What an honor and thrill! Wonderful home feature by Senior Editor CJ Lotz Diego, phenomenal images by Alison Gootee, and beautifully styled by Paige Mullens ALL PHOTOS LINKED TO GARDEN & GUN STORY 2025 Feb-March Cover Photo by Cedric Angeles HOMEPLACE SWEET REVIVAL ![]() Deep in Louisiana Sugar Country, an Antiques Lover Restores His Storied Family Home A sweet renaissance in a century-old bayou retreat By CJ LOTZ DIEGO February/March 2025 When Peter Patout craves a break from the bustle that rarely slows near his Bourbon Street home, he heads west from New Orleans. He drives for two hours, crossing the Atchafalaya River and cypress bayous until he reaches his family’s property thirty miles south of Lafayette, in the hamlet that is called—no joke—Patoutville, Louisiana. Patout, who sells historic properties in Louisiana and Mississippi, steps up to the house that his grandparents built sometime around 1925, a Mediterranean Revival with a columned porch anchored in a sugarcane sea. “There’s almost always a breeze,” he says, “and the birds and crickets provide the background noise. You can smell night-blooming jasmine and butterfly ginger, along with citrus blossoms in the spring.” To the hum and beat of planting and harvesting, the little Patoutville community thrums along in Iberia Parish, the same one where peppers grow and become Tabasco sauce, where James Lee Burke sets many of his novels, where the Blue Dog artist George Rodrigue painted, and where Bayou Teche flows. It’s also where Patout invites his many creative friends to steep in the mysteries of Cajun country. A century ago, Ory and Agnes Patout raised six children and ran a store here. The entire sugar enterprise at one point included a doctor’s office, lumber company, cemetery, and more than one bar. To this day, sugarcane dominates the region’s harvests, and Patout’s relatives remain forces in the industry. To a young Patout growing up in a sleek midcentury-modern house in nearby Jeanerette, the rural retreat invited romps through both nature and family lore. “I still remember delicious meals, the garden, geese in the yard, and a pigpen in the rear,” he says. “But my first recollection of my grandmother’s house was sipping café au lait and eating biscuits after attending Mass at Old St. Nicholas Catholic Church just across the street. This church was founded by my family’s French immigrant ancestor, who was buried underneath the center aisle.” The home has never left the family, and the ghosts still pull up a seat. “When my oldest cousin, Jimmy Keller, told me he wanted me to have the house,” Patout says, “he was sitting at the kitchen table in the exact spot where my grandmother had sat, where his mother had sat, and where I now sit.” Patout took over the place, along with an acre of land, after Keller died in 2010. “Since inheriting the house, I have poured my heart into its restoration and care.” And like many country homes, this one is named for its matriarch: the Mrs. Ory Patout House. After a family auction divvied up many of the odds and ends that had accumulated over the generations, Patout set to addressing the most pressing upkeep needs and restoring the house back to its glory days. “Everywhere there was this layer of smoke,” he says. “I think someone had smoked in there every day since the 1920s.” He chuckles, but then shudders as he recalls “the Sheetrock campaign” and the “synthetic floor with all the glue.” Patout pared those surfaces back to the original pine board walls and heart pine floors. “Fortunately,” he says, “I inherited a house with incredible integrity.” And he put oyster shells as ashtrays outside, on the porch. The sunny sitting room exemplifies Patout’s relaxed approach to hosting, with upholstered chairs galore, all meant for getting cozy with the Louisiana history books scattered about, and a big map of the Bayou Teche region hung in a corner. Everywhere, he layered in family mementos and treasures from his lifetime of collecting—nineteenth-century oil portraits of his French Creole ancestors, a marble-topped buffet, and in the central room that he reconfigured into an entertaining hub, an epic dining table ringed with ladder-back and rush-seat chairs. At the table’s center, he arranges garden roses, citrus branches heavy with kumquats, or armfuls of the Louisiana irises he planted all around