| Tremé / Lafitte | |
| New Orleans Neighborhood | |
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Historic homes in Treme.
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| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| State | Louisiana |
| City | New Orleans |
| Planning District | District 4, Mid-City District |
| Elevation | 0 ft (0 m) |
| Coordinates | |
| Area | 0.69 sq mi (1.8 km2) |
| - land | 0.69 sq mi (2 km2) |
| - water | 0.00 sq mi (0 km2), 0% |
| Population | 2,247 (2010) |
| Density | 3,257 / sq mi (1,258 / km2) |
| Timezone | CST (UTC-6) |
| - summer (DST) | CDT (UTC-5) |
| Area code | 504 |
Tremé ( /trəˈmeɪ/ trə-may); historically sometimes called by its more formal French names of Faubourg Tremé[1] 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.
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Tremé is located at [2] and has an elevation of 0 feet (0.0 m)[3]. According to the United States Census Bureau, the district has a total area of 0.69 square miles (1.8 km2), all of which is land.
The City Planning Commission defines the boundaries of Tremé as these streets: Esplanade Avenue, North Rampart Street, St. Louis Street, North Broad Street.[4]
As of the census[5] 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).
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.[6]
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 is no longer considered part of the neighborhood. The "town square" of Tremé was Congo Square—originally known as "Place des 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, although Armstrong, an uptowner, was not from Tremé nor often active here when he lived in New Orleans. Congo Square is within Armstrong Park.
Musicians from Tremé include Alphonse Picou, Kermit Ruffins, Lucien Barbarin, and "The King of Treme" Shannon Powell. 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. Alex Chilton, who led the rock groups Big Star and The Box Tops, lived in Tremé from the early 1990s until his death in 2010.[7]
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Tremé neighborhood received minor to moderate flooding. 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.
Popular contemporary musicians from the Tremé like "The King of Tremé" Shannon Powell, Lucien Barbarin, and the Treme Brass Band, are featured heavily in the 2011 non-fiction film by Darren Hoffman, Tradition is a Temple.
In 2010 David Simon, creator of The Wire, teamed up with Eric Overmeyer to create the HBO drama Treme. The series takes place in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and centers on the lives of residents of the area.
Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans[8], a 2008 documentary film by Dawn Logsdon and Lolis Eric Elie, former Times Picayune columnist and now HBO Tremé staff writer, bridges the pre- and post-Katrina stories of the Tremé neighborhood. Featuring a cast of local musicians, artists and writers, the documentary retraces the fascinating and unique history of America’s oldest surviving black community and neighborhood.
Located in Tremé, the New Orleans African American Museum is dedicated to protecting, preserving, and promoting through education the history, art, and communities of African Americans in New Orleans and the African diaspora.
Shake the Devil Off[9], a 2007 documentary co-written by Swiss-based director Peter Entell with Lydia Breen, explores the post-Katrina lives of parishioners at St. Augustine Church in the Treme, the oldest predominately-black Catholic parish in the nation. Father Jerome LeDoux (St. Augustine's priest 1990-2005) was a central character in the film. In 2006, he was recognized by the City of New Orleans for his work fostering greater appreciation of the Treme's black history and culture.
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