Audubon Zoo

The zoo opened in 1914, and a flight cage followed in 1916. During the Depression the WPA spent $400,000 on an expansion that included the artificial hill called Monkey Hill. By the early 1970s the zoo had decayed so badly that a study advised closing it unless the city committed to major upgrades, and in 1975 voters approved financing that grew the grounds from 14 to 50 acres. Leucistic white alligator hatchlings found in 1987 became its symbol. In 2005 staff rode out Katrina in the reptile house, only three animals died, and the zoo reopened for Thanksgiving weekend.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 — 2.7 mi
  The Garden District's 1833 cemetery of about 1,100 family tombs, closed to visitors in 2019 and reopened on October 1, 2026 for small guided tours run by the Preservation Resource Center.
• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — 4.3 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.
• New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park — 4.5 mi
  A National Park Service unit created in 1994 to tell where jazz came from, with free programs and a visitor center in the French Quarter and park land inside Louis Armstrong Park.
• The Historic New Orleans Collection — 4.5 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.

More markers nearby

• Audubon Zoo's Whooping Crane Legacy — steps away
• Boré Plantation - Audubon Park — steps away
• Audubon Park History — steps away
• The Original Teddy Bear — 0.3 mi