Gilbert Academy returned to New Orleans, achieved accreditation by the Southern Association of Secondary Schools and Colleges, and graduated many notable students until it closed in 1949.

Nathaniel P. Banks, the Gulf Department's second commander, appropriated the vacant mansion of Confederate exile Pierre Soulé on Esplanade Avenue to house the Colored Orphans Home in 1863.

She fundraised tirelessly, holding concerts and fairs at the Soulé mansion itself and touring the country to raise money until her death from yellow fever in New Orleans in 1867.

[2] Banks himself assisted in raising money for the orphanage, as evidenced by his name appearing on the imprint of cartes de visit sold on behalf of the institution.

The Freedmans Bureau, a government agency created in 1865, transferred the children in 1866 to a Marine Hospital being built to replace one destroyed by explosion in 1861.

A combination of private donations and public funds enabled supporters to purchase a former sugar plantation 104 miles west of New Orleans.

Originally rural, improvements to the St. Charles Streetcar Line made the Uptown neighborhood more accessible and one of the most desirable places to live in the city.

In the 1910s, two African-American universities in the Uptown area left or closed, their land purchased to build homes for the white population wanting to live there.

Margaret Davis Bowen became the Academy's principal about 1935;[14] Marjorie Lee Brown was a mathematics teacher there for a short time; Joseph Henry Reason a language instructor.