Armstrong Park Redivivus

Terry's ties to the city have been more spiritual than personal, but his admiration for a New Orleans hero led almost a decade ago to one of the most important gestures of his life. A few blocks from the Super Dome a monument to Louis Armstrong is nearing completion. It might very well not have been built without Terry's inspiration. 

New Orleans's Armstrong Park has been a project of the administration of former mayor Moon Landrieu, who deserves full credit for paying tangible tribute to the city's greatest artist. But impetus for the idea came in 1969 on a bus ride during the second New Orleans Jazzfest. As a musicians' tour was passing Jane Alley, Armstrong's birthplace, Terry deplored that fact that while New Olreans seemed to have statues of half the Latin American presidents in history, there were none of the city's most famous son. Then and there, he started a fund to commission a statue. His first dollar was symbolic. His organizing ability and leadership were much more. Nine years later, that statue is on the verge of becoming the centerpiece of an entire park dedicated to Armstrong's memory. The park's completion slowed in the six-month transition period between Landrieu's administration and that of Mayor Ernest Morial. But assuming that Morial, the city's first black mayor, gets behind the project, Armstrong Park should be the New Orleans equivalent of Copenhagen's celebrated Tivoli Gardens and open by 1980.

Landrieu (then U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development), Morial and Armstrong's wife Lucille dedicated Armstrong Park on April 15, 1980, nine years after Armstrong's death. It has a long way to go to become the Tivoli Gardens of America, but the developments Blumenfeld describes give hope that it will blossom despite the city's setbacks.