French Quarter Getaway: Transforming a petite pied-à-terre
When Tom Landry purchased a modest slave quarter unit on Governor Nicholls in the Louis Philippe Building in New Orleans, he wanted to capture the city’s historic nuances through a redesign that included both the architectural and interior elements of the limited space.
“My design intent was to return to the space a sense of time and history while respecting the French nature of the city and my own history of living there,” he explains. “I chose to follow an earlier period of New Orleans when the Creoles held great influences in style, fashion, and architecture.”
Originally from Donaldsonville, Landry resides in Los Angeles and owns Thomas J. Landry and Associates, a firm primarily focused on interior design. He uses the French Quarter apartment as his home away from home, having previously resided in New Orleans. “I love the lower part of the Quarter,” Landry says. “It is much less tourist driven, more quiet, and it is a real neighborhood.” The 1840s building that houses Landry’s apartment on Governor Nicholls originally belonged to the Ursuline nuns, and was intended as a hospital. The historic property garnered the Vieux Carré Commission’s architectural award in 1985, the year before it was converted into condominiums. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie live near Landry’s apartment, and on any given day the famous couple may be tracked by paparazzi. Landry’s 560-square-foot unit was “very contemporary” when he purchased it. “The floors were carpeted, no moldings existed, and access from room to room was along the front wall of the unit,” he says. “The kitchen was open to the living room with a corner bookcase at one end of the steps and a pony wall at the other, while the living and bedroom were separated by a closet and a return air chase. The bath was of a typical nature of the conversions at that time, bad and cheap.”
To achieve his concept architecturally, Landry repositioned the wall between the living room and the bedroom, giving the bedroom a bit more space. In the center of the wall, he installed a pair of French doors with French-inspired pulls that he designed and had cast in Los Angeles. “This enfilade of doors established a sense of spatial progression,” he notes.
The space is laid out as a series of four abutting rooms. “To accomplish my intent with the interior finishes, I painted each room in virtually the same color except I changed the intensity of the colors from room to room,” he says. All of the moldings and doors are just a shade darker than the walls in each room. “Unifying the wall color and the trim and varying the shades gives the spaces a hint of a contemporary note and makes the small rooms and the entire space feel larger.”
The antique-style basin in the bathroom with the marble backsplash, mirror, and antique sconces gives the eye a destination from the living room. Landry used antique pine floors and the traditional treatment of ceiling moldings and baseboards. “Using one flooring material makes the space feel larger,” he explains. “I used a walnut stain on the floors, giving them a little deeper hue than normally seen on pine floors.”
In the bedroom, he built wardrobes flanking the bed (a very French touch) with recessed shelves for his favorite old books on New Orleans. The bedroom has a rich, cocooned atmosphere. Voyage en Chine fabric from Old World Weavers was used to drape the bed. Because of the small space, the fabric had to be restrained in volume. Landry’s objective was to soften the alcove and warm up the room. “It feels connected to the rest of the house,” he comments. “I loved the French toile look with the twist of the Oriental subject matter connecting to the David Roberts lithographs in the living room,” he says.
Adding to the Old World atmosphere, Landry placed an antique etching from an old Italian vellum book in an Italian gold leaf frame over the elephant gray headboard. At a garage sale 25 years ago, Landry had purchased a French Louis Philippe period chest, which he placed next to the side wall. “What a coincidence this is, since it is the name of the building,” he remarks. Once the shutters are closed, no noise disturbs the serene space.
Sensitive to balancing the old and new, Landry devised a design that would enhance and expand the small space without making it too staid. “Using a Creole design idiom in the furnishing dictated the use of woods, iron, stone, alabaster, linens, linen velvets, cotton, and sisal rugs as well as refined and primitive antiques,” he says. “With this I wanted to inject a bit of my own influences with a few abstract pieces of art to relieve the space from being too serious and stuffy.”
In the bathroom, only the tub remained in its original location. “The tub niche was arched and tiled with a white porcelain reference to the 20s,” Landry explains. For storage of towels, soaps, and toiletries, Landry used an 18th-century Confuittier. “I love the feeling of a piece of furniture in the bath,” he remarks. Turn-of-the-century French sconces were added for visual effect.
“In the kitchen, I was able to keep most of the existing cabinetry, which was repainted,” he points out. “I installed a new refrigerator, which is only 24-inches deep, to give more space.” The countertop was changed to a French limestone, and Landry under-mounted the sink and removed the cabinets, replacing them with a cotton curtain.
For the living room, Landry placed a slightly overscaled French paneled screen in a driftwood finish from Dennis and Leen behind the custom designed daybed upholstered in a dark gold linen velvet. “The reason for using an overscaled object like the screen was that it makes one feel a little smaller in the space, hence the space feels a little larger,” he notes. “The scale of the daybed and the French Louis XVI oval back antique chairs are a little smaller than furniture you will find today.”
An abstract painting by New Orleans artist Adele Bane was framed in a traditional Italian gold leaf frame and placed over the daybed. “I love the play of the old and the new,” Landry explains. A French Neoclassical Napoleon III commode resides across from the daybed, adding a sense of grandeur. “The iron cage ceiling fixture is one I designed and it was fabricated by Paul Ferrante, Inc.,” Landry reveals. A Regence side table in a dark ebony finish serves as both a cocktail table and a dining table, cleverly reserving space.
The careful redesign of Landry’s elegant apartment echoes the history of New Orleans while reflecting the designer’s flair for creating beauty in small spaces. Though diminutive, Landry’s inspired pied-à-terre in the heart of the Quarter transcends its own limits with panache and a good deal of charm. ✦
