New Orleans, LA Facts

French Quarter Walking Tour

French Quarter Fountain

Discover the mystery and magic of the Creole people that made the French Quarter their own. 

The colorful home of Mardi Gras and birthplace of Jazz draws upon many different cultural influences. It was founded by the French in 1718, who constructed a rectangular fortification around the city. Today, that area is known as the French Quarter.

As the city grew, it was built around the curve of the Mississippi River. It became known as "the Crescent City", because of its shape. French occupation gave way to Spanish occupation, although no effort was made to actually remove the French residents from the city. Their mutual disdain for the Americans of English descent kept them living together in harmony and a new ethnic entity was born: Creoles. A further mix with indigenous Choctaw Indian and free persons of color begot Creoles of color. Creoles, then, were simply people who were born locally, regardless of ancestry. Such racial and ethnic diversity in the 1700s was unheard of outside of New Orleans.

A stroll through the French Quarter is not like a stroll down Main Street in Disneyland. These are not replicas but original structures that date back as far as the 1700s. There are more than 35,000 buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places. That's more than any other city in the United States.

Among those things for which New Orleans claims oldest: the streetcar system, which is the oldest continuously operating rail system in the world; the St. Louis Cathedral, the oldest continuously active Roman Catholic Cathedral in the U.S.; and Faubourg Trem', America's oldest Black neighborhood.

The French term "faubourg" translates to "suburb" or "neighborhood". In the early 1800s, free persons of color as well as African slaves who bought or bargained for their freedom where able to buy property here. This is even more significant when comparing the city to a good part of the rest of the country, which was still very much immersed in slavery.

Jackson Square Artist Community is an area around the Square where artists have worked for over 50 years. Jackson Square itself -- originally used as a drill field for the French militia -- is surrounded by an iron fence on which today's artists display their works.

Canal Street was once the widest street in the world. It was so named because there were plans to build a canal right down the center of it. That canal was never built.

Bourbon Street is the world famous center of New Orleans Mardi Gras. A popular drink during Mardi Gras, the "Hurricane" originated at Pat O'Brien's, a world famous piano bar on St. Peter Street, recognizable by its flaming courtyard fountain.

Since much of the city is at or below sea level, constant periodic flooding would be inevitable if not for the levees and canals, and massive pumps that drain the water as the level rises. Still, some studies have suggested that New Orleans is gradually sinking -- by almost an inch each year.

The above-ground mausoleums of New Orleans have also become a tourist attraction, notwithstanding their absolute necessity. Again, it goes back to the fact that the city is mostly below sea level and that it sits precariously atop the loose silt that has run down the Mississippi River.