"I don’t want to be the person I will be if I stay here.”

Harry Anderson is leaving New Orleans.

Harry Anderson, the illusionist, comic and former star of sitcoms like “Night Court” and “Dave’s World,” has lived in New Orleans since 2000, when he left Hollywood with his wife, the former Elizabeth Morgan. They rode out Hurricane Katrina in the French Quarter, in the building that houses Oswald’s Speakeasy, Mr. Anderson’s nightclub. Their home, whose ground floor was given over to Sideshow, their magic and curiosity shop, was in another building in the Quarter.

In the weeks after the storm, even before the power was back, Mr. Anderson opened his club for what he called French Quarter Town Hall meetings. The weekly gatherings, which at first offered little more than camaraderie by candlelight and warm beer, evolved into a de facto government for a part of New Orleans that had experienced little flooding but could not begin cleanup and rebuilding because of the city’s overall paralysis.

So it is especially poignant that the Andersons have now decided to leave. But their story is not unique: many in this city are suffering the same continuing loss and strain that led these two to their decision. So their departure raises the question of whether others who can afford to leave, those who have not sunk every penny into a now-moldy house or a devastated store, will also move on.

One reason they were leaving, they said, was that the tourists were few and even fewer were coming to see “Wise Guy,” Mr. Anderson’s engaging one-man show at Oswald’s. “I had more people in my car last night,” he said to his piano player during a performance in May.

Mr. Anderson said friends and relatives from out of town are happy to hear that they are moving. “It’s been a universal response from people who aren’t here,” he said.

Their New Orleans friends, too, have been supportive, Ms. Anderson said, and no one has expressed hostility. “I feel a little bit better now because I feel something is going to happen,” Ms. Anderson said. “I’m glad we tried to stay, but I don’t want to be the person I will be if I stay here.”