The Lasalle Corridor is richly layered with historic places and events, from the Antebellum to the Civil Rights Era, it has reflected and helped to define the African American experience in New Orleans. The narratives of LaSalle are those of reconstruction and Jim Crow, the challenges of the civil rights movement in the Deep South, the promise and the limitations of public housing and the Great Society. Central City, through which LaSalle winds, was settled in the 1830's, back of town from the Garden District, bounded by the St. Charles street car line and undrained swamp. In the last decades of the 19th and first decades of the 20th centuries, Central City became home to New Orleans first Black hospital, first Black library and in Shakspeare Park, the first Black public park. These landmarks served to stretch the horizons of segregation, while simultaneously demarcating its boundaries. In a location and for a people that could have been defined by those limitations, there was instead a flowering of entrepreneurial activity, community activism, and culture.
