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Tremé: Race and Place in a New Orleans Neighborhood
Across Rampart Street from the French Quarter, the Faubourg Tremé neighborhood is arguably the most important location for African American culture in New Orleans. Closely associated with traditional jazz and “second line” parading, Tremé is now the setting for an eponymous television series created by David Simon (best known for his work on The Wire ).
Michael Crutcher argues that Tremé’s story is essentially spatial―a story of how neighborhood boundaries are drawn and take on meaning and of how places within neighborhoods are made and unmade by people and politics. Tremé has long been sealed off from more prominent parts of the city, originally by the fortified walls that gave Rampart Street its name, and so has become a refuge for less powerful New Orleanians. This notion of Tremé as a safe haven―the flipside of its reputation as a “neglected” place―has been essential to its role as a cultural incubator, Crutcher argues, from the antebellum slave dances in Congo Square to jazz pickup sessions at Joe’s Cozy Corner.
Tremé takes up a wide range of issues in urban life, including highway construction, gentrification, and the role of public architecture in sustaining collective memory. Equally sensitive both to black-white relations and to differences within the African American community, it is a vivid evocation of one of America’s most distinctive places.
Michael Crutcher argues that Tremé’s story is essentially spatial―a story of how neighborhood boundaries are drawn and take on meaning and of how places within neighborhoods are made and unmade by people and politics. Tremé has long been sealed off from more prominent parts of the city, originally by the fortified walls that gave Rampart Street its name, and so has become a refuge for less powerful New Orleanians. This notion of Tremé as a safe haven―the flipside of its reputation as a “neglected” place―has been essential to its role as a cultural incubator, Crutcher argues, from the antebellum slave dances in Congo Square to jazz pickup sessions at Joe’s Cozy Corner.
Tremé takes up a wide range of issues in urban life, including highway construction, gentrification, and the role of public architecture in sustaining collective memory. Equally sensitive both to black-white relations and to differences within the African American community, it is a vivid evocation of one of America’s most distinctive places.
204 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2010
45 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 22, 2022
"Tremé: Race and Place in a New Orleans Neighborhood" is written like a master's thesis and details the many ways that local government has failed the people and culture of New Orleans. By emphasizing architectural preservation over artistic heritage, New Orleans is in danger of becoming a showcase city with no soul, an empty shell. The author does offer some hope for the future, but for the many displaced families of Tremé, there really is no going home again. Now I'll have to watch the HBO series "Tremé" to see if these topics are covered.
July 12, 2022
I've been going to New Orleans since the early 90's. Reading this made me wonder if the neighborhood was truly as dangerous as everyone always said it was. The closest we got was the cemeteries and the Rampart. It was there we talked to a local character named "The Chicken Man" who handed us his card and invited us to a barbecue. (Being from NYC, we did not understand what a local legend he was!)
Not knowing the local geography or where the address was located, we asked a waiter how to find it. He told us that under no circumstances should we go (everyone has a harrowing tale about tourists being kidnapped and "pistol whipped"). We decided against it, but were later informed by someone more knowledgeable that we should have gone!
Anyway, this book was written just after Hurricane Katrina, immediately prior to which, gentrification of the area was well underway. Fast forward to 2020, the date of our most recent visit where we took an organized tour of the nieghborhood. Our tour guide was quite angry that many homes are now AirBnB listings which effectively removes them from the market. Despite this, many descendants of the original settlers (Haitians who arrived from Cuba in the 1820s) are still there.
The most seminal turning point in the neighborhood came when construction of Interstate 10 obliterated Claiborne Avenue, which was once a bustling Black Main Street. According to one "old timer" that is "when the area turned into a slum." [However, the author points out that the end of "Jim Crow" laws also had a lot to do with it since blacks were no longer barred from the shops on Canal Street].
The same happened to Rampart which was also once a bustling entertainment district. There have been half-hearted attempts to revitalize it, but nobody can figure out exactly what to do with it, since nobody wants another Bourbon Street. I guessing the ill-fated Hard Rock Hotel (which collapsed before it was even finished) was part of that effort.
