Fats Domino’s House

Rock ’n’ roll legend Fats Domino’s two-home compound at Caffin Avenue and Marais Street has been a landmark of the Lower 9th Ward since 1960. Consisting of a pink-and-white split-level mansion on the corner and a white-brick shotgun house with yellow-and-black trim next door, Domino’s home is a symbol of the superstar’s attachment to his hometown.

New Orleans’ biggest musical export since Louis Armstrong, Domino sold more records from 1956 to 1963 than anyone but Elvis Presley and could have lived anywhere. He chose, when not on tour, to stay in the neighborhood he grew up in, holding court over heaping pots of red beans and rice in a living room with a grand piano and a couch made from the back of a vintage Cadillac. Musicians, neighbors, relatives, and visiting dignitaries were in and out the door over the decades.

A notorious homebody, Domino famously declined an invitation to the White House to receive the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton, sending his daughter instead. The house later became a global symbol of Hurricane Katrina’s ravages when photos surfaced showing Domino’s rescue by the Coast Guard. With Domino erroneously presumed dead in the confusion, graffiti sprayed on his home pronounced “R.I.P. Fats. You will be missed.” Domino eventually returned to New Orleans, setting up a new home in a quiet neighborhood in Harvey on the West Bank where he lived until his death in 2017.

For more on the roots of rock ‘n’ roll in New Orleans, click here.