CREOLE COTTAGE VIGNETTE NO. 9
New Orleans Architecture on the Eve of Americanization
Our view of New Orleans at the beginning of the Territorial Period (1803-1812) has been shrouded due to
the lack of available contemporary records. This is particularly true of its architecture. No broad surveys
of the architecture of the city were undertaken at that time. Many period maps were based on an out-ofdate Spanish colonial plan originally drawn by Vincente Sebastián Pintado, surveyor for the Spanish
Cabildo, in 1797. It was used as a kind of base map which was amended by surveyor and cartographer
Carlos Trudeau (12/24/1798), and others to meet different cartographic needs. This process of
augmenting and changing the plan continued until as late as 1819 (Alfred E. Lemmon, et. al., 2003:31819). The Pintado/Trudeau map also appears to have been the base used by Joseph Antoine Vinache for his
colorful commemorative map of the city and its surroundings at the end of the colonial era in 1803
(HNOC 1987.65 i–iii). Like the others, this detailed plan shows no domestic architecture within the
French Quarter, and only basic indications of buildings outside of it.
Drawings and sketches by architects of existiang domestic architecture ca. 1803 are equally
scarce. Carlos Trudeau conducted property surveys which have indications of buildings on them, but there
are too few of these to provide any broad basis for generalizing about New Orleans cottage architecture.
So we are left with open questions such as, “Had the gable-sided form of the Creole cottage become
popular at this time?” and, “Were properties in the Quarter now sufficiently narrow to encourage the
introduction of linear cottages?” These questions are not unimportant. Good answers to them would point
directly to the principal causes of architectural change and innovation at the beginning of the American
period.
Luckily, we have acquired new information which helps to fill in some of the gaps in our
knowledge. New survey data has become available covering the earliest stage of architecture during the
American Territorial Period. Architect, surveyor, and land developer Barthelemy Lafon became the
official surveyor for the Southern District of the Louisiana Territory in 1804. In this position he
conducted property surveys for land owners all across southern Louisiana, but mostly in and around New
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Orleans, Over one hundred surveys are recorded in three large survey books which he apparently
numbered at some later date. Books One and Two begin in 1807, and are held by the Historic New
Orleans Collection. Book Three, dating to 1804, has been closely held by the Grand Masonic Lodge in
Alexandria, Louisiana. Recently, they kindly supplied us with digital photos of a significant portion of
this book. The photos were taken some years ago, and they are rather difficult to use, but through the
wonders of Adobe Photoshop, they can be restored to something like their original glory (Fig. CCV7.1)
Fig. CCV 9.1. Lafon Survey Book No. 3 (1804-05), p. 46. Square 91, bounded by St. Louis, Conti, Dauphine
and Burgundy, surveyed in 1804. This image has been squared in Adobe Photoshop by skewing and dewarping. For orientation, modern street numbers and the Key Lots have been labeled by the author. On this
particular square, at least, the houses are all hip roofed buildings. Most of them are built right on the front
line of the properties, following the post fire Spanish zoning code. Barthelemy Lafon and Julie Brion reside in
the house at the corner of St. Louis and Burgundy, at about 934-36 St. Louis. The two key lots remain as
originally laid out in the French colonial surveys. Mr. Bernard’s corner lot has been expanded by 26 feet on
Dauphine. The lot of François Boré, M.L., is an original central lot, but the others have been subdivided into
30 foot wide demi-terrains, or lots less deep than the original 120 French feet.
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So what do these unpublished surveys tell us about the architecture of New Orleans that we did
not appreciate, previously? Actually, quite a lot, starting with the ways in which the squares have been
filled in with buildings: In his insightful little booklet, “The Vieux Carré, A General Statement”
(1966/2001), Architectural historian Bernard Lemann stated that “By this time [1803-1825] the street
elevations of the Vieux Carré had approached something like their present aspect of almost continuous
closure. Only in the outlying squares were open spaces between buildings to be found” (2001:14).
Lafon’s surveys, while certainly not providing continuous coverage, do provide sufficient sampling of the
Quarter to permit some generalizations. They show us that Lemann’s view requires modification. At the
beginning of the American Territorial Period (1803) the squares of the interior of the Quarter had been
divided into full lots (60 Ft. French Measure) and half lots (30 Ft. Fr. Measure). In addition, in many
squares, lots have been expanded or contracted in various ways. Some are as large as, say, a lot and a half
on the street (90 French Ft. wide). Others have been reduced to only 20, 25, 35 or 42 French feet in width.
