Audubon Park (New Orleans)

Audubon Park (historically French: Plantation de Boré) is a city park located in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the United States. It is approximately 350 acres. The park is approximately six miles to the west of the city center of New Orleans and sits on land that was purchased by the city in 1871. It is bordered on one side by the Mississippi River and on the other by St. Charles Avenue, directly across from Tulane University and Loyola University. The park is named in honor of artist and naturalist John James Audubon, who began living in New Orleans in 1821.

The land now housing the park was a plantation in the colonial and early statehood days. It was used by both the Confederate and the Union armies in the American Civil War, and as a staging area for the Buffalo Soldiers. At the time of its establishment it was the last large undeveloped parcel of what was to become uptown New Orleans. The area was annexed by the City of New Orleans, along with the surrounding communities of Jefferson City and Greenville in 1870, and the following year the city purchased the land.

Use as an urban park was intended from the start, with "Upper City Park" originally selected as a name to distinguish the park from City Park, but few improvements occurred in the first decade. The nascent park accommodated a World's Fair soon thereafter, the World Cotton Centennial of 1884. After the closing of the fair, the park's development began in earnest. Most of the fair's buildings were demolished, with the exception of Horticultural Hall - which remained in the park until destroyed in the 1915 New Orleans hurricane. The only notable reminder of the fair to remain in the park in the 21st century is a large iron ore rock from the Alabama State exhibit (which in local lore has often been misidentified as a meteorite). Audubon Park's present form largely follows a design drafted by John Charles Olmsted, a principal of the renowned Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture practice.

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