MovieChat Forums > Longstreet (1971) Discussion > The REAL 835 Chartres Street

The REAL 835 Chartres Street

posted 3 years ago by CarolTheDabbler (570)
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Here's a link to Google's double view of 835 Chartres Street, New Orleans -- in other words, Mike Longstreet's house (if you click the link below and a regular map comes up, just click its Satellite view button):

https://www.google.com/maps/place/835+Chartres+St,+New+Orleans,+LA+70116/@29.9589659,-90.0627151,34m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x8620a61105c32ec1:0x968f88401a681f4a!8m2!3d29.9589711!4d-90.0626789

The street view speaks for itself! In the overhead view, #835 is the leftmost third of the three adjoined white-roofed houses just west of the intersection. The courtyard is clearly visible, and behind that is the kitchen (which is a separate building).

It's unusual for TV shows to give a house's actual location, let alone the exact address. Sometimes the real house and its fictional location are thousands of miles apart (e.g., Jessica Fletcher's house in "Cabot Cove, Maine" -- which is actually in Mendocino, California!). But Longstreet is clearly an exception -- the street sign at the corner of Chartres and Dumaine is frequently shown in establishing shots, and if that's not Mike's house just a few paces away, then it's the identical twin!

So, even though the show was reportedly filmed "mostly" in California, that presumably means that the house's interior was a studio set, and some other locations were also in LA. Some of the exterior shots, however (including virtually all of those on Chartres Street), were apparently filmed in New Orleans.

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[–] CarolTheDabbler (570) 3 years ago

The Collins C. Diboll Vieux Carré Digital Survey has information about the house, here:

https://www.hnoc.org/vcs/property_info.php?lot=18515

According to that site, the property is 24 feet wide and 65 feet 8 inches deep. My eyeball estimate of the Google aerial view in the previous post puts the house proper (the front building) at roughly 24 by 40 feet, the courtyard roughly 24 by 10, and the kitchen building the remaining 24 by 16 feet.

The "Chain of Title" tab lists owners of that bit of land back to 1722, although the three houses were not built till about a hundred years later. The "Citations" tab mentions (rather vaguely) that a newspaper article dated New Year's Day of 1971 says the house will serve as the title character's office in an upcoming television series called Longstreet.

Note: "Vieux Carré" (meaning "Old Square") is a French-language name for the historic part of New Orleans that's generally called the "French Quarter" in English.

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[–] CarolTheDabbler (570) 3 years ago

Check out this photo -- look familiar?

https://ssl.cdn-redfin.com/photo/166/mbpaddedwide/149/genMid.889149_3_4.jpg

Look again! That's a courtyard view inside the real #835, from a real-estate website. As in the show, you're looking at one end of the kitchen building. Note that the privacy wall (at left) is much higher than in the show, so that you can barely see the top of it at one point. Note also the brick archway in the foreground -- don't recall ever seeing that in the show, so either I wasn't paying attention or they omitted it from the set.

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[–] CarolTheDabbler (570) 3 years ago

Here's a view from the walkway above the kitchen (shown in the prior photo), this time looking at the main house:

https://ssl.cdn-redfin.com/photo/166/mbphoto/149/genMid.889149_2_4.jpg

Note the arches on the ground floor (which we were looking through in the prior photo). Also note the tree at left, which is presumably the tree that's basically on the line between #835 and #837 in Google's aerial view -- this confirms that we're looking southeast, toward the main house.

There's also a tree in the next courtyard on Longstreet -- but it's by the other (southwest) end of #835's courtyard, not a good spot for a tree in real life (judging by the Google view, where there's a large building there, rather than another courtyard).

And here's #835's main page on that real-estate site, so you can "See all 13 photos," including the kitchen, a nice clear shot of the front, a view from the cast-iron gallery (the "balcony" where Mike and Duke were standing in "The Girl With the Broom"), and far more rooms than we've ever seen on the show:

https://www.redfin.com/LA/New-Orleans/835-Chartres-St-70116/home/79391838

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[–] CarolTheDabbler (570) 3 years ago

If you'd like to watch another TV show set in the French Quarter, check out Leverage: Redemption (a 2021 sequel to the 2008 Showtime series, with most of the original cast), about a team of good-guy (though not necessarily legal) con artists. Their headquarters is a lovely old house that bears a definite resemblance to Mike Longstreet's place. Clearly the exteriors are shot on location, and apparently the interiors are filmed in New Orleans as well (though not necessarily inside that house).

The episodes are available free on IMDb TV's streaming service.

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[–] CarolTheDabbler (570) 3 years ago

According to MovieMaps.org, the Leverage team's HQ is at 515 Madison Street (a mere 5-10 minute walk from Mike Longstreet's place). According to the Vieux Carré Digital Survey at HNOC.org, the house is almost 30% larger than 835 Chartres, and slightly newer.

And according to Zillow.com (which has photos, both interior and exterior), it's now a condo -- so it's conceivable that the interior scenes really are filmed inside a portion of the actual house. (I think it's more likely, though, that the interior is a studio set.)

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