Louis Armstrong Park
Historic gathering ground where enslaved New Orleanians built the roots of jazz, now anchored by a bronze of the city's native son.
Location
About this audio guide
Louis Armstrong Park in New Orleans opens onto Congo Square, where colonial law from the 1720s gave enslaved New Orleanians Sundays free of labor, and by 1817 the city had confined their gatherings to this one open lot then called Place Publique. The guide follows the drums built from barrels and hollowed logs, the calinda and bamboula dances, and the pecan pralines sold from blankets on the ground, tracing how historians link the rhythms pounded out here to ragtime, blues and eventually jazz. It also follows a harder twist: the decades the city spent condemning and bulldozing the surrounding Tremé streets to build the park honoring that same legacy.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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