![]() ![]() Town didn’t just design buildings in the style of Louisiana’s plantation architecture he scavenged relentlessly for old materials, which became formative components of his new designs. Hayes Town, a revered Baton Rouge architect whose traditional vernacular buildings were inspired by the historical plantation architecture of colonial Louisiana. Waller’s penchant for old materials was influenced by A. Every room in the house has some recycled elements or fixtures made from newly milled recycled wood. An Eastlake walnut buffet with marble top is nestled between the doorways. Two pairs of French doors connect the master bedroom to an intimate courtyard. Recycled materials were used throughout the house: Longleaf pine planks from the roof of a warehouse at the Poydras Street Wharf in New Orleans were used for flooring the floor of the master bedroom was crafted of recycled bricks from another New Orleans warehouse the slate roofing material came from the old Louisiana Governor’s Mansion the ornamental brackets adorning the façade are genuine Victorian-era brackets from a New Orleans salvage yard. The windows became the seminal Victorian-era elements that would influence the balance of his architectural design. Before this project was designed, Waller had purchased a pair of tall Victorian windows from a salvage yard and wanted to use them in an upcoming project. Squarely in the middle of Beaumont Lane’s townhouse block sits one of a pair of townhouses featuring a Victorian Creole façade. All the scheming was eventually rewarded with a formal acknowledgment of appreciation: In 2001, more than 20 years after Eliza Beaumont Lane was developed, it received an award of merit by the Baton Rouge Coalition for Smart Growth. Luck prevailed and a building permit was issued for the project. The hope was that given the favorable housing densities, the specific code violations wouldn’t be noticed. The planning commission director wrote a letter to accompany the proposal stating that Waller’s plan called for a lower housing density than the code allowed, with no mention of setback illegalities. Once this was approved, Waller submitted an intentionally vague proposal for more houses on the adjoining parcels. With no adjoining buildings around it, there would be no immediate issues. The head of the planning commission in Baton Rouge was sympathetic to what Waller wanted to do but realized it was quite illegal under the building code, so he suggested that plans be submitted for a single townhouse first. The simple Creole cottages had not just become old but were regarded as old-fashioned-a provincial reminder of the day when south Louisiana was a remote backwater French colony, so many of the city’s Creole cottages were modernized to make them more fashionable. During Reconstruction, the fashion of the day in Louisiana, and the rest of America, was Victorian architecture. The Creole cottage was built pervasively in Louisiana from the early days of the colony in the mid-1700s to about the time of the American Civil War, at which point New Orleans was a large bustling city with increasingly American inclinations. The street façade typically has a narrow overhang (called an abat-vent) that shelters the casement doors and windows from the heavy rains of south Louisiana. At the back of the house, facing a courtyard, is an open loggia (porch) flanked by two small rooms on either side, called cabinets (cab-i-nays). The gable ends are on the sides, and the roof slope facing the street typically features a pair of dormers that provide light and ventilation for an attic room. In its purest form, the Creole cottage features a squarish plan with a grid of four adjoining rooms that interconnect without hallways. Shotgun houses are a rather pervasive historical type in the American South, but the Creole cottage is distinct to south Louisiana. ![]() This compelling setting is evocative of the lower French Quarter or the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans where narrow shotgun houses and Creole cottages are nestled as close to each other as they are to the narrow street. Here, amid an otherwise suburban setting, one will find a delightful urban surprise-an intimate urban street graced by historically inspired facades abutting the sidewalk. ![]() With its rambling suburban neighborhoods, Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital city, doesn’t share the same storied architectural heritage of its larger downriver neighbor, New Orleans, except in rare instances such as Eliza Beaumont Lane. The Victorian ornamental brackets adorning the roof overhang were purchased from a New Orleans salvage yard. The large four-over-four front windows with segmental arches were salvaged from the St. This six-bay Creole cottage designed by Mike Waller is, in fact, a pair of townhouses. ![]()
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