New Orleans architecture

According to Nolo.gov, half of all houses in New Orleans were built before World War II, and some are 300 years old. I can often guess the decade a building was constructed, but that's easier to do on the West Coast. Here, I'm adrift in types (Creole, Townhouse, Center Hall Cottage, Bungalow) and styles (Greek Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne, Eastlake, Neo-Colonial, Edwardian, Arts and Crafts). And often theses types and styles are mixed together. For a good primer, I recommend the City of New Orlean's Building Types and Architectural Styles guide. And without further ado, I share some house types I spotted in the French Quarter and Garden Distrcit.

The Court of Two Sisters, a well known restaurant on Royal Street in the French Quarter, was constructed in 1832, in the French townhouse style, during the city’s first major economic boom. It was built for Jean Baptiste Zenon Cavelier, president of the Bank of New Orleans.

Above on the right is a simple Creole cottage, which according to my City of New Orleans guide, is "an "architectural style developed in New Orleans. It represents a melding of the French, Spanish and Caribbean architectural influences in conjunction with the demands of the hot, humid climate of New Orleans." These square cottages, built between 1800 and 1840, have four rooms and fell out of favor for more grandiose styles.

And my favorite, the Shotgun. A Shotgun is one room wide and and 3-5 rooms deep, without hallways. You walk through one room to reach the next. Doesn't sound like a good recipe for privacy, but it was a very cheap and prevalent style for the middle and lower class. A Shotgun could be a Double Shotgun or a Camelback Shotgun, or a Side Gallery Shotgun, and then stylistically decorated as a Greek Revival Shotgun or an Italianite Shotgun. Above you see a row of Double Shotguns, with a Camelback Shotgun (second story added), all with some Italianite flourishes that I saw in the Garden District. Check out this video for a great little tour showing the diversity of Shotguns.

New Orleans Jazz Museum

Just past the French Market sits the old imposing mint that made Confederate coins. Now it's a museum. The first floor contains some interesting artifacts from the coin making operation, including a 19th century conveyor belt that automatically flipped coins, the better to be inspected. But the real fun is the upper floors, where the history and great figures of jazz are explored. On our visit, we viewed an exhibit on Louis Prima, a big jazz name in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, though I'd never heard of him. What I gravitated to was the cornet Louis Armstrong played while sentenced to two years at the Colored Waif's Home after shooting a pistol into the air on New Year's Eve, 1913. While at the home he joined the band, and really, the rest is history. Armstrong is pictured in green in the painting above, based on the famous photo.

New Orleans - Ann's Tulane Graduation

Today was a big day for my niece Ann.

She is now a graduate of Tulane, home of the Big Green Wave. Founded in 1834, as part of the Medical College of Louisiana and University of Louisiana, it grew into a private college in 1884, named after its benefactor Paul Tulane. It sits side by side with Loyola University, backing up to the Audobon Park and Zoo. Think centuries' old oak dripping with ferns and green ponds filled with herons and egrets, and the occasional black snake.

Our day started early with a rainstorm. Volunteers wearing masks wore t-shirts asking us to please wear masks, and handed out rain ponchos and fans. It was both humid and wet, but not unpleasant. We sat in the nearly empty Yulman Stadium (just 4 tickets per family), and after a few short speeches and an original piano composition, a brave duo read off approximately 1,000 names for the graduates of the College of Arts and Sciences. We were excused after Ann's name was read.

Ann lives in a 19th Century rental a short walk from the school. Fourteen foot ceilings and equally tall windows, with a friendly porch perched up high. After meeting Otis, her cat, we ventured out to the Garden District for brunch, and ate at a favorite of Ann's, Surrey's at Uptown. Above, Ann, Leslie and Ben grin for the camera. I indulged in Bananas Foster French Toast. Delish.

New Orleans - Beauregard-Keyes House

We are in New Orleans to attend our neice's graduation from Tulane, but are doing a little sightseeing too. After a springtime rainstorm, we took a stroll from our lodgings at the NOPSI hotel in the Central Business District to the French Quarter, where we zigzagged over to Royal Street, the main shopping and business street of the district since the 1840s. We were on our way to the French Market when I spied a sign for the Beauregard-Keyes house,with tours on the hour. And as it was five to the hour, I told Steven it was fated that we stop and tour this nearly 200 year old house.

The house is next to Ursulines street, across from a former convent for Ursulines nuns, now a museum. It was these nuns who sold the first owner, John Le Carpentier, the lot for the house in 1825 for $6,000. The house, of Creole American style (Carpentier and his architect were both Creoles from Haiti), was completed in time for the wedding of Carpentier's daughter in 1829. But then Carpentier sold it a few years later in 1833 to Swiss businessman John Merle, who was forced to sell it after the financial panic of 1837. A plantation owner's widow purchased the home, then the Lanata and Giancona familes, Italian merchants. In between, Dominique Lanata rented the house to General P.G.T. Beauregard, the Confederate General, though only for 18 months circa 1865 or 1866. (Later, when the house fell into disrepair, it was a group of Southern ladeis, captivated by Beauregard, that renamed the house Beauregard House. It also helped with the fundraising.) You can still the general's trunk in the house as well as his portrait above the mantle in the ballroom.

Before it could be razed and replaced with a macaroni factory, it was saved for preservation in 1926, then rented by the novelist Frances Parkinson Keyes before becoming museum in the 1970s.

But the best story of this house involves the Sicilian mafia, or more precisely the Silician Black Hand. The Giancano family had purchased the house in 1904 and ran their wholesale liquor business out of it and were doing quite well when four members of the Black Hand came to call on June 16, 1908. After what must have been a tense dinner (in the room above), Pietro Giacona excused himself from the table for a moment, came back with a shotgun, and shot all four men from the Black Hand. Only one lived. Pietro and his son were arrested, but nothing came of it. The Italian community in New Orleans instead considered giving them a medal.

Bay Area adventures. San Francisco Presidio Park.

Herewith, a catchup post. Our boys visited us in Silicon Valley back in January and while not lounging around watching the Super Bowl and sleeping in, we took them to Presidio Park in San Francisco. This is a 1,500-acre park on a former military post and it is magnificent.

We started out inauspiciously, parking in a lot filled with broken glass, evidence of car break-ins now prevalent in SF, but stepped out into the magnificant Palace of Fine Arts, built for the 1915 Panama Pacific Expedition. This structure was slated to be torn down after the expedition but the people of San Francisco wouldn't have it, and it still stands today. Here Samuel and Steven stand in front of the jaw dropping rotunda, 162 feet tall.

We then headed to the beach (yes, SF has a beach). The beach runs along SF Bay all the way to the Pacific, and if you walk far enough you come to Fort Point National Historic Site. In the interim, you can take thousands of pictures of Golden Gate bridge, as Benjamin is doing here.

Fort Point is a pretty unimaginative but appropriate name. The Fort really is at the point where San Francisco Bay meets the Pacific Ocean, at the base of the Golden Gate bridge. It also contains a Civil War era fortress that, like the Palace of Fine Arts was slated to be torn down when the Golden Gate bridge was constructed, before reason prevailed. The Golden Gate bridge really is built right over it. You can see why the architect might have considered just removing it, but now I think we're all glad that didn't happen.

The fortress never actually saw battle, but it sure was ready for it. Here Steven and I pose for a panormora shot taken by Samuel.

Next to the confluence of the Pacific and Bay are a few waves and what passes for surfing in San Francisco. Young men, warm blooded and fearless, make the most of these small waves, which crash into large boulders at the base of the fortress. If you look closely, you can see them trying to catch a few.