French Quarter Holiday Home Tour 2025

Storyboard
Written By Ellis Anderson

Tony Marino’s bottle tree adds a festive note to the dining room, with its altar to St. Joseph

 December 2025

The venerable community organization, Patio Planters of the Vieux Carré, hosted the annual tour which helps fund the popular Caroling in the Square that follows later in the day.

- photos by Ellis Anderson 

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The line to purchase or pick up tickets began forming an hour before the tour began at noon.

The tree topper in this case? A top hat.

A few of the homeowners and docents who made the 2025 tour possible:

Ellis Anderson

Ellis Anderson first came to the French Quarter in 1978 as a young musician and writer.  Eventually, she also became a silversmith and represented local artists as owner of Quarter Moon Gallery, with locations in the Quarter and Bay St. Louis, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  

Her book about the Bay's Katrina experience, Under Surge, Under Siege, was published by University Press of Mississippi and won several awards, including the Eudora Welty Book Prize in 2010 and the Mississippi Library Association's Nonfiction Author's Award for 2011.  Under Surge, Under Siege was also short-listed as nonfiction finalist for the 2012 William Saroyan International Book Prize, Stanford University Libraries.

 In 2011, Anderson founded her first digital publication, the Shoofly Magazine and served as publisher from 2011 - 2022.  She established French Quarter Journal in 2019, where she currently serves as publisher and managing editor.

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Caroling in Jackson Square 2025