NEW ORLEANS FOR CHILDREN - Monuments, Parks, Outdoors

CITY PARK

City Park encompasses 1,500 acres from the tip of Esplanade Avenue, where the New Orleans Museum of Art sits, all the way to the lakefront. Its 250 ancient live oaks make up one of the largest concentrations of the trees in the world. The park is full of attractions including a 72-hole golf course, Bayou Oaks, an athletic stadium that hosted the 1992 U.S. Olympic Track and Field trials, tennis courts, athletic fields, horse stables, the New Orleans Botanical Gardens, the new Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden and more. There are plenty of places to park and enjoy a walk through the park or just a patch of grass to lay out and relax. The Casino building just behind the art museum offers refreshments.

The park was originally the Allard plantation, purchased in 1845 by John McDonogh, a noted philanthropist. Many New Orleans public schools still bear his name. He donated the land to the city in 1850 and eventually it became the largest public park. During Reconstruction it was a favored dueling spot until that was outlawed. The park saw major development during the Depression under Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration. Artists like Enrique Alfarez were hired to beautify the park. His many statues still adorn various areas. Even the cement bridges bear his relief work.

LONGUE VUE HOUSE AND GARDENS

The Longue View home, at the edge of the city, was built for Edgar and Edith Stern. The two filled it with antiques, classical and contemporary art, and it is now open to the public for tours. Surrounding the home are eight acres of gardens done in different styles from the highly sculpted and geometrical brick and fountain lined Alhambra Generalife Gardens in Spain to a winding path through some of Louisiana's indigenous plants and trees.

Longue Vue also added a Children's Discovery Garden in recent years. The hands-on garden has regular programming for kids of all ages featuring everything from how to plant flowers to using garden fruits and vegetables.

We offer a tourr of the Longue-Vue in our City & Cemetery Tour

NEW ORLEANS ZEPHYRS

It wouldn't be summer without baseball. New Orleans roots for the Zephyrs, a triple A team affiliated with the Houston Astros. The team has won the Pacific Coast League title twice in the last ten years. The Zephyrs play at a state of the art park on Airline Highway, complete with a pool and hot tubs, which can be reserved. Most games start at 7 pm.

STORYLAND

Climb aboard Captain Hook's pirate ship, journey with Pinocchio into the mouth of a whale or scamper up Jack & Jill's Hill in City Park's Storyland, a charming fairytale theme park adjacent to City Park's Carousel Gardens and the New Orleans Botanical Garden.

Brimming with 26 larger-than-life storybook exhibits, this storybook fantasy play area is inhabited by sculpted characters created by New Orleans' finest Mardi Gras float makers. Little visitors delight in "fishing" in the Little Mermaid's Pond and attending regularly scheduled shows offered by the Storyland Players at the Puppet Castle, presided over by Rapunzel.

CAROUSEL GARDENS AMUSEMENT AREA

Since 1906 little kids and kids at heart have enjoyed the "flying horses" of City Park's antique carousel, one of only 100 antique wooden carousels in the country and the last one in Louisiana. The carousel, featuring the masterwork of famed carousel carvers Looff and Carmel, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and its renovation garnered national attention and praise from the National Historic Preservation Society.

Other rides to keep you twisting, turning, whirling and twirling within the live oaks of the Hines Carousel Gardens include a Ferris wheel, mini Ferris wheel, bumper cars, antique cars, helicopter ride, bumper cars, tilt-a-whirl, Tornado, 40-foot fun slide, umbrella cars, Friends Castle, Live Oak Lady Bug roller coaster and two miniature trains that tour the park.