What a New Orleans roof actually is
Walk a block in the Garden District or on Prytania and the roofs change every lot: slate, standing seam, and the occasional tile on the grand houses, asphalt on the shotguns and doubles behind them. Mid-City and Bayou St. John are bungalows and raised cottages with hips and short ridges. The French Quarter, the Marigny, and parts of the Warehouse District are parapet buildings. Water does not shed off an eave there it has to reach a drain or a scupper, so the membrane and the edge metal matter more than the shingle color.
Lakeview, Gentilly, Fillmore, and much of New Orleans East were rebuilt with simpler hip and gable forms, often architectural shingles or a low-slope membrane on additions. Algiers Point still has Victorian and Eastlake houses with the same oak and wind problems as Uptown, on the other side of the ferry. We look at the house that is there, not a citywide “typical roof.”
