Julia Street: From Slave Trade to Gallery Row

Julia Street: From Slave Trade to Gallery Row

Julia Street has one of the most dramatic reinventions of any street in New Orleans. In the antebellum period, the blocks near the river were the site of some of the largest slave auction houses in the American South—a dark chapter written into the very cobblestones. By the twentieth century, the area had become a decaying warehouse district. And then, beginning in the 1980s, artists and gallerists began converting those same warehouses into studios, galleries, and living spaces, transforming Julia Street into the contemporary art capital of the Gulf South.

History

Julia Street sits in what is now known as the Warehouse District or Arts District, the neighborhood between the French Quarter and the Garden District along the river. Before the Civil War, this area was the commercial engine of the American sector. Cotton presses, sugar warehouses, and shipping offices filled the blocks. So did slave trading firms—the St. Charles Hotel and the buildings along Julia and surrounding streets were where enslaved people were bought and sold at auction, generating enormous wealth for the planter class and unimaginable suffering for the enslaved. After the war, the area continued as a warehouse district until the shipping industry moved to the Industrial Canal and the wharves fell silent.

The Neighborhoods

Julia Street runs through the Warehouse District, which was rebranded as the Arts District in recognition of its cultural transformation. The neighborhood is bounded roughly by the Pontchartrain Expressway, the river, Poydras Street, and the Convention Center. It sits between the CBD to the north and the Lower Garden District to the south. The area was one of the first in the city to be converted to residential lofts, and today it is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in New Orleans.

Key Landmarks and Businesses

The Contemporary Arts Center at 900 Camp Street, just off Julia, was one of the first institutions to anchor the district when it opened in 1976. The Ogden Museum of Southern Art at 925 Camp Street houses the largest collection of Southern art in the world. The National World War II Museum, one of the top-rated museums in the country, sits at 945 Magazine Street, steps from Julia. The galleries on Julia Street itself—Arthur Roger Gallery, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, LeMieux Galleries, and a dozen more—make the 300 through 600 blocks one of the premier gallery walks in America. Every first Saturday of the month, the galleries open their doors for White Linen Night in August or Art for Art's Sake in October, drawing thousands of art lovers to the street.

Reckoning and Renewal

Julia Street's transformation from slave market to gallery row is not a simple redemption story. The history is too heavy for that. But there is something meaningful about the fact that a street built on exploitation is now a place where artists create, where Southern culture is celebrated in museums, and where the darkest chapter of American history is confronted head-on at the nearby Whitney Plantation and in the permanent collections of the museums that surround it. Julia Street does not erase its past. It builds on top of it, layer by complicated layer.