By R. Stephanie Bruno, Mid-City Messenger
It was a perfectly beautiful Sunday for a StreetWalk … or a StreetScene … or for taking a walk on The Sidewalk Side.
All of these have been the names of this column for the past 14 or 15 years, when I first started taking walks and bringing readers along with me.
I’m delighted to be back at it again, today in Mid-City not far from Canal Street and North Carrollton Avenue. Nearby are classic Mid-City spots including Brocato’s, Venezia and Wit’s Inn, plus more recent classics like Cafe Minh, Revel and Zasu.
Come along with me today while I explore the odd-numbered side of the 4100 block of Iberville Street between North Solomon and David streets, a block I have chosen for its appealing collection of Arts and Crafts style houses. I begin at the corner of Iberville and Solomon and walk toward David.
There’s a 1940s-era two-story stucco duplex followed by a ranch house closest to the corner. They aren’t remarkable houses, but they do contribute to the architectural diversity at the block.
I pass them up, for now, intent on viewing the five additional houses on the block. Come to think of it, there may be six — I spot a building at the rear of the shady yard between the ranch and the Neoclassical houses. I can’t get close enough to it without seriously trespassing, so I focus on the shady retreat instead.
The yard is delightfully overgrown, and the chair that’s been put out there for visiting has been obstructed by palm fronds. It’s very, very atmospheric.
I do a quick check of the assessor’s website on my cellphone and learn the green space belongs to the pretty house to its right. I have personal experience with the pleasure of having a large, somewhat overgrown side yard — a sort of divine wilderness — and no doubt this shady retreat brings its owners m uch spiritual joy.
The facade of the main house reflects what the late architect Lloyd Vogt in his book “New Orleans Houses, A House-Watchers Guide” would have called Neoclassical. There’s a front porch shaded by the gabled roof that extends above it to the porch’s forward edge. Three simple round columns of the Doric order (meaning no fancy capitals at the top) are clustered together at each side of the leading edge of the porch, supporting the roof.
The entry consists of a glass door flanked by sidelights and topped by a fan transom (I call this combination of door plus sidelights plus transom an “entry assembly”). The prominent front-facing gable forms a perfect triangle, lined with block modillions (small decorative blocks of wood). An attractive round attic window is set in the gable, adding to the visual interest.
I study the house carefully, then look down the left side, and realize it’s a six-room-deep single shotgun (I count the number of metal awnings on the left side). The glorious facade demonstrates how easily a single shotgun house can be dressed up or played down, depending on the preferences of the builder, the era in which it was built and adaptations by the homeowners.
The house I visit next differs entirely from the first, in style and type. Yes, it conforms to the shotgun typology, but here that means one single shotgun stacked atop another. The house appears to be just one room wide, a typical shotgun — although a two-story one — and it adheres to one of the Arts and Crafts styles. Here the style is Craftsman, through and through.
What tells me this house is Craftsman? The first thing I look for is the presence of exposed rafter tails, which are at the eaves of the roof as well as at the roof over the front porch. I also note the treatment of the porch gable itself, which is stuccoed, has a gable window and a decorative cross-hatched pattern in wood strips.
Next, I consider the number, size and configuration of glass panes in the windows. This house features casement windows on the second floor with a typical Craftsman configuration of panes: an unequal number and size of panes up top and fewer, larger size panes of glass below.
On this pair of casement windows, I see four small square panes up top — with moss green milk-glass inserts — above two long rectangular panes. The same pattern echoes in the sidelights flanking the front door, where the transom in the entry assembly is rectangular rather than arched.
I suddenly realize I’ve spent such a long time in front of these two houses that I better move on or risk not getting to the remaining houses before it’s time to leave. So I hurry on to the next two houses, both of them shotgun doubles.
I stand back to see them together and notice that the blue one on the left is Neoclassical and the white one on the right is Craftsman. Elements of the first house’s Neoclassicism are present here, such as simple Doric columns, front-facing gables and a decorative gable window.
In contrast, the white house exhibits iconic Craftsman details including exposed rafter tails, post brackets in the gable, and clusters of three half columns that rest atop brick pedestals that support the roof.
Both houses have fine details such as the fish-scale shingles on the gable of the blue house and its Queen Anne-style gable window (a central pane of glass surrounded by small squares of stained glass).
Another enchanting aspect of the white house is its pink doors. In all my years of house watching, I believe these are the first that I have encountered. Don’t get the idea that this is a sweet pastel nursery shade of pink: Nope. Instead, it’s a robust pink.
There is also a painting hanging between its two doors. I never would have thought of hanging a painting outside on the weatherboards for the world to see. Do you think they change out the painting regularly?
Before I leave, I notice the gable window here has met a sad fate, for although one side of it is fine, the other half is covered with black tar paper, rather like a pirate’s eye patch — a result of Hurricane Ida’s mischief perhaps?
Moving on, I arrive at the last house on the block and try to get a sense of the floor plan by counting the openings and noticing where the front door is: Might it be a centerhall?
A Palladian-style window appears in the vast gable, shedding light into the attic of the house. Other remarkable features include the deep and wide front porch that offers respite from the sun and the elegant columns supporting the roof above it.
The column capitals are a version of the Ionic order made popular by architect and scholar Vincenzo Scamozzi in 16th century Venice. They’re called Scamozzian or angle capitals because half of each volute is twisted outward so that the four faces of the capital are identical. Scamozzi did not invent this capital — it was fashionable in Pompeii and appears in the portico of the Temple of Saturn in Rome. But he popularized it so that today it appears on a late 19th century or early 20th century house in Mid-City.
By now my head is swimming with images and terms and thoughts about the block, so I need to go reflect on it a bit. As I make my way back down the block, I notice a message spelled out in tiles embedded in a concrete sidewalk. It says “YOU ARE HERE.” Hmmm … where else would I be?
New Orleans native R. Stephanie Bruno is a writer, architectural historian and real estate consultant. She is the author of “New Orleans Streets: A Walker’s Guide to Neighborhood Architecture” and serves on the city’s Historic District Landmark Commission. Her StreetWalker column appeared in The Times-Picayune’s InsideOut section. Bruno can be reached at rstephaniebruno@gmail.com .
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Love our house and our neighborhood. Thanks, for strolling on our side of the hood.
Hope you enjoyed your tour of our Mid City block.
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