Marie Laveau's House
New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
The French Quarter cottage where the Voodoo Queen lived and worked, still marked and visited by devotees who leave notes and thanks on its front.
The cottage at 1020 St. Ann Street was the home of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, in her later years, the place where the most famous religious figure in American folk history lived, worked her practice, and was visited by clients of every class. Laveau's grave in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 draws the crowds; the house draws the devotees, the people who leave penciled crosses and thanks-notes on its front and who approach it as an active address of the tradition rather than a museum stop.
The house is a private residence, and the etiquette of the visit is correspondingly quiet: view from the sidewalk, leave the marks that tradition leaves, do not disturb the people who live with the doorbell of history. The living practice of gratitude at Laveau's address is one of the clearest cases of New Orleans Voodoo's continuity in the built city.
Visiting
1020 St. Ann St, New Orleans; private residence, viewable from the public sidewalk. See the New Orleans Historical project entry.
Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Site_of_Marie_Laveau's_Home.jpg), CC BY-SA.
Associated traditions & practices
Traditions from this region
Traditions historically rooted in this region — offered as background context, not as a claim about this particular place.
Visitor stories