IN 1995, Susie Hoskins was ready to return to New Orleans after living away and building a career for 35 years. She told her sister, Sally Reeves, a celebrated historian, preservationist and the city’s longtime notarial archivist, that she wanted to live in an old house on the parade route.
“Not something built in 1900,” Reeves said, “but a really old house.
“One day I was driving down St. Charles on my way downtown,” Reeves said, “and I saw a sign in front of a Queen Anne that said ‘For Sale or Rent,’ so I stopped and looked in the windows. There was beautiful stained glass and beautiful floors. It was perfect. I called and told Susie she had to buy the house. So, she decided to buy it sight unseen from Italy.”
The seller said the house had been built in 1900, but there was something unusual about the property. “The feel of it changed halfway down the side hall, where there was a second staircase,” Reeves said. “I had noticed something unusual about the newel post on the rear staircase that was not in keeping with the age of the house. I started researching the house.”
Reeves ran the title. She came across a mortgage documented in 1900 that included a description of a two-story house built in 1853. In 1900, that structure had been moved back on the property line and its façade removed before the current house was built in front of, and connecting to, the older house.
“I called Susie,” Reeves said. “I told her ‘I hope you are sitting down. You own an old house. It was built in 1850.”
In 1899, the house was advertised at auction in The Times Democrat: “The splendidly located frame slated two-story residence at 2826 St. Charles Avenue, corner Conery St., retired from the sidewalk, having handsome iron fence out front, nice lawn flowers and shrubbery, large yard with paved walks, etc. The house contains front and rear galleries, halls, parlor, dining room, kitchen, bathrooms, and six other rooms. The many rooms are all neatly papered, gas throughout, three cisterns, large shed, etc.”
The house sold that year for $4,200.
The newel post at the foot of the staircase that had so piqued Reeves’ interest was indeed part of the house built in 1850.
“It was double-turned with a round mushroom cap. The one in the front was square. When you move from round to square, you have left the 19th century,” Reeves said. The original staircase remains intact in the home, along with the later, more opulent staircase at the front of the home.
Hoskins’ life with her new home began with a restoration. “When I moved in, the house was completely white and stripped down,” she said. “I could tell the property once served as a boarding house. There was a telephone jack in every room. I brought the house back to what I thought it should be with Oriental rugs, period antiques, additional pieces of stained glass, and ceiling medallions in the front of the house. I furnished the two different personalities of the two different homes accordingly,” Hoskins said.
In the “new” part of the house, she created a formal feel suitable for the many dinner parties that she, as an accomplished professional cook and retired caterer, enjoys hosting. The rear of the home has a more rustic feel.
The front staircase, which bears a carved, square newel post, is laid with an traditional runner held in place with brass stair rods. The side hall at the foot of the staircase bears its original heart-pine floors and fine antiques, many of them acquired on Magazine Street.
Continuing down the side hall, a threshold separates the newer house from the older one. The wooden floorboards are wider and painted, the narrower, humbler staircase with its double-turned newel post and round mushroom cap is laid with a simple woolen runner.
The kitchen is adjacent to the older staircase. Except for the tile floors and a built-in cypress hutch — both of which are original to the home — Hoskins gutted the kitchen to the studs. In doing so she banished all shiny surfaces, favoring instead natural wooden cabinets, an electric cooktop, and Formica counters. Hoskins describes the effect as “Old Louisiana. I wanted modern amenities, but I wanted to keep the feel as 1900s as I could.”
During the renovation, Hoskins added a tranquil sunroom off the kitchen. She spends her afternoons in the vibrant space, which overlooks a tropical courtyard garden. Her mornings are spent in the “cozy” space adjacent to her office in the more formal part of the house. A devoted Catholic, the formal area includes what she calls an “Ecumenical space” adorned for quiet reflection and prayer with religious ephemera from Russia, France, Mexico and the Philippines, some of which were acquired while travelling abroad.
The walls throughout are hung lavishly with artwork, including those by Louisiana artists Simon Gunning, Alex Beard, Elmore Morgan Jr, Clementine Hunter, Bill Hemmerling, Thomas Lofton, Hunt Slonem, Rolland Golden, and Françoise Gilot.
For the PRC Holiday Home Tour, Hoskins’ dining room table is lavishly adorned for the Christmas dinner she hosts annually for friends and family.
See this home and six other stunning Garden District homes at the PRC’s Holiday Home Tour on Dec. 14 & 15. Click here to purchase your tickets today!