The sides of those squares facing the lake or the river averaged between five and seven separate lots. The
sides of squares facing up town or downtown had fewer lots because they originally had only three
properties -- two of 120 feet width, and the central key lot of 60 French feet in width. Some of the squares
had been so completely altered by 1804 that the key lots were no longer present.
Scattered across the lots were buildings disposed in a number of different patterns. In a few cases
buildings were crowded together at the front of the property lines as Lemann suggests, but the vast
majority of the squares hold houses separated from one-another. The distances between them are the
result of different factors. Some of the properties were considerably wider than the buildings, themselves,
leaving ample space beside them. In other cases, some properties had no buildings upon them, leaving
wide gaps between built-up lots. Finally, in many cases the main houses were set back as much as sixty
feet from the front of the lots (Fig. CCV 9.2). Some of the recently built-up lots display more of the postfire pattern in which nearly every house is set right at the street. Vieux Carré Square 91, between
Dauphine, Burgundy, Conti and St. Louis Streets is one example. This entire square was surveyed at one
time by Lafon, perhaps because it contained his own house (Fig. CCV 9.1). In other cases it appears that
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houses, which had been set back from the street before the fires, were rebuilt on their original
foundations. Square 28 surrounded by Decatur, Chartres, Conti and St. Louis Streets has houses which are
set back as well as others located on the front of their lots (Fig. CCV 9.2). This is similar to the colonial
pattern depicted on the French Colonial maps by Gonichon and Caillot in 1731-32. It is also clear from
the surveys that between 1804 and 1818, many of the open-fronted lots would experience a considerable
filling-in with new buildings opening directly onto the streets.
Fig. CCV 9.2. Lafon Survey Book No. 3, p. 52, 1804. A survey of the riverside of Square 28, bounded by
Chartres, Decatur, Conti and St. Louis. In this view, up is towards the river and North is towards the lower
left. This is the 400 block of Chartres Street. This half square shown burned the fire of 1788, and the entire
square burned again in the fire of 1794. All of these buildings postdate the fires and they are not on early
French colonial foundations. In 1732 the Caillot map shows a long building on Chartres at the front of the
quarter lot between roughly 406 and 420 Chartres. Two houses stood on the downtown quarter lot (422-440
Chartres). None of those buildings survived the fires. In French New Orleans, Quarter lots were lots 150 feet
long (along Chartres) by 120 feet deep (along Conti and St. Louis). The two key lots were already in place in
1732 (not shown here).
The houses shown here are all new houses postdating 1794. Three of the houses shown here are French
colonial cottages set back from the street 50 to 60 feet. They are each one main room deep plus, perhaps, the
addition of a semi-double range of rooms behind the main rooms. Colonial appartements were typically about
15 to 18 feet in depth. The long structure in Noel Destrehan’s corner lot measures roughly 20 feet wide and
sixty feet deep on Conti street. It is probably a store. If architectural tradition holds, Mr. Paillet’s house, the
near-square building at 440 Chartres, has a four-square plan plus, perhaps, a cabinet-loggia range of rooms
at the rear. The buildings on the narrow central lots of this square are probably stores with residences behind
or above. There is no information on the building heights, except for Mr. Paillet’s house at 440 Chartres,
which is almost certainly a single story in height. The the house with its narrow end towards Chartres Street
(422 Chartres) appears constrained by the narrow 25 foot lot on which it rests. The other buildings are not so
constrained, so cultural preference appears to have played a strong role in the selection of the late colonial
housetypes (image courtesy the Grand Masonic Lodge, Alexandria, LA).
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Domestic Architecture of the Quarter, 1803-1809. Once one is acquainted with the artistic conventions
used by Barthelemy Lafon, it is possible to provide a considerable amount of information on the houses
drawn in his surveys. Chimneys are not included, for example. The shape of the roof (hip or gable) is
indicated, but dormers are not sketched in. We suspect that at least some of these houses had lofts
[mansards] which were lighted with dormers. Neither is it possible to determine whether a house was
raised on a rez-de-chaussée or not.
