I have about four days worth of meandering material on this Broad subject of the No. 9 bus route. I don’t mind sharing it with you. You never know when you might need this information.
The end of line is called East New Orleans Regional Library by city librarians. It is located at 5641 Read Blvd, New Orleans, LA 70127. They are always tickled to receive a postcard.
The No. 9 bus passes through the following zip codes:
70115 Uptown
70125 Broadmoor
70119 Mid-City
70122 Gentilly
70126 Little Woods
70127 Lake Forest
A fifth of the population in the 70119 gets around New Orleans by hoofing it or by catching one of the buses that stop at the intersection of Broad and Esplanade Avenue. This part of New Orleans is called Esplanade Ridge, or Bayou St. John, or Faubourg St. John, or Greater Tremé. Like everything in New Orleans, it is hard to define. Boundaries are as fluid as mud.
Broad starts where Napoleon Avenue ends. A short length of South Broad is in Broadmoor, the rest of it is completely in 70119. The story of 70119 is a story for another day. The No. 9 bus serves more library branches than any other route operated by the RTA. That would be four. Three are in New Orleans proper, one is in New Orleans East.
There are fifteen branches in the New Orleans Public Library System. One is in the East (see above), one is in the Lower 9, two are in Algiers, eleven are in the rest of New Orleans, the part that people call New Orleans. These four libraries serve 39% of the city's population. The other eleven serve the other 61%. Each of these neighborhoods is geographically isolated by water from the rest of the city.
The unfortunately named Children's Resource Library is located at 912 Napoleon Avenue (70115). It got its name in 1979, though the Napoleon Branch has always been a special place for little minds. The building is a Carnegie library from 1902. The only older active library is one in Algiers.
Algiers is the second-oldest neighborhood in New Orleans. The French Quarter was first. Faubourg Marigny was the first suburb. Now you know.
Where Napoleon Avenue ends and South Broad begins the Rosa F. Keller Library and Community Center is located at 4300 South Broad Avenue (according to the USPS) in 70125. Part of it is in a beautiful old house built in 1918. The house cost $9,500 in 1918 dollars. It became a city library in 1993. It was rebuilt and added to after Hurricane Katrina to the cost of $3.2 million. It is a state-of-the-art library partly housed in an eight-room mansion dating from the time of WWI.
Rosa Freeman Keller was the heiress to the local Coca-Cola bottling plant fortune. The plant that was located on what was then South Jefferson Davis Parkway. It's offices now. The street is now called South Norman C. Francis Parkway. Times change. Rosa F. Keller was part of the reason, R.I.P.
The next library the bus passes is the Norman Mayer Library at 3001 Gentilly Boulevard in 70112. This branch is completely new, having been constructed within living memory after Katrina.
Norman Mayer was an anti-nuclear weapons activist who was raised in a New Orleans orphanage. After a stint in the United States Navy, part of the world's largest nuclear killing machine, he drifted about. He died during the Clinton presidency in 1982. He was 66. He was shot while trying to blow up the Washington Monument. For this, they named a library after him on the corner of Gentilly Road and St. Andrew Avenue.
This is New Orleans. The Norman Mayer Library houses twenty-six computers and 40,000 books as of this writing. When was the last time you were inside a library?
If you are riding a bicycle and you forgot your lock at home, guess what! You can check out bike locks at any branch of the New Orleans Public Library system. Just go to the check out desk. The librarians keep a box of bike locks under the counter. They did not earn college degrees in library science for nothing.
The locks are supposed to be used only at designated properties on library property. They must be returned the same day, by at least 15 minutes before closing hours. Failure to return bike locks, like the failure to return books, will result in a curtailment of library privileges. Few library patrons check out locks at the East New Orleans Regional Library. Few people ride bicycles in the East.