Coliseum Square Park runs as a single elongated green space bordered by Camp, Coliseum, Melpomene, and Race streets, and the three vantage points below are different corners of that same three-acre stretch. And they’re all worth a visit.
Coliseum Square Park Fountain Perimeter
The fountain at the heart of Coliseum Square Park dates back to an 1895 improvement project that added curbing, two connected fountains, a fish pond, and a series of plastered brick basins to a park originally laid out by French architect Barthélemy Lafon in 1807. Today the basin draws dogs cooling off in the shallow water on hot afternoons just as readily as it draws people content to sit nearby and watch them do it.
Curved benches ring the fountain’s perimeter, positioned to take in both the water and the surrounding canopy of mature live oaks and magnolias. The statue of Margaret Haughery, known locally as the Bread Lady of New Orleans for her charitable work feeding the city’s orphans, stands near this stretch of the park, giving the fountain perimeter a quiet historical weight beyond its function as a place to sit.
The fountain sits roughly centered within Coliseum Square Park, accessible from any of the surrounding streets, with the park open daily from 6am to 10:30pm.
Camp Street Oak Benches
The Camp Street side of the park runs beneath a median path shaded by mature oaks planted as part of the park’s original 19th-century design, when Lafon’s drainage plan called for tree-lined canals along the bordering streets. Joggers and cyclists use this stretch regularly, and the benches positioned along it face directly toward the Italianate and Greek Revival mansions that line Camp Street across from the park.
This is the stretch where the porch-sitting ritual translates most directly from private gallery to public bench. The houses across the street carry the same architectural register the neighborhood is known for, double galleries, ornate ironwork, deep porches built for exactly the kind of unhurried afternoon the park benches facing them now offer to anyone passing through.
The Camp Street side of Coliseum Square Park runs the full length of the park between Melpomene and Race streets.
Race Street Corner
The corner where Race Street meets the park anchors one end of Coliseum Square’s elongated footprint, with Coliseum and Race marking one of the park’s primary entry points. This stretch tends to draw a steadier flow of foot traffic than the interior of the park, partly because it sits along a regular transit route and partly because the corner offers an easy vantage point to take in the park’s full length at once.
The benches near this corner work well for a shorter sit, the kind of stop someone might make on the way to or from Magazine Street rather than a destination unto itself. The view from here takes in both the park’s grassy interior and the residential block facing it, making it one of the more naturally social corners of the park even without any particular feature drawing people to linger.
The Race Street corner of Coliseum Square Park sits at the intersection of Coliseum and Race streets, at the upriver end of the park’s three-block stretch.
