Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas

Degas's brothers René and Achille came to New Orleans in 1865 and 1866 to join their uncle Michel Musson, a cotton factor. With the cotton trade ruined, Musson sold his Garden District mansion and rented a house on Esplanade Avenue for the whole family. Degas lived there from October 1872 to March 1873 and became godfather to the baby born to his cousin Estelle at Christmas. His painting of the Carondelet Street cotton office shows Musson, René and Achille. Musson had enslaved people, and he later joined the White League and took part in the Battle of Liberty Place.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Congo Square — 0.9 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.
• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — 1.0 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.
• The Cabildo — 1.3 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.
• The Historic New Orleans Collection — 1.3 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

• Dooky Chase's Restaurant — 0.5 mi
• Faubourg Tremé — 0.5 mi
• The Faerie Playhouse — 0.7 mi
• Fair Grounds Race Course — 0.7 mi