Six miles of shops, cafes, and galleries run parallel to the river along Magazine Street, the shopping, dining, and cultural spine of Uptown New Orleans for more than a century. The street takes its name from the French word magasin, meaning store or warehouse, reflecting its origins as a commercial artery during the French colonial period when warehouses lined the riverfront. Today Magazine Street is home to what may be the finest concentration of independent antique shops, vintage clothing stores, art galleries, and neighborhood restaurants in any American city — a six-mile linear neighborhood that changes character block by block from the Warehouse District near downtown through the Lower Garden District, the Garden District proper, and into the Uptown neighborhood.
The antique dealers along Magazine specialize in the particular inventory of a city that has been furnishing grand houses for two centuries: nineteenth-century French furniture, American Victorian pieces, silver, Mardi Gras memorabilia, estate jewelry, and architectural salvage from demolished buildings. The restaurants range from neighborhood po-boy shops to nationally recognized fine dining establishments. On a Saturday morning, walking Magazine Street from Canal to Audubon Park and stopping at the shops and cafes along the way is one of the better ways to understand how New Orleans actually lives day to day.