Bayou Built
The Legacy of Louisiana's Historic Architecture
by
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Louisiana is a special place. I discovered that when my parents first took my brother and me to New Orleans in 1962. How incredibly different and exotic it seemed to me, a nine-year-old boy from Delaware. I saw where the pirate Jean Lafitte used to hang out in the French Quarter and imagined myself as Mark Twain on a Mississippi River steamboat. I saw real alligators! My parents used to kid me about how I ducked into some dive on Bourbon Street only to be returned moments later by a chuckling bouncer. There was also the architecture. Although the word ambience was not yet part of my vocabulary, I sensed it; wrought iron balconies and old brick and hidden courtyards with banana trees gave the place a special feeling.
Twenty years later I returned to the Bayou State to work on my doctorate in geography at Louisiana State University. Another two decades have passed since that work was completed and I moved off to my first college teaching position. What is it about this span of time that demographers call a generation? Perhaps it is special because it gives us sufficient time to reflect on continuity and change. A few years ago I read New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City by Andrei Codrescu. He argues that New Orleans (and the state generally) casts a spell. You may leave it, but it never leaves you. I know he speaks the truth; my house is filled with reminders of Louisiana, including souvenirs from that boyhood visit to the Crescent City.
What follows is a perspective on Louisiana’s history, culture, and domestic architecture. To gain this perspective it is necessary to appreciate the temporal and spatial contexts of old houses, so more space is devoted to these concerns than is typical of most books on architectural history. Also, this book is about everyday houses. Louisiana is rightfully recognized for its magnificent antebellum plantation homes, and they are discussed here, but as a geographer who has traveled all of the state’s sixty-four parishes in search of folk and vernacular houses I realize that those columned mansions are only a small segment of Louisiana’s built environment.
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About the Book
Louisiana, the Bayou State, is famous for many things, including savory cuisine, great music, and a resident population whose mantra is laissez les bons temps rouler—let the good times roll! The place is also noted for its historic architecture, which ranges from simple forms such as the shotgun house or the Creole cottage to the celebrated plantation homes along the River Road.
Bayou Built: The Legacy of Louisiana’s Historic Architecture examines the so-called “built environment” from the perspectives of cultural geography and historic preservation. It explores the various folk types and architectural styles that became part of the Louisiana landscape from the first French settlement in 1699 through the railroad and lumber boom of the 1890s.
About the Author
Author Peter Mires received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in 1988 and subsequently taught geography and anthropology at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and the University of Delaware. His research interests include folk and vernacular architecture, geographic education, human-environment relationships, and material culture.
He has published on a wide variety of topics, ranging from chess competition, clouds over the Sierra Nevada, prehistoric archaeology, and solar energy to Western mining towns and Vermont farmsteads. He and his wife divide their time between their Gothic Revival Victorian home in Delaware and frequent visits to friends and family on the West Coast.