Higgins Memorial Pavilion and Liberty Canopy

Why is it significant?

Look up at the monumental, soaring white steel structure overhead: this is the Bollinger Canopy of Peace, the dramatic crowning architectural triumph of The National WWII Museum campus.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Look up at the monumental, soaring white steel structure overhead: this is the Bollinger Canopy of Peace, the dramatic crowning architectural triumph of The National WWII Museum campus. Completed in 2022 to designs by the internationally acclaimed architectural firm Voorsanger Mathes, this breathtaking steel lattice canopy rises one hundred and forty-eight feet above street level, spanning nearly five hundred feet across the urban campus to unify the museum pavilions into a cohesive architectural campus.

Look at the soaring geometry: engineered with over twelve hundred tons of structural steel clad in Teflon-coated fiberglass fabric, the canopy mimics the sweeping aerodynamic lines of an aircraft wing, illuminated at night with vibrant patriotic LED lighting.

Across the street stands The Higgins Hotel and Conference Center, an elegant Art Deco-inspired hotel operated directly by the museum, named in honor of Andrew Jackson Higgins. The hotel interior is decorated with museum-quality wartime artifacts, photography, and original 1940s propaganda posters, providing visiting veterans, military historians, and travelers with an immersive period experience. Below the canopy runs the Founders Plaza, where engraved commemorative granite pavers honor individual soldiers, nurses, codebreakers, and shipyard riveters who served the nation. Looking northward, the historic brick warehouses of the nineteenth-century cotton and sugar district frame the soaring white steel arch, creating a stunning visual contrast between early American mercantile brickwork and twenty-first-century aerospace engineering. The canopy open-air design allows river breezes to circulate freely across the pedestrian plaza, providing cooling shade for museum visitors during warm summer afternoons.

Gazing upward into the soaring white canopy against the Louisiana sky, the sheer scale and architectural daring of the structure are inspiring. It stands as a monument to human freedom, national unity, and the enduring quest for global peace.

Walk east along Saint Joseph Street toward the historic brick cotton mills of Fulton Street.