7004 St Charles Ave
New Orleans, LA 70118, USA

Park View Guest House - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

The Park View Guest House is locally significant in the areas of architecture and social/humanitarian. Constructed sometime between 1892 and 1896 as an exclusive boarding house, it is one of the oldest buildings in its section of uptown New Orleans. It is architecturally significant as one of the city's better examples of late-nineteenth century architecture and as a local landmark along St, Charles Avenue. It is significant in the area of social/humanitarian because residential hotels like the park View were once fairly common in New Orleans, but are almost non-existent today.

Although the Park View Guest House is a blend of elements taken from the Queen Anne, Eastlake and Colonial Revival styles, the Queen Anne features dominate and include the extremely varied roofline, the variety of textures on the exterior wall surfaces and the stained and leaded glass windows. The Eastlake features that were applied to this Queen Anne building block include the curved dormer openings, behind which the third story porches are set, and the curved treatment of the porch railings, which are emphasized by the placement of wooden knobs on the balusters. These two features together with the unusually complex roofline give the building a special distinction and make it one of the better examples of Queen Anne/Eastlake architecture in New Orleans. The Colonial Revival influence, seen in the classical columns on the porches and in the various demotivated cornices, is less pronounced, but adds to the architectural exuberance of the building.

The St. Charles Avenue and Walnut Street elevations of the park View are equally important and show an effort to have the building relate both to the main thoroughfare and to Audubon Park, both of which gave the site its prime location for a boarding house. In addition, the Walnut Street elevation makes an unusual contribution to the streetscape, which is mainly characterized by typical city houses with narrow facades facing the park. In contrast, the Park View Guest House presents a broad and monumental facade like a large country house. Thus, it can be considered a local landmark.

The Park View Guest House is given added architectural significance by virtue of its being, to the knowledge of the State Historic Preservation Office, the last remaining guesthouse in New Orleans that was originally constructed as one. (The other boarding houses that are currently being operated all began as private residences.) This is a residential building type that at one time was fairly common, but is now almost non-existent. The historic record and the floor plan indicate that it was built to serve this purpose, and its plan remains essentially the same, with only the use of some rooms being altered,

The Park View Guest House is significant in the area of social/humanitarian because it is an example of an establishment that was one relatively common to the city. The boarding house served as a residential hotel catering to long-term stays by families, and its public rooms, including the dining room, served as a gathering place for residents of the neighborhood. Today it reflects a lifestyle that no longer exists.

Photo by: James Philip IV