U.S. Marine Hospital

Congress first approved a seamen's hospital for New Orleans in 1802, but that one ran only from 1804 to 1809, and sick sailors went to private infirmaries. On the west bank, land bought in 1837 sat mostly unbuilt through stops in 1838, 1841 and 1845 to 1850, because Congress never voted enough money. The three-story Gothic Revival design followed a standard plan by Robert Mills and Thomas Lawson. After the hospital was abandoned, patients were sent to Jackson Barracks. The service did not open its next New Orleans hospital until 1885, on 22 acres bought two years earlier.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park — 1.4 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 — 1.5 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.
• The Cabildo — 1.5 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 — 1.8 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

• McDonoghville — steps away
• Touro Infirmary — 0.7 mi
• McDonoghville — 0.8 mi
• River Rhythms Mural — 1.0 mi