What is Creole Style?

What Is Creole Style?

Painting of Sun Oak by Riece Walton

Eugene Cizek & Lloyd Sensat on Creole Style

"Louisiana has always been different. In the begining New Orleans was the capitol of the colonial empire here. As we evolved, we were never really French or Spanish or African or American but it was a blending of all these influences which made us so different from every other city in America. We like to call it Creole, the best of all the influences."
Lloyd Sensat

"Creole architecture is an architecture that creates comfort in the hot, humid, sub tropical environment that is South Louisiana. This architecture evolves and incorporates the other popular styles such as Greek Revival, Italianate, Victorian and others. If one takes the typical Creole pavilion style double galleried house and changes the turned wood upper columns and Doric style first floor brick columns to two storey brick Greek Revival columns you have the grand style that was favored by the planters of the mid nineteenth century as epitomized by the principal houses of Oak Alley and Destrehan Plantations.

Sun Oak is an excellent example of this evolution of style. The champhered or turned wooden columns of the original Creole style front gallery are changed to Greek Revival detailed box columns. All of the original French doors of the Rixner Bouligny House are changed to large six over six lite double hung windows and wide panel style doors. The house retains its excellent flow of air and light that continues to give us a comfortable living environment.

One of the great attributes of the Creole house is its flexibility to satisfy the needs of each consecutive generation of residents. We have made Sun Oak a house that is elegant and still very human filled with personal statements of style and taste all the time providing an excellent setting for the many end of the semester Tulane Preservation Studies parties, political receptions, neighborhood and city wide events that promote the preservation of Faubourg Marigny and all of the other historic environments of New Orleans and the state. Sun Oak is an excellent place to live and to teach others about the importance of our heritage, cultural and greatly diverse society.

The Father Seelos Garden and recently built Sun Room show how one can live a contemporary life in a historic setting that is rich with sub tropical and native landscape. The archeological remains of the old privies have become fountains, the sites of the original slave quarter building, carriage house and barn are outline in different materials to emphasize what is old and what has evolved to today. Sun Oak is the perfect place to live in New Orleans. It respects the important traditions of the past while incorporating just enough of today to allow for 21st Century living."
Eugene Cizek

"As Gene said in New Orleans we live in our landmarks and adopt them for contemporary living. For me that is the New Orleans style.

Most of Sun Oak is what was the latest rage in 1830. It took us 30 years to finally get a downstairs bathroom. All of our friends live pretty much the same way. Everyone has a collection or two. We have lots of: suns,saints, books, candlesticks, floor to ceiling pictures. Everyone seems to be Catholic or Catholicism is the decoration motif with saints and altars everywhere and a little voodoo for good measure. Stacks of books everywhere...books on plantations, New Orleans, art, architecture, artists, history, gardens, exotic places. We try to hide them in armoires but some end up in artistically arranged stacks which we have to hide for photo shots. Then the house looks like a time warp. Everyone has a garden and everyone exchanges plants which turn our backyards into tropical jungles. Then there are the Mardi Gras beads and carnival memorabilia and costumes. It's all part of living in New Orleans. To me the New Orleans style is a hodgepodge of all these things. We make our eccentricity aesthetic. It is the Tennessee Williams School of Design. It is to be found no where else in America because no other city in America is like New Orleans. "Sun Oak" is our home, workplace, studio, retreat. It really reflects us- grandly decadent and excentric- it is the New Orleans style"
Lloyd Sensat

"We have been to most of the Louisiana plantation houses. It is the occupant of the house that gives it it's soul...Weeks Hall at the Shadows, Miss Lucy at Parlange, Anne Bulter at Old Greenwood, Normand and Sand at Laura. We have certainly been in many New Orleans houses. They are often Architectural Digest pretty but sterile and not "magic".It is the occupant of these houses and the ghost of past owners that give them their "joie de vivre". Without that you have no New Orleans style!
Eugene Cizek & Lloyd Sensat

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2020 Rue Burgundy
New Orleans, La. 70116-1606
504-250-6681