Louis Armstrong Park Review

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Louis Armstrong Park

  • Address: N. Rampart St. between St. Philip and St. Peter Sts., Tremé, New Orleans, LA, 70117 | Map It

Fodor's Review:

This large park with its grassy knolls and lagoons is named for native son and world-famous musician Louis Armstrong (1900-71), whose statue by Elizabeth Catlett is near the brightly lighted entrance on the outer boundary of the French Quarter. To the left inside the park is Congo Square, marked by an inlaid-stone space where slaves in the 18th and early 19th centuries gathered on Sundays, the only time they were permitted to play their music openly. The weekly meetings held here have been immortalized in the travelogues of visitors, leaving invaluable insight into the earliest stages of free musical practices by Africans in America and African-Americans. Neighborhood musicians still congregate here at times for percussion jams, and it is difficult not to think of the musical spirit of ancestors hovering over them. Marie Laveau, the greatly feared and respected voodoo queen of antebellum New Orleans, had her home a block away on St. Ann Street, and is reported to have held voodoo rituals here regularly.

Behind Congo Square is a large gray building, the Morris F.X. Jeff Municipal Auditorium; to the right, behind the auditorium, is the Mahalia Jackson Center for the Performing Arts. The St. Philip Street side of the park houses the Jazz National Historical Park, anchored by Perseverance Hall, the oldest Masonic temple in the state. Currently in the last stages of a $3 million restoration, the hall is scheduled to reopen in January 2010, and will house a jazz exhibit as well as host live performances of New Orleans Jazz. Armstrong Park is patrolled by a security detail, but be very careful when wandering, and do not visit after dark.

  • Open: Auditorium and performing arts center open by event; check local newspapers for listings
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