72 
House Garden 
A BREATH from the VIEUX CARRE 
"The Colonial French Quarter of New Orleatis, Whose Architecture is 
the Most Romantic in America^ is Drawn Upon for a House of Foday 
LYLE SAXON 
S OME day a book will be written on 
the architectural history of X^ew 
Orleans. It should be an interesting 
book, for there is no other city in 
America whose old houses have the 
same peculiar charm. Especially is this 
true in the French Quarter, developed 
during the Spanish regime, shortly after 
the great fire which destroyed the city 
in 1788. Here one finds high walls and 
barred windows, long passages and 
simple arches of heavy masonry, quaint 
old courtyards with their parterres of 
flowers and their broken fountains, 
crumbling pink stucco facades, and 
wrought iron balconies, like raveled 
black lace, clinging to the moldering 
walls. 
But in the modern New Orleans this 
old charm is lacking. There are many 
fine houses, many modern dwellings of 
A walk of old flagstones leads from 
the loggia, past the French windows 
of the living room, entered between 
pahn-filled jars, to the rose garden 
beyond 
old types; but there is little of the 
individuality which these old houses 
possess to such a marked degree. And 
there is not that severe simplicity which 
marks the older houses and makes them 
distinctive. 
In the residential districts of the new 
city, one finds a conglomerate of houses, 
which is most surprising. A few years 
ago the bungalow craze swept over the 
city and transformed it; but that is 
passing now. There is another change. 
It seems that the city is groping its way 
back to that t3qDe of architecture which 
was its own particular possession, and 
which it had abandoned and left to its 
fate. 
The photographs on this and the op¬ 
posite page show a house that is typical 
of the best in this renascence of New 
{Continued on page 96 ) 
The house from the garden, simply 
designed, pink-walled, vine-covered, 
shows its Creole origin. Mrs. J. C. 
Lyons, owner; Armstrong Koch, 
architects 
Odiorne 
