Hey Blake,
I remember a fraternity on Henry Clay Avenue that painted a cross walk “Drunk Zone.” Can you shed any light on the subject?
Dear Reader,
Members of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, known as “Dekes,” made headlines for their “Drunk Zone” street markings in front of their frat house in the 1400 block of Henry Clay Avenue as far back as 1957. At the time, the fraternity was affiliated with Tulane University.
“A motorist turning from St. Charles into Henry Clay Avenue drove a couple of blocks through the fraternity row section and executed a double take at a sign boldly painted across the street … ‘Drunk Zone’ and below in smaller letters … ‘15 miles per hour,’” wrote Times-Picayune columnist Howard Jacobs in July 1957.
“It’s said that the (fraternity) brothers erected street barricades, rerouted traffic, gleefully trooped outside with buckets of paint and generally had themselves a field day in fashioning the impressive block lettering,” Jacobs wrote in a follow-up article the next month.
The street lettering was still there 35 years later when New Orleans police and Health Department inspectors closed down the fraternity house for health code violations in April 1992.
“Yellow paint on the road in front of 1469 Henry Clay Ave. marks the location. ‘Drunk Zone,’ it says, suspiciously similar to the markings of a neighborhood school zone,” reporter Chris Rose wrote in The Times-Picayune about the fraternity house’s shutdown.
It was not the first time the Dekes had run into trouble. In 1978, Tulane’s Interfraternity Council suspended the fraternity for hazing. In 1984, the university severed its ties with the fraternity, citing "unbecoming conduct" and more allegations of hazing. The fraternity closed its LSU chapter in 2019 after an investigation found members violated hazing and alcohol policies.
By 1994, the Henry Clay Avenue fraternity house had been sold to new owners and renovated.
Tennessee Williams wrote the play while living in the French Quarter.