Garden District, Historic residential district in New Orleans, United States.
The Garden District is a residential area in western New Orleans, Louisiana, known for its large 19th-century houses set between wide streets and shaded avenues. Properties are often enclosed by wrought-iron fences, with gardens of old trees behind them, while facades show columned porches, balconies, and curved verandas.
After 1832, American merchants and entrepreneurs developed a new residential area on former plantation land outside the city limits of New Orleans to distance themselves spatially from the French Quarter. In the following decades until around 1900, villas and mansions rose there to display the wealth of an emerging society while creating a separate social identity.
The area reflects its origins through a blend of European-inspired architecture and American confidence from the 1800s, visible in tall columns and wrought-iron fences framing front entries. Street names like Prytania or Coliseum recall the classical models favored by builders who shaped their homes like small palaces and deliberately set themselves apart from the French heritage of the city.
The streetcar on St. Charles Avenue runs directly along the edge of the area and offers several stops for getting on and off. A walk can easily start near Lafayette Cemetery Number 1, from where side streets with wide sidewalks can be explored.
Many of the large oak trees along the streets are older than the houses themselves and were planted before construction to provide future residents with shade. Magazine Street on the southern edge developed over time into a shopping street with small stores and eateries, often housed in former warehouses and workshops.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 60,000 contributors worldwide.
