City Park Layover: New Orleans Museum of Art
Part of the full New Orleans Layover: French Quarter From MSY
City Park in New Orleans runs to 1,300 acres of live oaks with the New Orleans Museum of Art and a free sculpture garden at one end of it, a 1907 colonnade on the lagoon and an 1897 carousel still turning under a wooden pavilion.
The 1911 Beaux-Arts front of the New Orleans Museum of Art
Isaac Delgado, a sugar broker, put up the money for a museum in 1910 and it opened the following year as a single Beaux-Arts block at the head of Lelong Avenue: a pale stone portico of Ionic columns with low wings either side, facing a formal approach across the park. Four expansions since have taken it to 46 galleries without touching that front. The collection runs heavily to French and American painting, Japanese prints, and one of the better holdings of art from the American South, and there is a lot of Louisiana in it that you will not see anywhere else.
Doors open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm, with Friday running on to 9pm. Adult admission is around $15, Louisiana residents get in free on Wednesdays, and 13- to 19-year-olds are free every day. If a half-hour streetcar ride each way does not fit the day, a three-hour city bus tour bookable through a tours and activities platform takes City Park in alongside the older neighbourhoods and one of the above-ground cemeteries.
The sculpture garden next door is the part worth knowing about even if the museum is shut. It costs nothing, holds work by something like 59 artists across lawns, ponds and stands of oak, and opens at 10am every day, closing at 6pm from April through October and at 5pm through the winter.
The carousel and the Peristyle inside City Park
The roundabout inside the Carousel Gardens enclosure started turning in 1897, pulled by a mule, and was given a motor in 1906; it has been going under the same wooden pavilion ever since, and the pair of them are listed together on the National Register of Historic Places. New Orleans calls it the Flying Horses.
Around it sits a small amusement park of seventeen rides and a couple of cafés, gated and charged separately from the park: $27 for anyone 36 inches and over, $17 for a chaperone, $14 for seniors, and nothing at all for children under 36 inches. Opening hours are seasonal and shorter than the park’s, so the gate schedule is the thing to check rather than assuming it is open because the park is.
Built in 1907 on the bank of the lagoon, the Peristyle is an open platform ringed by Ionic columns, with four concrete lions at the steps and nothing enclosing it: a dance pavilion that has spent a century being used for picnics, weddings and shade. Nothing is charged to walk up the steps and nothing closes it at night.
The trees are the other reason to come out this far. City Park holds the world’s largest collection of mature live oaks, some of them over 600 years old, which is old enough to predate the city by a comfortable margin, and they are hung with Spanish moss along most of the lagoon paths. Near where Dueling Oaks Drive meets Dreyfous Drive stands the survivor of the two trees under which nineteenth-century New Orleans settled its arguments; a hurricane took the other one down in 1949.
Getting here is half an hour of streetcar each way, so any minute spent wrangling a suitcase at either end of that ride is a minute paid twice.
Nothing runs direct from City Park to the airport
The 202 Airport Express, the only public transit to Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY), starts from Poydras Street and the Union Passenger Terminal downtown, so from the park it is a streetcar back down Canal Street first and then the bus, at $1.25 for each leg. The bus run itself is about 40 minutes and departures are 70 to 90 minutes apart, which means the whole chain wants three and a half hours before departure to be comfortable.
A taxi straight from the park avoids the transfer; the ordinance fare of $36 covers the Central Business District and the French Quarter, so agree the price from this end before setting off. If you have four hours rather than six, the French Quarter walk is closer to both the bus stops and the airport road, and City Park is the piece to save for a longer gap.
Frequently asked questions
What should I do during a layover at City Park in New Orleans?
Treat the museum and the ground around it as the whole trip. The New Orleans Museum of Art holds 46 galleries in a 1911 Beaux-Arts building at the head of Lelong Avenue, and the sculpture garden beside it costs nothing to walk into at any time of year. Outside those, the park is 1,300 acres of live oaks with the 1907 Peristyle colonnade on the lagoon and an 1897 carousel still turning under its pavilion. Four hours is a comfortable fit; only the amusement park and the museum ask for money.
How do you reach City Park from central New Orleans?
A streetcar runs out along Canal Street and turns up to the park's Esplanade Avenue entrance, roughly half an hour from the river end of Canal. A single ride is $1.25 in exact change or $3 for a day pass through the transit app, and the stop puts you a few minutes' walk from the museum steps. Allow the same coming back, which is the thing that decides whether this trip fits your afternoon.
Is the sculpture garden at City Park free?
Yes, always, which makes it the best-value hour in this part of the city. The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden sits immediately beside the museum and holds work by around 59 artists across its lawns and ponds. It opens at 10am daily and closes at 6pm from April to October, 5pm from October to March. Museum admission is separate, around $15 for adults, with free entry on Wednesdays for Louisiana residents.
Does City Park work with a toddler?
Better than most of New Orleans does. Carousel Gardens is an enclosed amusement park with seventeen rides built around the 1897 carousel, and children under 36 inches tall get in free while everyone taller pays $27, so a small child effectively rides on a chaperone's ticket at $17. The ground throughout the park is flat, grassy and mostly shaded, and the lagoon paths take a pushchair without complaint. Check the gate hours before you set out, because the amusement park keeps shorter and more seasonal hours than the park around it.