Linda Phillips’ Tremé home is on a quiet street above North Claiborne Avenue. “Yes, I realize this isn’t a fashionable neighborhood but it’s truly a good place to live since many of the homes are owner occupied and there is a lot of watching out for each other’s property,” she says.
The colorful single shotgun house is a treasure. There are five rooms, “lined up behind each other so straight you could fire a shotgun from the front to the back of the house.” It’s what Phillips has done to each room that makes this house special. A design consultant with Ethan Allen, she is well versed with helping others create beautiful spaces. In her own home, she gave each room a dramatic flair the shows off her eclectic collection of items including fine antiques, Brazilian Amazonian Indian headdresses and African artifacts.
“It is always a challenge to adapt furnishings selected for one environment to a new one,” Phillips says. “Shortly after 9/11, I relocated to New Orleans with the contents of my eight-room New York apartment. It was quite an undertaking to downsize my collection of antiques, art and artifacts that I had gathered over many years of traveling and poking around nooks and crannies to discover unique things I couldn’t live without.”
Her decision to have three “sitting rooms” adds to the charm of her design. “Using the second parlor as an office-library-music room with comfortable seating made the front of the house seem more open than if I had used the usual dining room table and chairs,” she adds.
“Instead of a second bedroom I created a multi-purpose den-guest bedroom-media center. Here I mounted a unique Brazilian Amazonian Indian headdress that was used in a traditional name giving ceremony for a child.” An antique silk sari from
India was used to drape the couch. An 1860 Dutch chest serves as a coffee table and doubles for storage.
Phillips’s innovative talent is displayed in the kitchen where two of her bamboo chairs are hung from large red hooks on the wall to keep the space around the table from being crowded. “The chairs are moved from the wall to the table when I have six people over for dinner,” she says. “When not in use, the chairs become decorative objects on the wall.” Adding to the charm of the room is Phillips’s 18th century Irish pine table that doubles as a workspace. As an almost whimsical afterthought, she added a 12-candle chandelier in the corner of the room.
The large master bedroom across the back of the house allows Phillips to showcase
her handsome iron bed that was made in Italy. She dressed the bed in white for dramatic effect and then added a few touches of red, such as a vase of red roses on the side table and a red gown across the foot of the bed, for romantic effect. An adjoining luxury bathroom, created in a new bump-out addition, makes her forget that she lives in just over 1,000 square feet. “The grand bathroom is definitely a world away from what you normally find in a shotgun house.
“Location, location, location still applies to my home. I am only a few blocks from the French Quarter but out of the high-rent district,” she explains. “This is a perfect home for me.”
