In the days when the French Quarter was all there was of New Orleans, the city was in the shape of a half moon or crescent. The newer part of the city follows the course of the river and makes the New Orleans of to-day more like a letter S.
ST. CHARLES AVENUE
St. Charles Avenue is the most beautiful residential street in the American Quarter. It is a wide avenue with driveways on either side of a grassy parkway. Rows of trees, many of them stately palms, border the avenue. Here are splendid homes, each with its flower beds and gardens of tropical plants.
Churches and charitable institutions abound in New Orleans. One of the latter, Touro Infirmary, covers an entire city block. This infirmary was endowed by Judah Touro, a Jew, and is supported by Jews, but receives sufferers of any creed. In its courtyard is a fountain erected by the Hebrew children of New Orleans.
Tulane University is the most renowned educational institution in the city, and is noted for its medical and engineering departments. On Washington Avenue is the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College for young women, which is the women's department of Tulane University.
The great hotels and many restaurants of the city are noted throughout the United States. The creole cooks have made famous such dishes as chicken gumbo, chicken à la creole, and pompano.
The country around New Orleans is one of the richest in the world. Within a few hours' ride of the city are great fields of cotton, sugar, and rice. Two hundred miles from the city are immense deposits of sulphur and salt. Oil fields are within easy reach, and coal is brought by water from the mines of Alabama and even from Pennsylvania. Great forests to the north furnish lumber which is transported by water to the city, making New Orleans one of the foremost ports in lumber exportation.
