Building Plans in the City Archives
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About the Index
Exact addresses are not shown on some plans. In such cases bounding streets are listed. Individual buildings within larger groupings usually are listed under a corporate address (e.g., most structures on Tulane University’s Uptown campus are listed under 6836 St. Charles Ave. and most Louisiana World Exposition properties are listed at 805 Convention Center Boulevard). For a very few plans, no fronting street is indicated; in those instances the plans are listed in a separate “No Address Given” grouping.
Buildings are listed under formal or informal names (e.g., Maison Blanche) when possible. If a building is part of a larger institutional or commercial entity, then the name of that entity is listed in this field (e.g., Charity Hospital) and the name of the individual structure is listed in the “Nature of Work” field. When no such names are shown on the plans, or could not otherwise be identified, the listing is by building type (e.g., two story commercial building).
This field is used to identify work other than original construction (i.e., renovation). In some cases the nature of work is indicated along with the name or type of building. As indicated above, this field is also used to name individual structures within a larger institutional or commercial entity.
Exact date of approval by Plan Processing is shown when indicated on the plan. If the date was taken from the plan itself (“date drawn”), in most cases the year only is listed.
Generally included when shown on the plan for identification purposes only. In most cases letter prefixes have been omitted. Plans received from the Vieux Carre Commission, which do not have final permit numbers, have “VCC” in the permit number field.
Complete identification of all project participants is not necessarily indicated.
Plans with unprefixed numbers 450 or lower are on microfilm under call number KJG620. All other plans must be retrieved from storage by a staff member.
About the Building Plans
There was no legal requirement that property owners or builders file plans with city officials until 1884 when ordinance #733, Council Series, required that such plans, along with specifications, be submitted to the Surveyor if they were used. Thus, the City Archives collection has only one set of plans prior to this date.
Most of the plans in this collection are blueprints or blue line prints. Several are original drawings and are so identified in the index. This collection contains very few residential plans.
The Plan Processing Unit of the Department of Safety and Permits first transferred building plans to the City Archives in 1974. At that time, the office transferred all plans that had been retained in the department, almost all of which were non-residential. Thus, the City Archives has very few plans for residential structures prior to 1974. Since that first deposit, Safety & Permits has continued to deposit plans on an irregular basis.
About 450 sets of plans are available only on 35mm microfilm. These plans represent some of the earlier sets in the collection (1894-1949).
The Vieux Carre Commission transferred plans to the City Archives in several installments during the 1990s. Most of the plans (which can be identified by filing numbers beginning with the letter “V” or by the letters “VCC” in place of a permit number) are blueprint copies filed by project architects or engineers with the Commission. They generally are stamped with the date of Commission approval. Researchers should note that these plans are the Commission’s copies, not the final copies approved by the Department of Safety and Permits.
Additional Vieux Carre Commission plans are available on several rolls of 35mm microfilm (Call number: mf AS620). These plans are not indexed, nor are they arranged in any logical order.
During the early part of the nineteenth century, actual building permits were not required for the erection of either residential, commercial, or institutional structures in New Orleans. Once legally required by ordinance 6022 in 1879, various departments were responsible for issuing such permits. The City Archives has copies of building permits, applications, and inspections from various city agencies from the late 1800s through the 1980s. These documents are arranged by permit number but are unindexed. In most cases they provide little information other than a date and some brief description of the foundations, walls, etc.
- Record of Certificates of Inspection of Streets and Buildings, 1879-1883, Department of Police
- Record of Building Permits, 1883-1887,Surveyor’s Office
- Building Permits, 1896-1902, Department of Police and Public Buildings
- Record of permits for building and repairs, 1893-1895, Department of Police and Public Buildings
- Record of Building Permits, 1911-1917, City Engineer’s Office
- Building Permits and Applications, 1927-1988, Department of Safety and Permits
- Search for recent permits through the Department of Safety and Permits website.