the property. (Not unrelated: He installed an outdoor shower hidden in a bamboo patch, a storybook spot for a post-weeding rinse.) Four-poster Louisiana canopy beds fill the large bedrooms. Years ago, Patout uncovered a swatch of faded wallpaper in an abandoned manor house in neighboring St. Mary Parish. He sent it off to the experts at Adelphi Paper Hangings in New York, who concluded that it was an 1830s French design. The company re-created the print by hand and now sells it in four colors under the name Florence Place Foliate. Lauren Buckholtz of Baton Rouge’s Perla Paperhanging covered one of the bedrooms with the pattern in blue, and when she finished, Patout sat in a rocking chair and cried. “It had been Jimmy’s mom’s, my Aunt Evelyn’s room,” he says. “This side of the family was so modest. They were never extravagant, but she had an eye for beauty.” Stories swirl all around Patout. The author Natalie Baszile shadowed the area’s sugarcane farmers while writing her stellar 2014 novel Queen Sugar, which became a television series produced by Oprah Winfrey. For years, Baszile shuttled between her own home in California and both of Patout’s houses. “I had never really come across someone who had that deep of a connection to the objects in their home,” Baszile says. “He’s committed to the past, but it’s not like things are frozen in amber—he lives a rich and textured life. He serves breakfast on the dishes; his guests sit in the chairs and sleep in the beds. He has been a real teacher to me in the importance of visual storytelling.” Baszile says she’ll always remember watching golden hour on the sleeping porch that Patout transformed into a screened-in sanctuary. “I would sit in a wicker chair with the breeze rolling in over the sugarcane fields with the mill in the distance,” Baszile says. “When you think about the fact that sugarcane was one of the three crops that built this nation—sugarcane, tobacco, and cotton—you realize you’re at ground zero for the American story in all its beauty, ugliness, and complexity. Peter’s generosity of spirit allowed me to access this whole world.” In the charmingly rustic kitchen, nothing is too delicate to use. Tomatoes ripen on the windowsill above the deep enameled sink. Counters, walls, and glass-fronted cabinets hold blue-and-white dishes, assorted ceramics, and knife-worn cutting boards. Platters might be chipped on the edges, and the skillets are cured smooth, but everything has fulfilled its purpose time and again, bearing witness to lifetimes of gatherings. Patout still makes his aunt’s recipe for kumquat preserves here. He also ages bottles of satsuma-cello liqueur from citrus picked around the property, a treat introduced to him by the food historian Poppy Tooker and beloved by his dear late friend and longtime G&Gcontributing editor Julia Reed. In 2019, the year before her death, Reed published her final book, Julia Reed’s New Orleans: Food, Fun, and Field Trips for Letting the Good Times Roll. In it, she nodded twice to Patout. First, she threw a midday get-together in his leafy Bourbon Street courtyard, with Ramos gin fizzes arriving on silver platters before a gumbo lunch that ended with rum-pecan pie. Then she devoted an entire chapter to adventures around Patoutville. With Patout’s two properties as her examples, Reed artfully connected the New Orleans party scene to the wider history of Cajun country. In a big photograph, Reed re-created the scene of Aioli Dinner, a painting by George Rodrigue. Patout had hauled his grandmother’s old harvest table to the backyard, draped it in white linen, and assembled Reed’s guest list of friends with wineglasses in hand and a black Labrador retriever smiling from the grass. The next pages laid out the recipe for a heaping shrimp-and-potato spread with lots of garlicky dipping sauce, which Reed dubbed the Grand Aioli. “Since pretty much everything is meant to be eaten with your hands, the platter encourages intimacy and camaraderie around the table,” she explained. “But at this particular meal, we were all good friends in the first place.”
“Peter,” Reed wrote, ending the chapter (and it’s only fitting that her spirit have the last word here, too), “with his antiques-filled houses and love of the land, honors the past and his own Louisiana history with more joie de vivre and élan than anyone I know.”
