Molly Marine

In wartime New Orleans a Marine recruiter, Technical Sergeant Charles Gresham, wanted a statue that would help bring women into the Marine Corps Women's Reserve, and sculptor Enrique Alférez offered to donate his time. Rationing ruled out bronze, so the twelve-foot figure was made of cement mixed with granite and marble chips. It was unveiled on November 10, 1943, the Corps' birthday. Groups of women Marines have repaired it every few decades, including a 1966 rededication, and in the late 1990s two bronze replicas were cast for Parris Island and Quantico.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — 0.3 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.
• The Historic New Orleans Collection — 0.5 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.
• 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.
• 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.

More markers nearby

• New Orleans Massacre Of 1866 — steps away
• Hurricane Katrina Memorial — steps away
• The Rault Center High-Rise Fire of 1972 — steps away
• Immaculate Conception Church (Jesuits') — steps away