A Treme Treasure

The Treme is more than an a HBO TV show about New Orleans.

The uncovered old plaster walls are left as is

The Treme is the oldest neighborhood in the USA settled by Free People of Color, and remains today an important center of African American and Creole Culture.

It's location right next to French Quarter is attractive to anyone wanting to buy a house of excellent historic pedigree and architecture. As in many cases with houses nearing the 200 year old mark, there is some serious work to be done.

The hallway may be the last remaining foyer
still retaining its original ashlar block treatment
a faux painting technique to make masonry look like stone

Will Germaine bought his Treme treasure in 2003, and found it to be a grand pile ready to fall in on itself.


He has been doing an unusual renovation. He has been trying to stabilize the house in its antiquity, bringing it back as close as possible to historical accuracy.

The old plaster walls create a livable environment without HVAC

The original owner of the house was Louise Vitry, a free woman of color, who lived a placage, in this house with one of the French Creole men who built the Treme, Achille Courcelle, and their four children. After his death, she kept the house.

The living room is charming
Slipcovers and seagrass and old plaster - Yum!

In old New Orleans, Placage was an extra legal system of "placing" a free woman of color with a white male protector in a type of common law marriage. He gave her the title to the house, and other creature comforts and luxuries, and he would be expected to provide an education (often in Paris), and an inheritance for her children.

The exterior of the house

I would love to live in house like this. I have lived in places with ruined walls and stabilized them in their glorious decrepitude. Even now I drag in chippy crappy things and use them in the house.

What about you? Could you live in a house historically restored like this?
To be fair. There is a second floor where the owner lives with comfortable amenities (like new plumbing) that are contained in an addition on the back of the house built in 1900.

The idea is to be historically accurate, not pristine. Will wants to maintain the signs of age for aesthetic reasons (kind like me in my old age ha ha). Rather than tearing down and re-doing the plaster work in the soaring rooms downstairs, he will keep much as he can secure, including the damage and the exposed lath where the plaster has fallen.

I love what Will Germaine is doing, and if I have one more house left in me to buy in New Orleans, I'd love an old crumbling center hall house in all it's decadence.

Posted in: New Orleans, Placage, Treme