Goldring Woldenberg Riverfront Park
Goldring Woldenberg Riverfront Park reimagines one of the last working stretches of the New Orleans downtown riverfront as public space—an elevated park on an existing wharf structure that reconnects New Orleans to the water, stitches together historic neighborhoods, and creates a new economic and cultural heart at the edge of the French Quarter.
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Historic wharf conditions as a working maritime port
Historic Wharf Conditions
At the turn of the century, New Orleans riverfront wharves were the city’s front door—a dense working landscape where cotton, hides, grain, and other cargo moved between steamships, rail lines, warehouses, and global markets.
Modern Conditions
By 2009, Governor Nicholls Wharf was already underutilized, reflecting broader shifts in maritime trade and the changing infrastructure demands of modern shipping. But its formal transition out of Port cargo use didn't occur until late 2017, when Port NOLA approved transferring the wharf to the City of New Orleans for conversion into public park space.
The remnants of the industrial wharf immediately before construction.
The phases of completed & planned projects within the Reinventing the Crescent Plan.
Completing the Vision
As part of Audubon Nature Institute’s “Riverfront for All” initiative, the project is the next major chapter of the Reinventing the Crescent master plan – the post-Katrina framework by Hargreaves Jones, TEN Arquitectos, Chan Krieger and EskewDumezRipple that proposed transforming the riverfront from industrial, maritime use into accessible public space.
A site plan developed by landscape architect partner, Hargreaves Jones, late in design
The mandate was simple yet ambitious: add green space along the river and transform a once-industrial edge into an accessible, flexible, and ecologically rich public park. Designed for both everyday use and large community gatherings, the landscape introduces a continuous ribbon of green along the Mississippi. A tree-lined shaded promenade traces the river’s edge, connecting a great lawn, marsh-inspired play grove, Esplanade plaza/gateway, habitat gardens, seating terraces, concessions, and quiet overlooks—always keeping the river in view.
Goldring Woldenberg Riverfront Park was shaped as much by process as by design. From the outset, the project was actively programmed and refined through a robust, multiplatform community engagement effort that included in-person town halls, digital forums, and ongoing dialogue with residents, cultural leaders, and adjacent neighborhoods..
Community feedback directly influenced how the park balances active and contemplative spaces, where performance areas should be located, how circulation should work, and even granular considerations like seating quantity, placement and shade. The resulting design is not an imposed vision - it is a collective one, grounded in what New Orleanians said they needed from their parks and waterfront.
Project Manager Haley Robinson leading a feedback session for initial plans, 2023
Playground elements with a local Louisiana wildlife theme
At the heart of the project, a portion of the former industrial maritime warehouse at Governor Nicholls St. is preserved and reimagined as an open-air pavilion—a flexible frame for the city’s evolving cultural life. The design intervention retains the muscular steel structure and industrial vocabulary of the wharf while opening the building to light, landscape, and public use. A perforated membrane acts as a scrim to filter daylight and, at night, transforms into a translucent, glowing presence.
Reclaiming the Riverfront
Goldring Woldenberg Riverfront Park positions New Orleans within a broader national movement. Across the country, great American cities – New York, Chicago, Detroit, Seattle – have spent recent decades reclaiming their waterfronts as cultural stages, ecological corridors, and economic engines. Goldring Woldenberg Riverfront Park completes a long-imagined front porch to the Mississippi—transforming a guarded industrial edge into a shared public place where infrastructure becomes public life, heritage and ecology coexist, and New Orleans can once again experience the river up close, with curiosity, openness, and care.
