Buildings and architecture of New Orleans

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Colorful architecture in New Orleans, both old and new Chartres str.jpg
Colorful architecture in New Orleans, both old and new

The buildings and architecture of New Orleans reflect its history and multicultural heritage, from Creole cottages to historic mansions on St. Charles Avenue, from the balconies of the French Quarter to an Egyptian Revival U.S. Customs building and a rare example of a Moorish revival church.

Contents

The city has fine examples of almost every architectural style, from the baroque Cabildo to modernist skyscrapers.

Domestic architectural styles

Creole cottage

Creole cottages are scattered throughout the city of New Orleans, with most being built between 1790 and 1850. The majority of these cottages are found in the French Quarter, the surrounding areas of Faubourg Marigny, the Bywater, and Esplanade Ridge. Creole cottages are 1½-story, set at ground level. They have a steeply pitched roof, with a symmetrical four-opening façade wall and a wood or stucco exterior. They are usually set close to the property line. [1] [2]

American townhouse

American townhouses with multi-level service wings at the rear Conti Street, French Quarter, New Orleans, May 2019 10.jpg
American townhouses with multi-level service wings at the rear

Many buildings in the American townhouse style were built from 1820 to 1850 and can be found in the Central Business District and Lower Garden District. American townhouses are narrow, three-story structures made of stucco or brick. An asymmetrical arrangement of the façade with a balcony on the second floor sits close to the property line. [3] [2]

Creole townhouse

Creole townhouse with an arched carriageway (rightmost) instead of a front entrance Bourbon Street under reconstruction New Orleans 28th Jan 2019 16.jpg
Creole townhouse with an arched carriageway (rightmost) instead of a front entrance

Creole townhouses are perhaps the most iconic pieces of architecture in the city of New Orleans, comprising a large portion of the French Quarter and the neighboring Faubourg Marigny. Creole townhouses were built after the Great New Orleans Fire (1788), until the mid-19th century. The prior wooden buildings were replaced with structures with courtyards, thick walls, arcades, and cast-iron balconies. The façade of the building sits on the property line, with an asymmetrical arrangement of arched openings. Creole townhouses have a steeply-pitched roof with parapets, side-gabled, with several roof dormers and strongly show their French and Spanish influence. The exterior is made of brick or stucco. [4] [2]

Shotgun house

The shotgun house is a narrow domestic residence with doors at each end. This style of architecture developed in New Orleans and is the city's predominant house type. The earliest extant New Orleans shotgun house, at 937 St. Andrews St., was built in 1848.[ citation needed ] Typically, shotgun houses are one-story, narrow rectangular homes raised on brick piers. Most have a narrow porch covered by a roof apron that is supported by columns and brackets, which are often ornamented with lacy Victorian motifs. Many variations of the shotgun house exist, including double shotguns (essentially a duplex); camel-back house, also called humpback, with a partial second floor on the end of the house; double-width shotgun, a single house twice the width of a normal shotgun; and "North shore" houses, with wide verandas on both sides, built north of Lake Pontchartrain in St. Tammany Parish. [5] [2]

Double-gallery houses on Esplanade Avenue EsplanadeThreeHouses.jpg
Double-gallery houses on Esplanade Avenue

Double-gallery houses were built in New Orleans between 1820 and 1850. Double-gallery houses are two-story houses with a side-gabled or hipped roof. The house is set back from the property line, and it has a covered two-story gallery which is framed and supported by columns supporting the entablature.

The façade has an asymmetrical arrangement of its openings. These homes were built as a variation on the American townhouses built in the Garden District, Uptown, and Esplanade Ridge, areas which in the 19th century were thought of as suburbs. [3]

California-style bungalow house

California bungalow houses were built from the early-to-mid-20th century in neighborhoods such as Mid-City, Gentilly Terrace, Broadmoor, and scattered throughout older neighborhoods as in-fill. California bungalows are noted for their low-slung appearance, being more horizontal than vertical. The exterior is often wood siding, with a brick, stucco, or stone porch with flared columns and roof overhang. Bungalows are one or one-and-a-half-story houses, with sloping roofs and eaves showing unenclosed rafters. They typically feature a gable (or an attic vent designed to look like a gable) over the main portion of the house.

New Orleans neighborhoods

French Quarter

"Madame John's Legacy" was built just after the great fire of 1788, in the older, French colonial style. MadamJohnsLegacyLakeward1.jpg
"Madame John's Legacy" was built just after the great fire of 1788, in the older, French colonial style.

