The purpose of this directory is to provide interested citizens with a listing of local agencies and collections which may be able to provide historical documentation on real estate and buildings in New Orleans. This directory also includes a short bibliography of those books and other publications which should be consulted by those property owners with an interest in learning more about the city's architectural history. Over the years, the staff of the HDLC has been repeatedly asked for assistance regarding research into historic properties. This directory provides that information in a written form. Any individuals who wish to discuss specific research work in more detail may make an appointment with the staff architectural historian.
Governmental Agencies and Collections.
Office of Real Estate and Records, Room 5W06, City Hall, 1300 Perdido Street, Ph. (504) 565-6015
Open to the public from 2 to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. This office, the starting point for all investigations into the history of property ownership in New Orleans, maintains a record of current property ownership for all real estate in the city. This record will direct the researcher to the appropriate volume in the office of the Register of Conveyances, where the full record of the prior owners of the property will be found.
Office of the Register of Conveyances, Room B-3, Basement, Civil Courts Building, 421 Loyola Avenue, Ph. (504) 592-9170
Hours: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. The function of this office is to record the sale and purchase of all real estate in New Orleans, from the present day back into the 18th century. All property transactions are recorded in large bound volumes which are available for public inspection. These volumes contain abbreviated sale descriptions, listing buyers and sellers of the property in question, as well as the notary public who handled the act of sale.
New Orleans Notarial Archives, Main Reading Room and Filing Office, Room B-4, Basement, Civil Courts Building, 421 Loyola Avenue, Ph. (504) 568-8577. Notarial Archives Research Center (pre-1900 notarial records), Suite 360, 1340 Poydras Street, Ph. (504) 680-9604
Hours: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. These offices hold some forty million pages of signed acts compiled by the notaries of New Orleans. Most of the local notaries business dealt with sales or mortgages of immovables in the city and surrounding parishes. Notaries also received building contracts and conducted estate inventories. In addition to text-based documents, the Archives holds thousands of "Plan Book Drawings" created during the 19th century by civil engineers, surveyors and architects. This collection includes topographical elevations, construction documents and site plans of property located throughout New Orleans, the State of Louisiana and in surrounding states. The signed and dated drawings depict both property lines and buildings, and were usually created to advertise judicially ordered auction sales held to comply with the rules of civil procedure. Plans and surveys may be found either attached to notarial acts or in the Plan Book collection. Early plans may be in ink and water color on paper or ink on cloth. These drawings may be signed by trained architects or may be the simple sketches of builders working in vernacular styles.
Louisiana Division, New Orleans Public Library, 3rd Floor, 219 Loyola Avenue, Ph. 596-2610, web site: http://nutrias.org.
Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. In terms of the information it contains, the Louisiana Division is the single most important research facility in the city. In addition to housing a large collection of books on a multitude of Louisiana and New Orleans topics, it also serves as the archives for the city government. In this capacity, it holds the records of the various tax assessors back to the 1850s, an invaluable source of information on the yearly value of each piece of real estate in the city, clearly indicating when vacant property was developed with a building. The Division also holds early city building permit records and records of the water and sewer connections made to new buildings by the Sewerage and Water Board. Of special interest is the Division's complete collection of city directories, dating back to the 1830s. The Louisiana Division has two significant and extensive newspaper indexes which are based upon general subject material headings, as well as an obituary index. The indexes will enable the researcher to locate the exact location of newspaper articles which may be found on one of the many hundreds of reels of microfilm which cover all of the various newspapers which were published in New Orleans over the past 150 years. The Division also has a multi-volume hard copy of the Friends of the Cabildo index to New Orleans building contracts. The highly valuable publication How to Research the History of Your House in New Orleans may be utilized at the Louisiana Division. See Bibliography below.
Other Public Collections.
Southeastern Architectural Archive, Tulane University, Room 300, 6801 Freret Street, (Jones Hall), Ph. (504) 865-5699
Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The Archives is the repository for the tens of thousands of architectural drawings by many of the city and state's most noted architects and architectural firms, including James Gallier, Sr. and James Gallier, Jr.; Thomas Sully; Weiss, Dreyfous and Seiferth; and Curtis and Davis. In addition to architectural drawings, the Archives holds a large number of student papers submitted to the Louisiana Architecture courses offered by Tulane's University College over the past thirty years. Of special note is the fact that the Archives owns the only original set of 19th century Sanborn Insurance Maps in New Orleans. These large-scale maps provide invaluable information on the location and size of buildings throughout the city.
