Qualla: Garden District, New Orleans

Garden District, New Orleans: Introduction

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elisa.rolle, CC BY-SA 3.0. Jefferson Davis, president of the defeated Confederacy, drew his last breath at 1134 First Street on December 6, 1889, in the home of Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Charles E. Fenner. A century later, the novelist Anne Rice purchased the Brevard-Rice House at 1239 First Street, one block away, and wove the neighborhood's oak-shaded grandeur into her vampire chronicles. Between those two addresses lies the entire arc of the Garden District: a neighborhood conceived in antebellum ambition, shadowed by war, and perpetually reinvented by the personalities it attracts. Carved from the Livaudais Plantation and laid out by architect Barthelemy Lafon, this enclave of Greek Revival mansions and gingerbread Victorians became a National Historic Landmark in 1974.

Image: Elisa.rolle | CC BY-SA 3.0

Garden District, New Orleans: The Americans' Revenge

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Infrogmation of New Orleans, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Garden District exists because of a cultural grudge. When wealthy Americans flooded into New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the established Creole families of the French Quarter made it clear the newcomers were not welcome. Rather than beg for acceptance, the A...

Image: Infrogmation of New Orleans | CC BY-SA 3.0

Garden District, New Orleans: Iron Fences and Cornstalk Gates

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elisa.rolle, CC BY-SA 3.0. Walk along Prytania Street today and you pass through an outdoor museum of nineteenth-century architecture. The Bradish Johnson House at 2341 Prytania, built in 1872 for a Louisiana sugar planter, reflects the French Ecole des Beaux Arts and has housed the Louise S. McGehee Schoo...

Image: Elisa.rolle | CC BY-SA 3.0

Garden District, New Orleans: Where the Dead Rest Above Ground

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dennis Flax, CC BY 2.0. Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, established in 1833 at 1420 Washington Avenue, is the Garden District's most haunting landmark. Laid out by city surveyor Benjamin Buisson on land that was once part of the Livaudais Plantation, the cemetery holds the remains of many German and Irish imm...

Image: Dennis Flax | CC BY 2.0

Garden District, New Orleans: Ghosts, Vampires, and Hollywood

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Infrogmation of New Orleans, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Garden District has always attracted storytellers. The George Washington Cable House at 1313 Eighth Street is a National Historic Landmark. The Buckner Mansion at 1410 Jackson Avenue, an opulent 1856 estate, served as the setting for American Horror Story: Coven. The house at...

Image: Infrogmation of New Orleans | CC BY-SA 3.0

Garden District, New Orleans: High Ground, Deep Roots

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew, CC BY-SA 2.0. Like the French Quarter, the Garden District sits on the natural high ground of the Mississippi River's natural levee. When Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, the district suffered wind damage but escaped the catastrophic flooding that devastated lower-lying neighborhoods. The ret...

Image: Andrew | CC BY-SA 2.0