The one thing that gives me some hope is that New Orleaneans seem better able to resist the encroachment of generic blandness that seems to be taking over the rest of the world. [Though there are those interlopers that complain about loud music and parades at late hours who seem to have more power in city government than poor blacks]
Not knowing the local geography or where the address was located, we asked a waiter how to find it. He told us that under no circumstances should we go (everyone has a harrowing tale about tourists being kidnapped and "pistol whipped"). We decided against it, but were later informed by someone more knowledgeable that we should have gone!
Anyway, this book was written just after Hurricane Katrina, immediately prior to which, gentrification of the area was well underway. Fast forward to 2020, the date of our most recent visit where we took an organized tour of the nieghborhood. Our tour guide was quite angry that many homes are now AirBnB listings which effectively removes them from the market. Despite this, many descendants of the original settlers (Haitians who arrived from Cuba in the 1820s) are still there.
The most seminal turning point in the neighborhood came when construction of Interstate 10 obliterated Claiborne Avenue, which was once a bustling Black Main Street. According to one "old timer" that is "when the area turned into a slum." [However, the author points out that the end of "Jim Crow" laws also had a lot to do with it since blacks were no longer barred from the shops on Canal Street].
The same happened to Rampart which was also once a bustling entertainment district. There have been half-hearted attempts to revitalize it, but nobody can figure out exactly what to do with it, since nobody wants another Bourbon Street. I guessing the ill-fated Hard Rock Hotel (which collapsed before it was even finished) was part of that effort.
The one thing that gives me some hope is that New Orleaneans seem better able to resist the encroachment of generic blandness that seems to be taking over the rest of the world. [Though there are those interlopers that complain about loud music and parades at late hours who seem to have more power in city government than poor blacks]
February 22, 2023
Tremé: From the Mande Bambara in Africa, to the French Capital in the Americas and beyond
Mr. Crutcher's work covers the socio-geographic foundation of New Orleans' Tremé Faubourg. I chose this particular book (back when we visited New Orleans) because it focuses on the geography or place of people and cultural groups, rather than the geographic divisions themselves. Recounting from the Haitian outmigration and near population doubling effect on NOLA of the influx of Haitian Cubans, to the Louisiana Purchase, to the construction of public spaces for the neighborhood's residents. The author shared such insights as the significance of the insurance industry as a source for race leadership; and the displacement effects of gentrification on the residential space, as well as on the character of the neighborhood.
The geographic divisions themselves are marked from three hard borders that are not easily passable Claiborne Avenue/ Interstate 10, Rampart Street, and Armstrong Park. They seal off the neighborhood. Esplanade is the only thoroughfare in and out of Tremé. Any visit reveals the basic structure of the city grew up along the lines of a segregated city, or at least once the Americans came in and tried to shake everyone into their own particular molds. Before that, life was very different for the enslaved in New Orleans.
Some of the topics covered include:
* The criteria for routing decisions for the city's interstate through Tremé
* The ease with which African Americans could be excluded from the public decision making process in the 1950s and 1960s.
* The passage of the federal highway act of 1968 which made residential displacement for the purpose of interstate construction illegal without the availability of decent replacement housing
* Louis Armstrong Compared to Stravinsky, Picasso, and James Joyce. A couple chapters are spent on the ins and outs of the planning and construction and apportionment of space in Armstrong Park.
The book is a nice covered hardback, and does have four photo pages, but I would have liked to have seen more photos of the things discussed. Overall it was an excellent choice and provided socio-economic information on the people and neighborhoods of New Orleans; a subject often ignored in other works I have read. I recommend this for anyone interested in people and places, particularly here in the South.
