La maison
RENOVATING an ARTISTIC Retreat YYYYYYYYY
YYYYYYYYY
NEW LIFE IN NEW ORLEANS
e
Y
W
By Anthea Gerrie Photography by Sara Essex Bradley
ith a large, sprawling family house to care for, designer Jill Dupré had long fantasized about a more pared-down life, a cozy place to downsize to when her children flew the nest. But before that happened, the mother of two stumbled upon a romantic, near-derelict little house in the eclectic Fairgrounds Triangle neighborhood of New Orleans. “It was such a special property with so much history and original detail,” says Dupré, who worked as a graphic designer in advertising before turning her hand to home decorating and accessory making. And what a project she created for herself, describing this little house of barely a thousand square feet as “a beautiful mess” when she and her husband took possession. “The previous owner called it the Art House, as she used to store stuff for her installations in it—and she also held some insane parties here, from what we were told.”
122 | SE P T E MBE R 2018
Many potential buyers would have thrown their hands up at the challenge of making a rapidly deteriorating house habitable in a climate dogged by humidity and termite issues, but Dupré and her husband found the greenery surrounding the property simply irresistible. “It was the hundred-year-old date palm, the bamboo, and a wonderful canopy of trees sheltering the L-shaped backyard that persuaded us to buy it.” You get that seductive sense of a home cocooned by tropical foliage from the get-go, thanks to the welcoming shade of a banana tree in the front yard whose precise shade of leaf green has been picked up in floor-to-ceiling shutters. “We loved the worn look of the original front, so we chose to keep the sun-bleached aged appearance, giving the house a contrasting crisp, modern feel by painting the trim and shutters,” Dupré says.