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Dear Friends, How exciting to have my country home featured in this New Orleans-focused issue of Garden & Gun Magazine! The Mrs. Ory Patout House in Patoutville, is located just next door to New Iberia. I had thought this charming bucolic home, which sits on the edge of sugar cane fields in the heart of Acadiana, may be of interest to World of Interiors. Years ago, my Bourbon Street home was featured in that publication. Garden & Gun's senior editor CJ Lotz Diego knew of me as a dear friend to Julia Reed (my deceased incredible writer and tastemaker friend). Over time, CJ and I developed a rapport where I would send her cultural highlights to explore and consider for their publication. She also visited my French Quarter home. Last Spring, I introduced her to the New Iberia area. She attended the Books Along the Teche Festival to interview James Lee Burke, viewed native Louisiana Irises blooming at City Park (a project I've happily helped spearhead), and of course, I took her to my remarkable family home (pictured below) which she found intriguing and then wanted to feature. What an honor! Contact me for Whole House Extended Rentals of the Mrs. Ory Patout Home Once the photo shoot timing was discussed, I moved into high gear to add more lustre, which included wallpapering my deceased Aunt Evelyn's former bedroom. There's quite a story about this historic wall paper and the installation process! Introducing Florence Place Foliate Gone But Not Lost Recreating Classic Wallpaper with Adelphi... Magical process brought historic paper to life Twenty years ago, I wandered into an abandoned deteriorated home in St. Mary Parish, Florence Place, which has since succumbed to the elements. In a stairwell closet, I found a piece of remarkably intact, though damaged, beautiful wallpaper. I later showed the sample to dear friends and top interior designers William Brockschmidt and Courtney Coleman of Brockschmidt & Coleman. They connected me with Steve Larson an owner of Adelphi Paperhangings. Bill and Courtney also expressed an interest in using the paper if reproduced. To my amazement, Adelphi recreated this original French wall paper from the 1830's. When I gave my permission to proceed in making the hand-carved blocks, it was with the understanding that Adelphi could sell the design to others - thus keeping the design alive for future generations. Courtney and Bill also developed some additional colorways of Florence Place Foliate that have been used in prestigious interiors globally! SEE ADELPHI'S PROCESS - VIDEO BELOW Founded in 1999, Adelphi Paper Hangings is a small, artisanal producer of historically accurate block printed wallpapers for museums and historic institutions, as well as for period designers and those involved in contemporary design projects. Adelphi papers represent the highest level of craftsmanship - and it isn’t cheap. Further, few tradespersons have the expertise to hang their works. It was quite an ordeal to find the right installer and one committed to making the trek to Patoutville for a multi-day installation. After making numerous calls and countless inquiries to find a qualified installer, I was at a complete loss! Seemingly on-cue, I got a call from a good friend and client, who recently left her high power commercial real estate career. THE COURTING BEGAN Luring Lauren to Patoutville I already knew Lauren Burns Buckholtz to have a great eye and to be meticulous. I was thrilled to learn she'd recently completed a special program in Vermont to learn how to hang wall paper professionally. She also apprenticed thereafter with a master of the trade....She reached out to make me aware of her career change and her new company Perla Paperhanging . Lauren is a perfectionist. In fact at first she said, Hey I can't hang this....this paper is for a senior paper hanger. She said she tried to break up with me over this very expensive delicate paper. She was very concerned about doing the perfect job and she went on and on to the extent I had to tell her I didn’t want perfection, and after that she seemed to calm down. Explaining her concerns Lauren said, "Peter wanted it done in historic overlap. He asked me to do because that’s they way it was done - which takes extra skill. I lined the wall with acid-free lining paper a day before even putting his paper on top of it to preserve the wallpaper and to prevent it from fading. The lining gave a better surface and locked in the seams which was especially needed with historic overlap technique, Lauren said. Beautiful sunsets in Patoutville as the paper was being installed Further she added, I spent a month researching for this project. I talked to Adelphi and they recommended I speak to the White House paper installer, and then I talked with 20 people in a guild. Lauren arrived on the first day and her car was filled with paper hanging equipment and materials. As she was unloading.... "Now Peter, I’m not able to talk to you during this time." I was there one night and felt confident she was a great choice for the job. She stayed five days and made this room incredible. And after the job was complete, I brought an old family rocker into the room and just sat in the space for awhile and teared up. My Aunt Evelyn was uncharacteristically elegant for the area. She had great style and would have loved the beauty this special wall paper added, and the fuss in making her bedroom exceptional. * * * * * ANOTHER TEARY MOMENT: Seeing this Sign In December, I had gone to pay my respects in Greenville, MS on the passing of Julia Reed's father, Clarke Reed. He was a huge influence in her life and I loved him, her mom and her extended family too. Later, I saw this sign and thought again about how my dear friend Julia had elevated my life in so many ways. The sign mentions her writing for the New York Times, Vogue and Garden & Gun. She included me in these publications because she believed in me. Poignant! Photo here & below by Paul Costello for Julia Reed's New Orleans:
Food, Fun, and Field Trips for Letting the Good Times Roll Perspective from Sale & Purchase of Canemount Tracy Talbot is an incredibly skilled negotiator and helped guide the Talbot Historic Team to keep buyer and seller aligned. Thank goodness for her calm too! Aide de Camp, John Welch, was also invaluable in bringing this deal to fruitition. He provided exceptional administrative support to both buyer and seller. A few thoughts from Tracy.... |
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