Allard Plantation

The plantation tract passed to the city in 1850 under the will of John McDonogh, who reserved it for a park, and in 1854 the Fourth District Court declared it a public park. The City Park Improvement Association formed in 1891, the year the name City Park became official. The park was not open to everyone: until 1958 the playground, Storyland and other amenities were limited to white residents, and Black children and families were barred. In 2005 about 95 percent of the park flooded after floodwalls failed, killing many trees and most of the botanical garden's plants.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — 2.1 mi
  New Orleans' oldest surviving city of the dead, opened in 1789 after the fire of 1788 and the burial place of Homer Plessy, reachable only on a guided tour since March 2015.
• Congo Square — 2.1 mi
  The 2.35-acre corner of Louis Armstrong Park where, from 1817, New Orleans confined Sunday dancing by enslaved people to one place, and where crowds of hundreds gathered to drum, dance and trade.
• The Historic New Orleans Collection — 2.4 mi
  A French Quarter museum and research center founded in 1966, whose 2015 Purchased Lives exhibition took on New Orleans' place as the largest slave market in antebellum America.
• The Cabildo — 2.5 mi
  The Spanish town hall on Jackson Square, finished in 1799, where Louisiana changed flags in 1803 and where the state Supreme Court sat in the same room until 1910, Plessy v. Ferguson among its cases.

More markers nearby

• Pitot House — 0.2 mi
• Duelling Grounds — 0.3 mi
• The Old Portage — 0.4 mi
• Beatles Only Concert Performance in Louisiana — 0.7 mi