Treme

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Treme (historically sometimes called Tremé or Faubourg Tremé) is a neighborhood in the downtown portion of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. 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 culture, especially the modern brass band tradition.

[edit] History

The modern Treme 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, and the city began building subdivisions throughout the area to house a diverse population that included Caucasians, Haitian Creoles, and free persons of color.

Old homes in Treme. Front stoops display high water line from Hurricane Katrina flooding in this October 2005 photo.

Treme 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 Treme; in the 1940s this was torn down and made into a public housing project. This area came to no longer be considered part of Treme.

The "town square" of Treme was Congo Square -- originally known as "Place de Negroes" -- where slaves gathered on Sundays to dance until this tradition was quashed after Louisiana passed to the rule of the United States. The square was also an important place of business for slaves, even enabling some to purchase their freedom. For much of the rest of the 19th century, the square was an open air market, and "Creole 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 century the city government officially renamed the square "Beauregard Square" after General P.G.T. Beauregard, but this name was little used within the neighborhood. The traditional name of "Congo Square" was restored late in the 20th century.

In the early 1960s in an urban renewal project considered in retrospect a mistake by most analysts, a large portion of central Treme was torn down. The land stood vacant for some time, then in the 1970s an effort to make the best of this bad situation created Louis Armstrong Park out of this area, named after the recently deceased Louis Armstrong. (Contrary to the impression this gives to some, Armstrong, an uptowner, was not from Treme nor often active here when he lived in town.) Congo Square is within Armstrong Park.

Musicians from Treme include Alphonse Picou and Kermit Ruffins. While predominantly African-American, the population has been mixed from the 19th century though to the 21st. Jazz musicians of European ancestry such as Henry Ragas and Louis Prima lived in Treme. Also, Joe's Cozy Corner in Treme 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 Treme 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 get many of the old raised homes.