The House With a Hump Out Back: Uptown's Camelback Comeback

A buyer touring a modest shotgun-front listing on a quiet Uptown side street recently had the kind of moment agents live for. From the sidewalk, the house read as a classic New Orleans single: narrow, gable-front, one story, unassuming. But walking the center hall toward the back, the ceiling suddenly lifted, a staircase appeared out of nowhere, and a full second story revealed itself, tucked behind the roofline where the street view never gave it away. The buyer stopped mid-hallway and said what almost everyone says the first time: "I had no idea this was back here."

That double take is practically a rite of passage in Uptown New Orleans, and nowhere more so than around Freret Street, where block after block of humble shotgun fronts hide an unusual number of these rear additions. If you're house hunting in this pocket of the city, sooner or later you'll walk into one. It helps to know what you're actually looking at before you fall for it, or second-guess it.

What a Camelback Actually Is

New Orleans grew up on a standard city lot of roughly 30 by 120 feet, a shape that runs from the French Quarter all the way upriver through Uptown. That long, narrow footprint is the whole reason the shotgun house exists: rooms lined up single-file, front to back, deep enough to fit on the lot without wasting an inch of street frontage.

The trouble was that a one-story shotgun only holds so much family. Rather than build an elaborate street-facing addition, which meant expensive ornamental work to match the existing facade, builders found a cheaper workaround: stack a second story over the rear rooms only, where nobody passing by would see it. The result is a house that looks like a single story from the sidewalk and hides a full second floor out back, a silhouette that reminded people of a camel's hump. The term itself isn't a modern nickname; it turns up in a New Orleans building contract as early as 1885, and the style had its heyday roughly between 1880 and 1920.

Why Uptown, and Why Freret Specifically

Historic shotgun and camelback stock is genuinely concentrated in Uptown, and Freret Street in particular still carries an unusually intact run of it, just blocks from Audubon Park. It's worth sitting with the contrast this creates. A few miles closer to the river, the Garden District built its reputation on grand Greek Revival and Italianate mansions set back behind iron fences, houses meant to be seen and admired from the street. Freret's shotguns and camelbacks are their plainspoken working-class cousins: efficient, unpretentious, built for the families who staffed and supplied the city rather than the families who commissioned marble mantels.

That range is part of what makes Uptown interesting as a place to search rather than just a place to buy. You can be touring a double-gallery mansion one afternoon and a camelback shotgun the next, both technically "Uptown," both a short walk from the park, and each telling a completely different story about how the neighborhood actually developed.

What They Cost Today

Uptown as a whole has gotten considerably more expensive to buy into. As of May 2026, the neighborhood's median home price sits around $725,000, with the trailing 12-month median sale price closer to $747,500, up roughly 22 percent year over year. Move a few blocks toward the park itself and the Audubon area runs higher still, with a median closer to $895,000 as of this past April.

Camelbacks don't have a single tidy price tag of their own; a lot depends on how much of the original house survives, how the rear addition was executed, and whether it's been expanded further since. As a general range, a well-restored or thoughtfully expanded camelback in this part of Uptown can land anywhere from the high six figures into well over a million dollars, particularly on the blocks closest to Freret's restaurant row or the park. Treat any number you see in a listing as a starting point for conversation, not a fixed rule.

The Renovation Calculus

Before falling for one of these houses, it's worth understanding what taking one on actually involves. Because so much of Uptown sits inside a local historic district, exterior work and additions on a camelback typically draw review from the Historic District Landmarks Commission, and it's worth budgeting time as well as money for that process rather than assuming a renovation timeline you'd use anywhere else.

There's also the structure itself to think about. A rear second story that was framed a century-plus ago onto a raised shotgun foundation carries its own quirks, and any serious renovation should start with a clear-eyed structural assessment rather than an assumption that "it's stood this long, it'll be fine." Finally, there's a balancing act that's more emotional than technical: how do you add the modern square footage a family actually needs in back, without losing the plain, honest street-facing character that made you fall for the house in the first place? There's no single right answer, but it's a question worth asking before you're three months into a project rather than three weeks before closing.

A Different Kind of Uptown House

None of this is a pitch for one style of house over another. It's really an invitation to think about what you're actually searching for. A grand Garden District mansion and a Freret Street camelback can both technically check the "historic Uptown-area home" box on a search filter, but they represent very different daily lives, very different maintenance relationships, and very different neighborhoods within the neighborhood.

If you're weighing a shotgun with a hidden second story against something grander a few blocks over, I'd rather talk it through with you than let a listing photo make the decision for you. We're building a life here, not filling out a spreadsheet, and the right house depends a lot more on how you want to live than on square footage alone. Reach out any time you want to walk a few of these streets together and see the difference for yourself.