Navigating & Searching the Survey

Abbreviations

Property Owners & Name

Entering a name in the search box on the home page will return records where the name appears in multiple places within the property record: chain of title, citation, property description, etc.

When searching for a particular person, simply enter the person’s first and last name (Jane Smith).

When using the advanced search form to search by name, only those records where the name appears in the chain of title will be returned.

Renters and lessees are not generally found in the database, only property owners and their agents. For information on renters and lessees, consult New Orleans city directories.

Individual Property Addresses

Keep in mind that street address numbers have changed through the years. While most municipal addresses used in the French Quarter are the same as those found on the 1896 Sanborn Fire Insurance maps in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, a few addresses were changed by owners or by the city. Updates for as many of these changes as possible were made through ca. 2005, but it would be best to search on an address in usage between 1960 and 1985. For the most accurate results, use the advanced search form.

Buildings may carry a range of municipal street numbers (for example, 1100–1110 Royal Street). Searching on a number within the range will bring up the property record. (so searching on 1108 Royal Street will return the property record for 1100–1110 Royal Street).

New owners of corner properties sometimes change the primary street address from one fronting street to the other. These properties may be searched by either address. Searching on street address from the search box on the home page does not return an Owners tabbed page, but clicking on an owner’s name listed in the chain of title will execute a query that returns a grid display of properties associated with that name. Addresses given on the color-coded square maps and the Bohlke elevation sketches are often incorrect, while those on Sanborn Insurance Maps (1876, 1896) and Robinson Atlas Maps (1883) are generally reliable for the years when they were created.

Some street names in the French Quarter have changed over time, as have street numbers (the City of New Orleans adopted its current street numbering system in 1894). When using a citation that references an old street name or a pre-1894 street number, you can determine the current address by consulting older plans and maps of the Vieux Carré or by using the indexes of Changes to Street Names and Street Numbers, 1852–1938 on the website of the New Orleans Public Library’s.

Square Numbers

Searching by square number can be done through the Advanced Search form, which includes a pull-down menu and interactive map.

The numbers assigned to squares (or city blocks) in the survey come from the City of New Orleans’s Department of Property Management. The configuration and number of squares between the Mississippi River and Decatur Street has changed several times. These squares are located on the former batture, the land between the river and levee. The area of the batture has increased over the centuries. It has typically been used for commercial purposes such as warehouses, sheds, and factories that were built and razed over time. The square numbers of the blocks north of Decatur Street have remained unchanged.

The pull-down menu of square numbers and the interactive map are based on a Vieux Carré Commission map that closely matches the VCC’s circa 1985 map except for squares located between Decatur Street and the river. Please mind the differences when referencing the VCC’s Marcou, O’Leary & Associates maps that have been colored coded and the VCS interactive map and square numbering.

VCC batture square “A” is identified in the VCS as square “Old No. 3.” VCC batture squares B, C, and E are combined and identified as “Old Square No. 4” in the VCS and contains the property records for the buildings and public spaces at 902, 904, and 906 N. Peters Street.

VCC batture squares “D” and “11” are identified in the VCS as a single square, Square 11.

Architectural Color-coding

Vieux Carré Commission Evaluations

The VCC color-coded square maps are based on the color-coded VCC architectural evaluations of the 1960s and early 1970s.

VCC Evaluation Color Code

Purple	Of national architectural or historical importance
Blue	Of major architectural or historical importance
Green	Of local architectural or historical importance
Pink	Of local or major architectural or historical importance that has been detrimentally altered but if properly restored, could be upgraded to Blue or Green.
Yellow	Contributes to the character of the district
Orange	Twentieth-century building
Brown	Objectionable or of no architectural importance

////// Substantial remains or site of a building of known architectural importance.

Prior to 1988 the VCC used a color-coding system that included striping (a building color coded Yellow with Green stripes, for example, indicated a property that, with proper restoration, could be upgraded from Yellow to Green). After 1988, the Pink rating replaced striping to indicate buildings that could be upgraded to Blue or Green.

Ratings were updated in the late 1970s and 1980s. please see the written evaluations found on the “Property Info” page for each lot and the two VCC color coded maps.

