Gilbert Academy and New Orleans University

Gilbert Academy began in 1863 as a home for Black orphans of the Civil War, set up in Pierre Soule's former mansion under Union commander Nathaniel Banks and run by Louise De Mortie, who died of yellow fever in 1867. The children moved until they reached a former sugar plantation near Baldwin. In 1875 the Methodist Episcopal Church reopened it as La Teche Seminary, later renamed for donor William L. Gilbert. The school reached St. Charles Avenue in 1935, became the city's first accredited private college-preparatory school for Black students, and graduated its last class in 1949.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 — 1.6 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 — 3.3 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 — 3.4 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 — 3.4 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.

More markers nearby

• Halfway Station — 0.6 mi
• Audubon Park History — 1.0 mi
• Newcomb Pottery Garden — 1.1 mi
• H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College — 1.2 mi