The Claiborne overpass carries highway I-10 directly through the Tremé, a historically black neighborhood in New Orleans.
Photographer: Bryan Tarnowski/Bloomberg
Why Is It So Hard to Kill This Freeway?
The Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans has long been a poster child for highway removal. But many members of the community beneath it aren’t ready to tear it down.
Keith Pete remembers what Claiborne Avenue was like before the interstate.
As a child in the early 1960s, the native New Orleanian would come to Claiborne Avenue with his dad to buy chickens from the local grocers. Sometimes, as a treat, father and son would get hamburgers on French rolls and pineapple juice and picnic on the neutral ground — the avenue’s wide, grassy median, which was thick with live oak trees and azaleas.