1132 Royal St
New Orleans, LA 70116, USA

Gallier House ( James Gallier Jr.,House) - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

The Gallier House was built and decorated in 1857-60 by James Gallier Jr., one of the most important architects of New Orleans in the mid-nineteenth century, as his own residence. It was occupied by his family into the twentieth century. Just as the marriage of Gallier, a second generation Irish-American, to Aglae Villavaso, a Louisiana Creole brought together families of two cultures so the House shows an urban residence in the eclectic Anglo-American manner of the mid-nineteenth century adapted to the physical and cultural conditions of the French Quarter.

The street front is in a restrained Italianate manner that was frequently used by Gallier and his father James Gallier Sr. and may have its origins in Regency London where Galliery Sr., worked as a young man. A cast iron gallery adds a typical local note. The garden in the courtyard is rather more French in feeling with a simple parterre and originally roses high on the garden wall.

On the interior the typical American plan of stair hall with double parlor on the first floor and bedrooms on the second receives an unusual variation on the second floor in widening of the' stair hall to make an Interior room, once used as a library from which the bedrooms open. In a typical Louisiana manner, all the living rooms of the houses, except the dining room, open to porches, galleries or the balcony with double-hang slip-head sash or doors. Except for a French Regence “Singerie" cornice in the parlors the House is typically late Greek Revival in detail.



One notes typical service rooms and cistern but also some of the latest conveniences of the day - a bath with tub and water closety a pantry sinky a kitchen with sinky hot water heater and patent stove and a hydrant in the garden. The master bedroom has ornamented ventilators in the ceiling.

Much of the House is original and enough original work was left in damaged areas for correct restoration in most areas. Also, the documentation of the period of James Galliery Jr., is of value: original architectural drawings an original manuscript plans the '’Benson Ledger" (showing the delivery of paints and wallpapers to the House in 1859-60,) various old photographs and Inventories of the successions of Gallier, his wife and children.