Restoration at Race and Religious streets is a family affair

COMPOUND INTEREST: The oldest of eight siblings, Gran Semmes moved to the Irish Channel from the West Bank in the early 1970s when his father bought a collection of shotgun doubles at First and Tchoupitoulas streets. The old houses and historic neighborhood made a life-changing impression on Semmes, then in his 20s, and helped to inspire his passion for architecture, design, art and history.

"That was the starting point of my affliction," he said. "My wife calls me a serial renovator."

Since then, Semmes has been involved in dozens of real estate projects, but his most cherished may be the townhouse, slave quarter and cottage at Race and Religious streets, a successor of sorts to his family's Irish Channel compound.

"I started with just the Creole cottage on Religious Street back in the '70s -- I bought it to keep it from being torn down," Semmes said. "Then in 2003 we bought the townhouse and its slave quarter and connected all the courtyards."

Gran, Billie and Elsie Semmes (the couple's youngest daughter) were living in the cottage when Hurricane Katrina forced them to suspend their renovation of the townhouse and decamp to Colorado, where the family's elder daughter lives (a son, Granville IV, lives here in New Orleans).

But eventually the townhouse renovation project got back on track.

"My brother Paul and I literally renovated the cottage ourselves," Semmes said. "I didn't borrow any money to do it but worked on it when I had the resources. Years later, the townhouse was a collaboration of three of us: me, Paul and Steve Richardson, a wonderful painter and cabinetmaker. He can figure out all the intricate details."

PERSONAL SPACE

THE HOUSES: Two early 19th-century treasures, one a Creole cottage and the other a townhouse, sharing courtyards in the Lower Garden District

THE OWNERS: Gran and Billie Semmes

THE SPACE: The ground floor of the townhouse, where the living room, kitchen and entry foyer flow seamlessly into one another

WHY THEY LOVE IT: 'This was a working man's house, not a fancy place,' Gran Semmes said. 'We wanted to bring it back without changing its nature.'

Semmes said that he and his team would meet at the kitchen table in the cottage each morning and talk about the townhouse, then proceed with whatever ideas and solutions they hatched that morning. What risked becoming a helter-skelter amalgamation of disparate visions became instead a harmonious composition, an outcome that Semmes attributes to the talents of his two partners. For the intriguing atmosphere of the building's interior, Semmes credits his wife, Billie, and her unerring sense of taste, with pulling it all together.

"Billie has corrected many a mistake before I made them," Semmes said. "She has a great eye."

FURNISHINGS: The couple has traveled the world together and likes to seek out elements to incorporate into their home wherever they go.

From Buenos Aires, they brought back the wrought-iron gates to the courtyard on Race Street, as well as the tall stained-glass doors found throughout the compound. From Afghanistan and Iran came multisized geometric patterned rugs, now scattered across the townhouse's clay tile floors.

Other artifacts, especially the ubiquitous religious objects, come from anywhere Semmes finds them, including a front porch in Waveland, Miss. Fine antiques such as the Renaissance-era trestle table in the townhouse kitchen are used casually, rather than showcased.

The effect is a visually arresting and refined environment that manages to be comfortable and unpretentious.

With all offspring well out of the house, Gran and Billie Semmes now spend more time at their Slidell home than their city roost. Set on more than 100 acres, the house they occupy was built according to a plan by Frank Lloyd Wright. No Renaissance kitchen tables or 200-year-old French hospital tiles at the Slidell house; the couple has furnished it in mid-century modern.

Billie's parents live across a bog connected to the Semmes house by bridges, constituting yet a third family compound. When Gran and Billie come in from Slidell, they stay at their "city house" at Race and Religious, but when they aren't there, they rent it out as an event venue.

REACHING BACK: Semmes says that what attracted him to the Lower Garden District 30 years ago stills holds him there today.

"When I started looking around here, there were many more old houses and warehouses than there are today, but it was clear change was coming," he said, citing the expansion of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and establishment of the truck route as two factors that resulted in sweeping changes to the once-quiet area.

"There was just this feeling that you wanted to reach back and hold on to it before it slipped away."

The same reverence for and instinct to protect the city's architectural and cultural heritage is expressed in various artworks found throughout the compound, especially in the townhouse kitchen mural painted by Richardson at Semmes' request.

Both Elsie Semmes and Richardson contributed smaller, framed pieces that appear in the townhouse, slave quarter and cottage. Mixed in are a few contemporary works, as well as oils that resemble Old Master portraits. Some paintings rest on mantels, but others hang on the sumptuously weathered walls that Semmes took care not to make too perfect.

"It's always tricky when you're renovating to make only the improvements that need to be made and to avoid erasing the place's past by smoothing out all the dents and imperfections," Semmes said.

"Those are the things that connect you to the people who lived here before you, and you want to keep those."

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Restoration at Race and Religious streets is a family affair