Creole Sketches/Old-Fashioned Houses
OLD-FASHIONED HOUSES[1]
Probably there are as fine residences in New Orleans as in any other city of equal population in the United States; and the almost tropical beauty of the grounds and gardens which surround them lends them a charm that cannot be found in many other cities of North America. Most of these fine residences are built upon designs entirely different from the prevailing architecture of New Orleans houses; and it is pleasant to observe that a new style of building even small houses is coming into fashion in different parts of the city. Few of us can afford to live in palaces; and excepting residences that are absolutely palatial, there are very few comfortable dwellings, comparatively speaking, in the Crescent City. There is much picturesqueness; but picturesqueness is not comfort: there is much of outward charm in old-fashioned places, in quaint rooms, in audacious balconies, in mediæval-looking dormers, in peaked roofs, in maisonettes tinted lemon-yellow, pale rose, or faint green; but all this does not give the coziness of a home. The New Orleans of half a century ago is not suited to the wants of the New Orleans of to-day. The population has increased; there are infinitely fewer rich people here than formerly; there are many more inhabitants to the square mile, and the great houses which formerly constituted the winter residences of wealthy planters and others must now be portioned out among many families or transformed into boarding-houses in order to be made profitable to their owners. A change in the old style of building dwellings is becoming more and more imperative every succeeding year. The causes of the old style of building are attributable to a wholly different social condition which still existed a generation ago; and there is really no reason why it should survive at present. Nevertheless, we frequently see new houses in process of erection, being constructed upon precisely the same uncomfortable and antiquated plans which should be abolished forever. We have nothing to say against the outward appearance of New Orleans houses. The general effect is very pleasing; — no one with an artistic eye can avoid loving the zigzag outline of peaked roofs with the pretty dormers; the iron arabesques of graceful balconies, the solid doors and burglar-proof shutters, so brightly green. The old-fashioned houses are by no means ugly. But their interior arrangement is altogether condemnable and renders them almost unfit for modern homes. Take, for example, the ordinary double cottages of which there are thousands upon thousands in New Orleans. Not only do all the rooms open into each other, either with large folding or sliding or the ordinary doors; but each room of each house often opens into each room of its twin on the other side. Thus there are from two to three doors to each room, besides windows; rendering it difficult to warm any apartment in a damp New Orleans winter. Privacy is impossible; seclusion a mockery. Even the attics of two houses open into one another. Suppose one is looking for a house, and expresses his dissatisfaction with this plan, the proprietor will exclaim with astonishment: "Why! there is a door; and the door is closed!" A thin door does not ensure seclusion or even quiet. Every sound can be heard distinctly in both houses — the crying of children in the night; family quarrels; noises of household work; and many other things which should not be heard at all. And the doors are not even double. In nine cases out of ten daylight shows through them. The same thing renders it very difficult to obtain comfortable furnished rooms in the city. Every room opens into another; and every movement of one's neighbor or neighboress is distinctly audible. All this might be avoided by the construction of hallways; and certainly it is not for want or value of space that we have so few hallways in the city. Immense rooms, high and airy! — but cold and comfortless — opening into other immense rooms — all opening into other houses: of such there is no end.
Now if there is one thing more essential than any other to the comfort of a house, it is seclusion! The English understand this fact even better than the Americans, and their cottages are model homes. When a man enters his house he wishes to be able when he pleases to shut himself up from the rest of the world, to be alone with his family or with his thoughts, to rest himself after the day's anxieties without further turmoil or annoyance. But how is he to do this when he finds only a partition thin as the cover of a novel between himself and others who are not of his family, and who live practically on the same floor and almost in the same room? If he wishes to enjoy an hour in his private study, it is not pleasant to be obliged all the time to listen to noises in the next room, even if made by his own servants or his own children. For members of a family themselves require at times to seclude themselves from other members of the family; — there are business matters to be talked of; there are projects which children or servants should not hear; there are numberless things which the heads of a household wish to discuss by themselves. And to warm such houses in winter there must be a fire in every room upon the same floor; otherwise one will find that folding doors are a mockery and sliding doors a vexation of spirit. The double cottage is an abomination; and even the single cottage without a hallway is an affliction. Is it agreeable to be unable to go to bed either without passing through somebody else's room or having somebody else passing though your room? It is not even a civilized way of living; and certainly a vast majority of New Orleans houses would appear to a stranger to have been constructed with little regard to common decency. The truth is simply that twenty-five years ago people here lived very differently from what they can afford to do now; — everything was on a larger and more generous scale; and perhaps the dwellings were excellently adapted at that time to the wants of their tenants. To-day all is changed. Picturesque and uncomfortable New Orleans must disappear to give place to one perhaps less outwardly attractive but less illusive and more substantial. The result will certainly be less consumption and less rheumatism.
- ↑ Item, January 12, 1881.