Creole on the Corner

The two remaining houses in the 300 block of S. Roman Street, inside the LSU Footprint, were wrapped as of last evening.  The small shed behind the house on the left has been demolished.  Humble Rumble's former house - a shallow double shotgun - is on the right.

The diminutive house on the left, a corner property with deep eaves overhanging, is 301 S. Roman, a structure with creole influences and several architectural elements that indicate a date of construction from around the time of the Civil War, if not before.

The house's location in the lower part of the LSU Footprint aligns with an earlier construction date, as the part of the footprint closest to the river was settled first as pumps progressively made more land available for construction.

A real loss in the UMC Footprint

Here's what 2101-03 Palmyra in the LSU (UMC) Footprint looked like until a few days ago.

Note the deep overhanging eave on the south side of the shotgun building:

This creole-inspired building likely dates to before 1880 given a number of architectural details, including the deep south eave, old-style brackets, and the roof lines, visible below.  The front portion of the hipped roof is distinct from the portion in the back.  It's also a corner building, so the cypress drop siding runs along not just the front facade on Palmyra, but also along the entire side elevation along S. Johnson Street.

From what I recall, Mr. Carl lived here back when the VA site was being cleared, as did an old lady who would sometimes clear weeds along the back fence, all the way up to a point several months ago.

Here's a view of the parcel from the Notarial Archives website. It is part of plate 5 of the Robinson Atlas.  Although copyrighted in 1883, it is based on the Braun survey of the late 1870s:

Note that the map shows a building with two distinct roof sections (denoted with blue arrow), indicating that the same structure was standing at that time.