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2 CANAL STREET: REVIVAL IN PROGRESS

BOUNDARIES: Canal St., Basin St., Convention Center Blvd.

DISTANCE: 1.93 miles

PARKING: Lots, garages, metered parking

PUBLIC TRANSIT: St. Charles Ave. Streetcar

Ask older natives of New Orleans about their memories of Canal Street, and you’ll likely see their eyes light up as they recall dressing up in their finest attire and heading downtown to what was once the city’s equivalent of Fifth Avenue. Back in the day, Canal Street—named for a canal that was never built—was the city’s primary shopping destination, home to such classic department stores as Gus Mayer, Godchaux’s, Kreeger’s, Holmes, Krauss, and Maison Blanche.

As enclosed shopping malls began sprouting up in the suburbs and many of these stores began opening multiple locations, Canal—which separates the French Quarter from the Central Business District—took a major hit. Crowds began to thin, opting for the convenience of the malls, near which New Orleanians were moving in droves. By the late 1990s, only a couple of specialty stores, Adler’s and Rubenstein Bros., remained.

To be sure, Canal Street was not the same—not that it had turned into a ghost town, but the quality of the shopping had been reduced to fast-food restaurants and discount stores peddling electronics, souvenirs, and T-shirts. Today, many of those outlets still exist, but a major revitalization effort has made Canal Street a destination once again, with upscale stores, luxury hotels and apartments, theaters, and restaurants now in the mix.

 Begin at 333 Canal Street, home of The Shops at Canal Place and the Westin Hotel New Orleans. Stores at Canal Place include Saks Fifth Avenue, Brooks Brothers, and Tiffany and Co. The complex also features a luxury nine-screen movie theater, where you can dine on gourmet goodies from chef Adolfo Garcia’s Gusto in the comfort of plush stadium-style seating.

 Walk one block. Between North Peters and Decatur Streets is the Audubon Butterfly Garden and Insectarium, one of the many museums of the Audubon Institute. Located in the historic US Custom House, it is the largest free-standing museum dedicated to insects in North America. Highlights include a butterfly exhibit in an Asian-inspired garden, a hilarious animated-bug movie featuring the voices of Joan Rivers and Brad Garrett, and up-close encounters with cockroaches, ants, and other creatures you love to hate. At the Bug Appetite Buffet, you can sample bug-inspired treats such as six-legged salsa and chocolate chirp cookies. Yes, the ingredients include edible insects.

 Continue down Canal Street just past Chartres Street, where you’ll see the Palace Café, a Brennan family restaurant known for such contemporary Creole dishes as crabmeat cheesecake, duck-and-roasted-garlic gumbo, and white-chocolate bread pudding. The restaurant is housed in another historic structure: the old Werlein’s Building, which until 1990 was one of the places in New Orleans to buy sheet music, pianos, and other musical instruments.

 As you continue walking down Canal Street, you’ll pass several luxury hotels, including the Ritz-Carlton, where jazz favorite Jeremy Davenport performs regularly in the Davenport Lounge. The Ritz opened in 2000 in what was once the headquarters of Maison Blanche, one of the city’s most popular department stores. Similarly, the Hyatt French Quarter is housed in the old D. H. Holmes building. Holmes, another of New Orleans’s legendary department stores, was known as much for its exterior clock as it was for its merchandise. If you were meeting friends downtown, you likely were meeting them “under the clock at D. H. Holmes”—a location immortalized in A Confederacy of Dunces, the beloved comic novel by John Kennedy Toole.

 Walk two blocks and cross North Rampart Street. To the right is the venerable Saenger Theatre, home to the Broadway in New Orleans series. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Saenger opened in 1927 as a venue for silent movies and stage shows. The theater’s trademark feature was its European-style interior, designed by architect Emile Weil to resemble an Italian Baroque courtyard. As part of the design, Weil installed dozens of tiny lights in the ceiling, arranging them as constellations of the night sky. The design made the Saenger the South’s grandest theater and the city’s preeminent place to experience “moving pictures.” In 2005, the Saenger was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, the storm’s floodwaters and winds causing millions of dollars in damage. The Broadway series moved to the nearby Mahalia Jackson Theatre for the Performing Arts, where it remained until September 2013 when the Saenger unveiled its magnificent renovated digs. Costing an estimated $53 million, the restoration combines the grandness of the past with state-of-the-art performance features such as an updated orchestra pit, a deeper stage, and first-class sound and lighting systems. The rebirth of the Saenger is considered a major step in the revitalization of Canal Street.

