As I was riding around today running various errands and smelling the hints of autumn on Ike’s final winds, I was thinking about how many recent representations of New Orleans have featured areas prone to flooding, neighborhoods still struggling to return after Katrina and from general poverty, and, of course, the French Quarter.  But I spend lots of time looking at houses like these as I travel the main thoroughfares of the city.  St. Charles is home to so many of these giant houses.  Most of us won’t ever see the inside of any of them, but they dominate much of the landscape for those of us who move through neighborhoods for work and play.  I always wonder who lives in these things.  Are they really for single families?  Do they have elevators inside, like the fantasy houses from my childhood?  Is there a woman in the attic?  My overwhelming feeling today, though, was why in the world some people get so much space and others so little.