Mr. Crutcher's work covers the socio-geographic foundation of New Orleans' Tremé Faubourg. I chose this particular book (back when we visited New Orleans) because it focuses on the geography or place of people and cultural groups, rather than the geographic divisions themselves. Recounting from the Haitian outmigration and near population doubling effect on NOLA of the influx of Haitian Cubans, to the Louisiana Purchase, to the construction of public spaces for the neighborhood's residents. The author shared such insights as the significance of the insurance industry as a source for race leadership; and the displacement effects of gentrification on the residential space, as well as on the character of the neighborhood.
The geographic divisions themselves are marked from three hard borders that are not easily passable Claiborne Avenue/ Interstate 10, Rampart Street, and Armstrong Park. They seal off the neighborhood. Esplanade is the only thoroughfare in and out of Tremé. Any visit reveals the basic structure of the city grew up along the lines of a segregated city, or at least once the Americans came in and tried to shake everyone into their own particular molds. Before that, life was very different for the enslaved in New Orleans.
Some of the topics covered include:
* The criteria for routing decisions for the city's interstate through Tremé
* The ease with which African Americans could be excluded from the public decision making process in the 1950s and 1960s.
* The passage of the federal highway act of 1968 which made residential displacement for the purpose of interstate construction illegal without the availability of decent replacement housing
* Louis Armstrong Compared to Stravinsky, Picasso, and James Joyce. A couple chapters are spent on the ins and outs of the planning and construction and apportionment of space in Armstrong Park.
The book is a nice covered hardback, and does have four photo pages, but I would have liked to have seen more photos of the things discussed. Overall it was an excellent choice and provided socio-economic information on the people and neighborhoods of New Orleans; a subject often ignored in other works I have read. I recommend this for anyone interested in people and places, particularly here in the South.
March 8, 2025
Excellent work. But maps would have made it perfect!
February 16, 2018
A geography book with no maps and lots of social justice policy advocacy. It is despite these limitations, often insightful. Crutcher is at his best in describing points of disagreement among blacks in New Orleans, such as politicians and community activists and those who support gentrification and those who do not. The best chapter was on the building of I-10 on Claiborne Avenue, pointing out that the decline in black businesses was in large part a product of integration.
That said, any critiques or ideas from whites are treated in dismissive tones and sometimes called racist. Which is not to say there are no racists, but as a person who lives right off of North Rampart the fight over how to develop the street is not merely a battle between people who valiantly wish to create a music scene and those desiring peace and quiet in historic homes. The threat of becoming Bourbon Street, if overstated, is real enough. Nor were those who opposed Armstrong Park merely a pack of racist snobs. Crutcher's nuance, which is evident elsewhere, fails him at times but it is not baffling. They are a product of a social justice academic conception of life, the universe, and everything.
That said, any critiques or ideas from whites are treated in dismissive tones and sometimes called racist. Which is not to say there are no racists, but as a person who lives right off of North Rampart the fight over how to develop the street is not merely a battle between people who valiantly wish to create a music scene and those desiring peace and quiet in historic homes. The threat of becoming Bourbon Street, if overstated, is real enough. Nor were those who opposed Armstrong Park merely a pack of racist snobs. Crutcher's nuance, which is evident elsewhere, fails him at times but it is not baffling. They are a product of a social justice academic conception of life, the universe, and everything.
October 5, 2012
The author considers this book 'geographic' but it seems more a review from a city planners view. He presents multiple viewpoints in contaxt, but without giving any real sense of the depth, validity or reach if those views. He gives physical descriptions without enough detail. I want to have a sense of how dilapitated the buildings were on that street. To have an idea what percent had basic water and a roof over their heads vs. what percent were 2 years overdue for a paint job.
November 24, 2023
Really meticulously researched. A fascinating look at stories that are perhaps on the way to fading out of memory. Does an incredible job of teasing out historical narratives in a city with superlatively deep, diverse, and messy history.
March 24, 2016
It read like a text book and I wish there were some more pictures and maps. Otherwise the book was very enlightening about the district and the problems it faces.
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November 14, 2011Very good read but no maps!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews