[Icelander]

Originally Posted by pestigor

I'd use google maps to look in the neighborhoods around Tulane and Loyola.
Check out Versailles Blvd north of Tulane's baseball stadium and Fontainebleau Dr west of Versailles east of South Carrolton Ave.

Ah, thanks.

It's established that Lucien Lacoste (PC) went to Jesuit High School on Banks Street near South Carrolton Avenue. He also attended Loyola University.

While it's true that his parents did not live at the ancestral Lacoste home while Lucien was in high school, Père Lacoste attended the school in his day (he was classmates with former Mayor Marc Morial) and was at that time definitely living at the ancestral home.

I'll walk through these neighborhoods in Google Street View, check if I see any houses that look right.

Originally Posted by pestigor

The main issue is the Southern Gothic Mansions are mostly on St. Charles itself.
The Garden district (and most of uptown) is just so expensive that every shotgun house there rent's for an absurd amount of money.

Yes, that's my fear as well.

With that being said, I think I'd rather accept a perfect-looking house and grounds in the 'wrong' location, i.e. likely to be all too valuable, than a house that doesn't look right, but has the right approximate value. After all, I have some good ideas in this thread on how the sale might have been made difficult and the prices offered might have been low, due to a variety of factors like trouble with Historical Societies, disputed ownership and the like.

Originally Posted by pestigor

I think, unless you're running a game for locals you can get away with some poetic license. The simple fact is that area is taken up by long time residents or student rentals (which inheritors of long time residents realize they could milk for loads of money if they rented).

None of the players has ever been to Louisiana. Nor have I, for that matter. But it doesn't matter, I don't like inexplicable anomalies in fictional backgrounds, not unless it's meant to be a mystery.

Technically, it's perfectly fine if people wonder why Nana Lacoste doesn't reach some sort of settlement with her late husband's family so that all of them can be millionaires with a sale of the house. That's an actual mystery that has answers in the setting. What I don't want is for it to be completely mysterious and inexplicable why the 2-3 generations before Grand-père Lacoste didn't sell the house at some point, as they clearly could have used some life-changing money.

It would help if the house was in a location or of a style (or both) that was not all that sought after during the first five or six decades of the 20th century. I just don't know if there are any neighborhoods in New Orleans that might have the requisite Gothic architecture and sizable grounds, but where it might have been difficult to sell a huge, sprawling, decaying house for massive amounts of money in the 1920s to the 1960s.

If there was ever a period where the real estate market was depressed for a given location or neighborhood with suitable houses, no matter how desirable it is today, maybe that was exactly the time when a stubborn patriarch or matriarch of a previous generation died and the heirs had to accept that they couldn't sell at that time, not easily or for what they thought the estate should be worth.

Originally Posted by pestigor

I've lived 10 minutes away from New Orleans for over 47 years and used to gig in every dive bar uptown in the early to mid 90's.

Great.

I'll be relying on you for as much local knowledge as you feel inclined to supply. Anything of which you can think.