Big houses from the 1850s stand behind cast iron fences, with smaller Victorian houses filling the gaps between them.
What Garden District looks like
A block in the Garden District usually has two or three big houses on it and a lot of smaller ones.
That comes from how the land was sold. It was the Livaudais plantation, cut into lots from 1832 and built up as part of the city of Lafayette, which New Orleans annexed in 1852. Early buyers took a quarter block each and set one house in the middle of a garden. The lots were divided later and narrower Victorian houses filled the gaps.
The big ones are Greek Revival and Italianate, wood or stucco over brick. Most sit behind a cast iron fence with a gallery across the front. The one at has galleries on two sides. and have most of the grand ones. On , a block toward the river, they are single storey wooden cottages.
Brick sidewalks and stone gutters run along the streets. Iron gratings cover the drains and cast iron posts stand at the kerbs. Street names are set into the concrete in blue and white tile.
is the lake side of the district. The streetcar runs on the neutral ground down the middle of it, on a line in service since 1835. is the river side, and the shops are there.
takes up the block on between Prytania and Coliseum. The city closed it to visitors in September 2019 to repair the walkways and the tombs. It was still closed in 2025.
Films shot in Garden District
The Buckner Mansion at 1410 Jackson Avenue is the outside of Miss Robichaux's Academy in the Coven season of American Horror Story, and only the exteriors were shot there. Double Jeopardy shot inside in 1999 and swapped the 1 on the entrance gate for a 3.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 2008
David Fincher found the house at 2707 while scouting in 2006 and wanted it for the retirement home where Benjamin is left as a baby and where he grows up. The owner was Mary Nell Porter Nolan, who had evacuated to Houston after Katrina. She said no. Bill Doyle, the location scout, looked at as many as three hundred other properties. Fincher would not take any of them and she agreed in the end. The house is on the odd side of the block, across the street from the townhouses in this photograph.
What Garden District can double for
Garden District can stand in for the antebellum South and Miss Robichaux's Academy in American Horror Story.
