Washington Square Park in New Orleans: The Personal and the Profound

The Ultimate Guide to New Orleans’ Faubourg Marigny: History From Washington Square Park

If you want to experience New Orleans culture outside the French Quarter—where folks are picnicking (thanks to our liberal public drinking laws), kids are playing, and musicians and other local color are loitering—your journey couldn't start anywhere better than in the historic Faubourg Marigny. And cradled right at the gateway of this vibrant neighborhood is Washington Square Park, a beautiful oak-shaded green space where local history runs deep. It’s great to experience the park on a casual stroll, but understanding the 200 years of history behind it—and how it became the epicenter of the Marigny street culture we explore on our daily bike tours at A Street Tour Named Desire—gives you a view of the city that most visitors completely miss.

The Park and the Origins of a New Orleans Bike Tour

Eighteen years ago, when I first started A Street Tour Named Desire (formerly known as Confederacy of Cruisers), I had to figure out how to run a mobile bicycle tour company without a physical storefront. My fleet of cruiser bikes was stored at my house, so I needed a local meeting spot.

I needed a place where I could bring bikes back and forth from my overcrowded living room, lock them safely overnight, park ther borrowed Ford Btonco with a bike rack without a hassle, and find sidewalks quiet enough that we wouldn’t bother the neighbors with the bikes set up on the sidewalk..

Eighteen years ago apparently was another lifetime. Back then, the obvious answer was the Royal Street side of Washington Square Park.

It was so quiet in that area back then that the joke was I knew someone walking down the street was a customer for our tour  simply because they were there.

Washington Square Park Today: A Cultural Hub

Today, the area looks completely different. There are now three hotels nearby, including the gorgeous Royal Frenchmen Hotel right across the street. Frenchmen Street itself has become world-renowned for live New Orleans jazz music, but nobody needs to be told that anymore….

By 9:00 AM, local favorites like Ayu Bakehouse have a line wrapping around the building. Times change, as this neighborhood has and I feel I’ve seen enough that I must be getting older

But despite the neighborhood's newer popularity with visitors, we remain exactly the same. We still start every single New Orleans neighborhood bike tour under the shade of the park's 200-year-old live oak trees. (Fun fact: Their big 200th birthday will be in 2029, and I will likely be the only one celebrating it!)

While our guests always remark on the beauty of the oaks, the park's deeper history often gets overlooked, even by us as we are all antsy to bet on the bikes and see more. Washington Square Park has always been a symbol and social centerpiece for the Faubourg Marigny.

The Creole History of the Marigny

The land for the park was originally set out by young Bernard de Marigny, of ‘losing his plantation in endless games of craps’ fame, when he sold off his land into individual tracts to pay hos gambling debts.  He specifically included this square unsold to ensure there was a permanent social centerpoint for the new Creole neighborhood. We always liked hanging out.

The park was formally designed and named in 1838. Interestingly, it wasn't named after George Washington, as most everyone figures… it was named in honor of the Washington 141st Field Artillery Regiment, which had recently organized downriver to much local fanfare.

Beautiful, grand Creole townhouses were built around the square soon after. By the 1860s, the Holy Redeemer Church served the neighborhood's Black population—both rich and poor alike as we always had a large population of free people of color on this side of the city before the civil war—with immense elegance.

From "Little Angola" to the Turf Wars of the 1950s

As often happens in New Orleans history, any periods of boom are followed by longer eras of stagnation and then eventual decay. I don’t  complain, it’s who we are. By the 1950s, New Orleans was struggling economically, particularly in these downriver neighborhoods.

Washington Square Park became a centerpoint for violent turf wars between Black and White youth gangs who lived in the neighborhoods on the opposite directions from the park.

These neighborhood standoffs might look cute in West Side Story, but, while I’m sure everyone still danced, we are New Orleans, it wasn’t during the rumbles. The real life in New Orleans  was far more real. It wasn't a comical Officer Krupke patrolling the streets; it was a violent, angry police force actively jailing the local youths who battled each other.

Because of this constant pipeline from the neighborhood to the prison system, Washington Square Park was called "Little Angola." Those who hung out around the square were expected to end up at the Angola—Louisiana's most notorious and dangerous prison, where most inmates are in for life (and while, fortunately much less brutal than earlier eras in it’s ugly history remains famous today for the Angola Prison Rodeo and Art Sale which is a story in itself)

Hurricane Betsy, The Christopher Inn and the Unintended New Chapter

In the 1960s, the most critical changes of modern Marigny history began. In 1965, Hurricane Betsy tore through New Orleans and did what hurricanes do here, The storm destroyed the Holy Redeemer Church and the local library that bordered the park, and the church decided to build the ugliest giant building that ever graced this neighborhood, and through a series of unexpected outcomes, the ugly building protected and saved the neighborhood. That will be part 2. Enjoy the location, you are only 3 blocks from Loretta's Pralines or listen to some stories under the shade of the oak trees with us, book our New Orleans Culture Bike Tour!