House Floats – St. Charles Ave.

St. Charles is famous in part for being the grand avenue the Uptown parades roll during Carnival in New Orleans. This time of year, the live-oak-and-manor-home lined avenue is normally crowded with ladder chairs topped with children, ice chests and barbecues, and throngs of festively dressed parade-goers snatching beads, toys and cups from the air as massive, colorful floats roll by carrying dozens of Krewe members scattering throws. Mardi Gras is an act of love and festivity with the members of the various Krewes paying for everything from the throws, floats, bands and dancers to the police and clean-up. But COVID interrupted that act of generosity.

Not to be undone, the city has embraced “Yardi Gras.” Thousands of homes and businesses throughout the city (and even the world) are 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. In the search for these fun and fabulous house floats, I’ve already covered Magazine Street, the Irish Channel, Mid-City and the Garden District and Lower Garden District.

The people of St. Charles Ave. took house floats to a whole new level with the spectacle of grand mansions decorated by artists like Kern Studios – the same people who design and create most of our parades’ stunning floats. The dinosaur and circus house floats are particularly amazing as is the traditionally dressed Maison Mask-querade house float house across the street (that locals know as “the skeleton house” for its witty Halloween displays).

Many house floats on St. Charles were already shared in my post on the Garden District, as St. Charles is one of the borders of the district, and have not been repeated here. I have included some house floats on streets near St. Charles well worth wandering toward toward Carondelet or Coliseum for – like the Krewe of Zulu house, or the pun-driven Uptown Boil Advisory house float featuring a crawfish boil.

Next up – house floats in the French Quarter, the Marigny and Algiers.