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Podcast 46 features a Boyd Cruise painting of a Creole cottage at 707 Dumaine Street.
707 Dumaine Street by Boyd Cruise
Alvik Boyd Cruise painted the cottage at 707 Dumaine Street in 1941. Notarial documents list Rue Dumaine, the “Main Street,” as the “Street of Shops.” This painting features a one-story Creole cottage. It’s not a shotgun.
The Pod
Creole Cottages
1880s sketch of the 701 block of Dumaine Street, courtesy THNOC.
A casual passer-by might mistake a Creole cottage for a shotgun double. While both have two front doors, the cottage is a single dwelling. A shotgun double contains rooms that connect front-to-back. A cottage such as 707 Dumaine Street contains four rooms, two in the front, facing the street, then two in the rear. The gates on either side connect the cottage with its neighbors. The flat roof design of these cottages remains on 707. This was the original Spanish Colonial design, but many of these cottages were re-fitted with angled roofs. The total rainfall in New Orleans created problems for flat roofs. Water puddled on the roof, rotting the wood.
The People
Cruise painted three people in his scene of the cottage. On the left, a Black woman looks out from the gate to the street. She’s obviously a #writingprompt. Given Cruise’s preference for antebellum scenes, she is likely enslaved. It’s possible that she lives there at the behest of her master, who keeps her in a nonconsensual relationship. With wife and family back on the plantation, many white men kept enslaved women in town, for their dalliances.
It’s possible the Black woman is household staff for a family living in the house. Or, perhaps she is a Free Person of Color and owns the cottage outright.
The two woman on the right sport French-styled dresses common in the 1850s. They wear jackets over their dresses. Cruise envisions them in the cooler temps of Fall or Winter.
The Architect
This cottage was designed by Architect, Engineer, Surveyor, and Scoundrel (he was a contemporary of the Lafittes), Barthélemy Lafon.
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