Enthusiastic world travelers Garrick and Darcie Braai have collections of artwork and mementos from their travels with their young sons to such far-off places as Thailand, New Zealand and Iceland. However, of all of their collectibles, the most attention is garnered by artifacts unearthed in the yard behind their 1896 four-bay Victorian shotgun double on Pelican Avenue.
“When I took the plaster off the fireplace, I exposed the brick,” said Garrick Braai. “A few bricks were broken, but I couldn’t just go out and buy hard tan bricks at Home Depot, so I called this guy I had heard about who goes around digging up privies and selling off what he finds. I thought he might have some bricks.”
A friendship with Shane Mears ensued. Soon, Mears, aided by a Robinson Atlas detailing the area before the Great Fire of 1895 wiped out 200 buildings on Algiers Point, was in the yard digging up the privy (outhouse) that had served the home that had burned on the site where the Braai’s house now stands.
“He explained that they would throw in the privy anything they couldn’t burn,” Braai said. “The hole in the ground would have been lined with cypress which would have kept many things intact.”
Mears excavated old medicine and liquor bottles, pickle jars, bricks, marbles, china plates, toys, inkwells, and a toothbrush carved from bone.
The two men then divided up the treasures. The Braais’ collection of over 100 glass and pottery pieces is artfully displayed against the walls that Darcie Braai, a Realtor, painted in slate-colored gloss to highlight the shimmering colors of the old glassware. The Braais struggle to figure out what to call the room.
“Is it the Privy, the Library, or the Family Room?” Darcie mused. “We just can’t decide.”
The cypress that once lined the water-logged privy has joined a collection of household artifacts Garrick is assembling as a sort of museum of the house. It includes old nails, slate roofing tiles, and dated newspapers he found sluffed in the fireplace flue.
“I get excited about all old things,” said Garrick, “but it’s the bottles everyone gets excited about.” The vessels date from 1840 to 1890.
The couple — he from Old Gretna, she from Roatán, Bay Islands, Honduras — bought the home in the spring of 2020. “I always wanted to live on Algiers Point,” Garrick said. “We had been looking for a house, and I wanted to find one on the ‘point’ of the Point near the ferry landing. This one was move-in ready.”
Previous homeowners had thoughtfully renovated it from a double into a single-family home. They updated the home’s utilities, kitchen and bathrooms, and added handmade, operable stained glass transom windows above all the interior doors. The look remains in keeping with the house’s historic character while adding vibrant bursts of color that play against local works by artists Becky Fos, Ellen McCord, Caliche and Pao, and Joe Mustachia.
“They kept the house’s historic character in the renovation,” Garrick said. “They treated it with respect. It still has all its original woodwork, mantles, and pocket doors. The walls are a combination of Sheetrock and plaster.”
A collection of indoor plants thrives throughout the home due to the abundance of natural light imparted through numerous windows.
In the future, the couple plans to camelback the house to make room for their two sons.
“We want to keep everything as original as possible. We have 10 feet of property on either side of the house to work with,” Garrick said.
“But one thing we will never change is the color,” Darcie said. “Our sons call this ‘The Yellow House’.”
Take a tour of this home and six other private residences (and one bonus) at PRC’s Spring Home Tour, presented by Entablature Design + Build, April 5 and 6 in Algiers Point!
