Frenchmen Street is a street in the 7th Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana. It is the home to the city's most popular live music venues, including Snug Harbor and The Maison, in addition to restaurants, bars, and other businesses.
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Frenchmen Street runs from the intersection with Esplanade Avenue just inland from the Mississippi, back to the Gentilly neighborhood.
The most famous and frequently visited section of Frenchmen Street is a short section in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood, just down river from the Vieux Carre, or French Quarter. This area was once the plantation of a wealthy Creole born man who made the dice game Craps popular in America. He influenced the city of New Orleans with his joie de vivre--or a keen enjoyment of living-- and extravagance. In 1806 his property was subdivided. The area of Frenchman Street in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood slowly developed into a happening block with a mix of a unique European flair and cosmopolitan feel.
Wandering down Frenchmen Street, a passerby will notice the New Orleans architecture that makes the city stand apart from other American metropolitan areas. Frenchmen Street is the home to many Creole Cottages—a New Orleans design stemming back to the period between 1790-1850. Creole Cottages are single story, set at ground level, have a steeply pitched roof, symmetrical four-opening façade wall and are set close to front property line. The cottages are usually made of stucco or wood exterior. In the “French Quarter Manual” New Orleans architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe describes these cottages: “These one-storied houses are very simple in their plan. The two front rooms open into the street with French glass doors. Those on one side are the dining & drawing rooms, the others, chambers. The front rooms, when inhabited by Americans, are the family rooms, & the back rooms the chambers.” (Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Impressions Respecting New Orleans, Diary & Sketches, 1818-1820) Frenchmen Street is also the home to another characteristically New Orleans style home: Creole Townhouse. This style dates back to the 1788, following the Great New Orleans fire. The Creole Townhouse is a two to four story structure set at or near ground level, asymmetrical arrangement of arched openings on façade wall set on property line, iron balcony at second and sometimes third levels, and steeply pitched side gabled roof often with multiple roof dormers. It usually has a stucco or brick exterior.