Due to refurbishings in the Victorian style after the Louisiana Purchase, only a handful of buildings in the French Quarter preserve their original colonial French or Spanish architectural styles, concentrated mainly around the cathedral and Chartres Street. Most of the 2,900 buildings in the Quarter are either of "second generation" Creole or Greek revival styles. Fires in 1788 and 1794 destroyed most of the original French colonial buildings, that is, "first generation" Creole. They were generally raised homes with wooden galleries, the only extant example being Madame John's Legacy at 632 Dumaine Street, built during the Spanish period in 1788. The Ursuline Convent (1745–1752) is the last intact example of French colonial architecture. Of the structures built during the French or Spanish colonial eras, only some 25 survive to this day (including the Cabildo and the Presbytère), in a mixture of colonial Spanish and neo-classical styles.

Following the two great fires of New Orleans in the late 18th century, Spanish administrators enforced strict building codes, requiring strong brick construction and thick fire proof walls between adjoining buildings to avoid another city fire and to resist hurricanes but the Spanish did not directly influence much of the Quarter's architecture. Spanish influence came indirectly in the form of Creole style, a mixture of French and Spanish architecture with some elements from the Caribbean.

Two-thirds of the French Quarter structures date from the first half of the 19th century, the most prolific decade being the 1820s, when the city was growing at an amazing rate. Records show that not a single Spanish architect was operating in the city by that time; only French and American were, the latter gradually replacing the former as Creole style was being replaced by Greek revival architecture in the 1830s and 1840s.

From its south end to the intersection with Claiborne Avenue, Canal Street is extremely dense with buildings. Each building, being no larger than half a New Orleans block, has a notably intricate façade. All of these buildings contrast each other in style, from Greek revival, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco, to Renaissance Colonial, and one of Gothic architecture. Also there is Post-modern, Mid-century modern, Streamline Moderne, and other types of 20th-century architecture. However, most of these buildings have lost their original interiors because of hurricane damage and business renovations.

Jackson Square took its current form in the 1850s: the Cathedral was redesigned, mansard rooftops were added to the Cabildo and to the Presbytère, and the Pontalba apartments were built on the sides of the square, adorned with ironwork balconies. The popularity of wrought iron or cast iron balconies in New Orleans began during this period.

St. Charles Avenue

Mansion on St. Charles Avenue StChasJan07HouseB2.jpg
Mansion on St. Charles Avenue

St. Charles Avenue is famed for its large collection of Southern mansions in many styles of architecture, including Greek Revival, Colonial, and Victorian styles such as Italianate and Queen Anne.

The city of New Orleans was the largest in the Confederacy at the start of the American Civil War. The city was captured barely a year after the start of hostilities without military conflict in, or bombardment of, the city itself. As a result, New Orleans retains the largest collection of surviving antebellum architecture.

St. Charles Avenue is also home to Loyola University New Orleans and Tulane University, both campuses of which sit across the street from Audubon Park.

Central Business District

Piazza d'Italia by Charles Willard Moore, New Orleans. Charles Moore Piazza d'Italia.jpg
Piazza d'Italia by Charles Willard Moore, New Orleans.

For much of its history, New Orleans' skyline consisted of only low- and mid-rise structures. The soft local soils are susceptible to subsidence, and there was doubt about the feasibility of constructing large high-rises in such an environment. The 1960s brought the trail-blazing World Trade Center and Plaza Tower, which demonstrated that high-rise could stand firm on the soft ground.

One Shell Square took its place as the city's tallest building in 1972, a title it still holds. The oil boom of the early 1980s redefined the New Orleans skyline again with the development of the Poydras Street corridor. Today, high-rises are clustered along Canal and Poydras Streets in the Central Business District (CBD).

Located within the CBD is one of the world's most famous pieces of postmodern architecture, Charles Willard Moore's Piazza d'Italia.

The district has a number of significant historicist buildings. Perhaps the most notable are the Moorish revival Immaculate Conception Church and the Egyptian revival U.S. Custom House.

Lafayette Square has some notable art deco civic buildings.

Cemeteries

New Orleans is known for its elaborate European-style cemeteries, including Greenwood Cemetery, Saint Louis Cemeteries, and Metairie Cemetery. Because of New Orleans' high water table, graves are not dug "six feet under": stone tombs were the norm. Many cemeteries in New Orleans have historical significance.

Preservation

Vaults in St. Louis Cemetery No. 3 StLouis3CemRow.jpg
Vaults in St. Louis Cemetery No. 3

Many organizations, notably the Friends of the Cabildo [7] and the Preservation Resource Center, [8] are devoted to promoting the preservation of historic neighborhoods and buildings in New Orleans. New Orleans has suffered from the same problems with sinking property values and urban decline as other major cities. Many historic structures have been threatened with demolition. During Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, several historic New Orleans neighborhoods were flooded, and numerous historic buildings were severely damaged. However, there is a general notion by both rebuilders and new developers to preserve the architectural integrity of the city.

