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The entrance to Louis Armstrong Park, opposite the French Quarter in New Orleans. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.

New Orleans’ Louis Armstrong Park is back in tune

Tom Hoepf
Tom Hoepf
The entrance to Louis Armstrong Park, opposite the French Quarter in New Orleans. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.
The entrance to Louis Armstrong Park, opposite the French Quarter in New Orleans. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – With a brass band playing and city leaders looking on, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu reopened historic Armstrong Park.

Friday’s opening followed a bungled effort to refurbish the park on the edge of the city’s Treme neighborhood by the Nagin administration. Landrieu ordered the work stopped after the contractor’s crews cracked part of the park’s beloved namesake statue of Louis Armstrong, separating the trumpeter’s left shoe from the statue’s base.

Several sculptures in the “Roots of Music” Cultural Sculpture Garden also were unveiled.

The park, the original site for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, sits on 30 acres and includes the Mahalia Jackson Theatre for the Performing Arts and Congo Square.

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-11-19-11 0904GMT

ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

The entrance to Louis Armstrong Park, opposite the French Quarter in New Orleans. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.
The entrance to Louis Armstrong Park, opposite the French Quarter in New Orleans. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.