New Orleans African American Museum

This guide to the New Orleans African American Museum follows the ground itself back to 1725, when a French concessionaire's brickyard fired the city's very first bricks along Bayou Road, and forward to hatmaker Claude Tremé, who began selling off the plantation's lots to gens de couleur libres in the late 1790s. It traces how that neighborhood grew into one of the country's largest free Black communities, and follows the brick house built around 1828 for the keeper of the city jail, along with builder Pierre Passebon's own cottage nearby. Stand on Governor Nicholls Street and picture that first brickyard beneath your feet.