Jackson Square

The square was the Place d'Armes to the French and the Plaza de Armas to the Spanish. After the 1811 German Coast uprising, three enslaved people were hanged here. In March 1873, during the insurrection that followed the disputed 1872 election, the Battle of Jackson Square was fought on the grass. The WPA repainted the surrounding facades in the 1930s, and painters made the square their gathering place from the 1920s into the 1980s. It became a National Historic Landmark on October 9, 1960, and in 1971 the streets along its sides were closed to cars.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Cabildo — steps away
  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 — steps away
  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 — 0.2 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 — 0.4 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

• Cathedral of St. Louis, King of France — steps away
• Bourbon Street Attack Memorial Crosses — steps away
• The Presbytère — steps away
• Don Bernardo de Galvez — steps away