The Historic District Landmarks Commission Evaluations

The squares that border Canal Street (squares 1, 2, 5, 31, 32, 33, 34, 65, 67, 94 and 95) are not part of the Vieux Carré Historic District monitored by the VCC, and therefore the hand-colored maps for these squares do not represent official VCC ratings. These squares are in the province of the Historic District Landmarks Commission, which has its own color-coding system, similar to that of the VCC. Please mind the differences when referencing the HDLC Canal Street District Map.

HDLC Evaluation Color Code

Purple	Of national importance
Blue	Of major architectural importance
Green	Of architectural or historic importance
Red	Important building that has been altered
Gold	Contributes to the scene
Grey /  Black	Unrated

This HDLC color rating corresponds to the map found on the French Quarter Map Resources age, which was used in this survey. In 2011 the HDLC changed to a three- tier code: Significant (Purple, Blue), Contributing (Green, Red, Gold), and Noncontributing (Grey, Black). For more information on this change visit the HDLC pages on the City of New Orleans website.

Building Materials

To indicate building materials, the survey uses a four-color code based on the Sanborn Insurance Maps of ca. 1935.

Building Material Color Code

Red	Masonry, including bricks between posts (for colonial and many pre–Civil War structures), solid brick, surfaced brick, granite, marble.
Yellow	Wood
Blue	Iron
Green	Frame special

Houses with brick-between-post walls whose street faces are clad in weatherboards are usually coded yellow for wood. Houses with brick-between-post walls with plastered street facades are coded red for masonry (even if the side and back facades are clad in weatherboards).

Surveyors' Measure

During the 18th and 19th centuries, many New Orleans surveyors used the French system of measurement—pieds for feet, pouces for inches, and lignes for lines—when surveying property. (The French foot is slightly longer than the English foot, at close to 13 inches.) The old French system was used until the Civil War; plans and surveys often indicate whether the surveyor is using French measure (F.M.) or imperial measure (noted as A.M. for American measure).

Chains of Title

Completeness:

Many chains of title in the survey only extend from the early American period (ca. 1803). References to French and Spanish colonial acts of sale for some properties are found within the citations. Researchers wishing to access the original French and Spanish notarial acts may find them at the New Orleans Notarial Archives and at the Louisiana Historical Center, located in the Louisiana State Museum.

From 1982 to the present, HNOC staff collected clippings from the Times-Picayune’s real estate listings and entered them into the survey. They may be useful but are not considered official. The dates provided are the newspapers’ print dates, not the dates of the acts of sale. Chains of title are in the process of being updated using official notarial acts.

Content:

Though the chains of title follow the general model of a legal chain of title, the historical chains of title abstracted by VCS staff sometimes give citations to things not included in a legal chain of title, such as building contracts, maps and plans (especially from the 18th century), books, and magazine and newspaper articles.

In creating the abstracted chains of title, the original compilers of the survey generally used the Conveyance Office Books—the de facto indices for the acts housed at the New Orleans Notarial Archives—rather than the original notarial acts and legal judgments. As a result, the dates most commonly provided are not the dates of the actual notarial acts or court rulings but the dates they were recorded by the Conveyance Office. This “COB” date may be much later than the actual date of the legal instrument. When the actual act or court date is cited by the survey, it appears in the site’s chain of title listings as the “Authority Date.”

Please note that VCS staff did not always include property prices in the abstracted acts of sale.

Free People of Color

Pre–Civil War chains of title usually indicate parties who were free men or women of color, but race was not always noted. Existing information was included in the database and “free people of color” was made a search operator. However, a search on this term will not yield a complete count of all free people of color who owned property within the confines of the survey.

Citations

Citations include quotes from sources such as newspaper articles, letters, books, and legal documents that survey staff discovered in the course of their work. Though some building contracts have been entered into the chains of title, most are listed as citations.

Where no date was available for a citation, VCS staff did their best to estimate the date of publication. For published works, the year provided has been verified.

Please note the that the 19th century bilingual (French and English) newspaper Le Courrier de la Louisiane is referenced in the survey by several names: Le Courrier, Le Courier, The Courier, Louisiana Courier, and LA Courier, to list a few.

Image Credits

When known, proper credit has been provided for images, but a small number of photographs and other images within the original survey did not credit a rights-holder, repository, or creator. We have done our best to locate this information, and we ask that if you know the provenance of an uncredited image, please contact us.