washington Avenue becomes four lane in its final mile and a half. At least there is a bike lane.

I had just passed the cathedralesque Rhodes Funeral Home.

Otherwise the neighborhood along the four-lane is nondescript.

This section of Washington Avenue parallels the 17th Street Canal.

Blue Plate is the mayonnaise of New Orleans and is still being manufactured but not here near Washington Avenue. Its former factory is now condos.

The “Five Over One” has been frantically constructed all over America since 2010. It apparently is a dramatically lower cost method of building apartments. New codes allow up to five stories of wood frame construction above a usually concrete ground floor. This new one on Washington Avenue is only a four plus one. My biggest criticism is that they are bland looking.

Nearing the end of Washington Avenue, wedged between the 17th Street Canal and the Ponchartrain Expressway is the 3,500 student Xavier University of Louisiana, the only historically Black Catholic university in America. I have heard that its pharmacy school is particularly well regarded.

Washington Avenue ceases at Carrollton Avenue, on the far end of the Xavier campus, although the street continues into neighboring Jefferson Parish with the name Palmetto Street.

A huge Costco store sits on the other side of Carrollton Avenue. You can’t really see it in the picture below but it’s there.

In both New Orleans and my other home of Chapel Hill NC we have close friends seemingly obsessed with Costco, for groceries and often everything else. I guess I could join or buy groceries at Costco but making large scheduled shopping trips is just not my style. I would have to use my car!

In the past several years I have had trouble hearing. Too many rock concerts. A poll of friends both in New Orleans and Chapel Hill recommend Costco as THE place for hearing aids. I need to do something about it but I keep putting it off.

I continued cycling this day but eventually came back to our Lower Garden District condo for lunch. I have been making avocado toast with Leo’s sesame semolina bread, garnished with olive salad, avocado, cold cooked mustard greens, and chopped sun dried tomatoes in olive oil. Our North Carolina friends Martha and Don recently visited and suggested we put a table out on our gallery. It is quite a chill vibe out there.