Fats Domino House — Lower 9th Ward

Antoine "Fats" Domino sold 65 million records worldwide — more than any 1950s rock and roll artist except Elvis Presley. He lived his entire life in the Lower Ninth Ward, from birth in 1928 until his death in 2017, writing and recording "Blueberry Hill," "Ain't That a Shame," and "I'm Walkin'" from this neighborhood downriver of the Industrial Canal.

The house at Caffin and Marais is where he stayed through everything. On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall just east of the city. At approximately 10:00 am, the levee wall protecting the Ward broke in multiple sections. Storm surge from the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet — a deep-draft shipping channel the Army Corps of Engineers built in the late 1950s — poured into the Lower Ninth from at least three directions. The Industrial Canal breached twice. The neighborhood flooded under 15 feet of water. Nowhere in the city was the devastation greater. Domino was trapped in his home for two days before being rescued by boat.

He rebuilt on the same lot at Caffin and Marais rather than relocate. The house is a private residence, viewable from the street — a corner lot where one man stayed put through the entire arc of American popular music and the worst natural disaster in the nation's history, and then stayed after that, too.