Notable structures

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">French Quarter</span> Neighborhood in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

The French Quarter, also known as the Vieux Carré, is the oldest neighborhood in the city of New Orleans. After New Orleans was founded in 1718 by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, the city developed around the Vieux Carré, a central square. The district is more commonly called the French Quarter today, or simply "The Quarter", related to changes in the city with American immigration after the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Most of the extant historic buildings were constructed either in the late 18th century, during the city's period of Spanish rule, or were built during the first half of the 19th century, after U.S. purchase and statehood.

The architecture of the United States demonstrates a broad variety of architectural styles and built forms over the country's history of over two centuries of independence and former Spanish, French, Dutch and British rule.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American colonial architecture</span> Building design styles associated with the colonial period of the United States

American colonial architecture includes several building design styles associated with the colonial period of the United States, including First Period English (late-medieval), Spanish Colonial, French Colonial, Dutch Colonial, and Georgian. These styles are associated with the houses, churches and government buildings of the period from about 1600 through the 19th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shotgun house</span> Narrow rectangular domestic residence

A shotgun house is a narrow rectangular domestic residence, usually no more than about 12 feet (3.5 m) wide, with rooms arranged one behind the other and doors at each end of the house. It was the most popular style of house in the Southern United States from the end of the American Civil War (1861–65) through the 1920s. Alternative names include shotgun shack, shotgun hut, shotgun cottage, and in the case of a multihome dwelling, shotgun apartment; the design is similar to that of railroad apartments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Cabildo</span> Building in New Orleans, Louisiana

The Cabildo, originally called "Casa Capitular", is a historical building in New Orleans, Louisiana. Originally the seat of Spanish colonial city hall, the building now forms part of the Louisiana State Museum. It is located along Jackson Square, adjacent to St. Louis Cathedral.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louisiana State Museum</span>

The Louisiana State Museum (LSM), founded in New Orleans in 1906, is a statewide system of National Historic Landmarks and modern structures across Louisiana, housing thousands of artifacts and works of art reflecting Louisiana's legacy of historic events and cultural diversity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jackson Square (New Orleans)</span> United States historic place

Jackson Square, formerly the Place d'Armes (French) or Plaza de Armas (Spanish), is a historic park in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1960, for its central role in the city's history, and as the site where in 1803 Louisiana was made United States territory pursuant to the Louisiana Purchase. In 2012 the American Planning Association designated Jackson Square as one of the Great Public Spaces in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">French colonial architecture</span> Style of architecture used in French colonies

French colonial architecture includes several styles of architecture used by the French during colonization. Many former French colonies, especially those in Southeast Asia, have previously been reluctant to promote their colonial architecture as an asset for tourism; however, in recent times, the new generation of local authorities has somewhat "embraced" the architecture and has begun to advertise it. French Colonial architecture has a long history, beginning in North America in 1604 and being most active in the Western Hemisphere until the 19th century, when the French turned their attention more to Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great New Orleans Fire (1788)</span> 1788 fire in Spanish-controlled New Orleans

The Great New Orleans Fire (1788) was a fire that destroyed 856 of the 1,100 structures in New Orleans, Louisiana, on March 21, 1788, spanning the south central Vieux Carré from Burgundy to Chartres Street, almost to the Mississippi River front buildings. An additional 212 buildings were destroyed in a later citywide fire, on December 8, 1794.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great New Orleans Fire (1794)</span>

The Great New Orleans Fire (1794) was a major fire that destroyed 212 structures in New Orleans, Louisiana on December 8, 1794, in the area now known as the French Quarter from Burgundy to Chartres Street, adjacent to the Mississippi River. On March 12, 1788, just 6 years prior, 856 buildings had been destroyed in the First Great New Orleans Fire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Presbytere</span> United States historic place

The Presbytère is an architecturally important building in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. It stands facing Jackson Square, adjacent to the St. Louis Cathedral. Built in 1813 as a matching structure for the Cabildo, which flanks the cathedral on the other side, it is one of the nation's best examples of formal colonial Spanish architecture. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970, and is now a property of the Louisiana State Museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Creole architecture in the United States</span> Vernacular style of the US Gulf Coast region

Creole architecture in the United States is present in buildings in Louisiana and elsewhere in the South, and also in the U.S. associated territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. One interesting variant is Ponce Creole style.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frenchmen Street</span>

