Living with antiques: THE GILMOUR-CHRISTOVICH HOUSE IN NEW ORLEANS

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2001 by William Nathaniel Banks

Barnsley probably had settled on a plan by May 1851 when he contracted for 300,000 bricks. [11] It seems that he too employed Thayer as his architect, although he, not Thayer, may have chosen the Italianate style. Known for his artistic sensibility and strong predilections, Barnsley was conversant with the works of Andrew Jackson Downing (1815--1852), who extolled the Italian villa style "for expressing the elegant culture and variety of accomplishment of the retired citizen or man of the world." [12]

The Gilmour house is a more timid exercise in the Italianate style than Barnsley's villa, but there are notable similarities. Both buildings have low-pitched roofs and overhanging eaves supported by brackets that are typical of the style. Both facades feature double roundheaded windows, and the tripartite window on the second floor of Barnsley's house appears on the sides of the Gilmour house (see Pls. III, VI). The massing of the Gilmour house, with its projecting wing, also suggests the Bansley house, although the Gilmours omitted the three-story tower, or "campanile," as Barnsley called it, as well as its arcaded loggia.

The Gilmour house may be the earliest dwelling in New Orleans with Italianate features, [13] It is a reasonable assumption that the introduction of the Italianate style in New Orleans was inspired by an Italianate villa in the north Georgia hills.

The Gilmours spent the summer of 1853 in England, visiting Gilmour's mother on the Isle of Man and shopping in London for furnishings for their new house. In August, Gilmour wrote Barnsley that "We are very busy getting silver, carpets, cutlery &c &c not forgetting a pair of diamond ear drops which Anna took a fancy to." [14]

Both Barnsley and Gilmour prospered in the booming antebellum economy of New Orleans. Gilmour required a staff of nine to maintain his extravagant domestic arrangements in the Prytania Street house, and he took special pride in his well-stocked wine cellar. Anna Gilmour cultivated a luxuriant garden. The architect Thomas K. Wharton, writing in his journal in April 1858, described the Gilmour garden as being

in the finest condition, with the sweetest of sweet peas, verbenas, gladiolus, amyrillida, nasturtiums &c. &c. in full flower, and the usual large intermixture of fine roses which are always in bloom, and the purest blue overhead. [15]

In 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, Barnsley cleared approximately $80,000 and Gilmour's profits amounted to $100,000. [16]

The following spring, when hostilities commenced, the halcyon times abruptly ended. On June 1, 1861, Gilmour his wife, and their two children sailed from New York City for Liverpool aboard the Canadian. On the fourth day at sea the ship struck an iceberg and sank, taking with it some thirty passengers and crew members. On June 14 Gilmour wrote to Barnsley from Saint John's, Newfoundland:

Here we are all safe & well after having been kicking about in the ice the last ten days, & am only astonished to find we have all stood it so well...[We] arrived here this morning, having been picked up by French fishermen shortly after the ship went down...[We] shall yet get to L'pool by the end of the month. [17]