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Originally Posted by bocephus
Based on the other info you can literally put it anywhere you want. Here's how it works if you need realism.
Using this as a background you can pick, pretty much, any house you want in just about any location. Unfortunately I don't have the background in New Orleans that your seeking so I cant point out a specific house. Even one with a lot of land around it. Remember that in the USA land isn't as costly or hard to come by as in Europe, locations go up and down in value based on local developments, but it isn't hard to just look elsewhere for a better deal.
Historical sites become very tricky to sell as well because the govt cant just take land, however they can make it difficult and costly to try and do anything with it other than restore it. Historical Societies can be as bad as they are good, many people in historical areas see them as an expensive plague.
I can tell you that the story is actually much more common in the USA than you might think. Old families change over 2-3 generations typically and all but one branch of the family goes back to middle class in less than 100years.
Basically its really easy for this situation to occur. Typically one of the last things families that invest in their history let go of is the Ancestral Homestead, especially in a place like New Orleans where deep roots mean something in some circles.
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That house IS their decline. Once upon a time they were great merchant princes, cattle barons, industrialists, whatever and most of their stuff got taken over by some mundane LLC with a ringer for a CEO. But a few things stuck like the house. Look how long the Astors lasted. The Dulles' came fresh off the boat at Plymouth.
They married high in Europe somewhere. And the guys on the other side of the pond moved over because of to many people ending up against the wall somewhere or other. Always a good reason (in fact there is a lot of playing around you can do with that).
The present owner got it by some eccentric family connection.
What did the family do during the Recent Unpleasantness? If it is old enough to be interesting one wonders if they were all on the Southern side or if they had connections up North.
It is not impossible to give their family plenty of age.