Margaret Place and the Margaret Haughery Monument
Why is it significant?
Stand before the touching seated marble statue in Margaret Place, where Camp and Prytania Streets converge.
Key Facts
| Place | Margaret Place and the Margaret Haughery Monument |
|---|---|
| Address | Camp St & Prytania St, New Orleans, LA 70130, United States |
| Geo Coordinates | 29.92680, -90.08720 |
| Part of Walk | Garden District, Antebellum Mansions and St. Charles Streetcar: New Orleans' Gilded Avenues |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand before the touching seated marble statue in Margaret Place, where Camp and Prytania Streets converge. Unveiled on July 9, 1884, this poignant monument holds a momentous milestone in American civic history: it is officially the very first publicly funded monument erected in the United States to honor a woman, as well as only the second statue honoring a woman in world history.
The statue honors Margaret Haughery, beloved throughout New Orleans as the "Angel of the Delta" and the "Mother of the Orphans." Born to impoverished Irish immigrant parents in 1813, Margaret lost her parents to yellow fever in childhood, and later lost her husband and infant daughter to illness, leaving her alone and illiterate in a foreign city.
Working initially as a humble hotel laundress, Margaret began delivering milk from a hand-pulled cart before purchasing a small bakery. Through sheer grit and business acumen, she built the first steam-powered bakery in the South, producing thousands of loaves of bread and crackers daily. Despite amassing a fortune, Margaret lived in extreme personal simplicity, wearing a plain calico dress and shawl, while giving away virtually every dollar she earned to build, fund, and supply orphanages, schools, and asylums across New Orleans without regard to race or religion. When yellow fever epidemics swept the city, Margaret walked through plague wards with food and medicine; during Civil War food shortages, her bread wagons fed starving citizens regardless of their political allegiances.
Carved from Carrara marble by sculptor Alexander Doyle, the statue shows Margaret seated in her plain dress, with one arm protectively embracing an orphan child. When she died in 1882, the entire city wept; thousands attended her state funeral, led by the governor and mayor.
Walk southwest along Prytania Street toward the historic shopping landmark of The Rink.