Dew Drop Social and Benevolent Hall

Before it was a jazz landmark it worked like an insurance company. Black residents of St. Tammany organized the Dew Drop Social and Benevolent Association in 1885, when they were often refused insurance, and members drew help with funerals, food, shelter and medical care. Saturday nights made the hall a music room: Kid Ory, Bunk Johnson, Papa Celestin, Sam Morgan and George Lewis played here, and so did Louis Armstrong before he left for Chicago in 1922. Music stopped around 1940, the building sat empty for decades, and a donor gave it to the city in 2000.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fontainebleau State Park — 2.6 mi
  Lakeshore park on the Northshore where Tchefuncte potters, Acolapissa and Choctaw lived, and where 153 people were enslaved at Marigny's sugar and brick plantation by 1840; the mill ruin still stands.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Lake Pontchartrain — 0.5 mi
• Pottery Hill — 0.7 mi
• Native Peoples — 1.8 mi
• The Enslaved — 1.9 mi