Mechanickham

Nobody knows for sure what the name means. One reading ties it to mechanics' homes, the 19th-century custom of tradesmen pooling labor and materials to build houses for one another, which German craftsmen in the area followed. Benjamin Buisson surveyed the street grid in 1836 for Nicolas Noël Destrehan, leaving room for a railroad right-of-way, a foundry and a ferry landing. Ferries were running by 1834, carrying German craftsmen across from New Orleans, and an 1839 map labels the subdivision Mechaniks Village. Its volunteers formed the Gretna Fire Company.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 — 1.3 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.
• New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park — 2.5 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.
• The Historic New Orleans Collection — 2.7 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.
• The Cabildo — 2.7 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.

More markers nearby

• Freret's Folly — 1.3 mi
• Commander's Palace — 1.3 mi
• Garden District — 1.4 mi
• Higgins Boat (LCVP) — 1.4 mi