Frenchmen Street is in the 7th Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana. It is best known for the three-block section in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood which since the 1980s has developed as the center of many popular live-music venues, including Cafe Negril, Favela Chic, Vaso, Apple Barrel, Blue Nile, Snug Harbor, the Spotted Cat, and the Maison. In addition the street has numerous restaurants, bars, a premier bicycle shop, a record store, a book shop, and other local businesses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Micaela Almonester, Baroness de Pontalba</span>

Micaela Leonarda Antonia de Almonester Rojas y de la Ronde, Baroness de Pontalba was a wealthy New Orleans-born Creole aristocrat, businesswoman, and real estate designer and developer, who endures as one of the most recalled and dynamic personalities in the city's history, though she lived most of her life in Paris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1850 House</span>

The Louisiana State Museum's 1850 House is an antebellum row house furnished to represent life in mid-nineteenth-century New Orleans. It is located at 523 St. Ann Street on Jackson Square in the French Quarter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ponce Creole</span> Architectural style created in Ponce, Puerto Rico

Ponce Creole is an architectural style created in Ponce, Puerto Rico, in the late 19th and early 20th century. This style of Puerto Rican buildings is found predominantly in residential homes in Ponce that developed between 1895 and 1920. Ponce Creole architecture borrows heavily from the traditions of the French, the Spaniards, and the Caribbean to create houses that were especially built to withstand the hot and dry climate of the region, and to take advantage of the sun and sea breezes characteristic of the southern Puerto Rico's Caribbean Sea coast. It is a blend of wood and masonry, incorporating architectural elements of other styles, from Spanish Revival to Victorian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hotel St. Pierre</span>

The Hotel St. Pierre is a collection of Creole cottages, many dating from the early 1780s, in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A. Its business address is 911 Burgundy Street.

This is an alphabetical index of articles related to architecture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Louis Dolliole</span> American architect who was a free person of color

Jean-Louis Dolliole was an African-American architect in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, during the 19th century. He was a free man of color who also worked as a cabinetmaker, home builder, contractor, planter and leader of the African-American community of New Orleans in the time of the Antebellum South. Dolloile is noted for the architectural design of several residential projects which continue in use as homes into the 21st century. The designs were early versions of the creole cottage that became a common style of homes in New Orleans and elsewhere in the southern United States. Dolliole was a leader in the early development of the Faubourg Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gallery (New Orleans)</span> Building platform with supporting posts in New Orleans

In New Orleans, a gallery is a wide platform projecting from the wall of a building supported by posts or columns. Galleries are typically made of cast iron with ornate balusters, posts, and brackets.

References

  1. Vogt, Lloyd (1985). New Orleans Houses: A House Watcher's Guide. Pelican Publishing. p. 16. ISBN   0-88289-299-1.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Building Types and Architectural Styles (PDF). City of New Orleans Historic District Landmarks Commission. January 2019. pp. 03‐3–03‐7. Retrieved 28 January 2024.
  3. 1 2 Vogt, Lloyd (1985). New Orleans Houses: A House Watcher's Guide. Pelican Publishing. p. 21. ISBN   0-88289-299-1.
  4. Vogt, Lloyd (1985). New Orleans Houses: A House Watcher's Guide. Pelican Publishing. p. 17. ISBN   0-88289-299-1.
  5. Vogt, Lloyd (1985). New Orleans Houses: A House Watcher's Guide. Pelican Publishing. pp. 22–23. ISBN   0-88289-299-1.
  6. Edwards, Jay D. (2009). "Shotgun: The Most Contested House in America". Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum. 16 (1): 83. doi:10.1353/bdl.0.0018.
  7. "Friends of the Cabildo and the New Orleans Architecture Series". New Orleans Preservation Timeline Project. Tulane University School of Architecture. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
  8. "Preservation Resource Center and Preservation In Print". New Orleans Preservation Timeline Project. Tulane University School of Architecture. Retrieved 2 July 2014.

Further reading

Bruno, R. Stephanie (2011). New Orleans Streets: A Walker's Guide to Neighborhood Architecture. Pelican Publishing. ISBN   978-1589808744.

Campanella, Richard, Geographies of New Orleans : Urban Fabrics before the Storm, Gretna, LA, Pelican Publishing, 2006.

Kingsley, Karen. Buildings of Louisiana, New York: Society of Architectural Historians, 2003.

Lewis, Peirce. New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape, 2nd ed., Santa Fe, NM: Center for American Places, 2003.

Toledano, Roulhac B. (2010). A Pattern Book of New Orleans Architecture. Pelican Publishing. ISBN   978-1589806948.