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New Orleans Conventions, Trade Shows, Conferences and Meetings
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Locating Convention Centers and Trade Shows in New Orleans
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New Orleans, city (1990 pop. 496,938), coextensive with Orleans parish, SE La., between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, 107 mi (172 km) by water from the river mouth; founded 1718 by the sieur de Bienville, inc. 1805. It was built within a great bend of the Mississippi (and is therefore called the Crescent City) on subtropical lowlands, now protected from flooding by levees. The river is crossed there by the Algiers Bridge (completed 1991), the Huey P. Long Bridge (completed 1935), and the Greater New Orleans Bridge (completed 1958), which is one of the largest cantilever bridges in the country. Lake Pontchartrain is spanned by a 24-mi (39-km) double causeway (opened 1957).
Each year, millions of visitors are lured to New Orleans. As one of the true party capitals of the world, the city offers great food, infectious music, and round-the-clock bars and nightclubs. New Orleans also has a fascinating history and culture derived from the rich blend of European, American, and Caribbean cultures that began mingling in the city in the 18th century.
Close to the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain, and countless bayous, New Orleans is near many beautiful natural sites. Like many Caribbean islands, New Orleans has a local dialect, laid-back lifestyle, native music tradition, Carnival celebration, history of voodoo practice, and a famous spicy cuisine. The city clings tenaciously to the French and Spanish roots that were established when it was a colonial outpost. As one of the busiest ports in the world, New Orleans enjoys a rich ethnic mix of residents.
A key cultural link between old Europe and modern America, New Orleans strikes many newcomers as a place that retains the spirit of a vanished era. Music and revelry rank prominently in New Orleans culture, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors every year to its Mardi Gras celebration and its world-class jazz festival.
The motto here is laissez le bon temps rouler, or let the good times roll! With gourmet dining, world-class jazz, museums, antique shops, casinos, and nature preserves, there are more than enough activities to occupy almost any visitor. A short drive west and you can take a boat tour of the bayous in Cajun country or tour the grand plantations of the Old South. Of course, you may prefer to just sip a cafe au lait, munch on a beignet, and read a good book at the world-famous Cafe du Monde. Either way, you can be sure that no one in New Orleans is going to rush you.
Only in New Orleans
Locals say that the South ends fifty miles north of New Orleans. In many ways, that is true. This city is home to a diverse music culture, world-renowned cuisine, voodoo, and Mardi Gras, one of the world’s largest parties. New Orleans' colorful constitution incorporates French, Spanish, Caribbean, Italian, Irish, and West African influences into one big jambalaya. The result is a red-hot town that can be everything from difficult to magical.
New Orleans is a relatively small city with little concern for what goes on outside of it. Hardly anything ever changes in New Orleans, which suits the locals just fine. In the summertime, heat rouses the scent of everything from magnolia blossoms to fresh-boiled crawfish, and contributes a comfortable laziness to the New Orleans’ attitude. Part of the city’s charm lies in its laid-back, anti-serious manner toward almost everything. You can blame the laissez-faire attitude of the city on the heat, but this approach has become part of the culture. In New Orleans, there is always a tomorrow for what they have to do today, and that is what makes this city so fun and relaxing.
Getting Around
Once you reach New Orleans, you can take a cab to almost anywhere in the city for a flat rate of about USD25. If you are heading to one of the major hotels, you can take the airport shuttle, which costs about USD15. Renting a car is also an option, but if you are planning to stay in the city center for most of your visit, it is best to leave the car behind and avoid the costly parking and potentially perilous New Orleans streets. If you do opt to mosey about town in a vehicle, keep in mind that these city drivers exhibit a tendency toward risky driving methods.
Public transportation in New Orleans consists of the streetcar line and the bus system. Though Public transportation is not the most reliable form of travel, in many cases it can take you where you want to go for only a USD1.25. If, of course, you need to get somewhere quickly, or if you're traveling late at night, it is best to take a cab.
A good way to sightsee is to take the streetcar line, which is the oldest continuously operating streetcar in the world. Three streetcar routes operate in the city. The #12 St. Charles line begins at Canal Street, travels the length of St. Charles Avenue, and terminates at the intersection of South Carrolton and South Claiborne Avenues. The #2 Riverfront Streetcar Line travels the entire length of the French Quarter, along the riverfront, from Esplanade Avenue to Tchoupitoulas Street where the Morial Convention Center is located. Finally, the #48 Esplanade line departs from intersection of North Rampart and Canal Streets, travels the length of Esplanade Avenue, and terminates at City Park and the St Louis Cemetery. Bus and streetcar fares are USD1.25 and exact change is required. Visitor passes offer unlimited rides for a flat fee: a one-day pass is USD4, a three-day pass is USD8. Passes are available at most major hotels and at New Orleans Tours and Gray Line Tours locations.
