When Jennifer Graves Hance graduated from the University of Maryland in 1998, she felt an inexorable pull toward New Orleans. The city’s mind-boggling architectural variety fascinated her, and she moved there for good in 2003. She’s still there 14 years later (now with a husband and three boys in tow).

Hance started taking photos of historic places that captured her interest, posting them on her Instagram account, @the.preservationist. “I started it for lots of reasons, but mainly because I wanted to document all of the beautiful details of old homes I saw around the city,” she says. “I wasn’t finding on Instagram the things that I love about New Orleans, like the tiled corner store entranceways, window details, and midcentury homes, so I figured I would start one myself.”

Preservation magazine highlighted an image from Hance's account on our “This Place Matters” back page in the Winter 2017 issue. We liked her photos of New Orleans architecture so much, we’ve chosen 9 more to share with you here.

Note: This Place Matters is a campaign that the National Trust started in 2009, before Black Lives Matter had come into being as a movement. Out of respect for Black Lives Matter and the important message behind it, we retired the campaign in June 2020. We encourage National Trust supporters to instead celebrate places that are important to them using the hashtags #SavingPlaces or #TellTheFullStory.