Ann Rice's House 1239 First Street, New Orleans Louisiana

Ann Rice's House 1239 First Street.

Built by James Calrow and Charles Pride in 1857, 1239 First Street is "transitional" in style, containing both Greek Revival and Italianate elements. The double galleries have Corinthian columns below and Ionic columns below, set between square pillars at the corners. Albert Hamilton Brevard, who commissioned the house, was a wealthy merchant with a taste for the finer things in life. At the time of its construction, the house contained many conveniences, such as hot and cold running water in all four of its bedrooms. However, Brevard had little time to really enjoy his mansion; he died there, only two years after he moved in. The Reverend Emory Clapp acquired the house from Brevard's daughter in 1869 and contracted with architect Charles Pride to add the hexagonal bays.

 They were designed to enlarge an existing room for use as the Episcopalian clergyman's library. But Rev. Clapp found more pleasure in tobacco, and his library quickly became his smoking room. As newlyweds, the Clapps wanted their residence to reflect their style and refinement, so they began their occupancy by installing massive, beveled French mirrors in the double parlors downstairs.

After Rev. Clapp passed away, his wife continued to occupy the house until 1934, taking a loving interest in maintaining it. In her later years, Mrs. Clapp enclosed part of a gallery and installed an elevator on the Chestnut St. side of the house. From 1989-2004, the house was the home of Stan and Anne Rice.

This house is also the inspiration for Mayfair Manor, the Garden District home of Anne's Mayfair Witches.  Both of these locations figure prominently in Mayfair Family history. In Anne's Mayfair Family, the swimming pool in the backyard garden was installed by Stella Mayfair in the wild years of her youth. It is the pool that Michael Curry is found floating in on Christmas morning, 1989, after suffering a heart attack while fighting Lasher.

Deirdre Mayfair sits on the side porch in silence for over thirty years, refusing to speak so as not to allow Lasher to enter her thoughts. During this time, Lasher is often seen standing beside her rocking chair, whispering into her ear. The side porch is two stories high with very ornate cast iron decorations. It fronts on two attic windows on the third story of the house. Ancient Evelyn, when she was a young girl, paid secret visits to Uncle Julien by climbing this iron balcony to the second story. Antha Mayfair climbed through one of the attic windows onto the porch roof, where she jumped to her death rather than become part of the Mayfair legacy.

Behind those windows, Carlotta Mayfair poisoned private investigator Stewart Townsend, and then wrapped his body in a rug bound with chains, and stored him in the attic for fifty years to be discovered by the engaged Rowan and Michael. Michael also throws Lasher, in a Taltos body, from one of these windows to his death on the flagstones below.

Greek Revival Mansion from “American Horror Story” the Buckner Mansion

My favorite house in New Orleans is Miss Robicheaux’s Academy aka Buckner Mansion from “American Horror Story”

1410 Jackson Ave. in the Garden District

This 1856 home was built by cotton factor Henry S. Buckner in overt competition with the famous Stanton Hall in Natchez, built by Buckner's former partner. Among the luxurious details are 48 fluted cypress columns and a rare honeysuckle-design cast-iron fence. The triple ballroom was used by debutantes practicing their walks and curtsies. Now privately owned, the house served as the campus of Soulé College from 1923 to 1975.

The Greek Revival style Buckner Mansion was built in 1856 by cotton magnate Henry S. Buckner. The mansion was built to outdo his ex-business partner’s well-known Stanton Hall mansion in Natchez, Mississippi. The Buckner Mansion has galleries on three sides, an amazing honeysuckle motif cast iron fence and a triple ballroom. The mansion served as a home to the Buckner family until 1923, when the prestigious Soule Business School moved in.

Detail of the amazing honeysuckle motif cast iron fence 

Soule was the best business school in the South until it closed doors in 1983. The mansion is now a private residence, available as a vacation rental for the tidy sum of $20,000. According to the show’s Facebook page “Extreme precaution was taken to not damage the 156-year-old mansion.”

Back of the mansion 

View of the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius 1770's by Pierre Jacques Volaire

View of the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius 1770's by Pierre Jacques Volaire 

Snuff Box with a painting of five brothers and sisters, France, c.1810.

