Pictures 9-1 through 9-7.

In the author's considered opinion, the South Claiborne line was the most beautiful line in the City.  These first pictures are submitted in support of that view.  At 191 feet wide, this avenue was even wider than famed Canal Street.  For at least part of its length, the median was occupied by a large drainage canal, an important component of the city's drainage system.  (Today, the canal has been covered over, but in streetcar days, part of it was open.)  The beautiful part of Claiborne Ave. had a broad, grassy, landscaped neutral ground, with a streetcar track at each edge of the neutral ground, as seen here.

The top picture shows car 921 passing azaleas and palmettoes somewhere along S. Claiborne Avenue in 1948.  The second picture is from Feb. 12, 1950 and shows car 956 followed by 972 downbound at State Street.  The third photo, dated March 11, 1950, looks across the wide neutral ground from the other track toward car 959, stopped to discharge a passenger, perhaps the suited gentleman seen walking around the trailing end of the car.  The date and location of the fourth picture, also featuring car 959, are unknown, but it was probably taken in the late 1940s.  The fifth picture, looking at car 874, probably dates from the early 1950s.  The sixth photo features cars 874 upbound at left, and 948 downbound at the right, some time in the last few years of the line.  Buildings of the Baptist hospital can be seen in the background.  The photographer is probably somewhere near Soniat Street.  There is an unusual car stop sign in the left foreground.  The seventh photograph, with car 972 somewhere along S. Claiborne Ave., is dated Jan. 7, 1951.

Note the narrow roadway for automobile traffic.  This ultimately proved fatal to the line, since the only way to widen the automobile lanes necessarily involved either rebuilding the streetcar tracks further to the center of the neutral ground, or removing them altogether. — Otto Goessl photo (second picture); Fred Victor DuBrutz photo (third picture); D. R. Toye, S. J., Kenner Train Shop (Chris Rodriguez) collection, courtesy of Mike Palmieri (fourth picture); F. J. Bechtel (seventh picture)

NOPSI_921-SClaiborne-1948.jpg

NOPSI_956-SClaiborne+State-1950-02-12.jpg

NOPSI_959-SClaiborne-1950-03-11.jpg

NOPSI_959-SClaiborne.jpg

NOPSI_874-SClaiborne.jpg

NOPSI_874+948-SClaiborne-1948-1953.jpg

NOPSI_972-SClaiborne-1951-01-07.jpg

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