House Floats – Garden District

In the search for fabulous and festive house floats, I’ve already covered Magazine Street, the Irish Channel, Mid-City and the Lower Garden District. New Orleans has been celebrating Mardi Gras in a safe, socially distanced way with City Park’s drive-thru Floats in the Oaks stationary parade and “Yardi Gras,” thousands of homes and businesses throughout the city decorated as parade floats. Krewe of House Floats promoted this safe parade concept, encouraging people to use local businesses and artists to help decorate their places as house floats, or go DIY, then register on their map. The effect is the city basically looks like a drive-thru parade.

The Garden District runs along Magazine St., so there are a few homes and businesses that also go with my earlier post if you’re wandering around looking for house floats. We’re all missing our parades with their marching bands, dancers, and floats of Krewe members throwing beads, cups and toys. It’s been fun walking (or driving) through our historic and architecturally amazing neighborhoods and seeing everyone’s creativity and spirit.

Some favorites are the Queen’s Jubilee, a gorgeous tribute to healthcare workers, Commander’s Palace with it’s Pete Fountain statue and flying cherubs, the magical Krewe of Muses house of Muses, and Harmony Street, where house floats represented different instruments – creating a harmonious band. I also loved seeing school fences decorated by our city’s children. It must be even harder for them to accept not going to parades so it was nice to see so many of them getting into Yardi Gras.

Oh – and thanks to the Garden District Book Shop for my commemorative Krewe D’ Etat float guide of the parade that might’ve been…