Map of Wards of New Orleans with Number Labels

The city of

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

, in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Louisiana Louisiana ( ; ; ) is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It borders Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, and Mississippi to the east. Of the 50 U.S. states, it ranks 31st in area and 25 ...

, is divided into 17 wards. Politically, the wards are used in

voting Voting is the process of choosing officials or policies by casting a ballot, a document used by people to formally express their preferences. Republics and representative democracies are governments where the population chooses representative ...

election An election is a formal group decision-making process whereby a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold Public administration, public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative d ...

s, subdivided into precincts. Under various previous city charters of the 19th century, aldermen and later city council members were elected by ward. The city has not had officials elected to represent wards since 1912, but the ward designations remain a part of New Orleans' fabric. Socially, it is not uncommon for New Orleanians from some wards to identify where they are from by their ward number.

History

Most of the boundaries of Wards 1 through 11 were drawn in 1852 when the city was reorganized from three separate municipalities into one centralized government. With various changes, these boundaries remain largely the same, and have not changed at all since the 1880s. The rest of the Wards were formed from the expansion of the city boundaries in the 1870s. The 12th, 13th, and 14th Wards were formed by annexation of land up river from the older city of New Orleans that had been Jefferson City and Greenville; the 15th by the annexation of the city of Algiers, Louisiana across the Mississippi River from the rest of the city, and finally the 16th and 17th Wards formed from the annexed city of Carrollton. Beginning in the 1980s, residents began to give new cultural meaning to wards as part of their local identity. Extremely prevalent in

New Orleans hip hop Southern hip-hop, also known as Southern rap, South Coast hip-hop, or dirty south, is a blanket term for a regional genre of American hip-hop music that emerged in the Southern United States, especially in Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, ...

(particularly Bounce Music), jazz, and other local genres of music, the concepts of "calling out" one's ward (stating the ward of one's residence), and "throwing up" one's ward (holding one's digits on one or both hands to signify their ward) have become mainstays of local culture and are even embraced casually at culturally mainstream events such as the

New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (commonly called Jazz Fest or Jazzfest) is an annual celebration of local music and culture held at the Fair Grounds Race Course in New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana. Jazz Fest attracts thousands of vi ...

. Although this practice is often seen as overly territorial and hostile, sometimes blamed for inciting violence, many simply see it as a friendly camaraderie shared with one's neighborhood.

Uptown wards

* 1st Ward * 2nd Ward * 3rd Ward * 10th Ward * 11th Ward * 12th Ward * 13th Ward * 14th Ward * 16th Ward * 17th Ward

Downtown wards

* 4th Ward * 5th Ward * 6th Ward * 7th Ward * 8th Ward * 9th Ward

West Bank wards

* 15th Ward (Algiers)

Works cited

References

External links

Map of the New Orleans ward territories
{{New Orleans Geography of New Orleans Neighborhoods in New Orleans