IV. CONCLUSION
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREOLE COTTAGE
If truth be told, the New Orleans cottage never had much of an impact on other sections of the United
States. French colonial cottages were pretty much confined to the Gulf Coast settlements and those in
upper French Louisiana in Missouri and Illinois. The Classic Creole cottage is unique to New Orleans.
The real significance of the Creole cottage is found not so much in its geographical distribution, as in its
history (Map 4.1). It stands as a monument to the exceptional multiculturalism which characterizes the
vernacular architecture of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. While the domestic architectures of other
parts of the country certainly borrowed heavily from European sources, none of them drew so broadly
from so many far-flung places. Nor did they integrate the components of so many disparate cultures so
cleverly and so aesthetically. The result was an entire repertoire of building types which continue to
please those who visit them or are lucky enough to reside in one.
Evidence of the importance of the Creole cottage may be seen in the maps of housetypes which
we construct as part of our study of the architectural history of New Orleans. Below is a map of the
Creole cottages which were surveyed and drawn by artists and architects who were assigned the job of
creating an attractive advertising poster for a property which was going up for auction. Gabriele
Richardson studied over six hundred of the images in the New Orleans Notarial Archives, assigned
modern street addresses, and mapped their locations. She conducted a GPS survey of every property in
the VieuxCarré, and identified its housetypes from a photographic survey by Jay Edwards (2014), aided
as well by Google Earth and the Deboll Digital Survey of the French Quarter, supplied on line by the
Historic New Orleans Collection. She digitized and georeferenced (adjusted) the hand-drawn maps, and
identified the Creole cottages thereon, remainng conservative in her identifications. This sample
represents only a proportion of all of the Creole cottages which existed in the nineteenth century. These
are simply the properties which were put up for auction, or which until 1876, or which are still standing in
the Vieux Carré.
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The map shows that Creole cottages were abundant in all of those residential areas of the city, but
not in the heavily commercial or industrial areas such as the Central Business District, and the section of
the French quarter bordering surrounding Chartres and Canal Streets, two commercial areas in the
nineteenth century.
Map 4.1. Distribution of Creole cottages as recorded from several kind of data. 1) A GPS survey of the
French Quarter, 2014 by Gabriele Richardson. 2) NONA Plan Book Plans (affiches) advertising properties at
public auction in the nineteenth century. 3) The 1876 Sanborn maps of New Orleans, as supplied by the
Southeastern Architectural Archive, Tulane University Special Collections. Map created by Gabriele
Richardson for the Kniffen Lab at LSU. The map does not extend to several isolated Creole cottages located
in outlying districts such as Carrolton and the Ninth Ward. Some sections have lost their Creole cottages. The
CBD and lower Tchopitoulis Street commercial/industrial area once had Creole cottages, but they were
replaced by commercial development. The same is true for southern section of the French Quarter.
The New Orleans Creole cottage is a classic example of creolization in material culture. Its
complexity reflects the points of origin of the numerous colonists and settlers who carried their
architectural presuppositions to New Orleans in order to make for themselves a better life. These
contributors included not only professional and amateur architects and builders, but also many people
from all walks of life who sought to replicate their architectural heritages in a new land. They shaped and
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reshaped the forms of the most favored type of cottage, even though the vast majority could not afford the
services of a professional architect. In this book we have followed a few of the many kinds of influence
which helped people to build better and with more comfort and style. Vernacular architecture turns out to
be more complex and interesting than most architectural historians seem to suggest. It is as complex as
the lives of the people who create it. This implies that good architectural history is really about the many
forces and cross-currents which comprise a society. To understand architecture, we must first understand
the lives of those people who molded it to their needs and sensibilities.