Williams Research Center of the Historic New Orleans Collection, 410 Chartres Street, Ph. (504) 598-7171
Hours: 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. This is the research facility of the house museum and galleries which are located at 533 Royal Street. The Center's most valuable source of information on the city's architectural resources is its vast collection of photographs. The largest in New Orleans, the photographic collection includes images that date to the 1850s, showing the antebellum character of the city, and photographs taken by the commercial photographer Charles L. Franck, who documented the Central Business District from the 1930s through the 1960s. The Center also holds a large number of significant primary documents, such as diaries and personal correspondence of many prominent persons, and an excellent collection of rare books and other publications relative to New Orleans.
Annotated Bibliography of Books on New Orleans Architecture and Neighborhoods.
This bibliography is designed to help individuals who are interested in learning more about New Orleans' architectural history. The publications listed here cover all of the historic districts regulated by the HDLC, as well as most of the individual landmarks designated by the Commissions. Unless noted, all are still available through local bookstores or the Louisiana Division of New Orleans Public Library, 219 Loyola Avenue.
A Guide to New Orleans Architecture, New Orleans Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, 1974. Although now out of print, this book is still useful as an introduction to the city's architecture and neighborhoods. It is particularly strong with respect to its coverage of the French Quarter and the Garden District, two of the city's most important historic neighborhoods. It also provides good surveys of St. Charles and Esplanade Avenues. Coverage of the Central Business District is dominated by recent structures.
The Architecture of St. Charles Avenue by Susan Lauxman Kirk and Helen Michel Smith. Pelican Publishing Company, 1977. Out of print. This is the only book solely devoted to St. Charles Avenue architecture. This volume is difficult to use as it covers one side of the Avenue for the first half of the book, and then turns around to cover the opposite side of the Avenue. This means that buildings that face one another on the same block may appear many pages apart in the text. While the book intends to be a comprehensive survey of the Avenue's architecture, it does not include all of the significant 19th and 20th century structures. Individuals who are interested in learning more about a specific property on St. Charles Avenue should be aware that while it is generally accurate, this book does not represent an exhaustive study of the subject, and further archival research will most likely turn up additional data of importance.
How to Research the History of Your House (or Other Buildings) in New Orleans by Wayne M. Everard. Friends of the Public Library and Dixie Savings and Loan, 1986. No longer in print, but available for use at the New Orleans Public Library Louisiana Division or on line at the library web site at http://nutrias.org/guides/house/title.htm. For those who are interested in conducting their own research into the history of their property, this is an invaluable publication. It covers the steps that lead to a properly researched investigation of a property's ownership history, as well as where to locate valuable information such as property tax records and other city records. While it is designed to help users of the Library's Louisiana Division, where much of the material is located, it covers the other local research collections as well.
Landmarks of New Orleans compiled by Leonard V. Huber. Louisiana Landmarks Society and the Orleans Parish Landmarks Commission, 1984. This book provides good, concise information, along with a photograph, of almost two hundred structures in New Orleans that have been designated as National Historic Landmarks by the National Park Service, or that have been designated as local landmarks by the Orleans Parish Landmarks Commission or the Historic District Landmarks Commissions. These range in age and character from the Ursuline Convent on Chartres Street to early 20th century bungalows in Gentilly Terrace. Good maps are included to aid in the location of these structures.
New Orleans Houses written and illustrated by Lloyd Vogt. Pelican Publishing Company, 1985. Written and illustrated by an architect, this book provides the reader with an easy to understand introduction to a rich subject. The handsome sketches of the various houses are very appealing, and the text is presented in language that is aimed at the layman, not the trained architect.
New Orleans Architecture by the Friends of the Cabildo, Pelican Publishing Company, 1971 to present. This important venture, which is still ongoing and will in time cover most of the city, is intended to provide a detailed overview of the city's historic neighborhoods. Each of the volumes published to date are discussed individually below.
