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St. Tammany Parish:
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New Houses with a Past |
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by Susan Johnson
Deep in the heart of Hammond, just blocks away from the thriving downtown, well-preserved neighborhoods flourish. These older areas of town endow Hammond with a distinct sense of place and continue to lure potential homeowners who long for things old. And while they enjoy the legacy of the past, most people want a home designed for modern living.
Blessed are those folks who survey the neighborhood where they would like to homestead and then, when they build, honor the prevailing style of architecture. These contemporary homeowners are all about borrowing from the past and interpreting it for today, while keeping in mind that a new house constructed within a historic neighborhood should blend with the character of the area.
In order to be compatible with the surrounding architecture, these new homes built to look old respond respectfully to the family-friendly orientation of the other houses along the street. They are all constructed of traditional materials and display architectural details that hearken back to another era. The front porch is a classic element found in many of Hammond’s new-old homes.
A symbiotic relationship with the neighborhood is just what Howard Jones and Regina Notariano imagined when they were looking for ideas to build their two-story home in the area between downtown Hammond and Southeastern Louisiana University. The placement of such things as porches, windows, doors and cornices reflects the rhythm of the other houses on Spruce Street, as well as the influence of the Queen Ann style of architecture that was so popular at the turn of the century.
Just a few blocks closer to Southeastern is the home of Bobby and Cub Lanaux. Located on one of the streets that border the university, their friendly front porch invites you to “stop by and sit a spell.” Theirs is a traditional Acadian style house in a neighborhood carved out of the wooded area that surrounds the university. The front porch with its rocking chairs, lantern-style light fixtures and lush ferns provides front row seats for enjoying the daily campus activity and the sights and sounds of the seasonal sports events that take place in Strawberry Stadium just across the street.
Pioneering the concept of building a new old house in an established neighborhood, John and Nanette Guerin’s home is a stylized version of the old houses that have graced West Church Street for more than a century. Wrap-around porches, expansive windows and screened doors repeat the scale and size of houses along the street. Replacing the old Jack Bahm house that burned, they raised the bar and set the design standards for new infill construction. Their new-old house is fit for a twenty-first century family, and it kicks the prevailing style of the neighborhood up a notch.
The 700 block of East Charles Street, often called Banker’s Row, is where it all began in Hammond.
This neighborhood is the high ground where Peter Hammond built his home around 1818. Even though all of the original dwellings are gone now, they were replaced by even grander homes that are still a notable part of the architectural legacy of the community. Unfortunately, not all of the grand homes survived the ravages of time. The house at 719 East Charles rose from the ashes of a home that burned on the site many years before and is an example of a new house built in the last decade to mesh seamlessly with the other gracious homes along the street. This white lap siding house with decorative gingerbread details and a porch swing is home to the family of Holly and Jay Watson.
Just up East Charles Street and around the corner from City Hall, Guy Recotta’s small house nestles between what was his original family home and the historic gravesite of the Peter Hammond family. His new-old house is a model for others contemplating new construction in vintage settings. It is charming, respectful of the surrounding architecture, and the red color is the exclamation point in the neighborhood!
The shotguns on North Cypress Street are one more example of creative use of undeveloped space around the downtown, the railroad station and a semi-industrial area. When Tim Lantrip undertook the development of this neglected block, he did his part to prevent urban sprawl. He created “density,” which translates into safety and a sense of community for the inhabitants of the four cozy cottages, each one with a porch and a stained glass window.
All of these homes display timeless patterns in the ways that they are put together.
They are new houses with a history and the romance of the past, and “old” houses with all of the amenities of the present. |
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Copyright 2006, M&L Publishing, all rights reserved. |
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