It is possible to estimate aspects of the floorplan of each house based upon the street side
dimensions of the lot upon which it rests. For example, if a house scales out at 24 feet from front to back,
it is insufficiently deep to accommodate two full European-sized rooms (see the Tricou house which
measures approximately 60 x 24 feet, at the corner of Royal and Saint Louis Streets (Fig. CCV 9.3). It
almost certainly has a floorplan of a single range of full size appartments, which have been augmented
either by the addition of a full-length front gallery, a full length rear cabinet-loggia range of rooms, or a
rear semi-double range of rooms. Since full Creole galleries were relatively uncommon on the houses of
the quarter, the chances are greater that the cabinet-loggia or semi-double arrangement is the one
indicated. Unfortunately, this leaves no way to determine whether these early Vieux Carré domiciles
contained purely French floorplans (semi-doubles), or whether they were creolized with cabinet-loggias
and galleries.
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Fig. CCV 9.3. Lafon Survey Book No. 3, p. 45, 1804. Squares No. 39 (right side) and 40 (left side). Today, the
600 block St. Louis is the location of the downtown face of the Louisiana Supreme Court building. Canal
Street is towards the top of the image. The Omni Royal Orleans Hotel is located directly across the street at
the bottom of the page today. All of the buildings have hip roofs. Houses on the Lalane, Andry and Tricou
properties may be either small stores, or residences, or both. Street names and house number locations have
been added to the original, as has an indication of the “key lot” which was originally taken up by Exchange
Alley. After the demolition of the historic buildings in 1903, the entire square would be taken up by what is
now the Louisiana Supreme Court building (1909). Today, the former location of Exchange Alley is
represented by the set-back in the downtown façade of the Supreme Court building. This image has been
squared by skewing in Adobe Photoshop. The image was kindly supplied by the Archive of the Grand
Masonic Lodge of Alexandria, Louisiana.
When information is missing from the survey, it is sometimes possible to obtain a better
description from the chain of title. Many ”suits of succession” for the Quarter have been posted on line in
the Tulane/Diboll Vieux Carré Digital Survey administered by the Historic New Orleans Collection. An
enormous amount of work has been invested in this invaluable resource. Occasionally, detailed
descriptions remove any doubts about the nature of the house and the number of floors. For example, for a
linear cottage standing at 535 Saint Philip Street in 1808: “A house of 18 feet front, brick in front and
brick between posts on the sides and rear, tile roof, four appartements plus a [freestanding] kitchen,
pigeon house and well.” All of the structures are apparent in Lafon’s survey (Fig. CCV 9.4). The 1812
written description of this property was penned when it was sold by José Antone La Rionda. It indicates
that the linear cottage house is of a single story in height because raised houses are always described as
such (à étage).
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Fig. CCV 9.4. Lafon Survey Book No. 2 (No. 114, Fol. 210). May, 1808. The uptown portion of Square 20
bounded by St. Philip, Decatur and Chartres streets, backed by Ursulines. This is the 500 block of St. Philip
Street. The La Rionda Linear Cottage is at the front of a lot, 42.5 French feet wide. We know the building
was a residence from the description given four years later when the house was sold by La Rionda. The image
was supplied by the Historic New Orleans Collection. Printed street names, modern street numbers, and
owner’s names have been added by the authors, together with the square number.
What kind of housetypes dominated the cityscape of New Orleans between 1803 and 1810? The
picture which emerges from Lafon’s surveys is quite different than we expected. We copied and mapped
twenty-four of Lafon’s surveys plus one of Trudeau and one from an unknown surveyor, all dated 1803 –
1810. The majority were from 1804 and 1807. The surveys ranged from single lots to entire squares. Most
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surveys covered the houses along one side of a square. We counted a total of 112 house-like structures
and 59 service structures. Of the houses, 75 were French style colonial cottages (67%); 27 were linear
houses with their ridges perpendicular to the street (24%); 5 (5%) were gabled roof cottages; 4 (4%)
were free-standing appentis buildings being used as linear cottages, and one was a terrace-roofed
structure. Most of the houses appear to have been a single story in height, giving a very low appearance to
the New Orleans cityscape of the time.
