Book Description

An essential reference guide to one of New Orleans’s most iconic Uptown neighborhoods, New Orleans Architecture: Volume IX documents the remarkable architectural history of the former city of Carrollton, once the seat of Jefferson Parish and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Following the format of previous volumes in the series, Robert J. Cangelosi Jr. divides the study into three sections. He begins in the early eighteenth century by chronicling the area’s development as one of the many upriver communities just west of New Orleans. Its fields and plantations afforded early homesteaders tillable farmland and easy access to the Mississippi River. Later, during the War of 1812, American troops led by William Carroll encamped there, and the area was subsequently named for the general. In 1831, developers purchased the land, subdivided it, and began construction of a road and a canal linking the area to New Orleans. Local officials reorganized Carrollton in 1845—by then a village of about 1,000 residents—as a town in Jefferson Parish, and in 1859 a charter officially incorporated it as a city. Just fifteen years later, the City of New Orleans annexed Carrollton—now replete with schools, public gardens, and brick-paved streets—as the Seventh Municipal District. The volume’s second section consists of a “Building Index,” which gives the original owners, dates of construction, costs, designers, and builders for many of the structures erected in Carrollton since its founding. In the “Selective Architectural Inventory,” the book’s final section, Cangelosi explores the history of nearly 420 historic homes and buildings in Carrollton, and shares thumbnail photographs, detailed sales records, and information on a variety of architectural styles. New Orleans Architecture: Volume IX serves as a valuable resource for the city’s Historic District Landmark Commission and the State Historic Preservation Office, as well as home owners, real estate agents, guides, historians, and tourists.