Walk every block of New Orleans’ Garden District in an afternoon and feel 200 years pass

It’s only a streetcar ride away

About 2.5 miles southwest of the French Quarter, the Garden District sits under a canopy of live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. The streets are quiet.

The homes are massive. And the whole neighborhood feels like it belongs to a different century.

You can walk every block in an afternoon, passing mansions that have stood since the 1830s, a cemetery older than most American cities, and a bookshop inside a former skating rink. The French Quarter gets the noise.

This place keeps the history.

Plantation land turned into American estates

French architect Barthelemy Lafon drew up the original street layout in 1806, back when the land was still part of the Livaudais Plantation.

After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, wealthy Americans snapped up parcels and built grand homes far from the Creole-dominated French Quarter.

The area became part of the city of Lafayette in 1833, then folded into New Orleans in 1852. Each block originally held just a couple of houses surrounded by sprawling gardens.

That’s where the name comes from.

Greek columns and cast-iron fences line every block

You’ll see Greek Revival, Italianate, Victorian and French Second Empire architecture all within a few blocks of each other. Many of the original homes from the 1830s through 1900 still stand.

As New Orleans grew, those big lots got carved up, so now grand mansions sit right next to smaller Victorian houses with gingerbread trim. Cast-iron fences wrap around front yards.

Wide verandas stretch across second floors. Wrought-iron balconies hang over sidewalks, and behind them, private gardens spill over with green.

Buckner Mansion takes up a whole corner on Jackson Avenue

Cotton merchant Henry Sullivan Buckner built this house in 1856, and it sprawls over 20,000 square feet at the corner of Jackson Avenue and Coliseum Street.

Corinthian and Ionic columns hold up the front, and a wide wrap-around balcony runs the length of the second floor. A stone-and-cast-iron gate guards the entrance.

After the Buckner family left, the building served as Soule Business College until 1983. Today it’s a private home, but it remains one of the most photographed houses in the city.

A cornstalk fence built for a homesick wife

Colonel Robert Short of Kentucky hired architect Henry Howard to build his home at 1448 Fourth Street in 1859. The house is fine, but the fence is what stops people.

Cast iron shaped into morning glories and cornstalks wraps the property, and local lore says Short had it made for his wife, who missed her native Iowa.

Federal troops seized the house during the Civil War, and in 1864, Louisiana Gov. Michael Hahn briefly used it as his executive mansion.

A $2.2 million mansion became a girls school

Sugar planter Bradish Johnson spent about $100,000 in 1872 to build his French Second Empire mansion at 2341 Prytania Street. That’s roughly $2.2 million today.

Architect James Freret gave it a Mansard roof and Corinthian columns, and inside, Johnson had a smoking den, a library, a conservatory and one of the earliest passenger elevators in the city.

Since 1929, the building has served as the Louise S. McGehee School, a private school for girls.

The only Gothic house and the story behind it

At 2605 Prytania Street, the Briggs-Staub House stands alone as the only Gothic-style home in the Garden District. Built in 1849, it’s an outlier because most residents avoided Gothic Revival architecture.

They linked it to Roman Catholicism and their Creole rivals. Planter Cuthbert Bullitt originally commissioned the home but refused to pay after gambling losses.

English insurance executive Charles Briggs bought it instead.

Rather than hold enslaved people, Briggs hired Irish servants and built them relatively spacious quarters.

7,000 people rest inside a single city block

Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 opened in 1833 and holds about 1,100 family tombs packed within the block bounded by Washington, Sixth, Prytania and Coliseum streets.

Roughly 7,000 people are buried here, making it the oldest of the city’s seven municipal cemeteries. The layout follows a cruciform design, originally paved with shells to accommodate funeral processions.

It joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

The cemetery has been closed to visitors since September 2019 for repairs, but you can still look through the iron gates on Washington Avenue.

Ride the world’s oldest streetcar for $1.25

The St. Charles Streetcar has run since 1835, making it the oldest continuously operating streetcar line on the planet. A one-way ride costs $1.25, or you can grab a one-day Jazzy Pass for $3 and ride all day.

The dark-green cars were built by the Perley A. Thomas Company in 1923 and 1924.

Inside, you’ll find original mahogany seats, brass fittings and exposed light bulbs, none of which can be changed because of the line’s historic landmark status.

The route rolls through a tunnel of live oaks past Loyola, Tulane and Audubon Park.

Six miles of local shops on Magazine Street

Magazine Street stretches six miles along the Mississippi River, running from the edge of the French Quarter through the Garden District and into Uptown.

The name comes from either an 18th-century ammunition magazine or the French word for stores, “magasins.” Most of the shops are locally owned, selling clothing, jewelry, antiques, art, home decor and gifts.

Many of them sit inside 19th-century buildings. Compared to Bourbon Street or the Quarter, the vibe here is neighborhood-level and unhurried.

Commander’s Palace launched two of America’s biggest chefs

Emile Commander opened a small saloon at the corner of Washington Avenue and Coliseum Street in 1893. The Brennan family bought it in 1969 and turned it into one of the most celebrated restaurants in the South.

The kitchen has earned seven James Beard Foundation Awards and launched the careers of Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse. Meg Bickford runs the kitchen now.

You can spot the place from a block away by its turquoise-and-white Victorian exterior.

A bookshop inside an 1884 skating rink

The Rink at 2727 Prytania Street started life as the Crescent City Skating Rink, built in 1884 during the World Cotton Centennial Exposition.

Now it holds the Garden District Book Shop, which carries a deep collection of regional titles and stays plugged into the New Orleans literary scene.

Inside the same building, Still Perkin’ Cafe serves cafe au lait and chicory coffee.

The Rink sits at the corner of Washington and Prytania, so it makes a natural starting point before you walk the neighborhood.

Explore the Garden District in New Orleans

You can reach the Garden District by hopping on the St. Charles Streetcar from Canal Street in the French Quarter. Get off at Washington Avenue and you’re right in the middle of it.

The neighborhood runs between St. Charles Avenue, First Street, Magazine Street and Toledano Street. Wear comfortable shoes because the sidewalks buckle where old tree roots push through.

Walking tours run daily from several operators, or you can follow your own route along Prytania, Coliseum and First streets. Every home here is a private residence, so keep to the sidewalk and enjoy the view from there.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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