French Quarter
The French Quarter, or Vieux Carre in French, is the oldest neighborhood in New Orleans. It lies in the crescent of the Mississippi River and consists of fairly narrow streets, reminiscent of European city planning, that reveal hidden courtyards and look up to wrought iron balconies. The architecture in the Quarter typically dates to the late 18th- and early 19th-centuries, and draws on French and Spanish influences. In daytime, the French Quarter, especially the area around Jackson Square, is filled with tourists, street performers, and the occasional conman. At night, the French Quarter transforms into the stereotypical party scene. Barhopping college students, adventurous suburbanites, tourists, and practitioners of the world’s oldest profession all populate the area until the wee hours.
Lower Canal Street
Once the main shopping district of New Orleans, lined with popular department stores and theaters, Canal Street lost much of its grandeur to a sluggish economy in the 70s and 80s. Today, Harrah's New Orleans and an expanded convention center have helped this part of Canal Street to develop into a ten block strip of hotels, T-shirt shops and electronics stores. The Riverwalk Market Place, which is near the aquarium and convention center, also makes this a popular stop for tourists.
Central Business District
The scattered, mismatched skyscrapers and superbly odd-shaped Superdomeof the Central Business District form the recognizable skyline of New Orleans. Several modern hotels, as well as older and established hotels like the Fairmont Hotel, are in heart of the CBD and the New Orleans’ business community. Bustling during the day with local businesspeople, this area lulls at night, with the exception of the restored Orpheum Theatre and its acclaimed New Orleans Symphony. Since the district is relatively empty at night, many of the guests from the hotels in the neighborhood head for the Quarter.
Garden District
This is the premier New Orleans residential neighborhood, boasting the tremendous oak tree lined Saint Charles Avenue as its most-famed street, and home after home epitomizing the antebellum’s Greek Revival architecture. Only a walking tour will do this dazzling district the justice it deserves. If you visit the city, you must see the lush, overgrown gardens and grand mansions that line these streets. The Garden District has many well-known residents, including Trent Reznor, Archie Manning, and Anne Rice, the famous author of many vampire novels.
Mid-City
Mid-City usually goes unnoticed by the average tourist until Jazz Fest, when thousands of eager visitors, bedecked in shorts and tank tops, crowd onto the Esplanade bus to reach the New Orleans Fairgrounds. Quiet and verdant with trees, Mid-City attracts locals to its wide offering of moderately priced restaurants, City Park, and the New Orleans Museum of Art. For tourists, Mid-City is home to impressive aboveground cemeteries, including Metairie Cemetery, Oddfellow’s Rest and St. Louis Cemetery #3.
Uptown
Oak lined streets, Victorian mansions, and college cafes are staples of New Orleans’ thriving Uptown neighborhood. St. Charles Avenue and Pyrtania Street offer examples of Colonial Revival architecture. The neighborhood is also home to Tulane and Loyola Universities. In addition to the mansions and universities, many pleasant coffee shops, antique stores, and restaurants crowd the small spaces between the fantastic homes of New Orleans’ upper class. Plenty of fit and tanned residents jog the two miles through Uptown's gorgeous, Spanish moss-filled Audubon Park each morning.
Warehouse District
Having outgrown the once-appropriate title, this historic New Orleans’ neighborhood is no longer frequented by blue-collar factory workers. Instead, it is now a vibrant arts district populated by the city’s young professionals. Some of the best art galleries in the city sit beside restaurants that offer excellent cuisine. In addition, locals and tourists crowd into the streets of the district during festivals such as Art for Art's Sake, when plenty of wine, cheese, gumbo, and art clutter the sidewalks and the shops.
New Orleans
Historical Background
Rene Cavelier Sieur de la Salle, a French explorer, was the first European to explore the lower Mississippi River, and subsequently, he claimed the entire river and its basin, a substantially larger plot than the modern state of Louisiana, for France. The immense area was named in honor of King Louis XIV and his wife Anne. Phillipe, Duc d'Orleans, then Regent of France, gave his name to New Orleans, but it was Sieur d'Iberville who founded the actual city some 20 years later. A port city that united the Mississippi with the Gulf of Mexico had been a strategic dream, but the site's physical landscape, an improbable 15 feet below sea level, was a nightmare. Most of the lands surrounding the river were swamps, wetlands intermittently covered by water and dense woody vegetation, so the French had their work cut out for them. In addition, malaria, spread by Louisiana’s most prolific resident, the mosquito, presented a lethal risk to any worker.