Clearly, hip roofed Creole cottages dominated the cityscape at the beginning of the nineteenth
century. Twenty-four of these were corner Creole cottages which often doubled as little stores. They are
invariably two rooms wide and two or more rooms deep. Over half appear to have included a cabinetloggia range of rooms. One of the earliest plans of a traditional Creole cottage is the 1808 Pierre home, at
the corner of St. Claude and Esplanade (attached to P. Pedesclaux, N.P., 1/7/1807; Fig. 2.38). While this
particular house has the typical plan of a Classic Creole cottage, many early Creole cottages were of a
different configuration than we see today in the Quarter. They all had hip roofs. They were wide on the
street, having three or even four rooms in width, but usually only a cabinet-loggia-augmented single
appartement in depth. Another example surviving from the late eighteenth century is a house, “moved to
its present location shortly after 1780,” according to the owners. It is a briquette-entre-poteaux cottage
which sits at the corner of Burgundy and Dumaine Streets. This is a semi-double plan four rooms wide
with a rear cabinet-loggia range of rooms. With its hip roof, it provides much of the appearance of the
French style cottages of the Spanish colonial Quarter. Unfortunately, its facades have had their plaster
covering removed, exposing the timbers of the frame to the weather and deterioration.
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Fig. CCV 9.5a. A brick between posts cottage at 901-07 Burgundy, corner Dumaine Street, ca. 1800. The
plaque on the house claims that it is the c. 1780 Gabriel Peyroux house, rebuilt at 901-07 Burgundy. The
Vieux Carré Survey states that the Peyroux house stands at 913 Governor Nicholls Street. JDE photo, 2014.
Fig. CCV 9.5b. Plan of the above colonial cottage.HNOC VCS No. 1.2.104.037. The 1808 Pilie map of the
property owners of the city lists “Peyroux” as the owner of the riverside half of Square 104, the 900 block of
Burgundy. However, this may have been a different Peyroux. Sylvain Peyroux and two other people named
Peyroux acquired the property in 1814 (act before Ph. Pedesclaux, NP, April 23, 1814. V. 68, Fol. 163).
In a plan more popular in rural areas, some cottages one main room deep and contained both a
front gallery and a rear cabinet-loggia range of rooms. The Osorno house at 913 Governor Nichols had
this plan (Figs. 2.18a, 2.18b). It was dismantled from an earlier cottage on Bayou Road and reconstructed
in the Quarter ca. 1782. Cottages with three or more rooms in line are typically the kinds of houses that
are set back on the lots, but by this time some were being built right on the street.
Surprisingly, only five gable-roofed Creole cottages are indicated in the twenty-five Lafon
surveys. This strongly implies that the gable-roofed cottage, which by 1830 had become so dominant, is
an innovation of the late first and the second decades, simultaneous with, but not coincidental with, the
arrival of the Haitian immigrants from central and southern Saint-Domingue in 1804 and 1809. It was
Phillippe Oszuscik who first argued that the Creole Cottage originated in southern Haiti:
In the South, the two-room dwelling, a double pen with a single-pitched, hipped roof
covering the rooms and a galerie is the basic [rural] folk cottage. It usually has two front
doors… The four-room house one refers to as the basic French cottage on the Gulf Coast
may have evolved from this simple plan rather than coming directly from the Norman
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farmhouse as generally accepted…. In southern [Haitian] towns, vernacular four-room
houses and two-story houses with four rooms per floor are common (1988:68-72).
Another example of a gable-roofed Creole cottage almost certainly present in 1804 once sat
at about 1029 Royal Street. It has the appearance of a 1780s cottage, elevated about four feet
above the ground, and with a full front gallery, a semi-double floor plan, and a rear cabinet-loggia
range with a single cabinet. This is the house depicted in our frontispiece (NONA 005.004).
There were also several half-hip, half gabled-roof cottages in the surveys.1 Most typically, these
appear at corner lots, such as at both intersections of the 1200 block of Bourbon between Governor
Nicholls (then Rue de l’Hôpital) and Barracks (Rue de Quartier). The gable roof was meant to align with
the close-set gable-roofed cottages on the adjoining properties, usually on half lots. This is precisely what
they do in Lafon’s 1804 survey. In all, the lakeside of Bourbon Street (Square 79 -- 1200 block of
Bourbon) has three gabled roof cottages in the interior of the block, plus another half gabled cottage at
each end of the block (Figs. 2.42; CCV 7.8).