 One block past the Saenger, on your right as you approach the intersection of Canal and Basin Streets, note the statue of Venezuelan military and political giant Simón Bolívar, who led the fight for Latin American independence from Spain in the 1800s. The 12-foot-high cast-granite statue is one of three monuments to Central and South American heroes that make up the Garden of the Americas, which honors the ties between New Orleans and Latin America. The other statues are of Mexican statesman Benito Juárez (Basin and Conti), who lived in Faubourg Marigny (see Walk 21) during the 1840s, and Francisco Morazán (Basin and St. Louis), who served as president of the Federal Republic of Central America—which comprised present-day Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua—from 1830 to 1839.

 Just past the monument, at 1201 Canal, is yet another former retail outlet: the site of Krauss Company, once the largest department store in the South. Now a luxury condominium development, Krauss closed in 1997, leaving behind a legacy of faithful shoppers who relished the store’s old-fashioned ways of doing business. In addition to being the first store in the city to install air-conditioning and escalators (known as mechanical stairways), Krauss boasted such departments as notions, fabrics, and foundations, along with a lunch counter that served New Orleans cuisine.

 Cross Canal at Basin Street. The center of Canal—which like all medians in New Orleans is called the neutral ground—is where streetcars pass, so be extra-cautious as you walk to the other side of the street. At Canal and Basin is the Joy Theater, another of the city’s longtime entertainment venues. Opened in 1947 as a movie house, it was one of four movie theaters (along with the Orpheum, State Palace, and Saenger) that populated downtown. Faced with growing competition from multitheater complexes with stadium seating, the Joy shut down in 2003. It remained closed until 2011, when it reopened as a state-of-the-art venue for live music, theatrical performances, and other special events.

 From the Joy, continue walking down Canal Street toward the river. Walk three blocks to University Place. The 121-year-old Roosevelt Hotel, just off Canal Street, is well worth a side visit, especially during December, when its grand block-long lobby is converted to a winter wonderland complete with thousands of twinkling lights, a New Orleans–themed gingerbread village, and a white-birch canopy. In addition, the hotel is home to the famed Sazerac Bar and the wildly popular Domenica, a contemporary Italian restaurant that Travel & Leisure magazine in 2012 named one of the best Italian eateries in the country. Like so many of the city’s historic buildings, the luxury hotel sustained extensive damage from Hurricane Katrina, and restoring it cost nearly $150 million. When it reopened in 2009 as part of the Waldorf Astoria hotel group, it won rave reviews from critics and guests alike.

 As you continue down Canal, you’ll notice numerous chain stores, many of which occupy the spaces that once housed some of the city’s premiere department stores. Sports Plus, at 828 Canal, is housed in the old Godchaux’s building. CVS, at 800 Canal, was once Gus Mayer. In the middle of the block, at 824 Canal, is the home of the Boston Club, probably the city’s most exclusive men’s social club. Many of its members belong to blue-blood Carnival groups such as Rex and Comus. Until 1992, Rex, King of Carnival, toasted the Queen of Carnival at reviewing stands erected outside the Boston Club on Mardi Gras Day. That royal tradition now takes place outside the nearby Hotel InterContinental.At 772 Canal Street is Adler’s, the city’s oldest jewelry store. Adler’s opened in 1898 in the French Quarter but outgrew that location and eventually moved to Canal. Even when their retail neighbors were closing up shop, Adler’s never gave up on Canal. Neither did nearby Rubenstein Bros., an upscale men’s clothing store that opened at the corner of Canal and St. Charles in 1924 and continues to thrive today as Rubensteins.

 Continue walking down Canal Street past Rubensteins and various other shops and hotels. The walk ends at Harrah’s New Orleans Casino, at the corner of Canal and Convention Center Boulevard.

POINTS OF INTEREST

The Shops at Canal Place theshopsatcanalplace.com, 333 Canal St., 504-522-9200

Audubon Insectarium auduboninstitute.org/visit/insectarium, 423 Canal St., 504-524-2847

Palace Café palacecafe.com, 605 Canal St., 504-523-1661

Saenger Theatre saengernola.com, 1111 Canal St., 504-525-1052

Joy Theater thejoytheater.com, 1200 Canal St., 504-528-9569

Roosevelt Hotel therooseveltneworleans, 130 Roosevelt Way, 504-648-1200

Domenica domenicarestaurant.com, 123 Baronne St., 504-648-6020

Adler’s adlersjewelry.com, 722 Canal St., 504-523-5292

Rubensteins rubensteinsneworleans.com, 102 St. Charles Ave., 504-581-6666

Harrah’s New Orleans harrahsneworleans.com, 228 Poydras St., 800-427-7247

ROUTE SUMMARY

1 Begin walk at The Shops at Canal Place.

2 Walk 11 blocks to Basin Street.

3 Cross Canal at Basin and turn left.

4 Walk 11 blocks on the opposite side of Canal to Harrah’s New Orleans Casino.

Canal Street, once the city’s premiere shopping destination, is making a steady comeback, thanks to the efforts of the nonprofit Canal Street Redevelopment Corporation.

Photo courtesy of New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp.