The Rigolets is an area of New Orleans East that has played a vital part in New Orleans history. Maroon communities developed in the area during the colonial period and forts were later built to protect the city. Most of what made this area…

An exploration of some of the historical locations and uses of New Orleans' lakefront, including colonial fortifications, military bases, amusement parks, and the University of New Orleans.

On September 14, 1874, what became known as the Battle of Liberty Place was fought between militant conservative Democrats known as the White League and Federalist forces led by the Municipal Police. As historian Justin Nystrom has written, the…

This tour unveils the park's history. Only a fraction of City Park's 1300 acres will be accessed. You will walk through the famous dueling grounds, stand beneath a tree whose branches touch the ground, and learn about many interesting…

Explore the present Broadway campus of Newcomb College, the last of three locations that have housed the noted school. Discover its history, characters, and legacy, and understand how it maintains its own identity in the present with its longstanding…

This tour examines the significant ways in which animals have affected the lives of New Orleanians. Within the confines of the French Quarter, rats, mules, mosquitoes, termites, and other critters cohabitate with the human residents.

Learn about some notable historic sites as you stroll along Bayou St. John.

Take an imaginative journey through a nineteenth-century World’s Fair. Only the beauty of the grounds exists today, for expositions were fleeting spectacles. Yet, photographic "ghost" images recall a time when the world’s products, accomplishments,…

Explore the original DeLord and Camp Street campus, as well as the second campus of Newcomb College, located on Washington Avenue. Uncover the history, characters, and legacy that shaped Newcomb College into what it is today by following its…

Both residents and visitors to New Orleans still have the desire to see where the levees failed during Katrina in August 2005. This tour allows one to virtually "visit" three major breach sites and their associated neighborhoods. The sites include…

The bridging of St. Tammany Parish and Orleans Parishes had been an issue of public interest from before the age of the automobile. Rail and ferry crossings of the lake were already well established by the time automobile bridges were contemplated in…

The Orleans-Kenner Traction Company connected downtown New Orleans to Kenner from 1915 to 1930. The only interurban rail line in New Orleans, it helped to spur residential development in rural East Jefferson Parish.

The Carrollton Court House launched several interesting Louisiana Supreme Court cases that provide insight into Carrollton's history. Some cases included are: the trial of two defendants convicted of murdering a 10-year-old girl; voter…

A brief history of illegal gaming (gambling) clubs in the areas surrounding the city of New Orleans in the early twentieth century.

Though the Civil War was over, the practice of segregating New Orleans streetcars by race continued. This tour explores the actions of Joseph Guillaume and others in their efforts to integrate New Orleans streetcars during the Reconstruction Era.

The Highwheel Bicycle Era in New Orleans, 1881-1891

Enjoy a walking food tour through the streets of the French Quarter and make sure to grab a muffaletta or a po-boy, something cool to drink and take a bite into New Orleans history! Some of New Orleans best-known foods originated as working class…

This tour tells the stories of different moments in the formation and evolution of Hollywood South in New Orleans. Sites reveal the important people, films, theaters, and locations from the silent era to the present. New Orleans has become a major…

One of the world's most advanced airports when it opened in the 1930s, Lakefront Airport retains many of its landmark buildings and hangars.

The 1973 arson attack at the Upstairs Lounge killed 32 people and was the largest massacre of LGBTQ individuals in the United States prior to the Pulse Nightclub shooting in 2016. The disgraceful reaction of the media and most New Orleanians…

Jackson Barracks is a military post which has been a part of the New Orleans landscape since the first half of the 19th century. It has been through the Mexican War, the Civil War and Reconstruction, both World Wars and countless hurricanes and…

A tour through the history of Palmer Park, located in the Carrollton neighborhood at the intersection of South Carrollton and Claiborne avenues. This tour exposes many connections to ongoing debates over the use of New Orleans’ public spaces.

James R. Wedell and Harry P. Williams founded the Wedell-Williams Air Service in Patterson, Louisiana, in 1929. The company expanded its transport routes as far as Dallas, Houston, and St. Louis. Wedell's aircraft designs brought the company…

James R. Wedell and Harry P. Williams established the Wedell-Williams Air Service in Patterson, Louisiana, in 1929. The company expanded its transport routes as far as Dallas, Houston, and St. Louis. Wedell's aircraft designs brought the company…

In commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1813, this tour features historic French Quarter sites, notable cases, and justices.

This is an immersive tour following the path of the 55 black students who integrated the new Louisiana State University at New Orleans (now the University of New Orleans) campus in 1958, creating the Crescent City's first desegregated school.

9-stop audio driving tour of the Carville Historic District, site of leprosy (Hansen's disease) quarantine hospital and treatment center from 1894-1999. This hospital-community was designed to be self-sustainable. Quarantine laws dictated the…

A tour of French Quarter sites and buildings connected to the Battle of New Orleans through fact as well as legend. This tour was created in January 2015 during the 200th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans.

Gallatin Street, the two-block stretch near the Mississippi River now known as French Market Place, was once the center of vice in Antebellum New Orleans. This tour shares some of the stories that gave Gallatin Street its notorious reputation.

