The Cabildo

The main hall, the Sala Capitular, served as a courtroom for the Spanish from 1799 to 1803 and for the territorial superior court from 1803 to 1812. The Louisiana Supreme Court sat in the building from 1868 to 1910, and Plessy v. Ferguson was among the landmark cases heard in the hall. By 1895 it was decaying and faced demolition until the artist William Woodward led a campaign to restore it. A fire on May 11, 1988, destroyed the cupola and the entire third floor, and the building reopened in 1994. Katrina left only minor damage.

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 — steps away
  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

• Don Bernardo de Galvez — steps away
• Upper Pontalba Building — steps away
• David Bannister Morgan — steps away
• Literary Landmark — steps away