Creole Cottages, architectural staples of New Orleans, were plain and functional. Built during the 1800s, these single family homes had a main floor with four rooms, armoires and a spiral staircase leading to an attic.
Free brothers of color, Jean-Louis and Joseph Dolliole, designed and built many cottages in the Marigny, Tremé and the French Quarter. According to Architectural Digest, Jean-Louis was the most prolific Black architect of his time.
“The Creole architecture of New Orleans is one of its most significant character‐defining features and was greatly shaped” by free people of color, Tara A. Dudley wrote for the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans in 2018. “Jean‐Louis and Joseph Dolliole…were among those builders who perfected the Creole cottage, increasingly adapting the form to unique property situations.”
Sons of French builder Louis Dolliole and Genevieve “Mamie” Larronde, a free woman of color, Jean-Louis was born in 1779 and Joseph in 1791. The brothers “built many homes in the growing Marigny, some of which still stand,” NOLA Tours states. “It is clear that his father’s techniques were well learned by Jean-Louis,” who became the better known brother.
Jean-Louis “played an important role in developing and maintaining the culture and traditions of New Orleans,” frenchquarter.com states. “Serving also as testamentary executor, legal tutor or sponsor for friends and relatives, he helped to maintain the family lives and stature of the free Black community.”
The Dolliole family owned 36 properties. Jean-Louis’s French Quarter home at 933 St. Philip St., for example, “represents the best of vernacular architecture,” frenchquarter.com adds. “Built in 1805 and owned by Dolliole for a half century, it was rescued from near ruin by a skilled local architect and his wife.”
Jean-Louis was 82 when he died in 1861 from chronic cystitis. Joseph died in 1868.
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