New Orleans, Louisiana Map 1764 City Plan - New Orleans, Place d'Armes, Mississippi River

Jacques Nicolas Bellin, appointed Hydrographer to the French Navy at just eighteen and later the first Ingenieur de la Marine of France's Hydrographic Office, produced this important early plan of New Orleans, first issued in Xavier Charlevoix's Histoire de la Nouvelle France. This second state of the map, distinguishable from the first by changes to its title placement and engraving credit, is one of the few surviving printed plans of the city to predate the Great New Orleans Fire of 1788. Bellin set an exceptionally high standard of accuracy during his decades as Official Hydrographer of the French King, producing sea atlases including the Neptune Francois and the Atlas Maritime that were copied across Europe well into the following century. This plan captures New Orleans only a few decades after its 1718 founding by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville under the French Mississippi Company, when the colonial port was still a young but rapidly organizing settlement.

The city's centerpiece, Place d'Armes, now Jackson Square, appears here as the spacious public square built for military parades, markets and public gatherings, a role it retained even as the city grew around it. A detailed key names eighteen individual places, including the parish church served by the Capuchins, now the site of St. Louis Cathedral, the Ursuline convent that established one of North America's first Catholic schools for girls, and colonial government buildings such as the Intendance and the royal warehouses. New Orleans was laid out on a rigorously planned grid system, a rarity among settlements of its era, reflecting the French Mississippi Company's ambitions for the port even in its earliest years. Baton Rouge, later Louisiana's capital, and Natchitoches, the state's oldest permanent European settlement, both anchor the wider Louisiana territory this New Orleans plan sits within.

This rare early plan makes a meaningful gift for a Louisiana family with roots reaching back to the French colonial period, or for a New Orleans transplant drawn to the city's earliest documented street grid. Surviving printed plans of New Orleans from before the 1788 fire are genuinely scarce, giving this sheet a documentary significance well beyond its decorative appeal. It's supplied unframed and available across our full range of sizes, from a small desk print to a large-format piece for a bigger wall.