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Historic New Orleans Home Marries Greek Revival and Italianate Styles

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  Published in House and Home on Friday, November 21st 2025 at 11:09 GMT by NOLA.com

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A Historic New Orleans Home That Marries Two Distinct Architectural Worlds

In a quiet corner of the Garden District, a stately home rises to the street, its façade a striking dialogue between Greek Revival grandeur and Italianate ornamentation. The house—now privately owned but publicly celebrated—was the subject of a recent feature in Nola.com, which explored how its owners and restoration architects were able to blend two of the city’s most beloved 19th‑century styles into a cohesive, living masterpiece.

A Dual‑Era Heritage

The house was built in 1857 for local merchant William J. Hargrave, a prominent figure in New Orleans’ mercantile circles. Hargrave’s original vision was to showcase the Greek Revival style that was fashionable among the city’s affluent residents at the time. The front of the house presents a full‑width portico with a classic Doric entablature, a pedimented gable, and six unfluted columns that echo the ancient temples of Greece. Those features, the article notes, “immediately signal to the observer that Hargrave was a man of taste and ambition.”

Yet the house was not finished in a single stylistic breath. A decade later, during the peak of the Italianate craze that swept the South, Hargrave’s son, Samuel, added a second story that incorporated Italianate elements. The new addition included tall, narrow windows with elaborate hood moulds, a bracketed cornice, and an ornamental cupola that crowns the roofline. This “late‑Victorian” embellishment gave the house an elegant verticality that contrasted with the horizontal thrust of its Greek Revival lower half. As the Nola.com feature explains, “Hargrave’s family was keen on keeping up with the latest trends—Greek Revival was all about symmetry and order, while Italianate leaned toward ornament and drama.”

The house thus became a tangible record of changing tastes in ante‑Civil‑War New Orleans. The article situates the home within the broader architectural conversation: “Greek Revival was a symbol of America’s aspirations in the 1830s–1840s, whereas Italianate reflected the country’s growing cosmopolitanism in the 1860s–1870s.”

The Restoration Story

The home’s most recent story begins in 2013 when the Hargrave descendants sold it to a new couple, Laura and Thomas Green, who were both passionate about historic preservation. Their dream was “to honor the past while making the house livable for the 21st century,” according to the article. To that end, they hired preservation architect Mary DeWitt, a local specialist in historic New Orleans houses.

DeWitt’s work was guided by the New Orleans Historic Preservation Commission’s standards. She began with a meticulous survey that confirmed the original Greek Revival masonry, the ironwork on the porch, and the Italianate window hoods still intact. One of the key challenges was “synchronizing the two different rooflines without compromising the integrity of either style.” The solution was to preserve the Greek Revival gable while carefully re‑creating the Italianate bracketed cornice, using reclaimed wood salvaged from other historic buildings in the area.

Inside, DeWitt restored the grand central staircase, a true Greek Revival statement of proportion and geometry. She also restored the original plaster ceilings of the Italianate upper rooms, which featured intricate scrolled plasterwork that the article compares to a “hand‑painted fresco.” The modern amenities—energy‑efficient HVAC, upgraded plumbing, and a solar‑powered hot water system—were installed in ways that respect the historical fabric: “The Green’s goal was to keep the house as close to its original look as possible, but functional for modern living.”

Owner Insights and Community Impact

When interviewed, Laura Green reflected on the significance of the project: “It’s not just a house; it’s a conversation between eras. The Greek Revival part reminds us of the city’s past as a commercial powerhouse, while the Italianate portion reminds us of its embrace of European influences.” She also emphasized the role of the community: “We wanted to make sure our neighbors felt the same sense of pride we felt, which is why we opened the house to a small group of local historians and students during the restoration.”

The restoration was widely celebrated by the Garden District Preservation Society, which praised the Green’s commitment to “accurate historical detail and sustainable modernization.” The article notes that the house is now a frequent stop on the Garden District’s annual historic‑house tour, serving as a “living classroom for architectural students and design enthusiasts alike.”

Architectural Context and Broader Significance

Beyond the details of a single house, the Nola.com feature underscores how New Orleans’ architectural landscape is defined by its hybridization of styles. It cites the National Register of Historic Places listings in the city, where many homes exhibit a similar blending of Greek Revival, Italianate, and later Queen Anne elements. The article situates the Hargrave house among a lineage of homes that showcase the city’s evolving identity—from its early aspirations of American republicanism to its later flirtations with European aesthetics.

The article concludes with an invitation to readers to appreciate the house not only for its visual appeal but also for its historical narrative. “When you walk past the Green’s house,” the piece writes, “you’re not just seeing a structure; you’re stepping into a dialogue that has been happening in New Orleans for over a century and a half.”

In Summary

The historic New Orleans home on the Garden District street is a masterful synthesis of Greek Revival solidity and Italianate ornamentation. Its original construction in 1857, followed by a stylistic update in the 1860s, provides a tangible timeline of architectural evolution. The recent restoration, guided by preservation standards and conducted by a dedicated owner–architect partnership, has ensured that the house remains both a testament to the city’s past and a functional, modern living space. As Nola.com reminds its readers, such houses are the living pulse of New Orleans’ heritage, and they deserve to be preserved, studied, and celebrated for generations to come.