The Property
You don't need to be on vacation to live the good life. When you visit New Orleans, you should do it like you live here. As I tell people walking back to the French Quarter after Jazz Fest, a fifteen-minute walk away — if you were lodging at La Belle Esplanade, you'd be home by now.
Every happy memory is a secret hidden out in the open.
- Esplanade Ave
- The Middle Sister
- The Suites
Esplanade Avenue
I tell people that we live in Tremé, and people say, "No, man, you live on Esplanade Avenue." They're right.
Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans, LA, is a world of its own, a fairyland of colorful historic mansions under the live oak trees. A wide neutral ground runs down the middle of the street, a linear park, to our block. Walk down the middle of the street as far as the river — that way you get the best view of both sides of the street.
La Belle Esplanade is right at the center point between the French Quarter and City Park. It's the orange house, one of three sisters built in 1883. All day long, tour buses, bicycle tours, and people parking their cars jump out to take a picture of the house. We live in a landmark. Our houses have been featured on television shows, TV commercials, the cover of the city's official tourist guide — and inside the house, when people shoot movies and commercials here.
Every weekend, in season, there are second line parades around our block. You will usually be in the French Quarter, having a good time, while here in the real city, life goes on. The Degas House, on the next block, is a favorite wedding destination, as is the Derbes Mansion, diagonally across the street from La Belle Esplanade. When we bought La Belle Esplanade from Jim Derbes, that house was called the Benachi Mansion.
Within a mile radius of La Belle Esplanade, there is the Old U.S. Mint, home to the National Jazz Museum, the home-grown Tremé Petit Jazz Museum, the Backstreet Cultural Museum, the New Orleans African American Heritage Museum, the Degas House, Le Musée de f.p.c. (Museum of the Free People of Color), and St. Louis Cemetery No. 3, where all the tour buses stop after they pass by our house.