Snuff Box with a painting of five brothers and sisters, France, c.1810. Marked JBL, tortoise shell, red gold, painting on porcelain.

The Family of John Q. Aymar -Attributed to George W. Twibill Jr 1833

 The Family of John Q. Aymar -Attributed to George W. Twibill Jr 1833

Ingres: Le Christ bénissant, 1834

Ingres: Le Christ bénissant, 1834

"Gumbo YA YA" a 18th century Creole New Orleans kitchen

Gumbo YA YA by Andrew LaMar Hopkins

"Gumbo YA YA" my latest finished painting is the third in a  series of Louisiana Creole kitchen paintings. Each painting has sold before i was finished painting it. Including this one. The first Creole kitchen painting was a commission. I was a little hesitant to paint it as I did not consider the kitchen a fine room of a house like my parlor or bedroom paintings. But once I started painting them. I have really got into thyme, each new kitchen painting is better then the other.  The kitchen is a room that just about everyone can relate too.  18th and 19th century kitchens were fascinating room filled with interesting cooking apparatus. 

 The lady of the house A Free woman of color has a pearl choker on and wears a tignon a type of headscarf, she gestures to a fashionably dressed Free man of color enjoying a flute of Dom Perignon champagne. 

This painting titled after the famous book by the same name that chronicles Louisiana folk tales and customs. The painting Gumbo YA YA! shows a 18th century New Orleans Creole kitchen. Owned by Free people of color, the lady of the house to the right hand corner of the painting has a pearl choker and wears a tignon a type of headscarf, a large piece of material tied or wrapped around the head to form a kind of turban that somewhat resembles the West African gélé. It was worn by Creole women in Louisiana beginning in the Spanish colonial period, and continuing to a lesser extent to the present day. She gestures to a fashionably dressed Free man of color enjoying a flute of Dom Perignon champagne. 

A quadroon house servant get's ready to pour Dom Perignon champagne into two crystal champagne flute's in anticipation of the meal of seafood gumbo being dished out of a large copper pot into a Louis XV porcelain soup tureen by the cook. 

A free person of color in the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, is a person of full or partial African descent who was not enslaved. In the United States, such persons were referred to as "free Negroes," though many were of mixed race (in the terminology of the day, mulattos, generally of European and African descent).

Free people of color or in French "gens de couleur libres" was especially a term used in New Orleans and the former Louisiana Territory, where a substantial third class of primarily mixed-race, free people developed. There were also free people of color in Caribbean and Latin American slave societies. These colonial societies classified mixed-race people in a variety of ways, generally related to appearance and to the proportion of African ancestry.

 A fashionably dressed mulatto boy holds a flower garland up to his dog. He is wearing a gray satin sailor suit tied at the wast with a pink gold fringe sash. French Queen Marie Antoinette was one of the first parents to dress her children in sailor suit's. A fashion that continued well into the 20th century. The potted orange tree was a symbol of wealth in the 18th century.

The center piece of the room is the elevated stuccoed bricked stove. Firewood would have been stored in the arches beneath the platform. A fire would have been started on the top platform for cooking. Smoke would have been vented up in the pyramid top flute and out of the kitchen.  Over the stove is a wrought iron chandelier.  

To show the Roman Catholic culture of Colonial Louisiana next to the stove is a copy of a bust of Christ by Italian artist Guido Reni. In the 18th century copies of famous paintings were not considered  valuable. The gold leaf frames were considered more costly then the painting.

A quadroon house servant get's ready to pour Dom Perignon champagne into two crystal champagne flute's in anticipation of the meal of seafood gumbo being dished out of a large copper pot into a Louis XV porcelain soup tureen by the cook. A fashionably dressed mulatto boy holds a flower garland up to his dog. He is wearing a gray satin sailor suit tied at the wast with a pink gold fringe sash. French Queen Marie Antoinette was one of the first parents to dress her children in sailor suit's. A fashion that continued well into the 20th century. 

The buffet a deux corps. The name is literally translated to “buffet with two bodies”, which provided an ingenious type of storage and sometimes display case in the upper part, plus it was able to be split into its component parts making it much easier to transport and deliver into the narrow doorways of homes of past centuries. 

