Pictures 29, 30, 31, and 32.

These views look in, toward the river, from Carondelet Street.  The top picture features the Touro Building, on the downtown side of Canal Street at the corner of Bourbon, which extended all the way to Royal Street.  This large building was eventually destroyed by fire on February 16, 1892.  Note the unusually large separation between the two inner tracks at the left side of the picture.  In the second picture, we are looking down the middle of the neutral ground, and we can see how the inner tracks connect together.  All four inner tracks are occupied, the rightmost one showing the tail end of a horsecar, the other three the leading end of cars which have been turned on the turntable and are awaiting the start of their next runs.  We again see the large separation between the tracks from behind the photographer.  The starter's house, or ticket booth, to the right of the Clay statue, is much more crude than the one shown in Pictures 20 through 23, so this picture seems to be older than those.  In the third and fourth pictures, we see that the curve from Carondelet to Canal, in the foreground, passes under a leg of the steel light tower; that tower was built between 1885 and 1887, and it had not yet been built when the two top pictures were taken.  At the next intersection, St. Charles/Royal, we can see the back of the Clay statue, and beyond that, the fountain at the Camp/Chartres intersection (for a closeup of this fountain, see Pictures 66 ff).  In the third picture, all the horsecars in the block between Carondelet and St. Charles are coming toward us.  We can clearly see the mules leading the cars on the third track from the camera in that picture.  This confirms that cars operated lakebound on all tracks except the rightmost two.  Two different stereo cards containing the third picture are known to the author, one copyrighted 1891, the other 1904.  By 1904, the horsecar lines had been electrified for nine years, so the 1891 date seems more likely.  In the bottom picture, we see all four inner tracks of the New Orleans City & Lake RR occupied, three with cars facing out (lakebound, toward us) awaiting the start of their next runs, and the right one with cars facing inward (away from us) toward the turntable just this side of the Clay statue.  This picture also gives us a clear view of a ticket booth in the left foreground, with signs saying “Tickets for West End” and, on a window, “Lake RR”; presumably, windows that we can't read said “New Orleans City and”.  Note in the foreground the “ballast block” paving of the streets. — S. T. Blessing (two top pictures), J. F. Jarvis (third), collection of Jessica Spring (bottom)

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