Gazebo in Audubon Park
This print is of a very familiar scene in Audubon Park in New Orleans. Audubon Park, across from the campuses of both Tulane and Loyola University in New Orleans, has a rich history preceding and through the American Civil War. In 1884 it was the site of a World’s Fair — “the World Cotton Centennial.” It is the site of the popular “Monkey Hill,” a man-made hill “built by the WPA in the 1930s from excavated dirt to show kids what a hill looks like.”
For much of his life Byron lived in walking distance from Audubon Park. Of the hundreds of drawings and sketches he made of scenes of Audubon Park, perhaps the most endearing is his account in his “Memory Sketches” series, a collection now in the possession of The Historic New Orleans Collection. The image below shows what he recounts of the park — with close-ups which are more legible. Note the gazebo is from a very early recollection . . .
The images below are created from the above . . . but are a bit easier to read.
