Audubon Park

Audubon Park sits in historic uptown New Orleans at 6500 Magazine Street and is open to the public every day from 5AM to 10PM. Audubon Nature Institute manages it on behalf of the Audubon Commission, an independent public agency whose members are appointed by the Mayor of New Orleans, and the park covers every space from the Mississippi River to St. Charles Avenue, bordered by Exposition Boulevard and Walnut Street. For more than a century people have used it as an urban oasis of ancient live oak groves, a 1.8-mile jogging path, a picturesque lagoon, shaded picnic pavilions and playgrounds. It also holds tennis courts, riding stables, soccer fields, the Whitney Young Pool, Audubon Park Golf Course and Audubon Park Clubhouse, and Audubon Zoo sits inside the park boundary as a separate ticketed attraction. Accessibility is where the park's own pages go quiet. Audubon Nature Institute publishes an Accessibility and Inclusion page, but it covers only Audubon Zoo and Audubon Aquarium and Insectarium; Audubon Park has no entry on it and no accessibility page of its own, and there is no park directions, parking or FAQ page either. What the park does publish is concrete and useful: parking in the Audubon Zoo lot, the Magazine Street lot and on adjacent streets, public restrooms at Pavilions 10, 11 and 12, a paved 1.8-mile loop with five exercise stations plus a softer multi-use dirt path, and the Walnut Street Playground, described as designed for children and adults of all abilities with accessible equipment. Audubon Security answers 24 hours on (504) 628-3988, and eight emergency call boxes are placed throughout the parks. What it never describes is an entrance, a ramp, a path surface, a wheelchair loan or whether any restroom is accessible.