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Fig. CCV 9.8. A Lafon Survey of Square 79 and the 1200 block of Bourbon, taken May 2, 1804. Survey Book
No. 2 (No. 113, Fol. 208). The sketch shows the distribution of cottage types on this street. There are eight
demi-terrains with a single full 60 foot lot in the center of the block. The two end lots have Creole cottages
with hip roofs facing the intersecting streets (Governor Nicholls (l’Hôpital) and Barracks (du Quartier). The
Jacques Martinez Jr. house at the corner of Bourbon and Quartier measures exactly 30 feet on bourbon
Street and 33 feet deep on the 70 foot deep lot on Quartier. The corner cottages have gabled roofs facing the
adjoining cottages, which are, themselves, gabled roof cottages. The interior properties hold three gabled roof
cottages, one hip roof cottage, one hip roof linear cottage, and one building which appears to be a terrace roof
cottage. It is, at the time, the house of Manuel Prados. It is described as “a small house measuring 30 feet,
wood and brick with four rooms and a double chimney…” Modern street numbers have been added by the
authors. Image courtesy the Historic New Orleans Collection.
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What we see in this survey is the most modern architecture in the entire collection of surveys
(1804 - 1808). Most of the cottages here are quite recent. Another gable-roofed cottage is seen in the 1000
block of Royal Street, but only one such cottage occurs in the more numerous surveys of the uptown half
of the Quarter between Orleans and Canal Streets. It is perhaps significant that the downtown-lakeside
portion of the Vieux Carré was being built up in this decade. The area was known as the “Quadroon
Quarter.” It was here that many Haitian refugees settled beginning in 1804.
Terraced roof cottages were fairly common in 1804. We know that three were built in the 700
block of Dumaine Street, probably by Barthelemy Lafon in 1800. One survives. A notary’s description of
one of these in 1804 makes it clear that this house originally had a rear cabinet-loggia gallery:
Brief description: … A lot of ground in the street of Stores (Dumaine) having 66 feet
front on said street, of which lot 15 feet have a depth of only 45 feet and the remainder 90
feet, upon which lot there is a wooden house, with a ground floor and shingle roof,
composed of an entrance hall, communicating with five rooms, used as a drawing room
and bedrooms, a gallery at the rear with two cabinets, and one tile roofed brick kitchen,
separate from the house….The house and lot upon which it is built from Mr. Fortin on
May 12, 1800, taken from Act of Sale: Pierre Pedesclaux NP. 2/16/1804 (Vol 46, Folio
158).
The house at 707-09 Dumaine is the surviving member of three original cottages (Figs.2.19; 2.21; 2.22).
The second surviving terrace-roofed house, for which there is little documentation, is the cottage at 83840 Governor Nicholls Street.
Another architectural innovation has begun in this decade. By 1804 hip roofed appentis linear
cottages were appearing. They were now being set at the front of lots and opened directly onto the
banquettes. A few appentis are known from the Spanish colonial period, but most of those are gablefronted (Figs. 2.26; CCV 5.6, CCV 3.4). By the time of the Louisiana Purchase hip-roofed linear cottages
are seen in the French Quarter surveys (Fig. 2.27). Our tentative conclusion is that in the Spanish colonial
period, these houses were originally used as temporary shelters following the two great fires. Even before
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the Louisiana Purchase, more substantial versions of the appentis were being built with hip roofs on their
fronts. Nearly all of these linear cottages opened directly to the street with two (or three) doors and no
windows. These structures do not seem ever to have been built in Saint-Domingue. They are the first
small linear cottages in New Orleans. In addition to these, we counted five appentis service structures set
behind the main houses. At least some of these served as kitchens. Because service structures are simply
outlined or omitted altogether in some of the surveys, we have reason to believe that considerably more
appentis service structures existed on these properties.
Yet another architectural innovation is the introduction of narrow shotgun-like linear cottages,
also opening directly onto the banquette. In Lafon’s surveys we counted ten Single, three Side Gallery,
and twelve Double-width linear cottages, all with hip roofs at both ends and roof ridges running directly
back from the façade of the house. Of these, fifteen opened directly onto the street, while ten were set
back from the street in the pattern of colonial lots.
Because the sketches of buildings on these property surveys are mere indications, rather than
architectural drawings, many open questions remain. There is no way to tell exactly how each of these
buildings functioned. We drew conclusions about function based upon those better surveys conducted for
legal property transfers. The affiches, or posters, which advertised the sale of a property contain far more
information and make clear which buildings are functioning as residences, as doubles, or as commercial
enterprises. Unfortunately, only a few of these more complete surveys were made prior to 1804.
Nevertheless, we are fortunate to have been able to add to the store of knowledge about the architecture of
New Orleans at the beginning of the territorial period. This is a body of data which will, no doubt, be
expanded in the future. The total of our surveys have been combined in a map of the surveys, constructed
by Gabriele Richardson (Map 2.4).