The boy is standing next to a terracotta potted orange tree a symbol of wealth in the 18th century. Although furniture was being made locally in 18th century Louisiana, finer households had locally made French style Creole furniture mixed with imported furniture from Europe like the buffet a deux corps. The name is literally translated to “buffet with two bodies”, which provided an ingenious type of storage and sometimes display case in the upper part, plus it was able to be split into its component parts making it much easier to transport and deliver into the narrow doorways of homes of past centuries. 

Other imported furniture in the kitchen include the the Provincial tall case clock and the turned legged work table in the center of the room. Locally made Creole pieces of furniture would include the ladder back chair and the cabriole leg table holding the copper water cistern. The center piece of the room is the elevated stuccoed bricked stove. Firewood would have been stored in the arches beneath the platform. A fire would have been started on the top platform for cooking. Smoke would have been vented up in the pyramid top flute and out of the kitchen.  Over the stove is a wrought iron chandelier.  

On the shelf of the pyramid flute of the stove, displayed are 18th century French pottery and beautiful hand-painted faience and ceramics that were instant sources of pride for the local populace and a large green glass wine jar. To show the Roman Catholic culture of Colonial Louisiana next to the stove is a copy of a bust of Christ by Italian artist Guido Reni. In the 18th century copies of famous paintings were not considered  valuable. The gold leaf frames were considered more costly then the painting.  A collection of copper pots and pans are displayed on the walls. Two French olive jars were used for food storage. On the top of the buffet a deux corps are woven baskets. The architecture of the rooms features a terracotta tile floor. A beamed ceiling showing the upper cypress floor. A French door. The walls are painted a light French blue popular in the 18th century.  

Bon Séjour/Oak Alley Plantation 1837-1839 part 2 Slavery

The first time I visited Oak Alley plantation in the mid 1990's Slavery was hardly talked about during the tour. All of the slaves were called servants.  The local tour guides seem very uncomfortable talking about slavery in the 1990's. Today that has all changed. On my recent visit. Slavery has been incorporated in the tour. On all other sugar plantations in Louisiana, the workforce of enslaved laborers was critical to the success of any plantation and that was no different at Oak Alley.

 The slaves were housed in 20 white-washed cypress cabins located in two rows of 10 behind the Big House. Theses cabins have recently been reconstructed as you can see in my photo's. Each slave cabin was a double cabin housing two slave family's built of wood with a central brick fireplace that heated both halves of the cabin. The slaves were thus housed in 40 units. House slaves, referred to as servants, were likely housed in or near the Big House.

Over the years Jacques Télésphore Roman accrued an inventory of 20 house slaves and 93 field slaves, including children. Slavery spanned three decades at Oak Alley and ended in 1865 with the Civil War. A devastated land and the madness of haphazard methods of reconstruction wreaked havoc on former masters and slaves alike, while a whole culture was swept into the uncertainty of a new way of life.

The most noted slave who lived on Oak Alley Plantation was a field slave named Antoine. He was listed as "Antoine, 38, Creole Negro gardener/expert grafter of pecan trees", with a value of $1,000 in the inventory of the estate conducted on J.T. Roman's death in 1848. Antoine was a master of the techniques of grafting and, after trial with several trees, succeeded in the winter of 1846 in producing a variety of pecan that could be cracked with one's bare hands; the shell was so thin it was dubbed the "paper shell" pecan. 

It was later named the Centennial Variety when entered in competition at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where it won a prize. The trees may be found throughout southern Louisiana, where the pecan was once a considerable cash crop. Although Antoine's original trees were cleared for more sugarcane fields after the Civil War, a commercial grove had been planted at nearby Anita Plantation. Unfortunately, the Anita Crevasse (river break) of 1990 washed away Anita Plantation and all remains of the original Centennial pecans.

The Research and Collections Department at Oak Alley is currently conducting an extensive research effort into these lesser-known plantation residents. How did they live? What did they think of their status as property? Were they families in the modern sense of the word? While we will never know the answers to some of these questions, we are gradually gaining a better understanding of the way slavery functioned socially and economically on this sugar plantation. We have learned that infants were always baptized, there was a strong separation between house and field duties, and the most common punishment was imprisonment. These discoveries, and others, will help illuminate the lives of 158 plus individuals who for many years have been a mystery.