Streetcars are an iconic image of New Orleans. Although only four streetcar lines still exist—St. Charles, Canal, Rampart, and Riverfront—they remain nostalgic vestiges of the city’s past, immortalized in Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire,…

Enslaved people were among the first to enter the French colony of New Orleans. Furthermore, they were instrumental to the creation of a successful city, building much of the infrastructure, acting as the first doctors, and cultivating early…

Produced in conjunction with the Tennessee Williams Festival, this tour takes you to the homes and haunts of famous literary figures in New Orleans history.

A tour of four Confederate Monuments in New Orleans.

New Orleans' claim to be the birthplace of jazz is explored in this walking tour, which focuses on the musical artists and the communities where jazz developed in and around the French Quarter. Starting with the discovery site of the…

When New Orleans became a part of the United States in 1804, the population of the French Quarter was 8,222 with 1,565 free people of color, just over 30% of the total free population. The free black population flourished throughout the Spanish era…

This tour focuses on New Orleans's role in the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. As one of the South's largest and most important cities, one with an African American protest tradition spanning generations, New Orleans…

Paper Monuments is a project designed to elevate the voices of the people of New Orleans in the process of creating new symbols for our city that represent all of our people. During the process, you'll see posters and flyers across New Orleans…

This tour includes information about archaeological sites already investigated in Orleans Parish. Some of these sites are now destroyed. Others are no longer accessible or have considerable untapped research potential. Most are on private property…

Dryades Street, now known as Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard, was historically a thriving commercial center in New Orleans. Creole architect Barthelemy Lafon designed this street as a part of Coliseum Square in 1809. In January 1849, the City of New…

In 1981, the City of New Orleans oversaw the construction of Gordon Plaza, an affordable housing development, on the former site of Agriculture Street Landfill. This tour details negligent landfill operations, the construction of affordable housing…

Located on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, the University of New Orleans looks very much like a typical college campus. Yet the history behind this university is one of distinction, hostility, and resistance. First opened in 1958 as the…

The childhood of famed “Krazy Kat” cartoonist George Herriman might be considered his missing years. For years, facts were elusive — and Herriman didn’t clear things up. The few public statements he made about his youth were in jest. Occasionally he…

The New Orleans Tribune, or la Tribune de la Nouvelle Orléans, was America’s first black daily newspaper. Created by free black leaders, the Tribune was a formidable political tool that built a courageous campaign for social justice during the Civil…

The St. Peter Street Cemetery was one of the city’s first formal burial grounds, eventually occupying the entirety of the city block bounded by N. Rampart, St. Peter, Burgundy, and Toulouse Streets. This tour provides an introduction to St. Peter…

Madame John’s Legacy, located at 628-632 Dumaine Street, is often considered one of the best surviving examples of French Colonial architecture in the French Quarter, even though the existing structure was built in 1788 during Spanish colonial rule.…

Marie Laveau is known to many as the Vodou Queen of New Orleans. Vodou is an Afro-syncretic religion, blending elements of West and Central African religion, Native American spirituality, and European Catholicism. In the 18th and 19th centuries, when…

When an over-200-year-old building at 810 Royal Street collapsed in 2014, University of New Orleans Anthropology professor Ryan Gray and his students gained access to the site to conduct archaeological digs. This tour explores the artifacts found…

Today, the Cabildo is a facility of the Louisiana State Museum, but the courtyard of the Cabildo was the location of a city prison complex for nearly two hundred years, across French, Spanish, and American rule. Constructed in 1730, the prison and…

This tour will explore how women and girls played a major role in challenging legislation that perpetuated racial segregation in New Orleans by explaining the experiences of each woman and girl, and events associated with each person and location. By…

The cultural, social, and economic development of New Orleans -- from a colonial port to an American city -- can be traced through its history of bread baking. Bakers and millers were among the earliest laborers brought to the city by the French in…

In 1961, the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) demolished a portion of the Melpomene neighborhood in Central City to make way for The William J. Guste, Sr. Homes, a public housing project consisting of 993 public housing units including a…

On September 22, 1961, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) outlawed racial segregation on bus transit, requiring the removal of “whites only” signs by November 1 of that same year. The ICC made this decision in response to the efforts of…

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the land that is now Audubon Park was the Boré Plantation and the Foucher Plantation. Popular histories often credit Étienne de Boré, an enslaver and the first mayor of New Orleans, with…

Produced by the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies, Streets on the Table is a podcast that reflects on the historical relevance of both the old and new street names in New Orleans. Hosted by two UNO graduate students, the podcast highlights the…

Created by UNO students in collaboration with the Plessy and Ferguson Foundation, this tour dives into the origins of the Plessy v. Ferguson case and highlights the civil rights activism in New Orleans that launched the broader national movement for…

This tour documents two excavations of Charity Hospital Cemetery No. 2, a pauper's cemetery that was subsumed by Canal Boulevard in the 1930s.

Temple of the Innocent Blood was the focus of archaeological excavations in 2011, 2012, and 2014. This tour details the results of two assemblages from those excavations.

Created by Hannah Kreiger-Benson and Laura DeFazio, founders of the Frenchmen Notes project, this tour tells the story of Frenchmen Street through the voices of those who helped to develop its sounds and scene.

A tour created for the attendees of the Organization of American Historians meeting in New Orleans in April 2024.