Louis Armstrong Park opened in 1980 during the administration of Ernest “Dutch” Morial. “Performing at a jam session to commemorate the event were a who’s who of musical greats: Count Basie, Dave Brubeck, Al Hirt, Allen Toussaint, Lionel Hampton, Kid Thomas, the Olympia Brass Band and more,” the Times-Picayune wrote at the time.

In an article in the Summer 1980 edition of the New Orleans Jazz Club publication, “The Second Line,” the editor, Donald Marquis, noted that there were 12,000 people in attendance at the dedication, including Lucille Armstrong, the trumpeter’s widow. Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Dave Brubeck and the Olympia Brass Band all played at the ceremony. But Marquis lamented that, “Somehow, in all of the V.I.P. ceremony, the several thousand ‘little people’ who contributed almost all of the $30,000 for the statue were overlooked. Also noticeably overlooked were the major fundraising efforts of Floyd Levin and the New Orleans Jazz Club of Southern California and our own New Orleans Jazz Club. Although Louis Armstrong knew kings, presidents, millionaires and other V.I.P.’s he was most comfortable with the people who truly loved his music—the real jazz fans of the world.”

Armstrong Park has always had an uneasy relationship with the neighborhood surrounding it. The fence constructed around the park made clear that the facility did not belong to the neighborhood that sacrificed to make it possible. The Treme Community Center and Joseph A. Craig Elementary School, both of which sit adjacent to the park, have no real connection to it. While the park often hosted important gatherings, it never seemed to develop a real identity or focus.

In the late 1990s, the city of New Orleans granted the National Park Service a free, 99-year lease in the hope that the federal agency could make better use of the park space and the buildings within it. The federal government invested $3 million in the park’s buildings, but was never able to develop compelling program to attract visitors. In 2018, the park service returned Armstrong Park to city control.

The park and its facilities were badly damaged in 2005 as a result of the federal levee failures created by Hurricane Katrina. Then-mayor Ray Nagin oversaw the park’s renovation and added a sculpture garden including sculpture depicting jazz musicians, Mardi Gras Indians and Congo Square dancers.

There are four historical buildings located in Armstrong Park, Perseverance Hall No. 4 and “the Kitchen Building,” which were among the few buildings in the footprint of Armstrong Park that were not demolished, and the De Pouilly-Rabassa House, the Reinman House, which were moved to the site from other locations.

Perseverance Hall #4 was built roughly two centuries ago and is the oldest masonic building in Louisiana. Since 1973, it has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Creole jazz bands reportedly played for black and white audiences. Various organizations, both black and white, rented Perseverance Hall for dances, concerts, Monday night banquets, and recitals.

From 1984 until 2005, the Kitchen Building served as the studio for WWOZ. 90.7 FM, the community radio station. In an interview for 64Parishes.org, David Freedman, the station’s long time general manager explained, “The building we were in was called the Kitchen Building because it served as the commissary for the adjacent Perseverance Hall. Well, operationally it was a dream, and it was a nightmare. A dream because it was the center of the Treme universe, and everybody poured in, and we were in this paradisiacal park, which was just a drop-dead gorgeous place to be. Operationally it was a nightmare. First of all, like all of our spaces we’ve ever had, it was way too small. It was only three rooms, to run a radio station from. And we had hundreds of volunteers and hundreds of people streaming through there, artists, guests, and so forth. Also the security was just dreadful. We were in an isolated section, where at one point the gate was locked behind us and the only way to get out was to go clear across the park.”

 “Big D” Dennis Schaibly, a WWOZ host recalled in the same article, “There were things that happened in the Treehouse that never could happen any other place. Best example: we were having a pledge drive show in 2004. It’s Tuesday and we’re talking about Snooks [Eaglin, legendary guitarist] coming in for Billy Delle’s show on Wednesday night. And he’s gonna be in the studio, and all the people want to be there. And literally we’re sitting outside the front door and we said “Why don’t we just throw a big party out here in the courtyard?” And we got on the phone, we got a group called the Brotherhood of Groove to come and be the house band, and we set the whole program out on the back porch of the family house next door. And Snooks came and played, Eddie Bo came and played. George Porter was there. Glen David Andrews, John Boutte came and sang, and it was just a big party. People brought food and it was just a big neighborhood gathering.”

The Rabassa-De Pouilly House, a raised Creole cottage was the residence of New Orleans architect and Treme resident J. N. B. de Pouilly, who worked on the expansion and renovation of the St. Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square. Jean Louis Rabassa built it in 1825. It is the one of the only existing records within New Orleans of the creole cottage wherein the rez de chausée, or main level, is raised eight feet on brick piers.

The Reinman House, which dates back to the 1880s, was relocated from 618 S. Gayoso Street to the park in the 1970s. It once served as the office for the park manager. Though designed to resemble a historic building, the Firehouse was built in the 1980s.

In 2022, the Preservation Resource Center paid to stabilize the buildings, which had been badly damaged by Hurricane Ida the year before.

In 2010, as part of the post Hurricane Katrina renovation of Armstrong Park, then mayor Ray Nagin commissioned the Roots of Music Cultural Sculptor Garden as a visible tribute to the city’s culture history .

Adewálé Adénlé created a metal bas-relief depiction of the dance that took place in Congo Square.Steve Kline created “French Opera House,” an abstract tribute to the performance facility of the same name that stood at the corner of Bourbon and Toulouse street from 1859 until it was destroyed by fire in 1919. Sheleen Jones sculpted a statue of Allison “Tootie” Montana, the late big chief of the Yellow Pocahontas gang of Mardi Gras Indians. She also sculpted a procession of musicians depicting a second line parade. Kimberly Dummons paid tribute to the seminal trumpeter Charles “Buddy” Bolden in a sculpture that portrays him in three different positions simultaneously.

While there is general agreement that Armstrong Park and the buildings within it have never been utilized to their fullest potential, there has never been a consensus on how best to exploit the facility. Mayor LaToya Cantrell resurrected a 150-year-old idea that City Hall should be housed in Congo Square. The idea was met with stiff community opposition in the streets and in print. Ultimately Mayor Cantrell charged city residents with the task of developing alternative uses for the site. While several ideas have been proposed, the future of the park and its facilities remain in limbo.