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Garden District, New Orleans — Area Guide & Where to Stay
The Garden District is a historic residential neighborhood of New Orleans, laid out in the nineteenth century between St. Charles Avenue and Magazine Street. It is known for block after block of large antebellum and Victorian mansions set behind cast-iron fences and old live oaks. Grand houses define it. The George Washington Cable House and the Simon Hernsheim House survive among them, and the St. Charles Avenue streetcar still runs along its inland edge.
About Garden District
Where to stay in Garden District
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The Garden District is mostly private homes, so beds here are fewer than in downtown New Orleans. Lodging runs to small guesthouses and a few boutique hotels along St. Charles Avenue, where the streetcar carries you to the Central Business District and the French Quarter. The appeal here is quiet.
Visitors who want a walkable base among historic architecture, within reach of the mansions and the shops of Magazine Street, will settle in well here. For a wider choice of rooms, look to the neighboring Lower Garden District or the city center.
About Garden District
What are the main landmarks in Garden District?
The district's best-known sights are its houses. The George Washington Cable House, which recalls the writer of that name, and the Simon Hernsheim House on St. Charles Avenue rank among the grandest, alongside the Bullitt-Longenecker House. At the Magazine Street edge, in the Irish Channel, stand two nineteenth-century Catholic churches, Saint Alphonsus Church and St. Mary's Assumption Church.
Toward the river and downtown lie larger institutions, including the National World War II Museum, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and Confederate Memorial Hall.
What is the history of Garden District?
The Garden District took shape in the nineteenth century on land that belonged to the separate City of Lafayette, which New Orleans absorbed in 1852. Wealthy American newcomers, arriving after the Louisiana Purchase, built here rather than in the older French and Spanish Vieux Carre downriver. They favored houses set within gardens.
That pattern of green lots gave the neighborhood its name, and many of the widest parcels were later divided as the area filled in. The George Washington Cable House survives from that era, tied to the New Orleans writer who lived there.
Where is Garden District?
The neighborhood runs uptown of central New Orleans. Its long sides are St. Charles Avenue, on the inland edge, and Magazine Street toward the Mississippi River, while Jackson Avenue and Louisiana Avenue close the downriver and upriver ends. Cross Jackson Avenue and you reach the Lower Garden District; step across Magazine Street toward the river and you enter the Irish Channel.
Central City lies just inland, and Uptown continues past Louisiana Avenue.
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Updated July 2026