Most of what people call abandoned Louisiana is in and around New Orleans, and most of it has changed since 2023. Some of it is rubble now. Two of the best known sites are occupied buildings with staff inside them.
What is actually there
Six Flags New Orleans, the park that opened as Jazzland and drowned in 2005, is gone. Demolition of 62 structures started in November 2024 and the site was substantially cleared by September 2025. The land belongs to the City of New Orleans and is leased to Bayou Phoenix. It is a fenced construction site with contractors on it daily.
Plaza Tower at 1001 Howard Avenue is still standing and still sealed. It has been empty since a 2002 evacuation over mould and asbestos, and the sidewalks around it have been barricaded for years because glass and facade tile fall off the building. A judge cleared the city to demolish it in January 2025, but as of June 2026 nothing was scheduled and a buyer was working on a 325-unit senior housing conversion.
The Market Street Power Plant on the riverfront is the big derelict that is still open to the weather. It ran from 1905 to 1973 and closed for good in 1984. It is a registered brownfield with documented asbestos, and a trespasser was killed there in July 2022 when a platform collapsed inside.
Two places still listed as abandoned are not. The Dixie Brewing Company on Tulane Avenue was rebuilt between 2016 and 2018 and is now the Southeast Louisiana Veterans Health Care System research building, with offices and 12 wet labs inside. The Touro-Shakspeare Home in Algiers was structurally stabilised in autumn 2025 and is being rebuilt as 52 senior apartments, due to open in November 2026.
What you can and cannot visit
Six Flags, Plaza Tower, the power plant and Touro-Shakspeare are all closed. Each one is either a fenced construction site or a locked building, and entering any of them is trespass that gets prosecuted. Dixie Brewing is a federal medical facility: you can look at the retained Tulane Avenue facade and the silver dome from the street, and that is the whole visit.
The one place with a plausible legal route is Kisatchie High School near Provencal, closed since 1962, on the National Register and the subject of an organised restoration campaign. Ask that group rather than walking in.
On conditions: everything still derelict here is early 20th century construction with asbestos, lead paint and real collapse risk, and the New Orleans sites now sit inside active demolition and construction corridors rather than quiet ruins.
Full state list with check dates: abandoned places in Louisiana.