Garden District

The Garden District is where the Americans built their mansions after the Louisiana Purchase — a deliberate statement of wealth and taste aimed at the Creole establishment in the French Quarter who considered the English-speaking newcomers to be uncultured barbarians. The result is one of the most extravagant residential neighbourhoods in America: Greek Revival, Italianate, and Victorian mansions set behind wrought-iron fences on streets canopied by live oak trees whose branches form tunnels of green.

The neighbourhood was developed in the 1830s and 1840s on former plantation land, and the mansions reflect the fortunes made in cotton, sugar, and banking during the antebellum era. First Street, Third Street, and Prytania Street contain the densest concentration of historic homes, and walking these blocks feels like leafing through an architecture textbook — each house competing with its neighbours in scale, ornamentation, and the number of columns deemed necessary to impress visitors.

The best way to experience the Garden District is on foot from the St. Charles Streetcar — get off at Washington Avenue and walk south through the residential streets, ending at Magazine Street for lunch or shopping. Commander's Palace, the Brennan family's celebrated restaurant on the corner of Washington and Coliseum, is the neighbourhood's most famous dining institution and a reasonable excuse to dress up. The live oaks that line St. Charles Avenue are some of the oldest in the city, and their roots have been slowly destroying the sidewalks for over a century with a patient determination that no amount of concrete can defeat.