It turned out to be a Scotsman, royal counselor John Law, who stimulated interest in France's newest colonial addition. Law mounted an 18th-century equivalent to a modern day PR campaign, complete with phony eyewitness accounts of gold-rich lands. When hopeful, and oftentimes poor, immigrants arrived and saw none of the promised gold prospects, they had little choice than to stay and make the best of it. The deceived immigrants also found that New Orleans was a deadly place with its humid and unsanitary conditions. Those who died were buried in the swampy land, but residents soon discovered that coffins had the unpleasant propensity to pop out of the ground with every hard rain. Aboveground tombs and mausoleums were the only recourse.
Most residents built houses in a square-like grid, now called the Vieux Carre, and centered around an open area known as the Place d'Armes, today known as Jackson Square. The societal make-up of this Creole society was a mix of French aristocrats, merchants, farmers, soldiers, indentured servants and both slaves and free-people of color. It soon became fashionable for male Creole aristocrats to have black or mulatto mistresses. Children sired from these unions were often treated well and sometimes given valuable property and European educations. This generous attitude towards minorities set New Orleans apart from all other major North American colonial cities.
In the 1760s, New Orleans underwent its first major social transformation with the arrival of two new groups: the Acadians and the Spanish. The Acadian immigrants, or Cajuns, who were ousted from their native Nova Scotia by the British, traversed the entire United States, and settled in the bayous west of New Orleans. The Spanish arrived in the city prodded by the transfer of the Louisiana Territory to Spanish King Charles III, royal cousin to King Louis XV of France. The Spanish reign, however, was short and most notable only for the building codes enacted to spare the Vieux Carre from the devastating fires that swept the city in 1788 and 1794. The architecture of the area is frequently attributed to the French, including rear courtyards and elaborate wrought iron balconies, were actually Spanish contributions.
Despite the prosperity that developed during Spanish occupation, New Orleans remained predisposed to its French heritage. The city happily reunited with its original founders in 1800, when the Louisiana Territory was returned to France. However, the reunion was short-lived. War debts forced Napoleon to sell the territory to the United States for a mere USD15 million in the famous Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Louisiana later achieved statehood in 1812.
Once Louisiana was officially named an American state, American settlers and Irish and Italian immigrants rushed into the city of New Orleans. Rebuffed by the city's Creole society, the Americans settled upriver from the Vieux Carre (French Quarter) in what are now the Central Business District and the Irish Channel. Skirmishes between the old and new residents occurred frequently. The dividing line, an empty canal, between the French Quarter and the American sector, became known as "the neutral ground" and then, Canal Street.
In the years leading up to the Civil War, New Orleans became a prosperous port city. Cotton, tobacco and sugarcane plantations produced goods at full throttle. Steamboats along the Mississippi transferred the goods to the rest of country. During this economically comfortable period, New Orleans developed its festive reputation. By 1823, costume balls commemorated Mardi Gras, or "Fat Tuesday," the celebration that precedes Lent. Secret aristocratic groups, known as Mardi Gras Krewes, offered structure to the loose, sometimes violent, holiday season. In 1857, the first established Krewe, the Mystick Krewe of Comus, debuted a horse-drawn, decorated float, which soon became a prominent constituent of the annual festivities. Some years later, the Comus Krewe introduced the role of Mardi Gras Queen, bestowing the premier honor on Mildred Lee, daughter of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
New Orleans, loyal to the Confederacy, fell quickly to Union forces in the early years of the Civil War. City morale suffered, but the French Quarter continued to thrive because of saloons, gambling parlors and bordellos. The party atmosphere became somewhat regulated toward the turn of the century when alderman Sidney Story proposed setting up a red-light district along Basin Street, just to the north of the French Quarter. The district soon became known as Storyville. Resident entertainers there, most notably "King" Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton, would later contribute to the birth of the national musical art form known as jazz.
The beginning of the 20th century was a difficult period for New Orleans. A series of natural disasters, including a hurricane in 1915, a flu epidemic in 1918 and a flood in 1927, devastated the city. Legendary governor and beloved scoundrel Huey P. Long rescued the Crescent City with successful bids to the state legislature for the expansion of public works and services. Long's legally questionable, but ultimately successful methods also put a corrupt stamp on both city and state politics. The famous line, "Folks have a certain way of doing things 'round here," from the movie The Big Easy, is a fairly accurate assessment of the local bureaucratic mindset over the past century.
Oil, natural gas and tourism have become New Orleans' largest post-Depression industries. In 1969, the first Jazz Fest, a 10-day festival, one of the world's largest musical celebrations, attracted the biggest names in jazz and blues to its outdoor stages. The festival continues to draw impossibly large numbers of visitors to the city each year. The 1984 World's Fair Exhibit was a less successful commercial venture, but lead to the development of the Warehouse District wharves, now site of the ever-expanding Convention Center.
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