Volume 1: The Lower Garden District by Samuel Wilson, Jr., Bernard Lemann, Mary Louise Christovich, Roulhac Toledano and Betsy Swanson, 1971. The first volume led to the recognition and preservation of this important neighborhood. The organization of the book set the model for most of the books in the series, with a history of the development of the area, followed by shorter essays on specific topics with an illustrated survey of the buildings in the area forming the second half of the book. One of the best features of the book is the large number of 19th century real estate sale posters illustrated, many in full color, which provide valuable information on the original appearance of houses in this section of the city. The most important problem with the book is the fact that it somewhat arbitrarily ignores a large number of historic structures, particularly those built after 1870.
Volume 2: The American Sector by Mary Louise Christovich, Roulhac Toledano, Betsy Swanson and Pat Holden, with essays by Samuel Wilson, Jr. and Bernard Lemann, 1972. This is a somewhat painful book to read, as almost 25 percent of the buildings it illustrates were demolished soon after its publication. The Central Business District, the subject of this volume, is documented with special emphasis being placed on the antebellum history of the area. 20th century buildings in general are not as well studied, and the Warehouse District is not as well documented as it could have been. The two lead essays provide the reader with an excellent account of the overall development of the area, with a third essay focusing on banking and commerce. Again, a useful feature is the inclusion of several auction posters, in color, which shows the original appearance of several of the area's buildings.
Volume 3: The Cemeteries by Leonard V. Huber, Peggy McDowell and Mary Louise Christovich, 1974. In many ways, this is the most interesting and best organized of all of the volumes in the series, standing as by far the finest source of information on one of the city's greatest historic resources. The history of each of the cemeteries is presented, followed by essays on cemetery ironwork, tomb architecture, and a prominent architect of many important tombs.
Volume 4: The Creole Faubourgs by Samuel Wilson, Jr., Roulhac Toledano, Sally Kittredge Evans, and Mary Louise Christovich, 1974. Deceptively, this book covers Faubourg Marigny, Bywater and Holy Cross, but not all of the Creole developments outside of the French Quarter. The format of this volume is that used on the first two, with the important addition of an essay which is devoted to architectural types and styles. Earlier buildings in the area are well documented; however, later works, specifically shotgun houses, are presented with less documentation.
Volume 5: The Esplanade Ridge by Mary Louise Christovich, Sally Kittredge Evans and Roulhac Toledano, 1977. Covering the full length of Esplanade Avenue, this book breaks with the form established in earlier volumes in that it features no additional essays and spends most of its length on detailed discussions of individual buildings. Much of the text is devoted to genealogical information on the past owners of the various structures, with architecture often only briefly discussed. While several of the 19th century sale posters are illustrated, none are shown in color.
Volume 6: Faubourg Treme and the Bayou Road by Roulhac Toledano and Mary Louise Christovich, 1980. This volume covers the majority of the Treme and Esplanade Ridge Historic Districts. The early history of the area is broken down into multiple sections, with no map to guide the reader to the section which might contain their particular property. The strongest point of the volume is its essay on the area's house types, which is well illustrated by auction sale posters reproduced in color.
Volume 7: Jefferson City compiled and edited by Dorothy G. Schlesinger, Robert J. Cangelosi, Jr., and Sally Kittredge Reeves with essays by Bernard Lemann, Samuel Wilson, Jr., Sally Kittredge Reeves and John E. Walker. This volume covers a portion of New Orleans' Uptown neighborhood from Toledano Street to Joseph Street and South Claiborne Avenue to the river. This includes part of the St. Charles Avenue local historic district. Extensive essays on the neighborhood's history and architectural styles are accompanied by an architectural inventory and map of selected properties.
Volume 8: The University Section compiled and edited by Robert J. Cangelosi, Jr., and Dorothy G. Schlesinger with essays by Robert J. Cangelosi, Jr., Hilary Somerville Irvin, Bernard Lemann, and Samuel Wilson, Jr. This volume continues the survey of Uptown, focusing on the area from Joseph Street to Lowerline Street and Walmsley Avenue to the river. Includes complete building index of area showing owner, builder, architect and date and cost of construction. This is followed by a selected inventory of buildings with further details and photographs.