French Market

The first market was called the Meat Shops, and it was the only place in the French Quarter allowed to sell meat until meat was sold elsewhere. The oldest extant structures date to about 1813, and the Works Progress Administration did major renovations in the 1930s. Individual vendors sold fresh foods, including raw seafood, into the mid-20th century. Much of the former open arcade now holds shops and restaurants, and the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park visitor center is here. The market is on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Cabildo — 0.3 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 — 0.4 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.
• New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park — 0.5 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.
• Congo Square — 0.5 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.

More markers nearby

• Old Ursuline Convent — steps away
• Birthplace of Danny Barker — steps away
• Gallier House — steps away
• Faubourg Marigny — steps away