Slate & Tile Roof Restoration in Seventh Ward, New Orleans
Creole cottages and shotguns with a deep craft tradition — this is where many of the city’s Creole builders and carpenters lived and worked. Well-made houses, now carrying a lot of covering age.
- Creole cottage and shotgun stock
- Historic craft-trade neighborhood
- St. Bernard and Claiborne corridors
Seventh Ward building stock, and what it means for a roof
The Seventh Ward, running back from the Marigny and Tremé toward Gentilly, was historically the home of the city’s Creole craftsmen — carpenters, plasterers, bricklayers and roofers whose work shaped much of New Orleans. It shows in the housing, which is unusually well built for modest stock: tight cypress framing and careful detailing on ordinary cottages and shotguns.
The framing quality means the structure has generally outlasted several coverings, and the useful work here is almost always about the covering and the details rather than the building. Much of the neighborhood flooded in 2005 and carries the same mixed repair history as Mid-City, with roofs dating from the recovery period now reaching the end of their service life.
Why Seventh Ward roofs fail the way they do
Three things we see repeatedly on this stock — not a generic list, and not the same three as the next neighborhood over.
Recovery-era coverings aging out
Roofs laid in the 2006–2008 rebuild are now at or beyond expected life, and they are failing in numbers.
Original deck boards
Cypress plank decking is durable but gaps open as it ages. Modern underlayment over gapped plank needs the right approach.
Rear addition junctions
Kitchens and bathrooms added to the rear of cottages over the years create low-slope tie-ins that leak before anything else.
Keeping a historic roof rather than losing it
A slate or clay tile roof that is shedding units is usually not finished. It is usually telling you something specific, and the specific answer is cheaper than the general one.
- Establish what is actually failing. On most historic roofs the slate outlives the copper. Valleys, step flashing and gutter linings go first, and the symptom presents as a slate problem.
- Match rather than substitute. Replacement slates are matched on color, size and thickness; tile is sourced to profile. The HDLC and the VCC both treat a visible mismatch as a change to the building, not a repair to it.
- Check the fixings, not just the units. Nail fatigue is what makes a slate roof start dropping slates at random rather than in one area. That is a re-fixing job, not a re-roofing job.
- Respect the deck. Original plank decking under a century-old slate roof behaves differently from modern sheathing, and modern underlayment has to be specified to suit it.
- Document for review. Before-and-after photographs and a written material schedule are what a historic-district review actually wants to see.
What the commissions will not accept
Design guidance for the local historic districts is explicit that standing seam metal is typically not an appropriate material to replace asphalt, slate or asbestos roofing. Traditional slate and clay tile are supported for restoration, and modern substitutes are permitted only where they match in material and color. If a contractor proposes stripping your slate for metal because it is quicker, that is a review problem as well as a preservation one.
A re-roofing permit is required in Orleans Parish — and three different commissions may review it
Residential re-roofing permits are applied for through the Department of Safety and Permits. Properties inside a historic district require additional review time before the permit is issued.
Four stages, no surprises
Inspection
Someone goes onto the roof. Not a drive-by, not a satellite image — the covering, the flashing, the valleys and the deck condition, looked at directly.
Diagnosis
What has failed and why, traced to the actual entry point rather than the spot where water shows up inside.
Written scope
What we found, what we propose, and what it costs, in writing with photographs. No number quoted cold over the phone.
The work
Carried out to the agreed scope, dried in each day, site cleared, and documented for your records and your insurer.
Working around St. Bernard Avenue, Claiborne Avenue, St. Augustine High School and the surrounding streets. If your address is in Seventh Ward, it is in the service area — there is no travel surcharge anywhere inside Orleans Parish.
Slate & Tile Roof Restoration near Seventh Ward
Everything else we do in Seventh Ward
Slate & Tile Roof Restoration in Seventh Ward — straight answers
Can my slate roof be repaired rather than replaced?
Usually, yes. Slate is one of the few coverings where individual units genuinely can be replaced, and a roof dropping the occasional slate is more often telling you the fixings or the copper valleys are tired than that the slate itself is finished.
Can I put metal on instead? It is cheaper.
Not in a local historic district, in most cases. Design guidance is explicit that standing seam metal is typically not an appropriate replacement for asphalt, slate or asbestos roofing in these districts. Traditional slate and clay tile are supported for restoration, and substitutes have to match in material and color.
How do you match a slate or tile that is no longer made?
On color, size and thickness for slate, and on profile for tile, sourcing salvaged or matched stock rather than putting the nearest available item on the roof. A visible mismatch is treated by the HDLC and the VCC as a change to the building rather than a repair to it.
The boards under my roof have gaps — is that a defect?
No, that is original cypress plank decking behaving normally. It was laid with gaps and it has shrunk further over a century, which is fine structurally but does mean the underlayment and fixing approach have to suit it. Fastening a modern covering into gapped plank without allowing for that is a common cause of nail pops and early failure, so it is something we specify for rather than work around.
Slate & Tile Roof Restoration in Seventh Ward?
Call and we will get someone on the roof, then put what we find in writing.