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

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2001 by William Nathaniel Banks

The roof of Barnsley's Woodlands was blown off by a tornado in 1906, and it is today a picturesque ruin (Pl. V). Ironically, Godfrey Barnsley's daughter's less pretentious house on Prytania Street, with a handsome collection of late classical furnishings, is more splendid than ever, and is again providing a glamorous setting for vivacious entertainments.

WILLIAM NATHANIEL HBANKS writes and lecture about historic towns and houses.

(1.) New Orleans, the Place and the People (New York, 1895), p. 282.

(2.) Ibid., p. 280.

(3.) The Early Architecture of Georgia (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1957), P. 40.

(4.) Godfrey Barnsley collection, Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library, William R Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.

(5.) Ibid.

(6.) Quoted in Nelson Miles Hoffman Jr., "Godfrey Barnsley, 1805-1873: British Cotton Factor in the South" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kansas, Lawrence, 1964), microfilm, University Microfilms, Ann Arobor, Michigan, 1976, p. 177.

(7.) Ibid., p. 186.

(8.) See also Mills Lane, Architecture of the Old South: Georgia (Beehive Press, Savannah, Georgia, 1986), pp. 229, 233-235.

(9.) Little is known about the architect and builder Isaac Thayer. In the New Orleans Notarial Archives there are building contracts with Thayer from 1851 to 1853 for several houses ranging in cost from $3,500 to $9,500. In 1855 he signed a contract with the Louisiana State Board of Health to build a quarantine station consisting of four buildings, which he designed, in Plaquemines Parish for $35,500. He is listed in the New Orleans city directory as late as 1866.

(10.) New Orleans Notarial Archives, John Claibrone, notary, 1853, vol. 5, no. 5. The contract between Gilmour and Thayer initially specified "The Front Piazza [is] to be finished with Pillars and Cornice." A castiron gallery was substituted before the contract was signed.

(11.) Hoffman, "Godfrey Barnsley," p. 193.

(12.) Andrew Jackson Downing, The Architecture of Country Houses (1850; New York, 1856), pp.285-286.

(13.) See S. Frederick Starr, Southern Comfort: The Garden District of New Orleans (Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1998), pp. 46, 79.

(14.) Barnsley collection, Duke University.

(15.) Queen of the South, New Orleans, 1853-1862: The Journal of Thomas K. Wharton, ed. Samuel Wilson Jr., Patricia Brady, and Lynn D. Adams (Historic New Orleans Collection and New York Public Library, New York, 1999), p. 160.

(16.) Hoffman, "Godfrey Barnsley," p. 223.

(17.) Godfrey Barnsley papers, special collections, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

(18.) J. V. Smedley to George Barnsley (ibid.).

(19.) A copy is in the Williams Research center, Historic New Orleans Collection. The original is in the New Orleans Notarial Archives.