House
The house was saved from destruction by the Louisiana Landmarks Society in the 1960s and restored to its original splendor, showing the double-pitched hipped roof, and the plaster-covered brick-between-post construction. The wooden posts act as structural support, the brick offers thermal insulation, and the plaster protects this medley from dampness and rot. The style of the Pitot House is ensuite -- with no hallways and an outdoor stairway. The house was designed with hot summers and insects in mind. The doors were positioned across from each other to keep cool air moving. The extended galleries on both the bottom and top levels of the house keep the sun off the walls and offer outdoor breezeways.
The Pitot House was also designed to withstand floods and was able to survive the floods of Hurricane Katrina due to brick floors on the bottom level of the house which would have originally been caulked with a dry mix of sand and lime, allowing flood waters to drain through. The gallery, back loggia, and sleeping porch were used for outdoor entertaining, dining, and sleeping; they were fitted with shutters to provide relief from the intense Louisiana sun.
Read more about this topic: Pitot House
Famous quotes containing the word house:
“Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible, and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to be painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains; and the stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,—these eat up the hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.”
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931)
“Behold now this vast city; a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his protection; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and hands there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)