Creole Cottage

Creole Cottage.
This type is both the most basic and the most common form to survive from Louisiana's colonial period. These cottages are generally comprised of four rooms, each of roughly equal size, with the rooms being arranged two across and two deep, with no interior hallways for circulation. At the rear of the cottage are often found two small rooms, known as cabinets, which were designed to be used for household storage. The space between the two cabinets is generally open onto the rear yard of the house of the house, providing a covered, yet open space. There are two less common types of Creole cottage forms: the two bay cottage, with only one room across the width of the structure, and the three bay cottage, which allows for the addition of a narrow hallway alongside the two principal rooms.

External Features and Characteristics.
Creole cottages are always constructed with the facade wall set on the front property line. The yard space associated with this house type is to the rear of the cottage, with the extreme rear of the lot often serving as the location of a detached two story kitchen building. The exteriors of Creole cottages are finished in either stuccoed brick or wood lap siding. In rare cases where a high quality imported brick was used, the brick was left exposed to express the extra expense the owner incurred in the construction of his residence. The soft locally made bricks which were most often used in the construction of these cottages could not survive exposure to the elements, and were therefore covered. The exterior walls were built of brick between posts, a medieval construction technique which used heavy timbers to form the basic frame of the building, with the spaces between them being filled with small bricks.

The street facades of Creole cottages are generally symmetrical in the organization of the door and window openings. The earliest cottages were fitted with four full length door openings across their main facades, with each doorway being fitted with french doors. These doors, with their solid lower sections and glazed upper sections, opened into the cottage from the street. The earliest window openings were fitted with casement sash that opened inward in the manner of a french door, but this treatment is extremely rare today. The organization of the facade openings is most often symmetrical, with "door - window - window - door" or "window - door - door - window" being the patterns most often encountered.

The overwhelming majority of the openings of Creole cottages are square headed, with round arched doors and windows being found only in a small number of them. All of the facade openings were fitted with shutters, either the solid batten type found on early cottages, or the louvered shutters that became fashionable in the 1840s. It is important to note that many Creole cottages were subject to remodeling later in the 19th century which led to the removal of early batten shutters and french doors, in an effort to bring the cottages up to the latest taste and style.

The roofs of Creole cottages are an important element in their design. The majority of the cottages have a side-gabled roof, with a smaller number having full or partial hipped roofs. On cottages of stuccoed brick, or imported brick, the side walls rise above the roof line to form parapets. Cottages finished with wood siding do not feature this parapet element. On the earlier cottages, the roof stops at the facade wall, with a short overhang supported on iron outriggers projecting out over the sidewalk. Later cottages were designed with roofs which extended out beyond the facade wall. In many cases, these roofs have more than one slope angle. Chimneys break through the roof at the centerline of the house, and are often flanked by dormer windows. Dormers are generally carefully detailed on Creole cottages, with some featuring round arched upper sashes. While they are a common element, dormers were often later additions and not part of the original design of these cottages.