The district is more commonly called the French Quarter today, or simply "The Quarter", related to changes in the city with American immigration after the Louisiana Purchase. The district as a whole has been designated as a National Historic Landmark , with numerous contributing buildings that are separately deemed significant.
It is a prime tourist destination in the city, as well as attracting local residents. The French Quarter suffered relatively light damage from floodwater as compared to other areas of the city and the greater region, due to its distance from areas where the levee was breached during Hurricane Katrina in as well as the strength and height of the nearest Mississippi River Levees in contrast to other levees along the canals and lakefront. In , the royal engineer Adrien de Pauger designed the city's street layout.
He named the streets after French royal houses and Catholic saints, and paid homage to France's ruling family, the House of Bourbon , with the naming of Bourbon Street. The Great New Orleans Fire of and another in destroyed 80 percent of the city's buildings, and so nearly all the French Quarter dates from the late s onwards.
The Spanish introduced strict new fire codes that banned wooden siding in favor of fire-resistant brick, which was covered in stucco , painted in the pastel hues fashionable at the time. The old French peaked roofs were replaced with flat tiled ones, but the still largely French population continued to build in similar styles, influenced by colonial architecture of the Caribbean, such as timber balconies and galleries.
In southeast Louisiana, a distinction is made between "balconies", which are self-supporting and attached to the side of the building, and " galleries ," which are supported from the ground by poles or columns. When Anglophone Americans began to move in after the Louisiana Purchase in , they mostly built on available land upriver, across modern-day Canal Street.
