An Art House on Esplanade Avenue

One lane only

If you haven't been down Esplanade Avenue recently, the city is repaving the street between North Rampart and Moss Streets.  It's been an interesting public works project to watch from the front porch.  There is a hole in the pavement in front of our inn.  It looks like they were looking for a Cardiff Giant.

A hole filled in with sand

Tree trimming has already been done on the 2200 block of Esplanade Avenue and the oaks in front of La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast are safe.  Amply shaded on-street parking remains the rule.

When the work is finished, Esplanade Avenue will carry traffic differently.  Instead of two narrow automobile lanes on each side of the neutral ground, there will be one wide lane for cars, with a dedicated bicycle lane running along each side.  That and the pavement will be as smooth as Miss Alma's roux.  Most people are in favor of this change, but there a few people in favor of the status quo, as there usually are.

Remember the other day when I said that we don't get the Times-Picayune delivered to our house anymore and I had missed an important story?  Well, today, our neighbor, Johanna, told me I had missed something else.  I had missed an interesting letter to the editor.

It looks like a giant's grave from this angle

I happen to know the author.  Johanna and I rummaged through the recycling bin to find Friday's T-P.  We found it and I brought it into La France Suite where Frau Schmitt was straightening the pictures.  I asked her to guess who had his letter to the editor published.  "Probably some crackpot," she said.  She is usually right about these things.  

We were in La France Suite's bedroom.  Every room at La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast is a different color.  La France Suite is painted in the colors of the French flag.  The bedroom is red.  Over the mantle is a reproduction of Edgar Degas' famous New Orleans painting.

The walls are red like the blood of patriots

There is a reflection from the window across the room in the photo above.  It isn't 'Portrait of Estelle" that was purchased by the Delgado Museum.  It is "The Cotton Exchange."

Image courtesy of Edgar Degas

If your idea of excitement is reading the newspaper, this is the painting for you.  I've got something else in mind to replace it in the near future, but that is the subject of another post.  

What caught my eye wasn't the Degas.  I love to study it, and I pass the Degas House every day on my errands, and they also have a hole in front of their historic New Orleans bed and breakfast inn, and it really is a perfect composition.  A different painter came to mind.  It was Giorgio de Chirico.

"Love Song" by Giorgio de Chirico

I was looking at the corner of the mantle while I was talking to Frau Schmitt, at the bust of Napoleon positioned next to the tissue box.  It was a metaphysical landscape.

Bust of the emperor

"Able was I ere I saw Elba," I said.  New Orleans is the kind of city in which palindromes make up the patois.  Napoleon would not have lamented living here.  

What caught my eye was the plaster bust paired with a box of kleenex printed with a picture of a pier.  If I were a painter, I would have the subject to create a masterpiece. 

No matter what kind of frame of mind you find yourself in, you will enjoy staying at our inn.   The whole thing is a work in progress with new details being added and rearranged every day.  Every room is a different color.  Every suite has a different theme. We run an comfortably artistic New Orleans bed and breakfast that is full of curios and original work, as well inspiration for everyone who visits.

It is all in the details

Think about staying at La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast if you are visiting New Orleans.

A votre sante.