History of Bayou Road, New Orleans

Academic historians and neighborhood shamans call the intersection of Bell Street and Bayou Road the umbilicus of New Orleans.  People go there to stare at the ground at the downtown lakeside corner of the park formed by the two streets' crossing each other.  That's the official spot.  You'll be able to find it because there is always a pile of small change covering the physical umbilicus, which is just a depression someone carved out of the dirt with a spoon to catch coins from pilgrims and from other passers-by.  Bayou Road's ambiguous history attracts people from all walks of life, both pious and perfidious.

For decades, the park was a place where mothers went to bury their babies' umbilici after the babies' superfluous appendages had dried up and fallen off.  When vines grow long enough to reach up the cypress trees that grow in this park, the vines are twistier than examples of the same species found elsewhere in New Orleans.  The cypress tree branches are pretty twisty, too.

New Orleans is a city chockablock with picturesque decay.  The climate is murder on everything, here.  New Orleans is a city of night sweats and ghost pangs.  

New Orleans is a city that is robust in the way a queen mother is robust.  New Orleans is old but it knows a lot of secrets that the city is willing to share to keep things interesting and life worth living.  New Orleans may be old but that doesn't stop New Orleans from being sexy.  When you land in New Orleans, you are this close to Storyville.

The umbilicus of New Orleans is between Bayou Road, Bell Street, and North Dorgenois Street.  There used to be a movie theater there, the legitimate kind.  There are cypress trees and a sculptural installation by Robert Tannen, called 'Shotgun Temple.'  This part of the 7th Ward is home to the city's largest Rasta community.  You never know what you'll find when you turn a corner in New Orleans.

Dogs love the intersection of North Dorgenois Street, Bell Street, and Bayou Road.  Bayou Road is the oldest street in the city. The triangular park formed by the streets' crossing rights-of-way is full of interesting smells.  Even a human nose can smell them.  To a dog, a trip to this small part of New Orleans must be like a trip to Heaven.  Dogs get very amorous in this part of New Orleans.

Love is in the air in this part of New Orleans.  Love makes New Orleans go round and round until the city turns dizzy.  Where else but at the center of it all, across the street from the Old Indian Market?  Where else but across the street from The Church of I AM THAT I AM?  New Orleans is full of secrets, most of them hidden out in the open.  

The history of Bayou Road is the stuff of legend and tall tales, even the parts that are grounded in fact.  The whole history of New Orleans is that way.  What should be true, usually is, at least that's the way things are in New Orleans.  

And, now, a word from out sponsor:

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