Shotgun houses and bungalows line a flat grid off Canal Street, where a streetcar runs the median out toward walled cemeteries and City Park's oaks.
What Mid-City looks like
runs straight through the middle of Mid-City, three lanes of traffic on each side of a raised median, streetcar tracks and overhead wire running down its middle. Live oaks and a lone palm line the median through this stretch, and the streetcar continues past Mid-City's own edge to a cluster of walled cemeteries at Canal Street's far end. A second branch turns off onto Carrollton Avenue toward City Park's oak allees.
Off Canal Street the blocks flatten into a grid of shotgun houses, double shotguns and bungalows, most raised two or three feet off the ground. Fronts are narrow, a single door and window each, under gabled roofs that overhang the porch on wooden brackets. Newer paint covers some of the old wood siding, and a few yards still carry handwritten signs for work in progress.
Storefronts along Canal and Carrollton run one story under fabric awnings, hand lettered signs and paper banners taped inside the windows. Italian ice cream parlor holds its corner at Carrollton and Canal, its name painted across the awning.
A few blocks of Tulane Avenue carry larger buildings than the houses around them. The at Tulane and Broad is stripped neoclassical and Art Deco stone from 1931, bas-relief sculpture by Angela Gregory over its doorways. Warren Easton's red brick schoolhouse, built in 1913, stands further down Canal Street behind a row of oaks. The old Falstaff Brewery tower, now apartments, still spells its name in vertical letters below a weather ball.
Shot in Mid-City
HBO's Treme and Oliver Stone's JFK both used real Mid-City locations rather than a set built to resemble them. Treme shot inside a reopened Canal Street business, and JFK's courtroom scenes were filmed in the working courthouse at Tulane and Broad.
Treme
Angelo Brocato's
Angelo Brocato's reopened in September 2006, after Katrina flooding had closed it for more than a year. The first episode of the HBO series' second season, set that November, shows Toni and Sofia Bernette eating there and talking with the real Angelo Brocato III.
JFK, 1991
Orleans Parish Criminal Courts Building
Oliver Stone shot the film's climactic trial scene in the real Orleans Parish Criminal Courts Building at Tulane and Broad, the same courthouse where the real Clay Shaw was tried and acquitted in 1969 on conspiracy charges tied to the Kennedy assassination. Its stripped neoclassical and Art Deco facade, with bas-relief sculpture by Angela Gregory over the entrance, dates from the building's 1931 opening.
What Mid-City can double for
Freedmen's Town in Houston, Texas
Freedmen's Town has rows of single and double shotgun houses on a gridded street layout, a similar building type and period to Mid-City's own blocks. Only about thirty of the original houses survive among later infill, so a full block run usually needs more than one street to assemble. Downtown Houston's towers rise a few blocks east and read in any wide or aerial shot, so tighter street level framing holds the period better. Try searching double shotgun houses now.
Cuyler-Brownsville in Savannah, Georgia
Cuyler-Brownsville still has intact rows of single and double shotgun houses on a gridded street, built between the 1880s and the 1930s, close to the scale and period of Mid-City's own blocks. Many of the neighborhood's other shotgun rows have been demolished, so an intact block is scattered rather than continuous. Savannah's brick sidewalks and cast iron fences read differently in close shots. There is no streetcar track nearby to include in a wide one. Try searching single and double shotgun houses now.
Bishop Arts District grew up around a streetcar stop that arrived in 1904. Its six blocks of original brick storefronts date from the 1920s through the 1940s, with craftsman bungalows filling the residential streets around the commercial core, close to Mid-City's own combination of Canal Street and the houses around it. The streetcar itself is long gone, so a shot needing tracks or a passing car needs its own dressing. The district's boutique signage also skews newer than Mid-City's older storefronts. Try searching brick storefronts and bungalows now.
