Hindsight is easy. Sometimes you look around and see what’s been done and built in your city since you’ve been alive (easy for me since I’m an old lady) and you say, “Wow, what a good idea; should’ve thought of that a long time ago,” or maybe “Why in the hell did they do that? What were they thinking? Duh!”

Claiborne Avenue is one of those “Duhs.”

Claiborne Avenue Pre-Interstate.

I vaguely remember the controversy surrounding the extension of Interstate-10 through New Orleans, which virtually destroyed Claiborne Avenue from Poydras Street though Elysian Fields and replaced it with an ugly interstate overpass. Also in the 60s there was another controversial proposition to extend I-10 through New Orleans along the riverfront, and it was tentatively called The Vieux Carre Riverfront Expressway, or I-310. Needless to say preservationists and residents of the Quarter wigged out, mounted a campaign to stop the idea, and the freeway idea was scrapped.

But the Claiborne extension was approved to pass through the Treme neighborhood. Claiborne Avenue at that time was the shopping boulevard for that neighborhood, which was primarily black, since Canal Street was the shopping district of choice for the white market.  If you’ve ever ridden down Simon Bolivar Street south of the Pontchartrain Expressway, and have seen the beautiful sprawling live oaks on the wide neutral ground, it would give you an idea of what Claiborne Avenue used to look like, except that the street was more commercial with many flourishing businesses that served the Treme neighborhood. Claiborne’s intersection with Orleans Avenue was, and is, a primary meeting space for Mardi Gras Indians.

Now, the time has come when people are talking about tearing down the unsightly overpass and making it a real boulevard again. It’s sad this was done in the first place. Yes, it will prove inconvenient for people coming in from the east; they’ll have to reroute around the city on what’s now I-610. If this is approved, I’m sure it won’t be in my lifetime; it will take many, many years to reroute traffic and to rebuild Claiborne Avenue. But we have to start somewhere.

A similar overpass entrance was demolished on Coliseum Street in the Lower Garden District and the change that made in the neighborhood was nothing short of astonishing. It’s time we consider bringing Claiborne back too, to its former glory and to the center of Treme.