The Creole Cottage is a one and one-half story house with a gabled roof, the ridge of which is parallel to the street. The house is raised from 18 to 30 inches above a ventilated crawl space and is built up to the front property line. There are four squarish rooms with no hallways. Most Creole Cottages include various additional rooms behind the main four rooms. The earlier cottages include a gallery and two small service spaces known as cabinets A dependency (small separate building) at the rear of the lot probably supported this plan. Later cottages include one or more rooms constructed at the rear with a ridgeline at right angles to the main part of the house. This plan effectively moves the dependency from the rear of the lot and attaches it to the four main rooms.

The front of the cottage usually has four shuttered openings, of which two are doors and two are windows. Above the front wall is an overhang called an abat-vent. Much like balconies, abat-vents provide protection to the front wall, doors, and windows, from the sun and rain.

In cottages with a finished attic, a narrow, steep stair is provided in one of the rear rooms.

Across the street front of a cottage are four shuttered openings, with two being doors and two windows. The arrangement of the openings is symmetrical, but the doors can be toward the center or toward the outside.

Many descriptions of Creole Cottages say they were double houses (two families) because there are two doors to the street, but that is probably not correct for the smaller cottages. In the "French Quarter Manual" New Orleans architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe is quoted as saying:

These one-storied houses are very simple in their plan. The two front rooms open into the street with French glass doors. Those on one side are the dining & drawing rooms, the others, chambers. The front rooms, when inhabited by Americans, are the family rooms, & the back rooms the chambers. (Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Impressions Respecting New Orleans, Diary & Sketches, 1818-1820)

By placing the chambers to the side in the Creole fashion, access is provided from the street through the house to the rear yard and dependency without disturbing the bedrooms, even though there are no halls in a cottage.

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