Huey P. Long's New Orleans House

A populist governor who ran Louisiana from an Uptown parlor — the address alone was the joke. The Georgian Revival house at 21 Audubon Boulevard was built in 1904, sitting on what the brief calls one of the most expensive blocks in the city. Huey Long lived there while serving as governor from 1928 to 1932, then as U.S. senator from 1932 until his assassination in 1935. He'd won the 1928 gubernatorial election by building a coalition around class divisions, highlighting the sharp economic divide in Louisiana. The irony of a populist keeping house where old money lived wasn't subtle. Long didn't govern from Baton Rouge. He commuted by car, surrounded by bodyguards, running state politics from this Uptown address. When he visited Louisiana as senator — though he had no constitutional authority — Governor Oscar K. Allen would relinquish his office, working instead at his receptionist's desk while Long drafted bills and pressed them through the legislature. The house was the real seat of power. On September 8, 1935, Long was shot inside the State Capitol he'd built in Baton Rouge — at 450 feet, the tallest capitol building in the nation. He died 31 hours later. Over 200,000 people traveled to Baton Rouge for his funeral. The house remains a private residence. You can see it from the street on Audubon Boulevard near St. Charles Avenue — a reminder that in New Orleans, the contradictions were always part of the point.