United States Customhouse

Congress paid for plans in 1845, and the Treasury chose Alexander Thompson Wood's design in 1847. Work began in 1848, Wood was replaced in 1850, and eight architects followed before Alfred Mullett directed the building to its finish in 1881. Construction stopped in 1861. The unfinished shell made gun carriages for the Confederacy, then served as a Union headquarters and a federal prison that held as many as 2,000 captured Confederate soldiers. Its Marble Hall is counted among the finest interiors in the country. The Audubon Insectarium opened inside in 2008 and left in 2023.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 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.
• The Historic New Orleans Collection — 0.3 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 — 0.4 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.
• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — 0.6 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.

More markers nearby

• Bienville's Plantation — steps away
• Bank's Arcade — steps away
• Louis André Martinet / Office of L.A. Martinet, The Crusader & Comité Des Citoyens — steps away
• Merchants Mutual Insurance Company Building — steps away